504 i£x ICibrtB SEYMOUR DURST

When you leave, please leave this book

Because it has been said

"Ever thing comes t' him who waits Except a loaned book."

Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library

Gift of Seymour B. Durst Old York Library

Digitized by the Internet Archive

in 2014

https://archive.org/details/northamericancitOOunse

"HE HAD FOUND THE CAPTAIN AGREEABLE AND COMPANIONABLE." HARPER'S NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

Vol. LXXX1X. NOVEMBER, 1894. No. DXXX1V.

sea-ugbbejis o/jvew ymx by

Thomas A.Janvier.

i. domination the most romantic of our his- SEA-STEALING, though they did not torians have not ventured the suggestion call it by so harsh a name, was a lead- that anybody ever went to sleep when ing industry with the thrifty dwellers in there was a bargain to be made; and in this town two hundred years ago. That the period to which I now refer, when the was a good time for sturdy adventure English fairly were settled in possession afloat; and our well-mettled New-York- of New York by twenty years of occu- ers were not the kind then, any more pancy, exceeding wide-awakeness was the than they are now, to let money-making rule. Nor was anybody troubled with chances slip away by default. Even in squeamishness. Therefore it was that our referring to what is styled (but very er- townsfolk, paltering no more with for- roneously) the drowsy period of the Dutch tune than they did with moral scruples,

Copyright, 1894, by Harper aud Brothers. All rights reserved. — —

814 HARPER'S NEW M >NTHLY MAGAZINE.

set themselves briskly to collecting' the rously returning with their rich freight- revenues of the sea. age to their home port. These revenues were raised by two dif- Neither of these methods of acquiring ferent systems: which may be likened, wealth on the high seas, the director the for convenience' sake, to direct and to in- indirect, seems to have received the un- direct taxation. In the first case, our qualified endorsement of public opinion robust towns - people put out to sea in in New York in those days which came private armed vessels ostentatiously car- and went again two hundred years ago; rying letters of marque entitling them to yet both of them were more than toler- war against the King's enemies—which ated, and the Red Sea Trade unquestion- empowering documents they const rued, ably was regarded as a business rather as soon as they had made an offing from than as a crime. Because of which lib- Sandy Hook, as entitling them to lay eral views in regard to what might prop- hands upon all desirable property that erly enough be done off soundings, or at they found afloat under any flag. out-of-the-way islands in the ocean sea, The indirect method of taxation had in it is a fact that at the fag-end of the sev- it less heroic quality than was involved enteenth century our enterprising towns- in the direct levy; yet was it, being safer folk were sufficiently prominent in both in a business way and almost as profit- lines of marine industry —as pirates pure able, very extensively carried on. Eu- and simple, and as keen traders driving phemism was well thought of even then hard bargains with piratesin the purchase in New York: wherefore this more con- of their stolen goods— to fix upon them- servative (d ass <>f sea-robbers posed square- selves the ill-tempered attention of pretty ly as honest merchants engaged in what much the whole of the civilized world. they termed the Red Sea Trade. At the foot of the letter, as our French cousins II. say, their position was well taken. Their That the New York of that period was so-called merchant ships dropped down as pluckily criminal a little town as there the harbor into the bay and thence out was to be encountered upon any coast of to the seaward, carrying, for merchant- Christendom ('tis but fair to say that sev- men, oddly mixed ladings, whereof the eral worse were to be found on the coasts main quantities were arms and gunpow- of heathen countries) was due as much to der and cannon-balls and lead, and strong outward constraining circumstances as to spirits, and provisions, and general sea- inward natural disposition. Indeed, the stores. Making a course to the southeast- coming of the pirates hither was less the ward, they would slide around the Cape result of their own volition than of a cruel to some convenient meeting-place in the necessity; and the hearty welcome here Indian Ocean, usually Madagascar, where given them is to be credited as one of the they would fall in with other ships earliest exhibitions of that heterogeneous whereof the lading was Eastern stuffs, hospitality for which our city still con- and spices, and precious stones, and a tinues justly to be famed. good deal of deep-toned yellow-red Ara- As everybody at all familiar with pi- bian gold. No information was volun- ratical matters knows, the pirates doing teered by their possessors, a rough-and- business in American waters in the lat- tumble dare-devil bushy-bearded set of ter part of the seventeenth century had a men, as to where these pleasing commod- hard time of it. What with the increased ities came from ; nor did the New-Yorkers vigilance of French and English war- manifest an indiscreet curiosity — being ships in the Caribbean and off the West content that they could exchange their India Islands; the defection to the French New York lading for the Oriental lading service of many of their own number, on terms which made the transaction and to the English service of Morgan profitable (in Johnsonian phrase) beyond who was knighted for his misdeeds, and the dreams of avarice. When the ex- in the year 1680 was made Governor of change had been effected the parties to it Jamaica; and finally (this was the death- separated amicably: the late venders of blow), after that infamous coalition of all the Oriental goods betaking themselves, Christendom against them, brought about most gloriously drunk on their prodigal by the Peace of Ryswick— it is not too much purchases of West India rum, to parts to say that even the most capable men in unknown, and the New-Yorkers deco- the profession were at their wits' end. THE SEA-ROBBERS OF NEW YORK. 815

The prime necessity of these harried dered him. Pii"ates used to do that to and bedeviled seafarers was a friendly their captains now and then — not neces- port in which they could fit out their sarily for publication, but as an evidence ships, and to which they could return of bad faith. At any rate, his ship came with their stolen goods. Without these bade to America in charge of one Edward facilities for carrying on their work and Coats, and made the eastern end of Long for realizing upon their investment of Island in April, 1093. By this time Gov- courageous labor, they might as well — ernor Fletcher—a weak brother morally save for the fun of it —not he pirates at —was in power; and with him negotia- all ; and such of them as were hanged by tions presently were concluded by which, Sir Henry Morgan, their old comrade, or in consideration of the sum of £'1800 to were turned over by him —as was a whole be divided between the Governor and his ship's company— to he racked and fagot- Council, Captain Coats and his men were ed by the Spaniards of Hispaniola, did assured against any harm coming to not even have any fun. Most fortu- them, in New York at least, as the re- nate, therefore, was it that at the very sult of their piratical escapade. In the time that this dismal state of affairs was Governor's share was the pirate ship, on forward in Caribbean latitudes the possi- which —selling it to the respectable Caleb bility of relief for oppressed pirates was Heathcote —he realized £800. discovered here in our own hospitable III. and generous city of New York. Like many other important discoveries, It was the deal between Coats and the i-evelation of the piratical possibilities Fletcher which gave to piracy, under the of New York came about almost by acci- genteel guise of privateering, its practical dent: when one William Mason stumbled start in New York: as is made evident upon the simple plan of fitting out at this by the fact that as soon as the facili- port a pirate ship in the guise of a patriot ties offered for the transaction of pirati- privateer. It was in the year 1689 —dur- cal business by the obliging Governor ing Leisler's short administration —that were noised abroad there was a notable Mason was authorized to sail for Quebec gathering in this town of well-seasoned and "to war as in his wisdom should adventurers under the black flag. seem meet" against the French. Several Quite the most prominent of these ear- other ships similarly were commissioned ly arrivals was Captain Thomas Tew, a at the same time, and as these engaged well-known practising pirate of that time; only in genuine privateering there is no and an odd flavor of kindliness is given reason for supposing that Mason's let- to this section of the chronicle by the fact ter of marque was taken out in bad that between him and the Governor — faith. What swung him from legal to quite aside from the question of mutual illegal piracy appears to have been pure interest — there was developed a friend- bad luck. He seems honestly to have ship based upon mutual esteem. There tried to capture French ships off the was not the least doubt as to Tew's char- Canadian coast; and then, worried and acter, and his record was known. On the vexed beyond endurance by his ill for- Indian Ocean he had cut and slashed into tune in not finding any French ships to the East Indian Company's ships so bra- capture, to have taken to piracy as a last zenly, and so successfully, that his name resource. His shift turned out admirably was a terror in all that part of the world. well. In the course of his run across to To take a fresh start in his old business the Indian Ocean all his bad luck was left he had come to America, and before pre- behind; as a pirate he was as conspicu- senting himself in New York he had made ously successful as he had been unsuc- an unsuccessful attempt to procure a so- cessful as a privateer; and during the called privateering outfit in Rhode Island. ensuing three years he mowed so wide a That he had failed in this attempt is an swath through East Indian commerce emphatic testimonial to his disreputabili- that at the end of that period the division ty—for the man who was too bad for the of his spoils gave of the value of 1800 Bristol of that period must have been very pieces-of-eight to every man before the bad indeed. mast. Yet when Tew came down to New York, Mason seems to have left his ship on getting here in November, 1694, he and the other side. Possibly his men mur- the Governor seem to have struck up a

THE SEA-ROBBERS OF NEW YORK. 817

friendship at the very start. Later, when from the s'uth'ard — where he had been Fletcher was hauled over the coals offi- engaged in buccaneering until driven cially for his misdoings, he admitted his out of that business by the stringency of knowledge of the fact that Tew had been the times—about the year 1695. a pirate, but explained that the captain Captain Hoar was an Irishman, and he had promised to abandon piracy and to had an Irishman's handsome contempt for become an honest privateer. He added all petty subterfuge, as well as a birthright that he had found the captain "agreea- joy in the breaking of heads. He obtained ble and companionable," and "possessed from Fletcher letters of marque against of good sense and a great memory "; for the French—because that was the official which reasons of good fellowship, and also way of transacting the business that he to reclaim him to a better life, he had made had in hand—but he scorned (he would the captain welcome to his home. The have said "scarrn'd") to make a real only serious defect in the captain's moral secret of his intentions, and openly re- character, Fletcher declared, was his "vile cruited his men for the Red Sea and on habit of swearing"; which habit he, the the account. His financial backing, as Governor, seriously had set himself to was proved later, came from an unosten- cure, both by earnest counsel and by"lend- tatious syndicate of twenty-two merchants ing him a boolc upon the subject" —and of New York: the members of which qui- to these reformatory measures, he protest- etly directed the management of the ven- ed, the captain had been encouragingly ture in accordance with sound business responsive. Tew, on his side, had mani- principles, and left to their captain the fested his good- will toward the Governor congenial task of exploiting the joys and by presenting him with a handsome watch profits of a cruise with the jolly Roger (which presumably had come into the at the fore. So well did the captain suc- captain's possession as the result of a ceed with his part of the work that when chance encounter with its lawful owner lie dropped down through the Narrows afloat) ; and also, according to rumor, had he carried with him as fine a crew of presented the Governor's lady and her privateering pirates as ever sailed out of daughter with some pleasing knickknacks this port. in the way of jewels. Something more than a year later the As I have said, Fletcher was but a same syndicate quietly fitted out anoth- weak-kneed brother morally; and no er ship — the Fortune, Captain Thomas doubt — coming from a life in London Mostons — not as a privateer but as an to a life in this dull, coarse, raw little ordinary slaver, and cleared her for Mad- town—he must have been so insufferably agascar. Although professedly a slaver, bored that the arrival of the " agreeable the lading of the Fortune is described and companionable " pirate must have naively as consisting of "goods suitable seemed to him a veritable godsend. And for pirates." She made a good run to so, partly from self-interest, partly from Madagascar, and there—by appointment, good-will, Fletcher gave Tew the priva- presumably — fell in with Hoar's ship, teering commission against the French for well laden with Oriental goods; where- which he asked: whereafter the captain upon an exchange of cargoes was effect- made sail to the eastward and resumed ed; and the Fortune, bringing home also with great success his piracies on the Ind- some of Hoar's crew, came safely back ian seas. again to New York in the summer of In the case of Tew — who came here 1698. with plenty of stolen money left over IV. from his previous pickings afloat—New- In this affair of Hoar's our enterpris- Yorkers had no more interest than was ing merchants managed both ends of the involved in supplying him with stores business: they did their own piracy in and, probably, furnishing him with a one ship, and in another ship — as Red crew. But this was not a typical case. Sea traders — they brought home their I have cited it more because of its odd- piratical loot. It was an arrangement ness, and because the name of Tew has a which obviously increased the profits; most dashing notoriety in pirate annals, but it so greatly increased the risks that than because it is exemplary. the odds were against it as a whole. Be- A case truly typical is that of Captain cause of which prudent considerations the John Hoar: who came up to New York more steady-going of the merchants of Vol. LXXXIX.—No. 534.-94 818 HARPER'S NEW MONTHLY MAGAZTNE.

New York gave the go-by to direct piracy, The Nassau cleared hence for Mada- and were content with the lesser profits gascar in July, 1698, with a loading of arising from the more conservative meth "strong liquors and gunpowder," and in ods of the Red Sea trade. due course arrived at the port of St. To be sure, tbese were not inconsider- Mary's. Here she disposed of her out- able. For instance, in the record pre- ward cargo at the handsome rates above served of the venture made in the year given; took on board for the return voy- 1G98 by Mr. Stephen De Lanceyand oth- age a cargo of "East Indian goods and " ers in the ship Nassau, Captain Giles slaves ; and received as passengers twen- Shelley, the fact is noted that "rum which ty-nine pirates homeward bound for New cost but two shillings a gallon was sold York. Off the coast of America she fell for fifty shillings and three pounds a gal- in with some vessel that gave news of the lon,'' and " pipes of Madeira wine which sea-change that had taken place in the cost here about £19 for £300." With New York government— with the arrival modest profits of this sort the mass of of Lord Bellomont as Fletcher's succes- New York merchants was content; and sor—and therefore " landed fourteen of it was only the dare-devil younger men her passengers at Cape May," while "the who went in for the big returns to be others were put aboard of a sloop from won by piracy pure. These last, indeed, which they were put ashore on the east " sometimes Long Island —a reg ion where pi- their own fellow-townsmen —as when the rates were most kindly entreated in those slaver Prophet Daniel, out of this port, days. These latter, apparently, came was seized in Madagascar, and the super- well out of their scrape; but the luckless cargo (young Mr. John Cruger) noted fourteen landed in New Jersey were har- among the captors "Thomas Collins and ried and hounded across country by the Robin Hunt from West Chester, New authorities, and six of them were captured York." That was a case of dog eating dog. with their lading of stolen goods aboard. As I have stated above, the Red Sea Probably they were hanged. Precedent trade was not at first openly counte- to this dismal ending to their venture, nanced in New York, yet the fact remains under stress of some sort, they made a that when the trade became too notorious fairly full confession of their piracies to be ignored, it squarely was defended by in East Indian waters, and mentioned the those who were engaged in it; that is to interesting fact that the twenty -nine say, by the most prominent merchants of of them had paid for their homeward this rascally little town. The matter be- passage in the Nassau "almost £4000." ing come to an open issue, the merchants With this item added to the sum of the " were high in their maintenance of the returns, it is not surprising that the legitimacy of their trade ... .contending record of Mr. De Lancey's venture ends that they were right in purchasing goods with the statement: "The voyage of the wherever found, and were not put upon Nassau was an exceedingly prosperous inquiry as to the source from which they one, netting her owners about £30,000." were derived." In farther vindication of Such great profits were had, of course, their methods they asserted that the ves- at the price of great risks. At the very sels sentoutbythem to Madagascar "were time that the Nassau made her prosper- engaged in the pursuit of regular com- ous voyage three other ventures out of merce [i.e., the slave trade] and that they New York came to calamitous endings. accidentally came upon the ships in that Two of the vessels were captured by pi- region with which they trafficked for the rates, and the third, belonging to Freder- East India goods brought into this port." ick Phillipse, "was seized by an East " Certainly the profits arising from the India Company's frigate — presumably trade were sufficiently great to dull the for taking to piracy at first hand. This conscience of a better class of humanity was before any effort was made by the than was found in the New York of that New York government to check the Red period. What these profits amounted to, Sea trade. After the institution of what and the conditions under which they were was regarded as a policy of oppression, accumulated, may be shown by a more the New-Yorkers still more sharply were detailed statement of Mr. De Lancey's put to it to make their ventures come to venture in the Nassau, to which refer- a good end. Yet New York enterprise ence has been made above. for a time was equal to the emergency, THE SEA-ROBBERS OF NEW YORK. 819 and in one way or another the trade in New York and assume the duties of his went on. office until April 2, 1698— during which As atypical instance of its spirited and period, as will be observed by reference to intelligent conduct, Mr. Valentine makes the dates of the events above mentioned, the following statement: "About this the Red Sea traders were getting in their time [1698] Frederick Phillipse, one of the very best work. Council of the Province, the richest man But Lord Bellomont, during the time of that day in New York, expected a ship that he was hanging in the wind waiting from Madagascar, and with a view to pre- for his commission to be made out, endea- vent her arrival in the port with contra- vored—under the tutelage of Robert Liv- band goods, subjecting her to forfeiture, ingston, then temporarily resident in Lon- he despatched his son Adolphus in a ves- don—to make himself familiar with the sel ostensibly bound to Virginia. This affairs of the colony over which he eventu- vessel, however, cruised in the offing un- ally w'as to rule. What was more to the til the appearance of the expected ship, purpose — or less to the purpose, as the when she approached and discharged her eventproved—heeven essayed to begin the of great quantities of East India goods, reformation wherewith he was charged : a with which she sailed to the Delaware, laudable effort that led directly, by one of leaving the Madagascar ship to enter those oddly perverse twists of misfortune New York with only negroes on board." to which this city ever unhappily has been Well conceived though this plan was, it subject, to setting afloat the most notable ended badly. Mr. Valentine adds : "The pirate who ever sailed from New York, East India goods were afterward sent to and one of the most notorious pirates who Hamburg, where the vessel in which they ever sailed the seas—William Kidd, were carried was seized and the men According to Dunlop, "the English brought to trial." ministry were so deeply impressed with the necessity of suppressing piracy that V. Lord Bellomont was encouraged to solicit It stood to reason that this sort of that a frigate might be fitted out for that thing could not be permitted to continue. purpose; but the war with France requir- The New-Yorkers were too greedy. Had ing all the naval force of Great Britain, they been satisfied with their honest gains the i*equest was declined : however, a prop- from the then legitimate slave trade, and osition to purchase and arm a private ship with their winnings from the legitimated for this service met encouragement so far form of piracy then carried on in the that the Duke of Shrewsbury, Lord Chan- guise of privateering, no fault would have cellor Somers, the Earls of Romney and been found with them, and they would Oxford, with others, became sharers in have been left to their own money-mak- the enterprise with Livingston and Bel- ing devices in peace. But the Red Sea lomont—the latter taking upon himself trade, by which these impudent colonists the equipment of the vessel." In other preyed directly upon the commerce of the records of the transaction the King is mother - country—to say nothing of the credited with having suggested it, and strokes of business done by New York with offering to contribute towards it pirates in the capture of English ships in from his private purse the sum of £3000; West-Indian waters—was so flagrant an and his Majesty also is represented as impropriety that the home government having failed to pay up his promised sub- could not do otherwise than take strong scription when it fell due. However the measures for bringing them up with a project may have started, its prime mov- round turn. ers certainly were Livingston and Bello- The obvious way to accomplish this mont; of whom the former undoubtedly necessary reform in New York business was responsible for the selection of Cap- methods was to appoint in Fletcher's tain Kidd to command the armed vessel place a Governor who would have—what which presently went to sea. Fletcher certainly had not—a fair allow- Mr. Livingston's action was more than ance of moral backbone. Such a person justified by the facts. Kidd's record was was found in Richard Coote, Earl of Bello- excellent. In New York, where he made mont, who, although he was appointed his home, he was well known as the re- Governor in 1695, did not receive his com- spectable commander of an honest mer- mission until 1697, and he did not arrive chantman, the tAntigua, trading to Eng- —

820 HARPER'S NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

land; while socially, as a well-to-do mas- for New York lay at this port for ; a while ter-mariner, his position was good. He perfecting his arrangements and strength- married in this city, in the year 1692, Sa- ening his crew; and at last, in July, got rah, widow of another ship-master, Jan fairly away to sea. Oort; and with the widow took over the late Captain Oort's establishment on Han- VI. over Square. Shortly before his departure It is rather dreadful— looking at the on the unlucky cruise that landed him matter from the romantic stand point eventually al Execution Dock, the captain to think what a picturesque figure would had purchased a building site on the Da- have failed to take its place in history men farm, just then being' sold oft" in lots, had Captain Kidd remained an honesf and had built for himself a comfortable man. And a touch of melancholy is in- house on what then was Teinhoven and fused into the situation even as it stands now is Liberty Street, near Nassau : where, by the painful certainty that Kidd was no doubt, the reorganized widow gave a not nearly so desperate a character as the handsome house-warming which drew popular legends and ballads which chron- heavily upon their store of "one pipe icle his doings would lead one to suppose. and one half-pipe of Madeira wine." Indeed, I am more than half inclined to Livingston not only could, and pre- believe—very much against my will- sumably did, testify to the captain's good that he was a pirate in spite of himself: repute in their common home, but he and that he was very sorry for it; and also could testify — having but a little that he probably could have excused him- while previously made the eastward pas- self and got away scot-free had not his sage in the Antigua — to the captain's case become entangled with politics, and good seamanship. Another point in had not the need been urgent to make an Kidd's favor was his knowledge of the example of some one pirate in the hand— Red Sea methods, picked up in friendly for the good of those still in the bush—at talk with the Red Sea men, his famil- that particular time. I feel that I owe iar acquaintances, in New York ; which an apology to the captain's memory for knowledge, it was supposed, would ena- making these admissions, inasmuch as he ble him to run them down promptly in paid fairly with a stretched neck for the their piratical haunts. And, finally, the glamour which ever since has loomed captain's bravery had been proved, and about his name. his loyalty tested, by the gallant fashion What seems to have made him a pirate in which, but a year or so earlier, while was the ill-advised contract under which in command of a privateer, he had come he shipped his rapscallion crew. When to the rescue of a King's ship almost over- he and Livingston were planning this mastered in a bout with the French. pirate-hunting expedition together (as I Kidd received from the English author- believe that they did plan it) in the course ities at first the regular privateer's com- of the long voyage over—talking it over mission of the period, giving him the right night after night in the little cabin of the to war against the French; but this be- Antigua in the sanguine mood begotten ing judged insufficient, a special commis- of good-fellowship and stiff-mixed grog sion subsequently was made out for him, there could have been no end to the for- under date of January 26, 1696, which tune looming large before them in the gave him "full authority to apprehend bright future of their confident hopes. all pirates wherever he should encounter When their project actually materialized them, and to bring them to trial." The in London, with the fitting out of the ship money side of the transaction provided to make it effective, their anticipations of that all the property wrested from the a rich recovery of stolen goods must have pirates should vest in the stockholders in put on a still more golden coloring—so this queer enterprise, save that one-tenth that we almost can hear the captain (as of the piratical profits should be reserved the second bowl is getting low) vaporing to the King: to clinch which arrange- away to Livingston and to the noble ment Livingston joined with Kidd in lords their partners in this enterprise giving a bond to Lord Bellomont to ac- about the prodigious profits certain to count for all prizes secured. These pre- result from his cruise. Indeed, the terms liminaries being attended to, Kidd sailed of their joint agreement prove that they on the Adventure, galley,, in April, 1696, confidently expected to get out of it a THE SEA-ROBBERS OF NEW YORK. 821

relatively enormous return. The actual the promised booty; and Kidd had not investment of capital was about £5000. what nowadays would be termed the The prizes taken, after deducting the "sand" to keep his men in order: out King's tenth, were to be divided into four of which conditions came a mutiny that shares; of these, one share was to go to swung the Adventure into downright the crew, and the remaining three shares piracy, and replaced her ensign with the were to be divided again into five shares: black flag. Of course Kidd's lack of of which Bell om out and his associates backbone ceased to be weakness and be- were to receive three, and Kidd and Liv- came crime when he consented to act as last re- commander to these new-made pirates; ingston one ; but these were to ceive the ship also in case Kidd delivered yet even here there is a little of saving to Bellomont prize-goods to the value of grace in his assertion that he did not com- or over £100,000. No doubt it was to mand them when they made their cap- emphasize his own confidence that the tures, and in his plea that he consented high hopes which this suggestion of to be their commander between whiles in £100,000 in prize-money held out to his the hope that he might swing them back partners would be fulfilled that induced again into the path of seafaring propri- the captain to ship his crew on the fatally ety. unlucky basis of " no prize, no pay." After all, the actual amount of piracy Kidd does not seem to have gone into committed by this half-hearted pirate is his work with much energy. Reaching absurdly out of proportion to his piratical New York in the spring of 1696, he made celebrity. Assuming him to be respon- several short cruises hence with the in- sible for what was done by his crew, this tent to head off and capture suspicious is his record: he stole some provisions on vessels returning from the African coast; the Malabar Coast; he captured three, but, in point of fact, he did not encoun- possibly four, ships; and—here his bad ter any such vessels. His one small piece luck came in again —he personally killed of luck was the captui'e of a French pri- one mutinous seaman at whom, it would vateer — in recognition of which useful seem quite justifiably, he happened to service the Provincial Assembly "voted shy a corrective bucket. Absolutely, this him their thanks and a compliment of is the sum of Captain Kidd's piratical £250." Naturally, his no - prize - no -pay career. Presumably, his great notoriety crew became impatient. A large pro- at this late day — when pirates like Tew portion of his men had been recruited in and Hoar, who really amounted to some- New York, and the New-Yorkers of those thing, are almost forgotten—is due in part days were not in the habit of going to sea to the intei'esting fashion in which he merely for their health. Under Kidd's fell from grace, and in part to the melo- inert management they chafed until they dramatic legends which have arisen be- wei'e getting dangerously ripe for mutiny. cause of the burial of a portion of his It was in this strait —in order to retain his pirate spoils. VII. authority over his men ; and also in order to justify himself to his backers, to whom News travelled slowly from Madagascar he had been talking so glibly about prizes to England in those days. For more than to the value of £100,000—that Kidd de- a year the Adventure continued her mild- cided upon, and immediately put into ex- ly criminal career before any hint of her ecution, the dangerous plan of returning misdoings came westward from the Indian to New York and increasing his crew, and seas. But when the news did come, there then making a course direct for the Mada- was nothing slow in the action taken by gascar region, and hunting for the pirates the Admiralty for the abatement of this on what might be termed their native marine nuisance. Word of Kidd's pira- heath. cies reached London in the autumn of What actually happened, according to 1698; and by the 23d of November of that Kidd's own account of the matter, was same year a squadron of King's ships had precisely what the long-headed New- started on their wallowing way to the Yorkers prophesied would happen: the Indian Ocean—charged particularly with Adventure failed to find any pirate craft, the apprehension of Kidd and his fellows, or any merchantmen in obvious trade and, generally, with the suppression of with pirates, and so made no prizes; the piracy in that sea. Farther notice of the crew grew more and more clamorous for doings of this squadron is unnecessary, in- 822 HARPER'S NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. asmuch as Kidd was more than half-way of his men then and there deserted—yet across the Atlantic on his homeward voy- for the most part were retaken again age before the first of the pursuing tubby presently, some of them in the near-by war-ships had her snub-nose fairly around, town of Burlington, and others in Penn- the Cape. sylvania, and even in Maryland — and In his thick-witted, luckless way the then sailed around to the eastern end of captain was at the pains to provide a Long Island Sound, and from Gardiner's part of the evidence which subsequently Island opened communication with Lord helped to hang him by coming home in Bellomont, then in Boston, through the his principal capture. This was the Qui- medium of their common friends. dah Merchant, a Moorish ship — but com- Kidd's presentment of his case took the manded by an Englishman— well laden somewhat contradictory form of a denial with East India goods and treasure. Only of the charge that he had been a robber, a small part of his crew returned with coupled witli what virtually was an offer him. Soon after his arrival on the Afri- to divide with the Governor stolen goods can coast ninety of his men had revolted, to the value of upwards of £40,000. He and had gone off with the Mocha, frigate; explicitly declared that, so far from shar- and when he shifted from the Adventure ing in the piracies of his crew, he had been to the Quidah Merchant he was followed locked fast in his cabin on each occasion by only a portion of his crew. when the Adven hire had made a capture; Being aware, as Mr. Valentine gently and that in continuing in command of puts it, " that under the best explanations the galley in the intermediate peaceful he could give of his conduct he would be periods — though swayed by the high greatly censured," the captain had the moral motives already cited—he had but prudence to lay his landfall upon the yielded to a constraining superior force. West Indies— to the end that he might Under these conditions, he explained, investigate from a safe distance his he had come into possession of the Moor- chances for making his peace with the ish ship Quidah Merchant, having on Governor of New York. Early in the board goods to the value of £30,000; and spring of 1699 he made the island of St. he also had acquired, by purchase, the Thomas; but the protection which he sloop in which he was come to make his there sought was denied to him, and he terms, bringing with him " several bales was forced to put to sea again without of East India goods; 60 pounds weight victualling. Bearing northward until he of gold, in dust and ingots; about 100 was off Hispaniola, he fell in with a slooi> pounds weight of silver, besides other commanded by one Henry Bolton ; which things of the value of about £10,000"— vessel he first hired to run down to Cu- all of which, seemingly, he intimated racoa and purchase for him needed sup- might be considered as a part of the plies, and then bought out and out in profits of the voyage; and therefore di- order that he might go in her upon a visible among its promoters, of whom spying expedition to the northward be- Lord Bellomont was one. fore venturing openly to return to New In Kidd's favor, the fact is to be noted York. Bolton —who seems to have been that his plea of superior force as the cause one of the most obliging souls in the of his connivance at the piratical deeds world, ready to do anything for a con- of his crew carried on while he was fast sideration —agreed to remain in charge under hatches was supported by various of the Quidah Merchant, out of which rumors which had drifted across seas to much of the treasure was transferred to both England and America long in ad- the sloop, until the captain's return. vance of his return, and in New York Kidd's first landing in the English col- had been accepted as the fulfilment of onies, in June, 1699, was made on the the prophecies of his misfortunes which Jersey side of Delaware Bay—which fact had been made before he sailed away. probably lies at the root of the mani- This strong point is proved by a letter of fold legends of buried treasure all along Lord Bellomont's, written in May, 1699, shore from Salem Creek downward to in which he refers to "the reports we Cape May. For a while he lay off the have here of Captain Kidd's being forced re- his to plunder two Moorish ships,'' I lorekills, picking up information in by men gard to Lord Bellomont's vigorous policy, and to another report to the effect that which was so disheartening that several " near one hundred of his men revolted THE SEA-ROBBERS OF NEW YORK. 823 from him at Madagascar, and were about abouts of the Quidah Merchant unless to kill him because lie absolutely refused Livingston's bond in his favor were dis- to turn pirate." charged (which refusal was an evidence VIII. of very sturdy loyalty to his friend), a With this much to excuse him, and case was found against him, and he for- with the further mitigating- circumstance mally was committed to prison on the 6th that he had come home with full hands, of July. the captain almost certainly would have Really, though, it was the Whig party been suffered to go free had there not that was under fire. So much political been involved in his misdeeds far larger capital had been made in England out of interests than his own. The manners the association of eminent Whigs with and morals of the times were such that, Kidd's so-called piracies that nothing- when news came to England of the Ad- short of hanging the captain could be venture's piracies, the charge was made counted upon to clear the Whig skirts. openly that Lord Bellomont and the other But while in America it was easy enough dignitaries who had promoted the under- to make out a case against him upon taking were party to this perversion of which he could be committed, in England its purpose; and there was more than a —when at last, in the summer of 1700, hint that the King himself was involved Admiral Benbow had fetched him over with them, and was to have a share of there —it was not found easy to make out the piratical profits of the cruise. It a case against him upon which he could was the bruiting of this scandal which be tried. Actually, in the end, he was sent the King's ships to sea for Kidd's put upon trial for the murder of the mu- arrest in such a tearing hurry; and be- tinous sailor whom he had killed by cause of this scandal—far more than be- w hacking him with a bucket, one William cause of his own crimes and misdemean- Moore; and for this so-called murder a ors —the unlucky captain eventually was jury that evidently knew its business hanged. brought him in guilty. At the time, the Lord Bellomont's answer to Kidd's theory was advanced noisily that the message—possibly because he wanted to prosecution was afraid to press the piracy make sure of clapping hands upon this charge for fear of revelations of collusion seafaring person whose misconduct had with very eminent Whig noblemen, pos- got his Lordship into such a pickle— was sibly even with the King, which certainly kindly and encouraging. He bade Kidd would ensue. Undoubtedly, the Whigs come to Boston, and promised him safety did want to get him out of the way: in case he made good his claim that he which effectually was accomplished by had been driven into piracy against his hanging him, in company with nine gen- will. That the captain had his doubts uine pirates, on Execution Dock, in the as to the outcome of the matter was city of London, May 12, 1701. shown by his despatch of a part of his Before the unfortunate captain was treasure to Stamford for safe-keeping, and carried away to England by Admiral by his burial of another part on Gardiner's Benbow he saw his wife and daughter in

Island; by his sending secretly to Lady Boston for the last time ; and was per- Bellomont a rich present of jewelry —the mitted to give his wife some trifling part receipt of which she immediately dis- of his fatal winnings for her support. It closed to her husband and to the Massa- is known that for several years after he chusetts Council; and, most of all, by was hanged they continued to live mod- his hesitant delay in going to Boston to estly in their house in Teinhoven Street ; plead his cause. Yet that he did go I and then — the mother probably dying, take to be proof sufficient that he consid- and the daughter probably marrying—all ered himself to be an innocent man. trace of them is lost. But, obviously, The poor captain's misgivings were it is more than a possibility that lineal abundantly justified by the event. When descendants of the ill-fated pirate-in-spite- at last in July, 1699, he presented him- of-himself, who in a way was a political self to the Governor and Council for ex- martyr, are alive in America to-day. amination, his examiners made short work As to the buried treasure that has had of him. On the ground that his explana- so much to do with keeping alive the tions were trifling and frivolous, and be- captain's memory, it seems to be reason- cause of his refusal to reveal the where- ably certain that the whole of his work — —

824 HARPER'S NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

in this line was performed at Gardiner's directly representing the very interest Island in June, 1699; and that the trea- that Bellomont was to attack — uttered sure then buried was dii^' up again and these fine words not with the intention taken possession of by the colonial au- of buttering parsnips, but to the end that thorities within much less than a year. they might retain their offices, and so In Dunlop's time the Gardiner family weaken the effect of, perhaps even pre- preserved—and probably do still preserve vent wholly, the Governor's attempted —the receipt given by the commissioners reform. .1 pi minted to remove the treasure from The inevitable break in this factitious their premises; which treasure consisted, era of good feeling came before his Lord- as Dnnlop summarizes it, of "a box con- ship had been two days Governor—upon taining- 788 ounces of gold, and 847 ounces his summary suspension from the Council of silver, besides jewels." of Colonel William Nicoll on the charge of being the go-between through whom IX. Governor Fletcher had carried on busi- Long before Captain Kidd's execution, ness with the pirates, and who also had before even his return to America from shared with Fletcher the pirate bribes, his African voyage, the Red Sea trade This was more than the Councillors had from New York, and New York sea-rob- bargained for, and therefore—especially bing of all sorts, had been pretty much as there was no telling where the light- brought to an end. Lord Bellomont did ning would strike next—they resisted as the work that he had been sent to do, but far as they dared, and so forced a compro- at such a cost of strength wasted in over- mise. On the 8th of May the Governor coming needless obstacles, and with such wrote to the Lords of Trade: "Col. travail due to unnecessary worry, that Nicoll ought to be sent with Col. Fletch- the victory won by this honest and gal- er a criminal prisoner to England for

lant gentleman may be said fairly to have trial ; but the gentlemen of the Council landed him in his grave. To make a are tender of him, as he is connected by modern (but most improbable) parallel, marriage with several of them, and I am should a New York Mayor of our present prevailed upon to accept £2000 for his enlightened period squarely set himself appearance when demanded." Yet the to breaking down the City Hall ring, he case against Nicoll was admitted even by would be fighting practically the same himself. According to Dunlop he "ac- fight that Lord Bellomont made against knowledged the receipt of monies, but his own rascally Council, and against the not"— this touch is quite inimitable rascally provincial officers generally, two " from pirates known "!

hundred years ago ; and Lord Bellomont's As in the administrative so also in the hands were tied by those whose sworn executive department of his rotten little duty it was to aid him precisely as would government, the Governor found at first be done in the case of this very imaginary covert and then violently overt opposi- reforming Mayor of the present day. tion instead of support. The Earl's own When his Lordship — who was turned kinsman, Chidley Brooke, Collector of of sixty, and who seems to have been a Customs and Receiver- General of the peppery gentleman —proclaimed his com- Province, took the lead in traversing his mission and assumed the duties of his Lordship's authority; and the example office, the members of the Council re- thus set naturally was followed, in the ceived him with a commendable cordial- then state of public opinion, all down ity; and when he stated in set terms that the executive line. In very bitterness of he had been sent to New York to break spirit this harried and tormented gentle- up piracy and the Red Sea trade, and that man wrote to the King: "I am obliged he meant to do it, the affable Councillors to stand entirely upon my own legs: my —almost all of whom were engaged in assistants hinder me, the people oppose these branches of marine industry—gave me, and the merchants threaten me. It him at once to understand that in the ac- is indeed uphill work"—and so most cer- complishment of his good work they were tainly it was. the very people who could be counted The first clash came over the seizure of upon to uphold his hands. Actually, the ship Fortune; which vessel, as al- however, the members of the Council ready has been stated, brought back from being leading merchants of the city, and the African coast to the projectors of the kidd at Gardiner's island.

Voi,. LXXXIX.—No. 534.-95 —

N-Jf, HARPER'S NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINK.

expedition the stealings of Captain John law. Color is given to this even stronger Hoar. As the object of the Fortune's presentment of the impudent iniquity of

voyage was a matter of common notori- the period by the fact that the then Sheri ff ety, the Governor ordered his Collector was Ebenezer Wilson, a merchant (and to seize her instantly in the King's name. therefore likely to have piratical inter- Brooke's personal friends no doubt had ests), and that he was suspended from money invested in this venture; very pos- office during a part of his term. That be sibly lie had money invested in it him- was thought none the worse of by his self; certainly, as things then were going, fellow-New-Yorkers because of his Red he was to receive his share of the stolen Sea dealings is shown by the facts that goods as a return for permitting them lie was elected Mayor of this city in the to be landed by the thieves. Therefore years 1707-10, and that in the years 1709- Brooke at first objected that he had no 10 he was a member of the Provincial boat at his command; then that it was Council. But fancy the height of the not his business to make the seizure any high-tempered Governor's rage at finding way, and ended by interpreting the Gov- in one single morning the Collector of ernor's "instantly" as meaning the next the Port, the Sheriff of t he city, three con- morning—and in the night thus left avail- stable's, and a mutinous body of the prin- able almost the whole of the Fortune's cipal merchants— that is, of the leading cargo was brought ashore. citizens — all joined in opposition to his Being, as I have said, a peppery gentle- authority and afloat together in the same ma n, Lord Bellomont was in a fine tem- piratical boat! per over this evasion of his orders. He X. gave Brooke a practical lesson in the In the nature of things an open issue meaning of the word "instantly" by between the Governor and his Council whisking him out of the Collectorship could not long be avoided. It came in neck and heels; and in the same turn of the demand for clearances for the Prophet the hand appointed in his place Stepha- Daniel, the Nassau, and two other ships nus Van Cortlandt, with one Mousay as which sailed from New York in July Searcher, and sent the latter flying off to 1698 for Madagascar. The Governor or- seize the pirate plunder of the Fortune dered that before receiving clearances in the house of Van Sweeten, a merchant, these ships must be put under bonds not where, as word came to him, it had been to trade with pirates. The Council stored. A constable was ordered to ac- members of which had money up on the company Mousay; but each of three con- several ventures—decided that such bonds stables sent for, in turn, managed to be should not be required. The merchants missing at the moment when his services of the city backed the Council, of course, were required. Finally, when Mousay, and raised such a hubbub that the Gov- with one Everts, did at last go to make ernor— at that time but a little while in the seizure, a regular mutiny broke out office —yielded to the general clamor, and among the merchants — who flocked to suffered the ships to go unbonded to sea. Van Sweeten's house and hustled the of- By this time the bitter feeling here was ficers into an extemporized Black Hole, very strong against his Lordship; and it a close hot loft in which the goods to be grew stronger as news came up from va- seized had been concealed, and there rious points along the coast of more than locked them fast. For three hours they half a dozen vessels, laden with piratical were thus imprisoned, and they "had cargoes, which had turned about and put like to died of it." Fortunately, before to sea again upon getting news of the they were quite stifled, the Governor got hard times respectable traders were hav- wind of what had happened, and de- ing under this devil of a Governor in spatched the Lieutenant-Governor, back- New Yorlc. It was angrily—yet proba- " ed by a file of soldiers, to relieve them bly truly—declared that he had hinder- and to enforce the seizure of the goods. ed £ 100,000 from being brought into the What seems to be another version of city"; and to this was added the assertion this same story gives the house of " the that his continuance in office meant no- Sheriff" as the hiding-place to which the thing less than the ruin of the commerce ca rgo of the Fortune was carried, and in of the town. Wherefore a regular organi- which these racy liberties were taken zation against him was effected among the with the persons of the officers of the merchants, and by these injured colonists —

THE SEA-ROBBERS OF NEW YORK. 827

an attorney was sent to England to pre- that his efforts to uproot the piratical sent the record of his misdoings to, and commerce of New York were .solely that to pray for his removal by, the King. he might himself secure the monopoly of It was all the better for the Governor, its illicit gains. But the Governor, who probably, that the case against him was was game all the way through, was only pressed with such brazen impudence. He the more encouraged by this vilely slan- was in a better position to defend himself derous outcry to hang on to his purpose than if he had been attacked in the dark. with the more intense tenacity; and be- In short order lie got rid of the most pi- cause he did so hang on — like the delight- ratical of the members of his Council. ful old bull-dog that he was—he came out Pinhorne was dismissed; Bayard, Willet, victorious in the end. Mienville, and Lawrence were suspended He was a trifle over-old for such rough- ; Phillipse resigned —and, in place of these ami tumble fighting, and he was of a gout y frail brothers, Abraham Depeyster, Rob- habit and choleric to a degree; where- ert Livingston, Thomas Weaver, Samuel fore, after being kept for near three years Staats, and Robert Walters were called to in a righteous rage, it is not surprising the board. With these honest allies it that his Lordship's overheated flesh could was possible for the Governor to do some- not longer contain his broiling spirit, and thing at home; while over in England that, a martyr to his own high-tempered where necessarily was to be had the final virtue, he incontinently died. His death

settlement of the whole matter—he gain- occurred on March 5, 1701; and his body ed his first point by securing the condem- — after resting for some years in the nation of Fletcher; and thereafter, in chapel in the Fort— was laid at rest in every point raised against him by the St. Paul's church-yard: where still is his representative of the New York mer- unmarked grave. chants, the charges made by his enemies Very likely this sturdy old boy died were refuted and his own position was not unwillingly, for his life here— save sustained. for the knowledge of the good that he It was in the very midst of Lord Bello- was doing—most certainly could not have mont's triumphal progress toward reform- been a pleasant one. Moreover, he had ing the morals of this town that the news the satisfaction of knowing that he had came from Africa that Kidd had turned pi- accomplished his purpose; that through rate: which fact instantly was seized upon his exertions New York piracy and sea- eagerly, both here and in England, as a stealing at second-hand, rampant at the proof that the Earl himself was as much time of his coming, was as dead as he a promoter of piracy as anybody, and was about to be himself. gftfjfe^ PKOPbfe wk PASS.

ly come, you will see little Joe's home. THE LINK MAX'S WEDDING. It is a gigantic five -story double tene- X1J"ITH my good friend Gmvge Fletch- ment. It lias tjhe words "Big Barracks" ? T ci", of whom there may be more to painted in black letters on a white ground say in another account, of the " People on one side near the top. They are start- We Pass," I enjoyed the adventure here ling words to see and to think about, for set forth. It was the witnessing of an whether the landlord had them painted East Side wedding, which was in itself re- there to show his defiance of decency, or markable, and which afforded a chance whether it was a depra ved sense of humor for a close-range study of a phase of which prompted that rich barbarian's act, tenement life which was yet more inter- no libel was practised. Only the truth, or esting. Joe, .my friend's apprentice, had a merciful hint of the truth, was expressed obtained his promise that he would some in the words. Barracks they are within day call upon the lad's mother, who was those walls, and for miles and miles to the grateful for something Fletcher had done northward of them rise blocks after blocks for the boy quite in tl/e way of business. of other barracks. They are worse than The promise had been long standing the soldiers' dwellings to which the word when, one night recently, Joe told his is usually applied. They are more like employer that two friends of his sister those subterranean dormitories under- were to be married at his home, and that neath Paris where the dead were stored, it would be a great honor to the family for though' there is swarming, teeming if he were present. life in the tenements of New York, they " Don't be the least afraid," said Fletch- are veritable catacombs. They are the er. We were pursuing our way between tombs of manly and womanly dignity, of tall frowning walls of tenements. We thrift, of cleanliness, of modesty, and of noticed that the orderliness of their tire- self-respect. Man's first requirement is escapes and windows was the basis of a elbow-room, and these barracks deprive grand disorder of pots, pans, quilts, rugs, him of it. Where there is not elbow- rags, and human heads. As forJJre peo- room ambition stifles, energy tires, high ple, few were on the pavements. " Don't resolve is still-born. Childhood must be be the least afraid," said he; " there's no- kept as \y comes— fresh and pure, inno- thing except contagious diseases to fear cent, unsuspecting, hallowed. On this in these streets. They are the safest in the world depends. But childhood in town to walk in ; the only ones where the these barracks is_a^JtTdeous thing. In- front doors are left unlocked at night. As stead of a host of simple joys that should for the people, they are what we all brighten life's threshold, the little ones sprang from; they are what America is get age in babyhood, wisdom in forbidden made of." things, and ignorance of what is sweetest The next time you are in the neigh- and best. borhood of Grand Street and the Bowery Little Joe was at the doorway, and led you may see the region. Turn to the lis up and in. He introduced us to his east a block or two. and looking along mother, a jolly big German widow, who Forsyth Street, to which you will quick- laughed incessantly, and with such chan-

Color drawing- by F. V. Du Mond

SAINT GAUDENS'S STATUE OF GENERAL SHERMAN In the Street BY CHARLES HENRY WHITE

picturesque element of a New But do not imagine that it is only THEYork street depends, perhaps more your crumbling chateau or Parisian largely than in any other town, faubourg that is rife with sentimental upon conditions. It is not that obvious incident and tradition. While it is true picturesqueness of Niirnberg that follows that nearly each step one takes abroad you when you go out, meets you at every covers ground rich in historical sig- turn, or haunts you at night in your slum- nificance and legend, and every turn bers; nor is it that insistent beauty of brings suggestions of bygone splendor, Venice, which, from its superabundance, yet New York also has its romance makes the artist hesitate at times for fear —Zolaesque in character, perhaps, yet of verging on mere prettiness or dwin- equally stirring; and while your senti- dling into the commonplace. New York mental Frenchman will point to a at first glance is ugly; and it is not until narrow cul - de - sac and say, " There, you become intimate with her moods and monsieur, the Due de Bourgogne was ways that you begin to discern a subtle assassinated," or your Venetian enthusi- beauty lurking somewhere in this ugli- ast, waving his hand in the direction of a ness—a beauty suddenly coming to life crumbling palace, exclaims, " There, si- for one short hour in the day, and vanish- gnor, from that very balcony the Contes- ing as quietly. The more one loiters sa who formerly lived here eloped with her through the side streets of the city, the gondolier," so your friend on Mulberry more one begins to feel the elusive char- Bend, after satisfying himself that you acter of this picturesque element, and are only sketching and not inquisitive, will the longer he will avoid coming to hasty point over your shoulder and commence: conclusions regarding the latent signifi- " Right over there, Jack "—you are cance of certain street corners, which always "Jack" at the Bend,—"where under ordinary conditions seem common- you see de oyester-shack wot used ter be place enough : corners that one might a pipe - joint, Tony Carraccio shot pass a dozen times a day without a sug- Blinkey Rooke and Hefty Kelly. gestion of an artistic motive, until some Rooke fell right where you see de hand- happy accident brings you face to face organ playin', and Kelly dropped just with your subject—perhaps in the early where we're standin'. The third guy morning or on a late autumn afternoon, wot was wid de bunch was shifty, and at its " heure magique," when your bat- bein' light on his feet, ducked in time, and tered tenement or disreputable junk-shop here's wot was comin' to him," pointing is transformed, and you are confident that significantly to a bullet -hole in the wood- it compares favorably with the best that en cornice above a shop window. Paris or London can offer. To cut across to the East Side by That New York has not been more the most direct route, would be to miss fully exploited by the artists in recent half the pleasure of the roundabout years is largely due to the attitude of the course through Greenwich Village, with public. After all, the artist must live; its erratic twists and unexpected turns, and when he finds that a pot-boiler of an leading one past little squares dotted old chateau will not only please better, with shade-trees, and gabled red brick but sell twice as rapidly as a masterpiece houses with their quaint Colonial door- —if he were capable of doing one—of the posts and wrought-iron work lending a corner saloon or the peanut-stand, he will pleasant atmosphere of the past to every- quietly draw another chateau when the rent thing—an atmosphere of the early fifties comes due, and apologize to his friends. and sixties which even busy Bleecker HAKIM-ITS MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

Street cannot escape. There is a certain " Den ze coat you have on ?" lie con- orderliness existing in Greenwich thai tinues. " I buy it." one looks for in vain at the Bend; a final No; you insist that the coat you have struggle to remain respectable that di- on, such as it is, still keeps out the rain,

minishes perceptibly as one goes east wan I and demanding your belongings, beat a along Bleecker Street. hasty retreat. Just above the spot where Sixth Av- At Bleecker Street, Sixth Avenue ends enue fuses itself into Carmine Street, and Carmine Street begins. Here one New York's ugliest thoroughfare suddenly sees, half hidden between the adjacent becomes interesting. There are the race- buildings, a weather-beaten row of timber track followers—wise, hard-faced gentle- houses with sloping roofs, crumbling men in elaborate pique waistcoats,—hang- chimneys, and a delightful row of ex- ing about the local pool-room or grouping quisite gables, while below nestle the themselves before the corner saloon, with quainl "Id shops, crowding one anothet

- the ever-busy toothpick, while beyond, on in keen competition, where toys, can- either side of the street, are the second- dies, umbrellas, or nondescript pots and hand-clothing shops with their wonderful pans heaped up on the sidewalk invite collection of trousers and superannuated your inspection. coats and vests; even the ex-bandmaster's Beautiful as these old landmarks are, outfit is to be found here with the rest, enjoying as they do the peculiar distinc- hanging in picturesque rows, and flap- tion of having been one of the first piano- ping idly in the breezes. It is here that factories in New Y'ork, it is only during the Tenor liobusto rents his dress suit a few hours in the morning that they ap- for the Sunday-night " trial perform- pear to advantage,—when the sun steals ance," or the Knockabout Brothers locate around the corner, suddenly bringing the mysterious plug hat—of childish pro- them to life, and the shadows sift across portions—that sticks to the scalp under the battered fagades of the buildings, em- trying conditions; the impecunious artist, phasizing each eccentricity that time has too, wanders hither when in quest of a wrought in the timbers. So you return " directoire " coat and vest, and even the early the next day, affecting, in your pop - eyed lacrymose individual in the simplicity, what you consider to be a celluloid collar, who met you last week fairly decent impersonation of a free and with the hard-luck story of his phantom easy manner, at the same time probing wife and child. The proprietors of these around for as inconspicuous a place for stores are superstitious in the extreme, work as possible—behind a sign-board or and prosper in the ratio of their ability a show-case on the sidewalk. to interpret signs. Do not imagine that your movements Try, for instance, to get past these have escaped the small boy on the other crazy shops carrying a dress-suit case, side of the street, who has been observing and the hairy figure of Mr. Shingle- you intently. Y"ou no sooner decide upon hausenheimer emerges like a spider from a vantage-point than he tears down the the obscure interior; a long bony arm street, turns the corner, and you perspire suddenly shoots out and attaches itself freely as you hear the shrill voice in the to your coat button, and before you distance sing out, "Hey, fellers! dere's realize what is happening you are dragged a bloak 'round on Bleecker Street wot's !" within, your dress-suit case is grabbed goin' ter drawer a pictur' of dem hou~> is and placed on the counter. and before you can retreat you are sur- " ?" Now vat do you vant he asks. rounded ; so, realizing how futile it is to "Nothing; absolutely nothing," you try and escape notice, you steady your answer. The dress-suit case is empty and nerves and proceed to unpack your para- you are returning it to a friend. phernalia. When the three-legged sketch- " Gut ! den I buy it," he exclaims, ener- ing-stool is produced, folded neatly to- getically, putting it aside on a shelf be- gether resembling a club, the excitement yond your reach. " Vat does your vriend is intense; but when this is opened up vant for it?" and you proceed to fit the leather top " No ; he intends to keep it," you an- over it this excitement increases rapidly, swer emphatically. and almost ends in a riot when you top il

Bleecker Street Gables

Etched on copper hy C. H. White

the climax by sitting down on it. Then would be content to stand for hours in follow the copperplate, etching-needles, open-mouthed admiration at the mere and sundry bottles of varnish. A con- fascination of the intricacies of your fused mass of hands and arms are thrust medium : at the rapidity with which your out to hold them for you ; and the sud- needle glides through the wax ground, den appearance of a small palette to mix laying bare the burnished copper. The your Chinese white on is the signal for American gamin is also impressed by an impromptu fight, in which you act this, but coupled witli his admiration for as intermediary. mere manual dexterity and the mystery If there is anything the artist need fear of strange mediums and processes, is a in New York it is rather too much kind- sane desire to put the whole matter on a ness than the contrary. Everybody in the purely commercial basis, and before long neighborhood is interested and kindly one is interrupted with, " Say, mister; disposed towards him, from Casey the are you gettin' paid for doin' dis?" As roundsman, who occasionally stops on his a rule one has not time to reply before beat with a word of encouragement, and some intelligent boy answers for you: a little well-chosen profanity " —accentu- Shure ! Wot de do you t'ink de ated by a prod or two from his night- guy's doin' it fer—fer his health?" stick to scatter the crowd—to little Tom- The logic of this is so lucid that your my Sullivan, who rushes to the drinking- interlocutor blinks bashfully and with- fountain a block away to replenish your draws to the edge of the crowd. Do not wa ter-bottle. imagine that the incident closes here. And now you are fairly under way After a short intermission the intelligent with your sketch, and the buildings boy says, " Ain't you, Jack ?" across the way begin to assume more "Ain't I what?" you answer vaguely, tangible forms. In Venice under the trying to suppress a smile. same conditions your audience of boys "Gettin' paid fer doin' it?" comes his Vol. CX.-No. 65T.-46 A bit of Hudson Street

Htched on copper by C. H. White answer, pinning you down. You nod in and the latter left an order for a new the affirmative, and dismissing the inci- sign with a party named Smith, who dent, concentrate your attention on your subsequently drank himself to death, end- work. But there is a vital question that ing the matter; and off he goes into an has not yet heen disposed of that is intricate description of the latter's un- gnawing the juvenile brain, and it is fortunate domestic life. But you no certain to come in its logical sequence: sooner get rid of 'him than the bibulous " Say, Jack, how much are you gettin' gentleman with the fishy eye, who has paid for doin' it ?" hovered about you faithfully the entire You mention a moderate figure, and are morning, appears again and asks you greeted with a chorus of—" Gee whiz, fel- hoarsely, for the thirtieth time, with tears lers ! easy money ! Say, Jack, you must in his eyes, why you won't put him in. hate ter take de money!" And you He becomes irresistible; you take pity on frankly admit that you do. him and sketch him in where there is no As your work progresses you find that place for a figure, invariably spoiling one-third of your time is spent construct- the drawing. ing diplomatic answers; for it is not only What could be more unexpected than to the juvenile element that is inquisitive. have the local baker, a mountain of genu- There is the elderly gentleman who ine hospitality and good nature, lean over begs your pardon for making a sugges- your shoulder while you work, and re- tion, " but wouldn't it be easier for you mark, " That reminds me of the kind of to take a photograph of the building?" subject Charles Meryon might have And the clerk from across the street who chosen for one of his etchings," and this points out your mistake in putting Jack- all said without a suggestion of dis- son on the sign opposite, although it playing borrowed erudition, but a per- reads so; seeing that Jackson, four years fectly spontaneous remark, very apropos ago, transferred the business to Fangle, at the time, from a man of excellent .

IN THE STREET. 369

taste, who has collected several creditable numerous push-carts overflowing with proofs himself! fruit and vegetables in a riot of brilliant A few blocks from here the huge pro- color, surrounded by crowds of women in portions of a great 20-cent-room hotel long black shawls bargaining over a few tower above the housetops, dwarfing every- conls; little shops beneath dilapidated thing in the vicinity; and the street be- awnings with Italian bread and cheese, comes more congested, more saturated and prehistoric Salami sausages with with varied human interest than one will find in a five- mile radius else- where in the city. A continuous stream of humanity passes up and down the street from morning until night —old actors of the days of Booth, pa- thetic figures in their shiny coats brushed threadbare; greasy Poles, ro-

mantic - looking Spaniards, " street men " on an en- forced vacation, pet- ty grafters, " vogel- thieves," artist mod- els — yes, even the ex-ward heeler and prize - fighter an- chors here during the adverse winds, hopefully awaiting the flood-tide. Just across the street, where the Banca Italiana has its of- fices, looking west, In Cherry Hill one can usually see Etched un copper by C. H. White a group of short, thick - necked gentlemen, with petit- green fur all over them; cigar-stores with larceny faces, clad for the most part those vicious-looking things with straws in elaborate sweaters, hanging round the run through them, such as you smoked Klondike Pool Room, discussing in ha- in Venice—only worse; and children bitually hoarse and husky voices the latest everywhere—in the gutter, on the door- sporting news. slops, crawling through the refuse, ap- On one corner stands a curious hotel pearing behind ash-barrels, only to vanish with a sign that reads, Agenzia di Pas- again in the basements—and you have

saggi da e per l'Europa ; and beneath this, Thompson Street. lost in the confused patches of vividly It is necessary to go a few blocks colored bill-posters on the wall, is the before penetrating into the real atmos- sign Thompson Street. You turn in phere of this diminutive Italian colony. here. Great rows of tenements on either At noon, entering from Blcecker St rod, side, with their corroded iron fire-escapes the view is atrocious; but late in the festooned with vividly colored underwear; afternoon, when the shadows lengthen — "

370 HARPER'S MONTHLY .MAGAZINE. and the tenements empty their inmates "Corpo di Dio!" the last bundle dis- into the street, you see the real Thomp- appears into the dimly lighted basement son Street and confess that it is delight- below. Thompson Street is the home of fully picturesque. the ragpicker. On either side of the But Thompson Street of the red brick street, in the dust-laden atmosphere of gabled house and faded green Colonial the narrow basements, you see in the door-post and wrought-iron railing is uncertain light these toilers of the under- rapidly passing into history. Entire world—vague weary figures of men and rows of these landmarks vanish, it would aged women, bending over their task of seem, overnight, to be replaced by* "new- selecting the rags from the paper and idea " tenements, monstrosities of their packing them into bags, while in the kind, replete with preposterous orna- gutter numerous two-wheel carts, half ment and gaudy brick ; a perfect chaos hidden by pyramids of pure rag bundles, of the different architectural orders, add an occasional picturesque note to forming a species of Harlem rococo, the ensemble. Over these a confused which when once seen haunts one for- mass of screaming barefoot children romp ever after. and play. In these everything is up to date At Mulberry Bend one has all the sanitary plumbing and excellent bath- elements that go to make the charm of tubs, which usually contain Tony's sup- Thompson Street, only elaborated and ply of hard coal. How awkward and out intensified a hundredfold. In the latter of nlace he looks in these surroundings! it would seem as if the artist had chosen How the inharmoniousness of it all must too small a canvas and confined himself jar him! One might as well paint a to a rough experimental preliminary Harlem background around one of sketch, while in the former one has his Teniers's peasants and then ask him to finished picture, where everything is feel comfortable ! Business in Thomp- subservient to a general preconceived son Street is transacted on the sidewalk; idea. One no sooner turns into Mulberry ostensibly the shop is there for that Park than the sombre gray of Baxter purpose, but it serves only as a secluded Street and its smoky tenements is left spot in which to retire for a further re- behind and the magic touch of the south duction of prices; the stock, such as it is felt everywhere. At the " Bend is, is arranged to the best advantage everything is color. Gazing across this out on the sidewalk, leaning against the great piazza, with the spire of the Tras- store, for the curious to examine at figurazione rising beyond the row of odd their leisure. houses and their subtle harmonies of If one comes here on a late Saturday pale blue and faded salmon, with here or Sunday afternoon, it seems as if all and there a rich note of old-gold in a the tottering gabled buildings and frame dilapidated shanty, one has difficulty in derelicts for blocks around had suddenly, realizing that this indeed is New York. by common consent, emptied their hu- Even the Piazza Colonna in Rome, manity into Thompson Street. Swarthy, noted for its loungers, never in its melodramatic Neapolitans saunter back palmiest days outnumbered the crowd of and forth, followed by women of all ages, good-natured vagabonds that loiters here wearing the deep orange kerchief on their by the hour, sitting in a semidormant heads, carrying an infinite variety of state on the benches in the sun, or fills babies, stopping from time to time to the picturesque Loggia at the northern exchange a bit of gossip or scandal with end to overflowing. Your first impres- a neighbor— for this is the social hour in sion is that you have stumbled across a Thompson Street. Through the crowded local holiday, and you take a seat and thoroughfare men ply their way, drag- await developments. ging ponderous two-wheel carts piled Groups of men of all ages, in pic- high with great bundles of rags, stopping turesque hats and nondescript clothes, at the obscure basements of the local form and reform on the corners oi- ragpickers, who suddenly emerge like lcan against the iron railings. The spiders, and pouncing on their bundles, handsome Neapolitan with curling mus- tug and pull, until with one supreme tachios, in search of new conquests, THOMPSON STREET, THE HOME OF THE RAGPICKER

Etched on copper by C. H. White ;

372 HARPER'S MONTHLY MAGAZINE. and the tragic Sicilian in his great felt the band in brightly colored uniforms and hat, with a suspicious air of the Mafia with muiHed drums; the carriages, hired about him, saunter past, going nowhere at the cost of a month's rent, filled with in particular. Next comes a heavy van mourners, all silhouetted against the warm loaded down with cheap cardboard va- liquid grays of the adjacent houses. lises, and men clinging like lobsters to The rhythmical cadences of the distant the sides of the wagon, followed by a miserere still reach your ear faintly as padrone leading a nondescript crowd of the liu^e observation automobile rolls bewildered peasants—new arrivals who past with its cargo of credulous, open- have just received their bath and dis- mouthed sightseers, straining their necks infecting at the Island. They no sooner and gazing in pop-eyed wonderment at pass out of sight than another crowd, the Cicero in front, as he alternately more prosperous - looking but equally screams his oratory through a huge mega- picturesque, moves in the opposite direc- phone trained at the audience, or dodges tion. This is composed, for the most fruit that is overripe and tin-own his way part, of philosophers, who have saved by the throng of barefoot boys who fol- " their 150 or 200 dollars, and are about low on foot, yelling, Git a horse ! git a to return to Italy to spend the winter. horse, rubberneck!" You leave under As you sit absorbed with the infinite the impression that you have just seen variety of the life here, the distant strains a local holiday at the Bend; but if you of a funeral march reach your ears, return to-morrow, next month, or in the gradually increasing in volume, until you autumn, the same happy-go-lucky crowd is see the funeral procession thread its way there basking in the sunshine, or sleeping through the crowded thoroughfare—the on benches, and you turn to O'Reilly, hearse with its many plumes and trappings the roundsman.

Five Points, the Mulberry Bend Region Etched on copper by C. H. White —;

A Grand Street Corner, near the East- River

Etched on copper by C. H. "White

" Shure they're here every day," he re- Each quarter seems to develop its par- plies, indignantly. " They're just settin' ticular " bad man "—a sort of meta- around waitin' fer them little shade-trees morphosed D'Artagnan—quick to avenge to grow over yonder." a wrong, imaginary or otherwise, and The Piazza is the home of all who equally willing to go " broke " for a reside near the Bend. They live here friend. He is at once the pride and and dream away the hours. Perhaps a terror of the community; and when he job may materialize to-morrow or the saunters down the street you seem to feel day after? If it doesn't—well, there's an indescribable atmosphere of the char- always the Piazza, lots of good company, nel-house—a subtle something, a sud- and, what is more important, sunlight, den unnatural chilliness in the air, savor- and the great expanse of blue sky and ing slightly of distant plots of green flying clouds above. grass beneath the cypress, and marble Fresh arrivals come daily with new slabs with their short, terse epitaphs. stories from across the sea, while irre- Men cease to smile, and mothers seize sistible little Venetian ladies, with elab- their babes, withdrawing to the hallways orate coiffures, pass and repass with all while even the local pug who cracked the airs of a Colonna, causing Tony to a joke at his expense last week, scenting suddenly straighten up and brush his the unwholesome air with a prophetic coat vigorously, cursing himself all the nose, boards a Battery car—on the run while for not having worn a collar. After and thence to Harlem. all, life on a park bench at the Bend It takes a man like Jimmy Murphy is not half bad. It is a cheerful devil- to point them out as they pass and give may-care sort of poverty, quite devoid their records; for he knows them all. of that hopelessly sordid atmosphere pre- Jimmy and I met in the early spring vailing in Hester Street near by. last year in front of the chair-factory THE OLD WHARF, WILLIAMSBURG BRIDGE Etched on copper by C. H. White —

IX THE STREET.

wh» re he works. I was preparing to make row passageway; you hurry through a sketch of the combination restaurant, and emerge on South Street. gambling-hell, and banking- establishment The great open sweep of the quays across the way, when he appeared with stretches out before one, it would seem, a large wicker armchair, and shoving indefinitely. Bordering the water-front

it along the pavement beside me, said, arc the old warehouses and lofts of the sail- " Better take it easy, Jack," and dis- maker and boat-builder, with nautical- appeared before I could thank him. supply stores and saloons elbowing one When he appeared again, I remonstrated another for breathing-space; while stretch- with him, fearing that T might accidental- ing out into the river, like long arms, ly spill varnish on it. are the massive piers, and moored to "It don't matter wot happens to that these—their quaint figureheads facing the chair," he put in, in a confidential tone, buildings, and their lofty bowsprits half dispelling all my fears; "it ain't mine; spanning the street — are the deep-sea it belongs to the boss." From that mo- merchantmen from beyond the seas, with ment I was the recipient of many favors a swarm of stevedores in blue overalls at his hands. When a wagon would drive and jumpers bustling about, unloading up and stop directly in my line of vision, the cargo and placing it along the water- it was Jimmy who compelled the driver front to be loaded on the numerous trucks

to move on ; or when the wondering crowd lined up to receive it. Donkey-engines collected at the unusual spectacle of a puff away, huge cranes swing out over the solitary man sitting in an armchair on dock, while tugs and lighters thread their Mulberry Street, Jimmy would emerge way in and out between the piers, or from the doorway, armed with a piece of ply their way up and down the river. " scantling, and shout : Qowan now! Fer- Above all this is the roar of the ceaseless

get it ! . . . Wot the do you think stream of trucks that forms one con- this is—a three-card-monte game?" tinuous procession from morning until Half a block away from Jimmy's chair- night. There is an irresistible movement factory, looking south, you see the dis- here that is exhilarating. tant towers of Brooklyn Bridge rising A deep-sea merchantman is about to beyond the housetops. If one approaches sail, and you stop to investigate. An air them, he will be led to the water-front, of suppressed excitement is felt every- through great canyons of lofty buildings, where. Men bustle about giving orders, throbbing with the ceaseless hum of their and the captain stands on the deck machinery, past rambling streets fringed cursing everybody in sight. The only on either side by tenements and odd rows persons who seem absolutely contained of half-forgotten houses falling into de- in the midst of this confusion are the cay, until an undefinable something in sailors, who hang over the bulwarks, the atmosphere suggests to one the prox- chewing vigorously, with about as much imity of the river. expression on their faces as wooden In- Perhaps it is the faint odor of bilge- dians. From fragments of the conversa- water that tickles one's nostrils as tion that reach you from the deck it is he turns a corner, or the innumerable apparent that some member of the crew little nautical-supply shops bordering the is missing. The captain seems to be on street, filled with an elaborate display of the verge of apoplexy; when presently compasses, ship's logs, brass cleats, and a distant shout centres all interest on the bronze sextants, or the great coils of rope end of the pier. Here they come ! The and steel cable, and ponderous anchors, sturdy outlines of the mate appear, pro- with their chains forming strange evolu- pelling the equally ponderous frame of tions on the sidewalk. All these things the recalcitrant sailor who had tried to heighten your curiosity to push on, and create a liquor famine at the corner. before long you enter the district of the As they come abreast of you, grave warehouses. Here, framed on either side doubts enter your head concerning the by the damp weather-beaten wall of the mate's ability to get him up the gang- adjoining buildings, rise the masts of a way. These, however, are quickly dis- full-rigged merchantman. A sudden gust pelled, for with the former it is an old of fresh salt air rushes through the nar- story and merely part of the day's work.

Vol. CX -No. 657 —47 !

3TG HARPER'S MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

Grasping the unfortunate mariner by the bending over pinched his midriff, making uppermost pari of bis trousers with one it hang out inordinately over his belt. hand, and clutching him by the back "What's wrong?" I queried, working of his collar with the other, first drag- away, keeping my eyes on the paper. ging, now lifting, with many bumps and "You can't see de front of de boat," some amazing profanity, he drags him he wheezed, becoming more feverish ev- up the ladder like so much ballast, and ery minute. drops him on the deck in a confused heap. " Neither can you," I suggested, per- " Do ye want Kelly ?" asks the mate, suasively. mopping his face on his sleeve. " He's " Ya, but you ought to put it in," he still missin'." insisted. " Vat's de use of bein' an art- " Let him go to ," replies the cap- ist if you can't draw in vat you can't tain, decisively, throwing a few orders see?" he concluded, triumphantly looking about at random; and the great ship pulls around for sympathy. To argue with in her gangplank, slips her moorings, and a man like this is a futile pastime, yet glides gracefully out into the stream. one must say something to hold up his Suddenly the figure of a hatless sea- end of the argument, or the one dissent- man staggers out on the end of the pier, ing voice will soon have its influence on a trifle the worse for wear, waving his the crowd, and presently everybody takes arms at the ship and yelling like a a hand at criticising, and serious work be- maniac. Now it is the mate's turn to be comes impossible. I was at my wit's end

epigrammatical. Standing on the poop- for an answer, . when a stentorian voice deck with a wicked smile on his face, you behind me supplied it: hear him shout through his hands, " The " Back to the soup-kitchen fer yours alcoholic ward fer yours!" and. the ship Wot the do you know about art ? . . . steals quietly down the stream and dis- Back to the dishes! . . . Gowan now! appears from view. Quick! Fadeaway!" Last year, near one of these old piers, As I turned, the towering proportions T might have come to grief, had it not of the local " cop " who had turned art been for the timely intervention of a critic were bending over me. friend—one of those unobtrusive patron " Say, that's fine, young feller," he ex- saints that the city abounds in,—appear- claimed, authoritatively, inspecting it ing suddenly, with providential expe- closely; and then suddenly wheeling diency, in one's hour of need. around, pointing with his night-stick at I was at work on a sketch of the the retreating figure of the corpulent bridge, with the rear view of a steamer German, and pitching his powerful voice moored to the dock for a foreground, in a key calculated to give everybody surrounded by the customary group of the benefit of it for a radius of half a " loungers, critically watching every line. block, commenced : Some of these gas- My crowd was orderly, however; and if bags around here thinks they're sailors, it harbored any antagonistic opinions just because they happen to sling soup it had not yet expressed them, until an on South Street! . . . Say! Put that excessively fat German took a hand in it. sucker on a ship, and the first thing he'd " !" Dat boat ain't right," he gasped ; for do 'ud be to spit t' windward

SHOWN IN A GROUP OF NEW ETCHINGS BY JOSEPH PENNELL THE BUILDING OF A SKYSCRAPER - TRINITY BUILDING

ST. PAUL BUILDING, BROADWAY AND PARK ROW THE GOLDEN CORNICE, IOO BROADWAY AND WALL STREET

THE "FI.ATIRON" BUILDING, BROADWAY AND TWENTY-THIRD STREET I- "TIMES" BUILDING, BROADWAY AND 1-ORTY-SECOND STREET (BEFORE COMPLETION)

SCULPTURAL DECORATION OF THE LUNETTE ABOVE THE MAIN ENTRANCE

THE NEW NEW YORK CUSTOM-HOUSE BY CHARLES DE KAY

ETWEEN Bowling Green Devil, namely, the Spirit which in their and Bridge street, and be- language they call Menotto," yet it was in tween Whitehall street and order to give the white man to understand Battery Park, lies an irreg- that justice — the white man's justice of ular piece of land that once the seventeenth century — had come to belonged, like all thisprecious river-girdled stay that earthworks were thrown up and island, to those innocents the Manhattoes. the lean finger with its crook was reared Here, after a bargain satisfactory to both against the sky. It was to warn the parties, the West India Company of Hol- skippers and traders of Holland and Eng- land erected a fort, and in it a small land, France and Spain, that the laws of church, likewise a gallows, all with that the West India Company regarding export practical yet childlike symbolism which and trading licenses could not be broken was dear to our ancestors. It is fair to say with impunity. that the warning of that one-branched tree And now, well-nigh three hundred which bears a single fruit was not raised years later, on this very spot, is not the against the Indians. Although in 1628 the Custom-house giving the same message to Rev. Jonas Michaelius wrote that they were those who go down to the sea in ships? "verduyvelde Menschen" (bedeviled At their peril let them try to escape the men) "who serve no one else but the rules and regulations, the fines and penal- ;

CAUCASIAN HINDU ITALIAN COUKKUR HE IJ01S KEYSTONES OK THE FLAT ARCHES OK THE WINDOWS OF THE MAIN STORY liY VINCENZO ALKANO ties, of Uncle Sain! Here, too, have mansard roof, with copper and red slate other famous buildings stood, as, for ex- rising behind a French Renaissance balus- ample, that Government House erected in trade — here is an edifice that should last its sober, unbeautiful stateliness about forever. Deep it goes, seven feet below 1790 for the use of General Washington, high-water level, where the concrete floor- when New York had hopes of becoming ing of the cellar is braced downward the national capital. There are old col- against the lifting force of the tide. Its ored prints in the shops which picture this massive form and comparatively low roof- example of colonial architecture. But the tree contrast with the sky-scrapers that Government House gave way to rows of tower about the Bowling Green. private residences what time that Joseph Seated in his robes of bronze on his Rodman Drake and Fitz-Greene Halleck curule chair, old Abraham de Peyster has strolled on the Battery and felt them- been looking on with true Dutch phlegm selves as poets strangely out of fashion. while beam has been fitted into iron beam

Alas ! those residences were destined to be- and the great hewn stones with their come office-buildings after the wont of rough, grainy surfaces have been whisked

things in New York ! For many reasons on high and dropped gingerly and exactly the site has reverted inevitably to some into place. structure that belongs intimately to the The building of the Custom-house has special spirit of our seaport. The front afforded interest for more than eighteen of nearly two hundred feet from White- months to thousands of busy men in that hall on the east to the Battery Park on seething caldron of commerce near the the west looks down on the old space be- Produce Exchange, and how much longer fore the old fort where once the citizens met it will afford a spectacle probably the for sport or angry town riots, but where architect himself cannot tell. now the trolleys grind along on their el- During the two and three-quarter cen- liptical orbits. And an imposing front it turies that lie between the old fort and the is : walls of granite from the Penobscot, new Custom-house the city has been pulled with deep embrasures for the windows or burned down again and again, the new and ranges of columns before three of the buildings rising each time with the firm stories, girders and beams of steel instead belief that they would last forever. Will of wood, floors of terra-cotta and concrete this edifice of mighty foundations have

unassailable by fire ; beetling cornice any longer life than the buildings swept

KEYSTONES OK THE KLAT ARCHES OK THE WINDOWS OK THE MAIN STORY BY VINCEN :0 ALFANO

734 THE NEW NEW YORK CUSTOM-HOUSE 735 aside to make place for it? No one can from this vantage-point there is a slightly say. elevated view of the edifice, and fortu- As yet the front that looks northward nately not the least favorable. The power- over the Bowling Green to the turn of ful basement and mighty columns bear up Broadway has little to show of the sculp- well the weight of the superincumbent tures which are to be concentrated there, mass, and seem to perform their function but the illustration gives an idea how they instead of being merely the decorations of will look. On advanced pedestals to right a wall. The three fronts have organic anil left are four groups by Daniel C. structural proportions. French in gray Tennessee marble. In Elegance is not here, nor is delicacy; the cavernous main entrance is an escutch- but power. And in such a building, sur-

From the sculpture by Karl Bitter. Half-tone plate engraved by G. M. Lewis ARMS OF THE UNITED STATES ABOVE THE ATTIC OVER THE MAIN ENTRANCE

eon with supporters in relief, by O'Con- rounded by towering shapes, that is not at nor, and a rich ceiling decoration of mo- all out of place. It is far enough along saic. Along the front, not entirely free to warrant the belief that the new Cus- from the wall, are twelve columns built up tom-house will be a credit to the city. of drums they are repeated on the eastern its ruins are discovered by the de- ; When and western sides. These columns sup- scendants of Muscovite or Jap, the im- port the beetling cornice and lend a vari- pression will be one of strength and adapt- ety of shadows and upright lines to three ability. Perhaps these robust walls will sides of the building. As you descend suggest a fort, and the locality may well Broadway and turn the bend the side cause a confounding of the new Custom- colonnade is seen to the rear of the facade house with the old fort — the more so, — truly a remarkable effect which is not since buildings not entirely unlike may be often met with in architecture. Indeed found in a yet more ruinous state in SCULPTURES ABOVE THE CORNICE OF THE MAIN FRONT .

THE NEW NEW YORK CUSTOM-HOUSE 737

Europe. Historians ot" architecture will well-nigh intolerable on the ventures of see the massive character of the remains, merchants, and exercises tyranny over vot- but the cellars will puzzle them. ers who dare to return from foreign ports. A custom-house is one of the edifices of Here do free Americans forego their our cities which betokens the centraliza- boasted birthright and submit to delays, tion that took place when, after a world chicanes, impertinences, costs, fines, indig-

BtlDGC -TTCEET

BOWLING CLLLN From a drawing furnished by the architect, Cass Gilbert PLAN OK MAIN FLOOR OF THE CUSTOM-HOUSE of bickering and provincial meanness, the nities and exactions, the like of which, several colonies agreed to surrender many when they meet them in Russia or Turkey, of their old powers for the good of the they rarely fail to resent with a proper nation at large. Uncle Sam, not the great spirit of revolt. Also is the cost of the State of New York, least of all the enor- building borne by the general govern- mous city of New York, rules the incom- ment and paid for out of the general ing and outgoing of the ships, levies taxes fund, while the officials who dispose of

—

THE NEW NEW YORK CUSTOM-HOUSE 739 the vast business that flows in and out of are dolphin masks grotesquely treated, the greatest seaport of the country belong forms generalized from kelp, with a to every State in the Union. nautilus, the classic rudder and the tri- The architect, Mr. Cass Gilbert, has dent, or the conventionalized wave not seen fit to express in the sculptural things that suggest the sea without being decorations, even by an allegory, this pe- literal or realistic. The caduceus of Mer- culiar situation of the free-born American cury also appears. Under the arch of the who allows himself to be treated as a main entrance are the arms of the city by slave for the sake of what is called the O'Connor, with an eagle superposed and good of the country. Perhaps there is winged figures in somewhat "Anglo- lack of that sense of humor in politics Saxon" attitudes for supporters, instead which we find among the workmen on the of the sailor and Indian usually seen in old cathedrals, who made rare sport of the that position. haughty ecclesiastics who were in control In general plan the Custom-house is a of building funds. Perhaps that par- seven-story structure from street to roof, ticular United States inspector whose duty nearly two hundred feet on its Bowling it is to follow with painful care each stone Green front and nearly three hundred as it is laid in place is a Philistine. Per- deep on its Whitehall street and Battery haps our legislators at Washington are too Park sides. These sides are not parallel, lull of their own importance to appreciate but diverge, until on Bridge street the rear a joke, and so it were not wise in the arch- or south side has a length of two hundred itect to rouse them. But following out and ninety feet. In the center there re- the scheme of sculptural decoration de- mains a space which, if unencumbered, signed by the architect, at least something would have been a courtyard, eighty feet has been done to blunt the reproof that wide at the north, one hundred and twenty New York, a city by the sea, great through at the south, and about two hundred on the ocean and our magnificent waterways, the axis north and south. But the court rarely remembers the sources of her wealth is utilized, for, at the height of the main and greatness. In her public monuments floor, which is reached from the front by she is wont to ignore the sea, the navy, the the grand stair, the middle of this irreg- nations that have helped to make her what ular center is occupied by an oval hall she is. The sculptures in Tennessee mar- glassed over. It represents the rotunda ble which bring out this idea with the in the old building on Wall street, where greatest point have been considered in a the brokers ply their vocation, lining up former issue. Minor sculptures in the at the desks for signatures of deputy col- granite of the building claim attention lectors, then flying off for other signatures now. of the "naval officers" elsewhere, then The granite capitals of the column-; scurrying about to get the cash to pay contain a head of Mercury and the winged duties and fees — all in order to unravel wheel, for commerce and transportation those coils which bind the goods that enter respectively. Over the arch of the en- this port in a maze of red tape. trance presides a head of Columbia by To secure plenty of light through the Alfano. To right and left, over the arch, elliptical glass top, the southern facade are heads of panthers, to represent the on Bridge street rises in the center no most important among the wild beasts higher than the top of the dome. During found by the colonists. The keystones of the middle of the day, say from ten o'clock the flat arches in the windows of the main to three, the sun shines directly on the story which light the offices of the col- dome, and side lights penetrate the ro- let tor of the port are carved with masks tunda from windows looking on the nar- of races. There is the Caucasian, with row side courts. The room on the ground accessories of oak branches, the Hindu floor directly under the rotunda will be a with the lotus, the Latin and the Celt with place to store those papers which are most grapes, the Mongol with poppy-heads, the used, while one of the upper stories, spe- Eskimo in his hood of fur, the coureur de cially designed for the purpose, will con- bois with pine-cones. These are the work tain those not immediately needed. The of Alfano, after the designs of the archi- dome is built of flat terra-cotta brick on tect. Other decorations of minor sort the ( a iuastavino system of timbrel arch ; the Drawn by Jules Guerin. Half-tone plate engraved by R. Varley

THE BATTERY PARK FRONT OF THE NEW YORK CUSTOM-HOUSE THE NEW NEW YORK CUSTOM-HOUSE 741 oval skylight lias small, round bull's-eye is lighted only by narrow slits in the outer glass, shaped like the lenses of spectacles. walls. It is the "blind story" of the at- Fortunately, and as proof of the wis- tic, so rich in sculpture. Two sets of ele- dom of looking to architects of indepen- vators near the east and west ends of the dent practice for the execution of great great transverse hall, and two other sets at public edifices, the plans of the new Cus- the southern end, aid in circulating the tom-house are not by the architect of the crowd, while for service where the public government, but by one chosen in a com- does not enter there are still other eleva- petition ordained by the Secretary of the tors for employees. They start from the Treasury under the provisions of the ground tloor and run to the top of the Tarsney act. In this instance credit is also building. due to James Knox Taylor, the Super- These are tiresome particulars, but the vising Architect of the Treasury Depart- Custom-house is a great hive of men, and ment, whose cooperation has in every way all who must visit it may be glad to learn furthered the aims and plans of the spe- that the new structure has many things the cial architect. Despite the startling ignor- old one lacked — convenient approaches, ance of the labor involved in designing elevators, sunlight, electricity and venti- and carrying out such an edifice displayed lation. It will even have a post-office, for by able senators, it is not likely that Con- that big branch of the United States mail gress will ever revert to the old system now established in the Produce Exchange when government buildings were designed across Whitehall street will find a place at Washington by the gross and car- on the Bridge-street back, where, by two ried out without a thought of adaptability entrances and two inclined planes, the to the climate or surroundings, not to mail-carts will drive in and out, unload- speak of beauty as objects of aesthetic ing at offices on the ground floor. Pro- pleasure. vision is made in the basement for attach- Although from the floor of the cellar to ing pneumatic tubes, water-pipes, and the top of the mansard roof one counts electric conduits which may be needed only nine stories, there is much more floor- hereafter. The trolleys of Broadway and space here than in the W all-street build- Sixth, Seventh, Eighth and Ninth ave- ing. The cellar is like a great pan made nues, the elevated trains of Second, Third impervious to the tides by concrete and and Sixth avenues, the subway under asphalt. The basement floor is three feet Broadway, and that to Brooklyn under above high-tide mark and is thirteen feet the East River, come directly or very close to the ceiling. The ground floor, flush to it. Not far off are the ferries to Staten with the street, has a height of over twenty Island and South Brooklyn. So the new feet, and it boasts six entrances, two on Custom-house will be vastly easier of ac- the front and two each on the Whitehall- cess than the old, and the people of street and Battery Park sides. From the Greater New York and New Jersey will Bowling Green rises the grand stair to the be able to reach it quickly. After the long main floor, where the rotunda is. This exile in Wall street it has returned to the main story has a height of twenty-three water's edge. Through and over the feet and contains the offices of the col- trees of Battery Park it gazes on the ship- lector of the port, the naval officer, etc. ping as once its predecessor did, and the Their bureaus are lighted by great win- flag on the new Custom-house will again dows fifteen feet high and nearly seven be visible from a fair segment of the broad. As one reaches this floor by the horizon. main stair, a transverse hall two hundred The sculptures in the round confined to feet long and thirty-five feet high in the the main facade consist of the four groups central portion stretches to right and left, by French on four rectangular piers in ad- while directly in front is the rotunda. vance of the building, rising from the The floors above vary in height from street level already described in the Jan- twelve to sixteen and a half feet. Call- uary Century ; also of a row of twelve ing the main or rotunda floor the first, single figures in the attic above the cornice. then there are six floors before the roof- In accordance with the disposition of the tree is reached. Of these the fourth is columns below, of which they form the meant for the storage of documents, and embellishment and crown, these twelve

LXXI— 82 SCULPTURES ABOVE THE CORNICE OF THE MAIN FRONT

AMERIl \ and in some obscure way, he has clone his Beside and behind her are other figures own land wrong and may be fined heavily in due subordination, to carry out the sym- therefor. Wretched soul ! he thought, per- bolism, but also to present, from each of chance, that works of ancient art or foreign three sides at least, some object interesting would instruct, form, and elevate? He enough in attitude, curve, and mass to in- finds that some Congress of his fellow- duce one to pause and turn and follow the men has known better. So he pays his group about in order to explore its mean- tax and slinks away, wondering, perhaps, ing point by point. whether darkest Africa would be guilty of Although varied in composition, observe the follies and crimes against fair play that each group has a general contour enacted at the national capital. pyramidal in outline ; and though its Seen from all sides in broad daylight, masses will offer pleasing contrast to the where Bowling Green looks so strangely upward and transverse heavier lines of small among the towering piles of iron, architecture behind, each has a sense of brick, and stone, these groups offer some breadth and weight that suits the somewhat of the most difficult problems a sculptor low and powerful structure. The prob- has to solve. There is no escape from an lem here is very different from that of- all-round examination, no favor from a fered for the other figures, which will sheltering niche. The material used will stand on higher levels, forming closer be Tennessee marble, which is found in union with the building itself. various light colors that harmonize with Taking the group for the extreme left the grayish stone of the custom-house. near the corner of Whitehall street, — that At one step Mr. French has moved of Asia, — note that the fine, sinuous line of forward to a new feeling, an original back and neck in the tiger rounds inward method in dealing with abstract ideas in toward the head of the main figure. This sculpture. He has treated the groups as female genius represents Asia in her func- if, originally, each had been carved from tion as the mother of religion. Tiara a conical mass of stone in such a way that on hair, and with eyelids closed, she sits in the main and tallest figure should be a a trance suggestive of aloofness from the seated woman representing a continent. world of change, recalling that doctrine

428 ;

EUROPE of introspection which finds its poetic com- a lion, with the hand clenched on her knee, pletion in Nirvana. The rapt, ecstatic knuckles downward, while the other arm mood is further told by the Buddhist rests loosely on the granite sphinx of statuette on her lap, a figure of Gautama Egypt. Behind her crouches, deeply en- Buddha in contemplation, and also by the veloped in a mantle, a figure that ex- placing of her hands, one of which holds presses the mystery of the deserts and the a lotus-flower with a serpent rolled round unexplored recesses of Africa's primeval the stem. Active religious fervor is forests. shown by the youth prostrate in adoration It is as if the sculptor, an early admirer to her left and by the nearly nude elderly and portraitist of the sage of Concord, man in closer contact, who half kneels, had meant to suggest that Africa, not half runs, in anxious prayer, his hands awake, but on the eve of change, still strug- bound by superstition behind his back gles with a troublous vision. Were bits also by the young mother, quite undraped, from one of Emerson's finest poems float- carrying her child, who thrusts herself be- ing through his mind? tween him and the seated figure in a is drowsy, ghostly panic of fear. Asia's footstool is The Sphinx Her wings are furled. upheld by skulls, perhaps in token of the Her ear is heavy, cruelties which have marked the march of She broods on the world. religions over the earth. The cross and Who '11 tell me my secret sunburst at her back refer to that religion The ages have kept? which bulks largest in modern times so I awaited the seer far as power is concerned. While they slumbered and slept. Africa is on the extreme right, near the Battery Park. As a dark and unexplored Near the main central portal, to right continent, the genius, whose lower limbs and left, are the pedestals for Europe and are covered with a robe, has her head bent America. The genius of America has her in a somber dream. Eyes, mouth, and head raised, and in her uplifted eyes there hands hint of lassitude and discourage- is a look of one seeing a vision. Her right ment. She rests one elbow on the head of hand holds the torch of liberty, and on

LXXI.—45 429 : : —

ASIA

her lap lies a sheaf of maize. One of her gaze of conscious power. She is the attendants is the plumed Indian crouched teacher of letters and the arts. With at her back. The American past is further corselet over her Grecian gown, she sits symbolized by the head of a serpent carved her throne in a proud attitude, like Cybele of stone in the Mexican style, with a curl of the crown edged with battlements for a feather. It is the character used for Cybele the great mother of the gods. the rain and culture god Quetzalcoatl, But she is more the marine than the land and forms her foot-rest. By her side goddess, and so her right arm lies on the kneels a nude youth with a winged wheel prow of an antique galley, while her left before him to signify the inventive genius is propped on a big book which lies on a of modern America and her industrial en- globe of the earth. For Europe has con- terprise. quered the seas and pushed her sciences, If Africa has the sphinx, the drowsy at- arts, and letters into the remotest corners titude, the look of disconsolateness, then of the earth. The side of her marble

America recalls, by her poise and look of throne is enriched with figures from the inspiration, that other stanza in Emerson's frieze of the Parthenon. Behind her head poem stands the eagle, that "dog of Zeus" and Uprose the merry Sphinx symbol of the sun, a favorite also on the And crouched no more in stone, standards of Roman legions. She melted into purple cloud, Turning from the darker continents of She silvered in the moon. twilight and night, — from Asia and Africa She spired into a yellow flame, toward America and Europe, those chil- She flowered in blossoms red, dren of the day and ocean, — one may She flowed into a foaming wave, She stood Monadnock's head. murmur

Twice I have molded an image The billowy movement of the mantle at And thrice outstretched my hand. the back of America emphasizes the men- Made one of day and one of night tal movement and inspiration by which the And one of the salt sea sand. sculptor wishes to indicate the lively genius of the Americans and to separate this Behind Europe is the figure of History group sharply from the others. in the form of an old woman, heavily Europe looks straight forward with the draped, who studies a scroll as she holds

430 FRENCH'S GROUPS OF THE CONTINENTS 431

in her right hand a skull that rests in a ture, as one may see in some of the figures wreath of laurel. At her feet are the of Rodin, Paul Dubois, Barrias, and crowns of dynasties long leveled to the Meunier. of Saint Gaudens and such ear- dust. lier but less grandiose groups from French

( )nly an artist can realize what it means as the Milmore tomb and the monument

in mental strain and hard labor to com- to J( hn Boyle O'Reilly. pose and carry through their various stages In the groups here shown the sculptor four groups on this scale, having a com- has held a middle path between realism mon motif, but varied so that each emerges and extreme symbolism. One observer distinctive, each representing a series of may object that the faces of Asia and her ideas different from the other. Can a attendants are not types of East Indians, layman understand what studies must another may not like even so much atten- irecede a single group of this sort? tion to Oriental figures and accessories as 1 even

And is he likely to appreciate how few the group shows. ( >ne critic may call for a sculptors there are who can master such Berber, Abyssinian, or negro type or touch a task? Surely congratulations are due in the features and form of Africa, while to the genius and profound skill which another resents such obvious symbols as have combined to produce such results. sphinx and lion. The sculptor, however, These groups differ radically from any has steered a course that suits him and previous work by Daniel French, and mark will suit those whose appreciation is worth a stride forward in his career. They are while. When the last touches are given cast in a larger, more masculine mold than to the facade, though much excellent other any hitherto, and show a richer vein of work is to be there, it is more than likely imagination, as indeed befits the task of that the four groups by French will be the expressing through large group-sculpture most admired of all the statuary, not be- large elemental ideas by the channel of cause of their size and prominent place, human and other forms. but for their intrinsic dignity and beauty. Nowadays the realist no longer monop- Certainly they are worthy of prolonged olizes the attention in art. There is room study. They are the strongest work of once more for ideal and symbolical sculp- one of our greatest sculptors.

AFRICA Drawn by Jay Hambidge. Half-tone plate engraved by H. Davidson

' NESTLING UP TO HIM LIKE A KITTEN " — "THE OLIVE-VENDER'

!

THE GATES OE THE HUDSON BY CHARLES M. SKINNER

WITH PICTURES MADE FROM PAINTINGS BY VAN HEARING PERRINE

SHADOW falls into the surges riverward again to form Point-no- streets of New York, and Point, and still ascending behind Haver- not one in a thousand of straw reaches in High Tor a lift of 820 its people, idle or eager, feet. As the dyke extends southward, asks what has shortened also, to Bayonne, its total length is forty their day. It is the Pal- miles, but the Palisades proper front the isades that gray and purple the town at river for half that distance. evening, imposing on it a sense of rest, How desolate, how dark, this reach soon dissipated by the million electric how few the camps and habitations lamps that publish the nightly eruption Here we are as far from town as in the of the metropolis. Along the east bank Adirondacks. The range is mostly un- of the Hudson the city riots in the light, pathed, and there is but one road to the gay, sleepless, burdened, terrible along top : a road that became useless when the ; the western shore the Palisades are hotel at the end of it was burned, thereby in moveless march, their ranks now deepening forgetfulness of this wonder. curving inward, now veering toward When the New Yorker learned that the water, now seen in echelon, cape quarrymen had secured "rights" in the beyond cape, and melting into the scenery, and were converting it to pave- sky where new mysteries awaken. On ments, he betrayed a languid interest ; it the morning side of the river is humanity : was a matter that vaguely concerned on the sunset side is majesty that out- somebody. However, the people who lives it. Eying within rifle shot of the look ahead, the people with extra-social tenements are fluted cliffs and battle- interests, the people of the press, be- mented summits, closing the vista from stirred themselves, as they have to do a hundred streets, yet as little known to every year to save Niagara, and the Pali- the dweller of the inns and flats as are sades are become a public park. Let the Delectable Mountains ; for he never us pray that they be left in their savage ventures over to them, except 'for a pic- beauty ; that they be not pranked with nic, and then he is uneasy, for the silence stairs and fences, revetted, foregrounded threatens him yet in the days when they with lawns, flower beds, statuary and ; could be seen more readily they were as rustic benches imitated in cast iron. A famous as — the Astor House. few selfish souls will regret it when they This uplift of volcanic matter, resting become accessible by ferry, and when the on baked sandstone and inclining west- old privacy, if not the wildness dis- ward at a gentle slope, presents in its appears, for the like of these cliffs exists riverward aspect the columnar or pal- near no other city — and that is said with isaded appearance that so impressed the the memory still fresh of Salisbury Crag early voyagers: a gray wall beetling from and Arthur's Seat (basaltic extrusions 300 to 500 feet above the tide, shagged also) in the land environment of Edin- with trees at the summit, half buried be- burgh. True, on certain days, when the hind a scrap of talus, that is also verdur- river flows through dream country, I see ous. At Nyack it bends into the amphi- against the clouds an opal Parthenon at theater where that pretty town has nestled, the highest point, a focus in the land- THE PALISADES

scape, a symbol cf the steadfast and aspir- the top of the cliffsvby little vulgar boys ing in the national spirit, and it has the who were out for a day's hunting and

august approaches of the Acropolis ; hut were desperate at the lack of small game. the mists lift, the dream swims into a sky Yet holiday merriment of this kind is deeper and more glowing than that of apart from the sentiment of the Pali- Athens, and high above the highest rock sades. Cruel they may be, yet not irritat- an eagle wheels. ing. Something still pertains to them of In this soft age men walk where they the largeness and terror of that cataclysm have ease, and there is none of it in ex- which hurled them, smoking, from the ploring the Palisades. You furnaces of the earth hence, although must jump, ; slide, wade is their days of smiling, and al- and scramble ; there even they have a chance that you may tread on a venom- though no lovelier scene unfolds before ous serpent, for hereabout I have met the eyes of men than when, on mellow copperheads, and it is not long ago that afternoons, the violet shadows cascade a stroller was stung by a rattlesnake, but down the landslides, the tufted summits the only stirring experience which has burn green-gold, and the farther capes of yet gaiety befallen me there was in being followed velvet gray are footed in silver ; for a mile and pelted with stones from no more comports with them than it does

(160 —

THE GATES OE THE HUDSON 667 with Mont Pelee or the Sphinx. They re- Of late the Palisades have been in pro- veal themselves in darkness, and this is no cess of discovery by a few gypsies from stars, the metropolis who tent at their feet for paradox ; for it is under the moon, the the polar aurora, in mist, snow, wind and weeks, alternating the grind of shops and storm, when least seen, that they suggest offices across the river with nights of most, and are steadfast and sublime. silence and refreshment. Here they ram- housekeeping. 1 love my Hudson and am much in ble, swim, row and play at drink from springs, they breathe its company ; it solaces many whose un- They kind fate holds them to town; but in my an air tainted only by upcastings of the walks the Palisades are of this use: that river, they have wholesome green in their while they shut off the West and make eves, and their sleep is long. < )n broil- the prairies of the Hackensack a conjec- ing days when the city fries in its own ture, they lead my fancy toward the adipose, the shadows of these rocks in ampler wonders of the north. This is an unwearied land fall on the camps by an effect of both memory and landscape three in the afternoon, so that they es- composition: the long wall, seeking its cape the direct blaze of the sun, and the vanishing point in the taller Highlands woods give new shadow in the morning. — which in turn yield views of the lof- This darkness and coolness heighten the tier Catskills, whence, again, one may majesty of the ramparts and unify them glimpse the statelier Adirondacks into larger masses ; yet the rock sculp- carries, not my eye alone, but my mind, to tures that adorn the Hudson gates are regions more virgin, more ample, yet also impressive, since they share in the typed in the land this fortress of the vertical cleavage of the basalt and Hudson incloses. weather into fantasies that wake old

Owned by the Carnegie Institute, Pittsburg. H.ilf-tone plate i d bv t. W. Cliadn THE ROBBERS ;

Half tone plate engraved by H. C. Merrill THE RIDE world recollections of watch towers, cas- melted. The outpour of this mass from tles, and cathedrals. At one or two a volcano whose crater we cannot so much points a brook foams over the brink, at as guess in this day, was tremendous, and least, after a rain — for it is the dryness it cut the Hudson and Hackensack val- of the plateau that has saved it from set- leys asunder and pushed the harbor sev- tlement — and laces it with white. Off- eral miles to the southward, while related setting these natural beauties are the activities thrust above the surface, either shelves built in the buttressing slope as down-pours or up-pours, the thousand by the quarrymen, and as they cannot miles of basaltic hills that chain the Caro- put back what they have destroyed, linas to the Bay of Fundy, so that our the denuded front might be cleared Palisades are allied in form and time to to the water's edge, so as to reveal the Mount Holyoke and Cape Blomidon, complete height of the cliff in at least while they relate in cause to the steam- one instance. storms that swept thousands into eternity It was much higher, originally, for the at Krakatoa and Martinique, and were glacier that buried North America down felt around the world. to this latitude eroded millions of tons To the mineralogist our Palisades do which went to the upbuilding of Long not yield as much of interest as we find Island, trap boulders being common in in the rotting trap of Paterson, a few the soil of Brooklyn, and I have found miles away, from which have been taken on the top of the Palisades, opposite the largest prehnites in the world, sea glacial and wonderful royal amethysts Spuyten Duyvil, groovings and green ; polishings that have survived the pre- balls of silky pectolite, and quartz pseu- sumptive 15,000 years since the glacier domorphs that copy them; but we find THE GATES OF THE HUDSON 669 in these cliffs occasional duplicates of shall see them signaling from the light- the columns that make the Giant's less windows of this vast citadel, or Causeway and Fingal's Cave — geometric gesturing among the dead trees at its shapes of three, four, five, six and more top. Legends of a later time relate the sides, not a result of crystalization, as struggle of two Indians on the brink, was once imagined, for trap is a rock, not and their death on the rocks below ; we a mineral, but of lateral shrinking when hear also of a witch who lived in a shanty it has cooled. in the wilderness and would sit by the Poetry has evaded this region, and art hour together weav ing spells and storms has almost ignored it, save in the instance against the pleasant distances; there are presently to be noted, but our prede- buried treasures, too, that Kidd and other cessors in the land, the Indians, invested scandalous persons buried hereaway, and them with a glamor of myth. In their be- planted inexcusably deep ; then, a spooky lief the Palisades were a part of the wall tale is told of sweethearts wandering hand built by Manitou — whence, Manhattoes, in hand along the cliffs, who came to a or Manhattan — to keep the evil beings resolve to thwart their parents, not by that haunted the great lakes from vexing marrying, as young people of spirit would the race of men ; but the fresh seas burst do to-day, but by making a "lovers' leap," through, cutting the splendid pass of the and thus consigning their relatives to re- Highlands, and the rogues descended on morse incurable and objurgations infinite. the flood, to our besetment even at this They jumped, but never reached the

day. It is significant that in the red ground ; so, like Paolo and Francesca, man's belief the devils haunted the they wander through the air and plague marshes, and had never been lifted to the night with sighs and make strangers and by the hills. On misty evenings you timid of moonlight exploration.

Half-tone plate engraved by R. Varley THE PASS AT MOONRISE plate by H. Merrill Owned by Mri. J. Montgomery Sears. Half-tone engraved C. THE BELATED RETURN ;

THE GATES OF THE HUDSON 671

The days ot legend have passed, but moner sympathies and engaging with the the Palisades have their familiar spirit epic, in which their value is discovered. and loving exponent. Whoso in his finer Their strange, commanding individuality and deeper sentiments keeps that chord is in part a tokening of a recluse spirit, in tune which vibrates to "Hamlet," yet one that remains aloof from humanity "Faust" or to Tschaikowsky's last sym- not because of attenuate sympathies, phony will find it to ring responsive to but rather because it is under daily com- reat work nature in forms to the K > sad music figured in the mand of and phases of a young painter from the West : Van excite wonder and aspiration. These Dearing Perrine. Self-taught, unin- pictures are dark and solemn, yet creation fluenced by academies, he has chosen — for stirs in them; that never ceases, for the the expression of his nature? — to picture dead feed life and matter aspires. the Palisades : a cheery, youthful, earnest The sudden building of these Palisades

soul ; hence the tragedy of his work. expressed the demand for and exaction Why does this melancholy pertain to us, of liberty, and they stand as monuments free, prospering Americans? Is progress to the force that makes it, for the rock, too swift for us? Are our political bur- like the tree and the man, gains its atti- dens too heavy ? Cannot those who reach tude through striving ; and it is this civilization live through it? Can we not drama that Perrine sees in and above the cut loose from social austerities and be castle front, no less than the sculptur- ourselves? The Greeks had none of this. esque and the deific-drama that he some-

The world had little of it a century and times expresses also through human attri- a half ago. Yet, if it is sad, Perrine's butes, as in "The Robbers," with its fig- art is not morbid : it is of Beethoven, not ures peering into the gulf, and as in the Chopin. His color chills his canvas now glow of the city hovering phosphorescent and again, but he can light it with a above the water. It is also told in the blaze of sun, when he chooses. He lives frost, circling as light above the moon, with his subject, close to the ground, in in explosions of storm, in autumn wreck- an abandoned school-house, and paints age blown afar, in white heavens rising in a cabin, with a vertical wall at the beyond vistas of rain. Here he suggests door and a vertical drop under the win- Poe, Dante, Goya, while Angelo's archi- dow. So he knows his Palisades as tectural qualities are betokened in can- Thoreau knew his Walden. Indeed, vases that express the stabilities. Per- with direction, Thoreau would have been rine elects to live and work among these an artist, and Perrine is Thoreau directed rocks in winter. In the summer he and plus sentiment. Technically his scratches the soil a little on Long Island, style is large, nervous, his color sober, that he may go back to the cliffs with a his composition simple, but forcible, and fresher eye, a keener zest and the sharper there is nothing of the spectacular in consciousness of a continuing love. In a rather, he is reserved mystic. day when painters avoid great things, him ; and He takes us to the top of an obelisk at when they compose idyls, when they paint midnight and there leaves us, poised un- atmospheres, when they follow the pleas- der the cold stars and above the river with ant conventions of schools and studios, it its floes shining eerily, its shore line an is reassuring to come upon a man who emblem of repose, the staggering uprush thinks largely and seriously on themes of rock forms proclaiming creative force that deserve the thought, and whose pros- and in the snowy silence we stand at the perity in the unfolding of his sentiment, confine of eternity and cry into the night in that form we know as art, is due to a the old human questions of Whence and frank, unurged affection for nature, which Why. It is the vast intimation of these such as he must always regard as the mask pictures, passing the range of the com- or symbol of spirit. -DOWN ON THE LABRADOR'' BY GUSTAV KOBBE.

WITH PICTURES BY M. J. BURNS

|y:"*10PEDALE, so charmingly able enough — small fish in winter, seal

§f| pn i named, is a dale of rocks in meat in spring, and whatever he can pick ^Lsggj summer and of snow and ice in up in summer. At times the Hopedale dogs EssgMH winter. It is on the coast of have become so ravenous that they have Labrador— "the land of Cain," as an old gnawed through the palings of the gate

French voyager fittingly described it. From leading to the little garden, laboriously the desolate heights which half encircle the brought under cultivation by the mission- mission station one can see, far northward, aries, and have devoured an entire bed beyond surge-worn islands of bare rock, of cauliflowers. They also wander off to the dark outlines of Cape Harrigan, with the rocky heights in search of blueber- the white glare of the ice " loom " on the ries. The hunger of dogs that will prey horizon even in midsummer. On this in- upon vegetables and berries may well be hospitable coast — "down on the Labra- imagined. dor," as the Newfoundland fishermen say The Husky dogs are at all times savage — the Moravian brotherhood has main- brutes. They will kill and devour a sick tained mission stations for the Fskimo and dog, and at times half a dozen of them

the few scattered white settlers for nearly will, as if by preconcerted action, fall upon

a hundred and thirty years. a dog, tear it to pieces, and eat it. It is unsafe for children to go among them THE WOLF-LIKE DOGS unprotected. So long as the child keeps its feet they will not attack it, for they are

Dogs are in the majority at Hopedale. as cowardly as they are vicious ; but let it There are over two hundred of them, to fall, and they are at its throat. The mis- only a hundred and fifty " Huskies" (a term sionaries have a strong, high inclosure in for Eskimos) and the three missionaries front of their dwelling, outside of which and their families. A few chickens, wild their children are never allowed to venture geese which the missionaries are attempting alone. to tame, and two sheep, may be classed as The dogs appear to be half-tamed wolves, transients. There were once goats, but they and are so much like them in appearance contracted rheumatism and pneumonia. that when, as sometimes happens, wolves It is even necessary to heat the chicken- stray into Hopedale, they would not be coops in winter. recognized as intruders did not the Eski- The dogs are often in a far greater ma- mo know by sight both his own dogs and jority than that indicated above. In sum- those belonging to the other members of mer the Huskies fish from the outlying the community. The worst feature of it rocks, taking their wives and children into is that nothing can be done to improve camp with them, but usually leaving their the condition of the dogs. The mission- dogs behind to shift for themselves. A aries say that kind treatment makes lazy dog's living among the Eskimos is miser- paupers of them, and that they fail when

672

The Hudson River BY MARIE WAN VORST

is natural that the first inhabitants always grandiose. And the later majesty ITof a country should understand the and dignity of the Hudson as we more nature of their environment—that the familiarly see it at our harbor is sug- elements and physical characteristics of gest Lve of its victories when we recall their surroundings should speak intelli- the difficulties of its 300-mile journey, gently to the indigenes and be by them especially the triumphant rush where it in turn sympathetically interpreted. In breaks through the Luzerne and Palmer- " the souvenir he has left us " Hendrik ston chains, whose barricades melt as at Hudson is more Dutch than Anglo-Saxon, a wand. and we are likely to think of the river The exact spot on the earth from which whose waters wash the northwest shores the Hudson's first drops spring is a of Manhattan as a Dutch river, forget- matter of divers opinions. In one be- ting that it has received the name of a lief the wild and rugged steeps of Mount discoverer whose own appellation has been Ma ivy—one of the highest mountains in denationalized. But centuries earlier Essex County, in the North Adirondack than the records of the famous East- wilderness—conceal the first filet of the Indian voyage of an adventurous Eng- stream. To create this flow, which might lishman the river belonged tc the child almost suggest spontaneous birth, the of 1 ho American soil, before Europe parent source must be sought almost at christened it with insignificance as to its the monarch mountain's crest. characteristics—and natural common- Unusual, eerie beauty surrounds the re- place tribute to the explorer who in mote, untravelled region where lie two " general idea is supposed to have found cloud-created sister lakes. • From their it." For the red man had already known infilterings and penetrating oozes the it, lived by it, on it, and from it. He myriad water-veins drain down to feed the had stared at its merging into ocean ex- first visible spring source of the Hudson panse at the Greater Bay, had crouched River. This first lake is known in the by its almost imperceptible crystal source, picturesque colloquial of the moun- and had poetically called it —knowing taineers as Summit Water—and in old it, comprehending it, feeling it and Indian, as " Tear of the Clouds." Its speaking for it—Ca-ho-ta-te-da,—River height is nearly 5000 feet above sea- from Beyond the Peaks. level and is believed by many to be Essentially different in its course cer- the source of the Hudson. Not many tainly from hundreds of the great rivers feet below lies an expanse of meadow- of the world whose geography is valleyed marsh; scarcely a pool, still dignified and whose streams are over many miles by the name of lake. Here and there of plains, the Mountain Born never loses it is translucent, here and there lost its characteristic environment. From in its reedy weed-high bed. Its edge the stupendous peaks of the Adirondack is softened with luxuriant moss of un- wilderness where its first drops spring, to common kind; its farther margin is white its mouth between the high Palisades and with bivalve shells of arctic species. In the city of New York, the child of the unusual contrast to these sea specimens heights never leaves the hills. Properly the goldenrod grows in profusion. It is speaking, a calm level Hudson River val- as if ocean's distant hand reached up to ley does not exist. The river's entire lay its treasures here with the wilderness course is rugged—rushed out through flowers at the birthplace of the mountain- scenery often approaching the awful, and born river, later to find the sea its home. —

544 HARPER'S MONTHLY .MAGAZINE.

Almost ;ii once attaining the width of again here and there the ghosts of the several inches, vital and unerring in di- scarring trees shine white against t In- rection, ;i little brooklet found just below green. The surroundings —desolation, these marshy lakelike meadows winds mystery, and silence—are all that mid- downward, parting from a sister stream wilderness can inspire and epitomize of later to be known as the St. Lawrence. remoteness and solitude. And the one Noiselessly, delicately, it filters toward voice breaking the overwhelming stillness the Indian Pass. of the chasm is the song of the young Nature could not have chosen more river as it rushes on—and on. characteristic surroundings for the youth Suddenly there is an opening in the of the River from Beyond the Peaks than density, and the light comes trium- this mountain pass through which for phantly down the pass. The trail again some eighteen miles its way lies. Here finds the water's edge, and, lo! the stream is the very matrix of the mountains, the has begun to grow. It is a yard wide! actual heart of the wilderness, and along It leaps from stone to stone over ob- the bottom of a rocky ravine, sheer and structing rocks and crystalline shallows. clear-cut through the centre of a range It throws into the air millions of lighted between Melntyre on the east and Wall globules, and the sun colors them. The Face on the west, the Hudson begins its Indian Pass cannot keep the young, vigor- existence, growing inch by inch as it ous current. Some forest or mountain flows forever onward, fighting and ma- voice has told it sea tales—it is mad for king its bed and its course. Along the tho sea. mountain - side, sometimes close to the Toward the end of the gorge the stream stream, sometimes miles above its bank, is found to be too wide to easily ford winds the famous Indian Trail—tiny, from stone to stone. Remnants of old tortuous foot-path of the ancient Adiron- tree-trunk bridges pile across it from dack tribes, much travelled in the past, shore to shore. Its eighteen-mile journey now well-nigh impossible of following from the tiny spring has exhausted the and nearly obliterated. For miles the daylight. There is a new7 moon to find darkness above the river is dense as night. the few openings in the Indian Trail, and The mountains with green and velvet the moonrise holds the wilderness in its forest shadows come close to it, wall it spell. Just above the massing hetero- in heavily, oppressively. Below, in its geneous logs of the broken bridge the profound well—hundreds of feet below river—it is a river now—widens into a the Big Brook flows in black obscurity, great pool, a perfect circle, its bottom and so narrow is the vista here between umber, its water of a purity that tempts. Wall Face and Melntyre that the dis- It is ice cold and sweet to taste. So de- tance, as looked into, seems an apex, a licious it is, it seems a virgin draught, eojoining point, and the excited vision the first ever created, a draught of imagines that the mountains will sud- flowers. Along the bank's edge the low denly close together here and refuse out- foliage stands out black in the moon- let, jealously keeping forever within light, and the cries of the owl and their heart the River within the Peaks. the hawk come sharp across the falling On either side the chasm great forests night. Encircling its lonely pool, leav- conceal minor forests, and here and there ing the centre untroubled, the vigor of stretches of burnt land scar the emerald the stream carries it on and out un- luzuriance, where tree after tree, gray der the log bridge, and it is no more seen and naked as swords, lie piled, obliter- from the Trail. ating the pass, which has become savage From here the river joins Lake Hen- in impenetrability. In the ravine the derson. After leaving the Indian Pass stream, as yet nothing more than a tem- and the region of Marcy and Melntyre, pestuous brook, rushes over a bed brown the river flows through one of the most as saffron, with golden shallows. At the beautiful and individual of the Atlantic chasm's centre the walls lift themselves counties. It has definitely left its more a thousand -feet. The eastern bank is savage traditions, although still in a strewn with boulders, fallen and falling forest-hemmed region and surroundings rocks, and bare patches like snow, where wild enough. The land begins to be cleared and open; along- the river banks Here the river, nearly fifty feet wide, a rude road is built, little better than the spreads its widened sweep of steel-white corduroy it has replaced. From Tahawus water between stretches of mild mid- to North Creek, thirty-five miles, is a dis- country abundance. The fields, bordered tance whose loveliness and wild beauty with giroflee, are bright as France, or, fill the American with appreciation for sown broadcast with daisies, are white as his own land. Here the river, flowing English fields. But despite luxuriance along a little lower than the vising of rich farm cultivation—the ruggedness, ground of its shores, is a silver stream the bigness of the scene, the feeling that seen through forests of cedar, pine, elm, these meadowed miles and forest-crested and beeches, where green glades deepen valleys have until lately been the unre- and the underbrush is stirred only by the claimed wilderness, forbid the suggestion deer as it comes down to the stream-side of any Old World likeness. The whole to drink. A partridge with her covey landscape is fresh and pulsing with the scuttles into the bushes with whir and vernal vigor of North-American youth tremor. The squirrels spring across the and vitality. road, scarcely terrified by the near ap- The river's course is through fertile proach of the horses' feet. Forests of Newcomb Township, the harvests are full silver birch border the shores, and all and generous, the fields miracles of re- the woods know of luxuriance is mani- dundant wheat and grain, and it is hard fested here on the last wild forest edge of to recall that sixty miles back this slow the Hudson. moving current that indolently has As with a triumphant sweep its course slipped into its winding way was a now finds as much of a valley as it shall brooklet confined in a savage wilderness. ever see, the savory odors of pine and Its course across Newcomb is slow and cedar blend with the scent of fields and peaceful, as though the tide would field flowers—the open is reached. In the linger. Its wanderings will not find any- now great distance the mountain ranges, thing more heavenly sweet than these their lavender and green sides turning tranquil mid-country shores. Never will to blue in the darkness, lie black against the Mountain Born be more happily held the rising moon. than traversing the heights on the flat

Vol. CX.—No 658 - 68 546 HARPER'S MONTHLY MAGAZINE. levels of these uplands, where it appears steel, a line like a ribbon. Not far to have found a lap in the meadows of from Tahawus the Boreas, a meandering the hills. streamlet, winds slowly down to meet the In this region a new character sug- Hudson. It has a meditative indolence: gests itself. The river begins to bear without sound or rush—slowly, like a dis- trait and tardy lover, it comes to the tryst. From here on the descent of the country is gentle but perceptible. The roads widen, the landscape is dotted over witli tiny farms, red and gray barns, low old-time dwell- ings housed under clus- tering trees. Just above North

< !reek the river, eddying and purling, forces its swift current under its first bridge—and toward the first town standing on its banks.

Nor tli Creek is inter- esting by strong force of comparison. It is impos-

sible to set foot in it with- out instantly summoning to the mind the great metropolis at the river's mouth, the antipodes in comparison. North Creek is a forgotten settlement of 700 inhabitants. To its primitive charm the pen of Washington Ir- ving could do justice; it lies, a little Troy, among many hills, the sweep of the velvet mountains in the distance to north and south and the cir-

Lake Henderson— Indian Pass in distance cling river filling all the rest of the landscape. Round a single street its burden of piled and loosened logs. gather the low old-fashioned houses, a A bit farther up is the commencement hillside church and churchyard. Of the of the lumbering country, and from 700 inhabitants there is only one for- far above North Creek to Glens Falls eigner, and his ancestry is Irish, back so the stream is a burden-bearer, taking its far that he has forgotten from just what part in the progress and civilization into place his forefathers came. Again one which it is beginning to emerge. From contrasts this picture of the remote sylvan the heights of these hills of Newcomb village, with its American racial indi- —Tahawus to the north, Blue Mountain viduality, with swarming, seething Man- to the east and west—the river is only hattan, its mixture of races, its popula- visible now and again, through glimpses tion of nearly 4,000,000. caught of it here and there—a flash of From North Creek to Glens Falls th& Lake Sanford

character of the river varies. At first it miles of tranquil wandering are broken is pastoral, mirroring ami reflecting by the rush and dash of the falls at charming little islands on the widening Iladley. The aspect changes to turbulent surface. The hanks, no longer rough riot as the river plunges and hurls itself and tangled, are picturesque, with rocks down a precipitous chute, throwing into moss - overgrown, where, gently rising the air manes of foam. above the shores, the rolling fields toss This is its last madness, its final their golden harvests of wheat and the stormy, vigorous assault against bar- green blades of corn. Farther on these riers to an open-country course. It has

The Hudson where it is young The Boreas River

crossed four great ranges of mountains, ated by the new possession, the river which have seemingly melted at the flows on. approach. Here at Luzerne it has sev- On its way to Glens Falls it assumes ered the Palmerston ranges and its again the aspect of a giant, stormy brooks rush is superb. Below the turn near hurling itself against the rocks and the bridge the wide, flushing Sacon- stones, choked by the floating rafts of daga with foam and rush meets, blends, logs — huge boats, compact and inter- and mixes with the Hudson's cur- locked, they give the appearance of iron- rent; refreshed, inspired, and invigor- bound barges, but they must inevitably

The River is visible— a Line like a Ribbon

THE EUDSON RIVEE. 540 be separated and yield to the insinuation Hows on to the head of tide-water—Troy. and swash of the tide. They congest and It has received the Schroon at Warrens- dislodge, eddy and swirl, meet and cling, burg and the Sacondaga, as well as Cedar then drift free. Great spars of spruce River, Indian River, and many other and hemlock, cedar and pine, specimens streams. Below Saratoga and north of of all the trees of the north wilderness, swing into the current bound for the seas. They shall be masts for ships, they shall be beams for houses—facts and features of a civ- ilization the river is beginning to under- stand. The ships on the river's surface have been varied and will be more varied still : from the first fluttering leaf that eddied into the mid-mountain cunent, to the logs, the raft, the canal and steam boat, to the mighty ship —the river shall carry, embosom them all. At the great boom at Glens Falls thousands and thousands of cords of lumber congregate at the dam, piling half a hundred feet high. Against this barricade the river dashes in angry foam. The logs are swept in masses over the curdling falls, and again lie in heaped Making its Way through the Highlands near West Point piles below. This is the largest dam in America and not yet complete. North Creek has Troy the Mohawk has emptied itself into been a handful of life, little more. Glens the river, at the junction of Cohoes Falls, Falls is a little bustling city. The houses and lower down several small embranch- cluster down to the river's bank within ments of the same current find the Hud- full sound of the gay, brilliant falls. Be- son at different points. low this the river is calm and peaceful, The natural depth of the river is never broken by numerous dams, and from very great. In New York harbor it attains here begins the canal which extends to (inly from fifty to seventy feet, and in Troy and Albany. The canal-boats add early days was navigable as far as Hud- an individual and amusing phase of river son, but it is thronged with craft on from traffic, but they are not the properties of Troy, whose artificial channel was dug the river proper, and it would be a digres- several years ago, thus permitting the sion to follow their lazy tow-path course. large-sized steamboats to complete their We leave the artificial, tideless ways, journey from New York. Difficulties of and the river, unweakened by this use navigation in the overslaugh near Albany civilization has put to its acceptance, itself have been overcome by first-class .-,.-,11 1 1 AiiPKIiS MONTHLY .MACiAZIXK. engineering expressed by dikes. These of the wilderness have come thus far on structures lie along the shores for miles. their rushing course to blend with the up- Before definitely sweeping into its flowing tide of the sea. Even the charac- broad trunklike course, the river from ter of the growl li and verdure has altered Albany winds and twists among islets and along the banks. The trees that come down over sandy bars, until below Kingston its until they seem springing from the very breadth and expanse are assured. Its in- rocks are no longer the balsam and pine dividual, impersonal characteristics from of the wilderness—maple and elm re- now on never lose themselves. On every place them, and every now and again a mile, very nearly, of these east and west stretch of sparse dwarf cedar grows like banks, history is written, and the bosky a rugged furze along the shores. glades, the green exuberant woods, the Thus far the river has been fed by mystery of the hill tangles, the hollows springs and mountain brooks now up and valleys, are ripe and suggestive of from a distance of 150 miles comes a gray, song and story. penetrating current as old ocean extends From Albany down, the Hudson is a its embrace of welcome to the child from great unbroken column of water, with beyond the peak-. Again the figure of harmonious shore-line and sweep of cur- triumph is most vivid, as we contemplate rent unmatched by any other river of the deep, secure water-bed between the the world. hills of the eastern and western banks. And here, a little lower than the head It is as if the sea had reached up one of of tide-water, we pause and marvel at the its thousand arms through the Appalach- inland sea, the chain of lakes—the ocean- ian chain and the mountains had been like waters which now are the Hudson. cleft in twain. All kinship with the exquisite mountain Above Troy the Hudson receives the stream is lost. It is nevertheless the Poestenkill and Wynantskill rivers, but same, and the waters born in the interior from Albany to Xew York its tributaries

Village of North Creek The Hudson at Hadley

are insignificant, the Rondout, the Cats- Bay reveal unmistakable foretime traces kill, and the Esopus being- the most im- of the ancient stream. Let this be as it portant. No longer dependent upon may, the present Hudson is sufficiently brook and stream supply, the depth, soon archaic, and its course and channels as strongly saline, acknowledges all clear known to us date back to the first geo- and limpid sweetness and freshness to be logical period. From what might have forever lost: the sea has become its food been then a newer mould it perhaps look- and stimulus. The more vigorous cur- ed back to a transition period numbering rents graduate to a sort of indolence. It hundreds of thousands of years. is ponderous, its battles are hid in the From Albany to the mouth there is profound undercurrents and contending scarcely a mile of shore not fertile with floods. It has a perceptible tide, ruled interest for the American. The river has by the laws of the ocean. It has become run its course into and along the very a giant channel for the outer seas, and a pages of our country's annals; it has been completed work of nature lies held in a the cradle of our past. It rocked the mould definitely cast. strange picturesque ships of the early Scientific research has advanced the discoverers, from the day when the opinion that the preglacial aspect of Florentine, Verrazzano, entered the bay tiie Hudson Valley was unlike the pres- in his red and violet jailed brigantine ent; that the bed was hundreds of (1524), until the last hostile English bark feet above its position of to-day, the sailed out of the port more than two stream of greater velocity and fed hundred years after and less than two mainly from the great lakes, and its hundred years ago. No other river of our debouchment considerably farther into continent can boast of holding upon its the sea than it now is. Indeed, investiga- surface such varied historic craft,—from tions made on the sea floor of the Upper the low, stodgy "yacht," as it was called. The Sky-line of lower New York

built by the Antwerp and Amsterdam fully among the embowering trees as the ship-makers, to the higher-decked Span- mammoth night-steamers in passing flash ish ship and the sombre English vessel searching arms of light into historic with its sullen bow and stodgy port. nook and across the bland face of the No Dutch or English man can affirm sleeping, sleepy old Dutch town where the discovery of the Hudson River. Hendrik Hudson ended his adventurous Verrazzano must have distanced Hud- voyage. This region boasts the fasci- son's archives by nearly a hundred years. nating story of Rip Van Winkle, and in However, the Dutch and English liaison the gorge and wilderness of his sleep, in the matter is close. Hudson is ap- dimly outlined across the blur of these propriated by Dutch minds and has a hills, he still seems to toss his shaggy Holland tradition round him. He came locks in a midnight storm. For many in a Dutch yacht called the Half-Moon miles the horizon is darkly overwhelmed in 1609. His sailors were Hollanders and with the rising, ascending heights of the Englishmen; he represented a Dutch ('.it-kills, here called by the Indians On- East India Company on its way to find teora, or Sky Land. The shores directly the much-sought-for northeast passage to hereabouts have been the birth or living India. He explored the Hudson, going as places of many well-known American far as the little town that bears his name, families. The names of Martin Van and he himself has been transmitted to Buren, the Astors, the Crugers, and, most posterity with such blended and mixed notably, the Livingstons, add interest to traditions as to constitute him well-nigh the region's annals. Chiefly this last, for a half-breed in people's minds. at the docks of Chancellor Livingston The names of the river are varied. It was built and launched, less than one has been called Manhattan, the North hundred years ago, the first steamboat of River, the Great River, the Mauritas, the world. and in the year 1G1G bore legally for These settlements along the Hudson, some length of time the name Riviere many of them now not inconsider- Van den Vorst Moritias. able little cities, were originally Dutch Shortly after Albany is left behind it, trading -ports and vantage-points in on the western sky-line is discerned the the early commerce of the thrifty Hol- blue of the Catskill chain. This series landers. And here, too, were nurtured after series of mountain ranges undulates the bone and sinew and strength of the like the wall of ancient battlements. The soldiery who later added numbers to the town of Hudson on the west bank, dating ranks of the Colonial army. Many beau- its first traditions to the seventeenth cen- tiful country-seats lie along the eastern tury, retains something still of its Dutch shore, less broken by towns and landings. distinction. The houses cluster peace- The land is hilly,—rolling, not without A

a —

THE HUDSON RIVER. 553

hindrance, into lovely valleys whose nod- ington at Tappan, Tarry Town, and Peeks- ding grain and broad farms are homely kill; in this last town the tavern is and agreeable pictures for the eye to rest shown where Andre was held after his upon in contrast to the more constant arrest, and lower down, on the west side grandeur of the western shores, where a at Tappan is the scene of his condemna- splendid panorama displays its fortress- tion and death. Below Stony Point and like facades. At Poughkeepsie, on the Verplanck's Landing (the important ferry eastern shore, the river flows under the of Revolutionary days) Clinton and La- first and single bridge yet spanning it, fayette and Wayne were all assembled at from Troy to New York. This is an the battle of Stony Point (1779). But iron structure, delicate and inoffensive in the old river has never witnessed a more workmanship, and covers a distance little sinister sight than when of a certain Sep- less than TOO feet. From here on, the tember night, at Beverly docks, a little scene is one of tranquil loveliness, the boat slipped out into the stream bear- flow of the water smooth and gentle, the ing the traitor Arnold to the safety current in the centre of the stream. On of the enemy to whom he had betrayed the west are the bold and noble fronts of his country. the Highlands, whose ponderous crags Much that our history holds of song and projections jut out into the stream, and story and romance has gathered the sides gray and green with moss, the round these shores. To the east, on a summits dark with pine and heavy jutting rock, Captain Kidd's pirate ves- growth. Crow's Nest and Storm King, sel traditionally went to bits. the most majestic peaks of the High- Past Haverstraw, where the bay rounds lands, rise to the west, and along the out into one of the bowls that have given east the broken lines of the Beacon Hills the Hudson its title to a river of lakes, where the fires of the Revolution burned. past the old stains of Arnold's treason; To all this region the seasons bring con- past the gray and sinister walls of Sing stant and changeful beauty. The river Sing, from which may be seen the vague beats with a sound like a lapping sea at outlines of the Orange and Ramapo moun- the foot of the Highlands. The heights tains—sweeping again into a wide and themselves are dense and black, their unsurpassed inland lake, the Hudson finds sides impenetrable with thick foliage, and its greatest width between Nyack and through the ranges, from hill's summit to Tarrytown. Characteristic villages crowd summit again, are thrown back the echoes the hillsides or shine out with firefly of traffic—the shrill call of the steamboat- lights in the night. At this point the whistle, the sharp cry of the engines of river widens to a distance of nearly four the West Shore Railroad, the softer miles, and is known as the Tappan Zee. swash of the paddles as the great boats Here it has in summer-time all the mir- ply up and down the stream. Nowhere roring loveliness of a country pond. On is the autumn more brilliant and en- its clear surface the sails of tiny chanting; for 150 miles these shores are schooners are pictured again. Troops of clad in flame and gold, and the river lies gull-like boats fly against the rippling as crisply blue as the Mediterranean— current when the breeze is awake, or singular and transient change from its stand idly in the midday calm. It be- usual color of muddy gray. comes a sea of molten silver for the In 1777 the Highlands were a point of marvellous and lucent moonrises which defence and a famous redoubt. Here have made the Hudson River famous in struggling patriotism watched British song and story. Or it is held blood red fortune and took heart again, and in its shore-embraced basin by the bril- after repeated essays the famous im- liant and vivid sunsets of this region. pregnable chain-batteries were formed. For miles in the sluggish mildness of the Here Kosciuszko labored. In 1776 July days the dark and beautiful shore- the English plan was to gain control of lines reflect themselves far out into the the river, and scarcely a mile from New marvellous river that seems to be held York to Kingston but has its intimate immovable, tideless, currentless, in a bowl personal records of the war. Houses still of green shores. stand whose walls have sheltered Wash- In winter the Hudson is frozen from

Vol. CX. -No. 658 —69 554 HARPER'S MONTHLY MAGAZINE. bank to bank so solidly that paths are noble height; row after row of cluster- cut through the ice and snow, and hordes ing buildings, the ravellings of the city's of people trace their ways like trains of edge — then the compact, close-walled, flies above the silent depth of the water. honeycombed houses of the centre, and Here, between its heights of snow, the the city's heart beats above the river. river is enchained, during some especially In the glare of the day this modern hard seasons, from December till March. metropolis is crude and weird. The small- On either side the hills, low and rolling, er mass of the city is overpowered by the are banked with snow. When the spring upreaching sky-scrapers. They rise with sets it finally free—breaking through the brutal audacity, daring the heavens as it profound gray ice-crust, over which hover were; but toward night-time the softer and fly flocks of gulls, prototypes of the atmosphere, the flying smoke from little sailed sloops to shortly appear, the millions of chimneys, mysteriously veils river tosses its whitecaps in the March the singular, the wonderful city, and the winds. Stormy -caverns, black and ugly, lighted harbor from the river is one of that still devour bits of floating ice, are the marvels of the world. These brusque, revealed, and as if stimulated by the cold dominant buildings have their argus eyes that yet lingers, it struggles with con- all alight; they shed beacons from count- tending floods and rushes on. less panes. It is like looking into A little below Tarry town is Irving's mountains of light veritably—into lumi- home, Sunnyside. A low, sharp-eved nous hills,—and the Ca-ho-ta-te-da, River manse of a hundred years ago, it hides in from Beyond the Peaks, finds the moun- its park of monster elms and oaks, sur- tains still uprising along the last shores rounded by patches of bright lawn whose of its course. The heights are construct- sunny sweep suggests the dwelling's ed by the enemy of the red man, by the name. The gentle and charming Wash- foes of the sponsors of the Ca-ho-ta-te-da, ington Irving gave new character and and from peaks of human creation individuality to the region about him, swarming with life and the instigation of drew for us the mysteries from Sleepy progress the river makes its final ma- Hollow, the mossy, nestling cemetery in jestic sweep and splendid outrush into the glen just below, created and portrayed the bay. the types of the Hudson River people. Time was when the sole craft was a The classic perfection of these delicate passing canoe in which the lithe body of local studies has stamped their writer as the savage bent to the paddle, when the the ablest man of American letters. long stillness of the dense forest that once covered the island of Manhattan For a distance of thirty miles along was unbroken save for the shrieks of the the western bank rises the naked walled gull and the inhuman call of the red man. rock known as the Palisades. The sheer Now every hour of the day responds to unbroken fagade, varying from 350 to the noise of traffic, and sounds varied and 550 feet in height, is of granite crowned imperious echo across the river,—the by verdure. At Fort Lee it comes to an long deep signal of departing ships; the abrupt stop on the Jersey shore, and short impetuous whistle of the steam-tug with it ends the natural grandeur of claiming right of way; the siren in the the Hudson's banks. But opposite, al- factory tower; even the striking of city most without warning, has sprung into chimes hanging from some belfry as yet form and substance the mightiest marvel not displaced by a sky-scraper,—all these the river has seen throughout its journey. evidences of the thronged vortex of a vast Towns have not, in anticipation, grown populated centre break upon the nat- pretentious. There has been no an- ural stillness of the shores of the Moun- nouncement of the proximity of one of tain Born. Along the river front the the world's first cities. Suddenly a dome* docking stretches for several miles, ex- of white shines out, clear-cut against the tending port to the ships freighted with sky; the shadows of several monumental cargo and stranger thousands; and the inspiring buildings appear set aloft on a river, its waves and hue grown sealike, * Grant's Tomb. cradles and harbors them all.

CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA.

(1861.)

BY ANNA C. BRACKETT.

proudly side by side in spite of their well- I) ERHAPS there are no two States which stand more as representatives marked differences, and acting as con- of their two sections than Massachusetts stant foils to the beauty of each other. and South Carolina. In the history of While seeming to be opposed, they under- the country they have never heen silent, stand each other, and hold alike to the and they have spoken with no uncertain old motto concerning the obligations sound. Though they have often been resting oti a real nobility. bitterly opposed, yet in their sturdy and In the old times it was especially Bos- uncompromising allegiance to what each ton that hated slavery, and it was Charles- has believed to be the right way of act- ton, above all other cities, that hated anti- ing they have found a certain sympathy slavery. It has always been the boast of witli each other, and a certain large mea- Boston that her public schools were ab- sure of mutual respect. Each has felt, solutely perfect, and one would hardly that in the other she had a foeman wor- have expected that any resemblance could thy of her steel when in opposition, and be found to them, or to the spirit which when in conjunction a friend not to be runs through them, in the public schools misunderstood or distrusted. In the same of Charleston, differing as did the two way it might be said that their two lar- cities for so long in the very principles of gest cities are worthy antagonists, and their existence. But there is a story about now heartily respected friends. Boston is the public schools of Charleston before Massachusetts boiled down, and Charles- the war which is worth telling, and wor- ton may be spoken of as a very strong de- thy of the noble city, and which shall not coction of South Carolina. Both think go untold so long as I, who was a part of what they must, and say what they think. it, do not forget the duty of recognizing The people of both have a very strong at- noble deeds. tachment for and a hearty pride in their It was easy in Boston to carry on the city, and an injury to it, an insult aimed schools. They were a part of the tradi- at it, or even a humorous remark bearing tion of the city, and it took no great on any of its peculiarities, is sure to call to amount of courage to support and defend their feet a host of indignant defenders. them. They were filled by the children More than all others, these are the femi- of rich and poor alike, and it was the nine cities of the Union, being all through boast of the city that the child of the me- and everywhere just what they are any- chanic sat side by side with the children where, and, like women, arousing a chiv- of the richest and noblest families. To alric love. Both have a glorious past be a teacher had always been to be re- and a living present, such as in kind and spected, if not honored, and there was no intensity of personal life can scarce be thought of accepting charity in the chil- easily found elsewhere—at any rate in dren who enjoyed their advantages. This the East, or in the original thirteen colo- was generally the case in the Northern nies. There is among their merchants a States. But in the South it was different. fine sense of honor, which holds itself The public schools were supposed to be high for the sake of the city as well as only for those who could not afford to from personal motives, and in social life pay for education, and consequently they an aristocracy not based upon wealth. had many of the characteristics of charity Both have a line of noble names, the very schools. The teaching in them was poor possession of which is a presumption of and far behind the times, and none of the breeding and refinement. Both are the families of breeding ever thought of send- holders of the kind of firmness that be- ing their children to them. These were gins with " O," and are ready to maintain educated in small private schools, or at their opinion with any and all arms. home under tutors and governesses, or Both have strongly marked peculiarities were sent North. But about the year 1857 in their English, and hold to these as some of the best men in Charleston became firmly as to any other characteristic. dissatisfied with this state of things, and They are noble and consistent members determined to see if it could not be bettered. of the great family of cities, standing They studied the ways of other cities, and ;

942 HARPER'S NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. the outcome of the movement was the familiar: C. G. Memminger, chairman; building of three hi rge school-houses after William C. Bee; W. J. Bennett; G. P. the New York plans, having each one ac- Bryan ; George Buist ; W. G. De Saussure commodations for primary and grammar C. M. Furman ; William Jervey ; Hon. A. departments, and of one noble house of G.Magrath; Hon. W. A. Pringle ; F.Rich- different idea, to be called the Girls' High ards; John Russell ; E. Montague Grimke. ami Normal School. They meant to have secretary. good schools, and they were determined Of the building for Hie Girls' High and to have good teachers, and in time to have Normal School something more should them educated in their own city. The be said. Situated in St. Philip Street, a men who initiated the movement and square, three-story building with a crown- who gave it their personal attention, and ing dome, it attracted the eye of whoever not merely the weight of their names, passed that way. Below there were ward- were the men who should begin such robes, and a large room for the use of the enterprises. They were a power in the girls at recesses in stormy weather. The community, and commanded universal second story was filled by a hall and class- respect and confidence. They made up rooms leading therefrom, while above their minds that as to schools they must was a still larger hall, to which the in- learn of the North, and they faced the creased size of the school drove the daily necessity of the situation with a noble sessions in the second year of its life. courage. Their ultimate purpose was to The glory of the place, however, was the supply their city with good schools, garden in the midst of which it was set, taught by native teachers, and they hes- and which, surrounded by a high stone itated at no sacrifice of their life -long wall, gave perfect freedom and seclusion prejudices to attain their end. They to the pupils. This garden was overflow- must have- large and convenient houses. ing with all sorts of roses and flowering They built them, sparing no expense and plants, was laid out with gravelled walks, no trouble to make them as good as any. and well cared for by the Irish janitor, They needed teachers in line with the who had a little house on the premises. best theories, and familiar with the most Dan was very proud of the garden and tested practice of the profession. They his care of it, though he used often to as- took them from the principals of New sure us that, for real beauty, now, there York and Providence grammar-schools. was no place like Ireland, adding, "And They demanded the best, and they offered sure if ye were there now, I could show those men and women salaries sufficient yez a spot where this blessed minute ye to draw them from their positions in those could stand knee-deep in clover." In the two cities, and to make the question of second story, and fronting this garden, their acceptance of the offers only a mat- was a piazza two stories in height, with ter of time. They made these schools lofty pillars reaching to the roof—a plea- free to all the children of the city, and santer spot than which, during the heats bought the books which were to be used. of the early summer, I have never found. They furnished the rooms with every- For this school, in which was the hope thing that could make them attractive of the entire system, the teachers were all and healthful. They sought in the city selected from the Northern States—the for the best teachers, men and women, most convincing proof, if anything fur- that they could find, and made them as- ther were needed, of the noble courage sistants to the Northern principals, to and fearlessness of purpose which charac- learn of and to be trained in their ways; terized every act of the Board of Commis- and when all this had been done they sioners. The principal was a teacher of put their own children, not only boys, long experience in the public schools of but girls, into these public free schools, Boston, a native of New Hampshire; two side by side with any who might choose of Hie assistants were Massachusetts born to come. Never was there a nobler in- and bred, and one came from Pennsylva- stance of entire singleness of purpose nia. To show how conservative and wise and of the saci*ifice of preconceived opin- were the board, it may be stated that of ions to conviction. It seems worth while the seventy-seven teachers in all the pub- to give the names of the Commissioners lic schools, only nine were of Northern for the year 1860 as a testimony. Some birth and home. But in the Normal of the names will be easily recognized as School, where the future teachers were to CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA. 943

be trained, they were all Northern, that town, so different in every way from the very best and most modern work those of our Northern homes. The long, might be done there. airy houses with their three stories of pi- Of those three women, coming thus azzas, the negro quarters in the yards, into a new home and a strange city. I was often much larger and more imposing one, and am therefore telling what I know than the dwelling of the master and mis- and saw. tress, swarming with happy and careless It was a fresh experience, the voyage life, as the many servants passed to and thither in one of the beautiful steamers fro between house and quarters; and the which then ran between Charleston and little darkies of all ages were free to play the Northern cities — the Massachusetts and tumble to their hearts' content, unless, and the Soutlt Carolina. But .stranger indeed, a sweet- voiced call came from the to our Northern e\'es was Charleston it- rear of the piazza, "George Washington self, with the cross on old St. Michael's and Columbus, come notice Miss Elvira!" rising high above it as the steamer came followed by the rush of perhaps half a in view of the garden-loving city. The dozen small darkies of varying ages, all harbor is bad, like those of all the sand- eager to play with and care for the heir- line cities; and the steamers, though draw- ess of the house and of them. And the ing at the utmost only sixteen feet, were loving and reverent care which they did often obliged to lie outside waiting for take of the little Elvira was beautiful to high water, and had always to time their see! Then the long stretch of the yard, departures by the almanac. But, once with its pump in the middle, where a within the bars and on shore, there were buxom serving-maid was filling her pails no bars in the welcome of the people. of water, which came into the house after- Not only by our personal friends, but by wards, one poised on her stately head, while all connected with the schools, were we she carried two in her hands; the queer made to feel at home. The exquisite wooden shutters, and the bewildering ar- breeding of the city asserted itself, and at rangement of the numbers of the houses once took us, though from an alien land on the street, where it was said that every and a different civilization, into its charm- citizen, if he moved, carried his number ed circle. The commissioners who had with him as a part of his personal prop- invited us there spared no pains to make erty; the inevitable negro everywhere, our stay pleasant, making us welcome to waiting1 on and serving us at every turn ; their homes as well as to those of all the the beautiful gardens, whose high gates best people in the city. Courtesies of all opened mysteriously and swiftly by in- kinds were ottered to us. How beautiful visible hands at the appeal of the loud- and strange it all was—the rides about the echoing bell. While one negro led us up country, where, while our Northern homes the path, another opened the front door, were still shivering in frost and snow, a third escorted us to the drawing-room, the Cherokee rose spread its white petals while a fourth announced our arrival to along the dusty roads, and we picked the the gracious mistress, and a fifth chubby yellow jasmine where the gray moss hung little girl or boy appeared before we were

from the live-oaks! Camellias blossomed fairly seated with a tray of cooling drink ! unafraid in the open air, and our desks And the procession of servants from the at school were beautiful with them and kitchen when dinner was in course of magnolia blooms, or weighted with dain- serving, one servant for each dish, so that tily arranged baskets of the purple or the everything was smoking hot, though it large lemon figs which our girls had had come some distance in the open air! picked as they came to school from be- The queer and fascinating dialect of the fore their doors. The memory even now negroes, and the altogether fascinating lies in my mind, sweet and still, persist- accent of the Charlestonians, the flare ent as the odor of orange blossoms from and live sighlike breath of the pitch-pine the Charleston trees. The orange-tree is knots in the fireplace in the evening or not safe in that latitude; a sudden frost the early morning, when the servant who might stifle its life; but they were some- came to make our fire entertained us all times planted, and were of course found the time of her stay by her remarks, and in conservatories or raised in parlors. never quitted the room—which she did It was with a curious interest that we half a dozen times during the process — studied the buildings and customs of the leaving us in doubt as to what her errand Vol. LXXXVIII.—No. 528.-91 944 HARPER'S NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. might be, but announcing: encouraging- rung, morning and evening, the bells ly each time, as she opened the door and which regulated the negroes in (heir per- disappeared, "Now I'm going for the ambulations. In winter the evening bells matches," "Now I'm going for to fetch ring from quarter of six to six, and for a the dust pan," etc. All was new, and quarter of an hour before nine. This last full of interest and suggestion. was called the "last bell-ringing," and after The regulations under which it was it had ceased to sound any unfortunate considered necessary to keep the colored negro found in the streets, unless he could population were to us new and interest- show a pass from his master, was sum- ing. The law at that time forbade their marily deposited in the guard-house for being taught to read. A colored woman the remainder of the night. During the could not wear a veil in the street, nor ringing of the last bell two men regular- were two negroes allowed to walk arm in ly performed on the fife and drum on the arm except at funerals. A curious and corner opposite where the guard house suggestive thing happened, therefore. Ev- was situated, and the negroes who came ery negro funeral was largely attended, out to listen to the music dispersed in and the corpse was sure to be followed to quick time as the last tap was given the the grave by an imposing line of mourn- drum, and the last stroke of the bell lin- ers, all walking arm in arm. One very gered in the air. The watchman in the marked figure in the city was the old tower called the hour, and all relapsed man at the ladies' entrance of the Charles- into silence again. I give a literal copy ton Hotel. I think I have never seen a of one of these passes: man who had more the appearance of being somebody's grandfather than this "Charleston, March 12, 1855. kindly old Marcus. One day he had dis- ''Paris lias permission to pass from my res- idence in Beaufain St., near Rutledge, to the appeared, and there was no one at the corner of Vanderhorst's wharf and East Berry, door. After long and futile search for and from thence back again to my residence, word that he him, a messenger brought before drum-beat in the morning, for one month. wanted the loan of money in order to re- "J as. V>. Campbell. turn, and the mystery was finally solved "J. L. Hutchinson, Mayor." by the discovery that he could not come, not because he had bought either oxen One of the most interesting places was or land or married a wife, but for the sim- the church of Rev. J. L. Girardeau, a ple reason that, having become more than very large building, capable of seating specially interested in his one only pas- perhaps fourteen hundred persons. In time of gambling the night before, he had, the morning the lower floor was occupied congregation, the ne- in a fit of noble rage at his persistent ill by the white and luck, rashly hazarded his clothes — and groes, as in the other churches, sat in '.he lost the game. A contribution from his galleries, but in the afternoon the negroes friends at the hotel soon restored him, filled the body of the house, the whites clothed and in his right mind, which was being seated only at the sides and in the a very positive one. There was a tradi- galleries. To one not accustomed to the tion current that one evening, as a party sight, the church' then presented a strik- of lately arrived Northerners were hav- ing appearance, and we had an opportu- ing a pleasant conversation in the parlor nity of seeing all shades and varieties of dress. somewhat late, they were surprised by color, in both complexion and The the appearance of Marcus, who gravely old and staid negro women generally wore informed them that he had come to sweep bright handkerchiefs twisted around the the parlors, and that "our folks in dis head, sometimes with the addition, though house always goes to bed by half past not the amendment, of a bonnet perched ten, sab!" The intimation was humbly upon the top thereof, crown uppermost; heeded. Of course no one could resist but the younger and gayer portion of the the law of the hotel when the decisions community wore bonnets of all styles, were handed down from such a height. from the most fashionable to the most by the ne- Old St. Michael's Church was well obsolete. The only music was really worth hearing. worth a visit, with its tiled aisles and groes, and it was read, the square pews. In its steeple, 193 feet in As of course they could not time, height, were the chimes which marked the hymn was l-etailed, two lines at a the quarters of the hour, and here too were by the minister, who usually began !

CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA. 04.-. singing, and it welled out refreshingly West had been fired on, and the whole strong and true. Before the services com- city was full of devotion to the Palmetto menced the audience sometimes struck State and of denunciations of the North up a voluntary, greeting- the ear as we en- and of the people there ; when for a North- tered in the form of some grand old tune ern woman it was sometimes difficult to could neither listen to sung by the assembled throng-. The cour- be calm ; when we tesy which surrendered the main part of the prayers offered from the pulpits nor the church to the negroes for half the read the newspapers; when threatening time was only one out of many customs anonymous letters came to our hand, and in the city which testified to the general we grew tired with the constant strain kind feeling existing between master and and uncertainty—even then, and perhaps slave, where true nobility asserted itself even more than before, to cross the thresh- in relation to inferiors as well as to equals. old of that school-room was to pass at In the homes of Charleston the negroes once into an atmosphere of peace and un- were treated like a sort of children of the failing courtesy. Those girls came from household, and this because of a real af- homes that were full of bitter feeling and fection. opposition to the North, but there was The strength of family feeling on the never an ungentle look or word from part of the negroes was often queerly put, them to their Northern teachers. The as thus: "Law sakes! Balaam Preston school-room was an asylum, a safe and Hamilton Smith," a venerable old negro sure place for us; and what this meant of was heard to exclaim to a young man good-breeding and loyalty is comprehensi- who was understood to be thinking of ble perhaps only to those who have spent marrying, "don't say you'd go fur to their lives in contact with young and 'liberate fur to take up wid any middlin' warm-hearted girls. There is nothing set. If you want a wife, you'd better but sweet and dear memories of those marry into de Middleton family. De Mid- girls, light-hearted and happy then, but dletons is a mighty good family. Hm with heavy clouds of war and trouble De Roses is 'spectable too; but jes look at hanging over them — war and trouble !" me ! I married into de Middleton family which in more than one instance broke The closeness of the relation was amus- up happy homes, and struck down at their ingly illustrated by an incident which sides the brothel's and the friends whom occurred in school when we insisted that they so loved. I have before me now a certain words should be pronounced ac- card on which the girls of the first class cording to authority, and not in the way wrote their names together for me, and to in which the girls had been accustomed to look it over is to recall much of sadness, sound them. "But," they said, "you though much of devotion, faithfulness, know we grow up with the negroes, they and high courage. The planning of this take care of us, and we hear them talk all work is exquisitely neat, as was all the the time. Of course we can't help catch- work that they did. Here are the names ing some of their ways of talking. It of two sisters, who afterwards became sounds all right to us." They were told teachers in our places when we came that if they could find in any dictionary away. Underneath, a name that recalls the least authority for the pronunciation all gentleness and grace; next it, that of dear to them, there would be no objection a girl whose parents had been born in to it; that we were only trying to give New England, and who showed it in every them the best, and that it was not for any fibre. Then comes Sallie, tall and slender, notion of ours that we insisted. " But." full of dash and fire, and the indescriba- they said, quickly and sadly, "the diction- ble charm of the Southern girl, with her aries are all Northern dictionaries!" and haughty, "Who'd stoop to quarrel?" so so the matter came to an end. For it was often said when some difference arose in by no means nothing but flowers and the class; then Lizzie, with her beautiful fruit from their gardens that these South- dark eyes and her no less beautiful dis- ern maidens were in the habit of bring- position, whose after-life was so full of ing to us, their Northern teachers; they sadness and sorrow; then the carefully brought to our aid every morning the written signature of the girl who took up sweetest docility, the greatest eagerness the teacher's life, drawing her inspiration to learn, and the most perfect breeding. from what we brought her in those long- Even in the days after the Star of the past days, and who has become a tower '.1 10 HARPER'S NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

of strength to a new generation in her one of our commissioners, the Hon. A. chosen profession ; and then Celia, who, Gr. Magrath, and of the district attorney. leaving her gracious and luxurious home, The streets bloomed with palmetto flags, gave up her life to caring for the poor and with a great variety of mottoes, and and suffering, and died at her post, mourn- the air grew more and more charged with ed by the whole city. Sweet and strong electrical feeling. The banks all sus- they pass before me in memory, the girls pended November 30. 1860. The con- of that first class, with the happy days in vention met December 16th, and the act which we lived together in the close re- of secession was passed on the 20th. be- lation of teacher and taught. They had tween one and two o'clock. The firing of never before been in a large school, and guns and the ringing of bells announced its life and regulations were new and strik- the fact to the eager populace, and we be ing to them. They grew mentally like gan to live in a scene of the wildest ex- plants given a new sun and soil, and the citement — a double- distilled Fourth of work to the educator was beyond measure July. Business was at once suspended, delightful, yielding a rich harvest. and stores were closed. The chimes of old We had visitors, men and women, to all St. Michael's rang merrily at intervals all of whom our work was of the greatest the afternoon. Fire companies of both interest, and to whom it was a compara- colors paraded the streets, noisily jingling tive novelty to be allowed to visit a school, their bells, and one continually met mem- and to see the work going on. I was bers of the Vigilant Rifles, the Zouaves, greatly puzzled at first by the saying, the Washington Light-Infantry, or some which I heard often, that they had come other of the many companies, hurrying to "see the system," as if we had some in a state of great excitement to their patent method of conveying information headquarters. Boys in the street shout- and of training, which had to be applied ed, "Hurrah! Out of the Union'" with in some well defined manner. I have all the strength of their lungs; and the ne- since learned that this idea is not peculiar groes, who, on hearing any unusual noise, to the South. always made their appearance at all the Not different from the cordiality with gates, stood in groups at every passage- which we were welcomed to the city way. The young men devoted them- homes was the thoughtful kindness which selves to drinking the health of the State, provided for our Christmas holidays. To and exhibited indubitable evidence of see the rice plantation, with its long ave- having done so as they walked or drove nue of live-oaks, and the noble mansion furiously along. On Meeting and King standing on the wide lawn ; to go over the streets in several places the sidewalks were store-house, where were kept goods of all covered with the remains of Indian crack- kinds ready to be distributed to the field ers, and the whole air was redolent of gun- hands, the piles of dress goods and provi- powder. sions, and all presided over by the gra- The excitement by no means came to an cious mistress of the house; to watch the end as the day wore to its close, with a men laborers, tall and brawny, splendid rosy sunset over the rippling waters of the animals, with their fully developed mus- Ashley, and when the twilight had died cles, and their rows of perfect white teeth, away an illumination of the principal and the not-so-fortunate negro women, business streets by means of blazing tar- who also toiled in the rice-fields, bent and barrels produced a strong and bodeful knotted with the labor; to see the great light. Meeting Street, from above the supper provided for them on Christmas Charleston Hotel to below Institute or eve, and to listen to their rejoicing and "Secession" Hall, was ablaze with burn- songs— all this was a great pleasure and ing tar, which overflowed so that some- a great lesson. times the whole width of the street was But it all was to pass away. The Demo- aflame. cratic Convention in April, 1860, to which Ladies as well as gentlemen crowded we devoted all our spare time, was a high- Secession Hall at an early hour. About ly interesting and significant event. Po- half the floor was reserved for members of litical meetings grew more common and the convention and the Legislature, the re- more enthusiastic. Then followed the mainder being filled with an excited crowd election of President Lincoln, and the im- of men. The meeting was opened with a mediate resignation of the Federal judge. prayer, short but comprehensive, acknow- .

CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA. 947

ledging the possibility of suffering and the servants, who reported that they had privation, but asking-, after that was passed, heard firing all the night, in the direction that their sails might whiten every sea, of Charleston. We ate breakfast almost and their agriculture and commerce be in silence, our only thought being wheth- greatly prospered. The ordinance of se- er we could get to the. city that day; and cession was then handed to the president, after the meal was over stood on the and by him read from a large parchment broad piazza waiting till the big strong with the seal of the State hanging there- farm wagon could be arranged to take us from. At its close tumultuous applause to the railroad station. At last il ap shook the building, and the delegates, peared called in the order of their districts, were The driver went to the kitchen for a summoned to affix their names. The table last word, and detailed one of the house- upon which tlte signing was done was that servants who stood looking on to stand upon which the ratification of the Federal in front of the horses till he should re- Constitution had been signed. The whole turn. The latter, attracted by the play evening there was a constant discharge of two children, turned away to watch of fireworks, crackers, and lire arms in the them ; some sudden noise startled the street below, so that during the prayer it horses, and away they went, big wagon was at times impossible to hear what w as and all, in a mad run round and round being said. Bands of music passed at in- over the great field, in and out among tervals, and the crowd outside shouted and out houses, sheds, and trees, while we stood cheered without intermission. helplessly looking on, and heard the sound At last the signing was over, and the of the guns. It seemed a long time be- president, taking up the parchment amid fore they made for the opposite sides of a profound silence, saitl, "The ordinance of tree, which they saw stood directly in secession has been signed and ratified, and their w ay, and smashing the pole of the I proclaim the State of South Carolina to wagon on its trunk, were brought to a be an independent commonwealth.'' This standstill. There was the wagon hope- was the signal for an outburst of enthusi- lessly ruined, so far as any journey in it asm such as is not often witnessed. Every for that day was concerned, dripping as one rose to his feet, and all broke forth to its back end with broken eggs; there into tumultuous and ever-renewed cheer- was the terrified negro, tears streaming ing. Handkerchiefs waved, hats were down his face, and crying out, "Oh, I swung round and wildly tossed into the only looked away from dose horses one air, or they were elevated on canes, swords, minute, and now I have done more harm or muskets, and spun round and round. dan I can pay for all my life long!" The act of secession was then read to the And again and again we heard the sound crowd on the outside of the building, who of the far-off guns. The brother of one greeted it with their shouts. The t wo pal- of our company was on duty at one of metto-trees which stood on either side of the forts; the families of all of them were the platform were despoiled of their leaves there whence came the ominous sound. by the audience as mementos of the oc- But there was absolutely nothing to do casion, and the meeting slowly dispersed. on that isolated plantation but to sit still It was in the assembly-room of the old or pace up and down while the servants school - house, early on the morning of hunted for some other vehicle in sufficient

January 9, 1861, as I sat at the desk bend- order to be trusted to carry all of us over ing over my hooks preparing for the day's the roads, floating with the spring rains. work, that I heard the report of the first They worked at an old carry-all, which gun which was fired at the Star of the they found stored away in a shed, till they West, and lifted my head to listen, with a thought it safe to trust, and it was some great fear at my heart, and an effort to time after dinner before we finally set off persuade myself that the sounds were only for the railroad station miles away. When the effect of my excited imagination as we reached there in safety, in spite of the they came again and again. On the ominous groans and creaks of the crazy morning of April 12th I was twenty miles old carriage in which we sat crowded, the away, in one of the beautiful homes where air was full of rumors, but we could hear we had been so often welcome guests, nothing definite. At last came the train, and on coming down to breakfast found delayed, and with troops on board, whose anxious faces and much excitement among number was augmented at several sta- !

'.US HARPER'S NEW MONTHLY M AC} A ZI N K.

i ii> "Look! Did you see the bricks fly posite Charleston, we found it swarming then from the end of the fort? She struck with citizen soldiery. We crossed the that time!" river, and said hasty good-byes. I rushed "What is that smoke over Sumter? to my boarding-place, flung down my Isn't it smoke?" and all glasses and eyes packages, and hastening through the are turned in that direction and watch streets, filled with an excited crowd, re- eagerly. It increases in volume and rolls ported myself to the principal of the otf seaward. What can it he'. Is lie go- school as being in the city, to be greeted ing to blow up the fort ? Is he heating as soon as seen by the exclamation, "By shot? What is it? Still the batteries Jove! I knew you'd get here somehow," keep up their continual fire, and Ander- The night came and passed, and the son's guns, amidst a cloud of smoke, re- sun rose cloudless and bright on one of turn with two or three discharges. Sud- the April days which are like the June denly a white cloud rises from Sumter, days of New England, but the wind had and a loud report tells of the explosion of shifted, and we heard no reports. It was some magazine— "Probably a magazine " believed that the firing had ceased — why, on the roof for some of his barbette guns no one could tell —but at the Battery the —and the firing goes on. smoke still showed that it had not, even "Look out! Moultrie speaks again!' though there it was almost impossible to and another putt' of smoke points out the hear the sound. position of that fort, followed by one from Let us go thither. Many of the stores the floating battery of the others. We have their doors open, but no shutters are listen and watch. unclosed, and only necessary business is "I don't believe Anderson is in the transacted. We go down Meeting Street, fort. He must have gone off in the night past Institute or Secession Hall, and re- and left only a few men. It was a very member the scene of the 20th of last De- dark night." cember there. Saddled horses stand wait- "See the vessels off there? No, not ing at the door, and remind us that Gen- there; farther along to the right of Sum- eral Beauregard's office is within. As we ter. That small one is the Harriet Lane." turn down Water Street towards the East "Yes, I can see them plain with the Battery the crowd becomes visible, lining naked eye. Ain't they going to do any the sidewalk. Making our way between thing? The large one has hauled off." the carriages which fill the street, we "No; they are still." " mount the steps leading to the walk, and Look ! Can you see those little boats? taking up our position at the least crowd- Three little boats a hundred yards apart. ed part, turn our attention to the harbor. They are certainly coming." The reports come deadened to the ear, "Yes," said a woman, an opera-glass though one can easily tell whence the at her eyes, "the papers this morning shot come by the smoke. said they were to re-enforce with small The crowd increases, and is composed boats, which were to keep at a great dis- of all materials. Women of all ages and tance from each other." Another, in- ranks of life look eagerly out with spy- credulous, says they are nothing but glasses and opera-glasses. Children talk waves, and you can see plenty anywhere and laugh and walk back and forth in like them. " Doubleday is killed," re- the small moving-space as if they were at marks another. "They saw him from

7 a public show . Now and then a man in Moultrie, lying on top of the ramparts." military dress goes hastily past. Grave This is set at naught by a small boy, men talk in groups. Young men smoke who says, "Look, do you see that mos- and calculate probabilities and compare quito just on the corner of that flag in conflicting reports, and still the guns send Sumter?" and a dignified silence follows. forth their deadly missiles, and the light Now the smoke rises over Sumter again, clouds suddenly appearing and hanging black smoke, and curls away, but no other over the fort till dispersed by the wind signs of life. We watch, and as we watch tell of the shells which explode before it grows blacker and thicker. The fort they reach their destination. must be on fire " " There goes Stevens again ! He gives Yes! Can't you see the flame? There CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA. 949

at the south angle! You can see itthrough The tide has turned and is going out, this glass. Look now!" and now the vessels cannot come in.

The smoke hides all one side of the fort, What does it, mean? Still the people pass and the leaping Haines leave no room for and repass; the crowd thins a little; they doubt. They spread till it seems as if the jest idly and remark on the passers, and whole fort must be a sheet of flame within, conversation goes on. Friends meet and and the firing goes on as if nothing had greet each other with playful words. happened, but no signs of life at Fort Judge Magrath stands in a careless atti- Sumter. Why doesn't the fleet do some- tude, a red camellia in his button-hole, at thing? How can men with blood in their the window of one of the houses overlook- veins idly watch the scene and not lend ing the scene. Beauregard passes, observ- a helping hand when they have the pow- ant. Carriages drive by. People begin er? They must be armed vessels! Is An- to leave. derson still in the fort? No signal comes "Tlie Hag is down !" A shot lias struck " from there, and the firing continues, and I he stall' and carried it away. Look ! the the shells explode around and within, and flag is down!" and an excited crowd rush the dense black smoke rolls away, and the again through the streets leading to tin- flames leap round the flag-staff. Battery, and a shout fills the air. Now you'll see that old flag go down !" The flag of the United States has been cries a boy with a spy-glass. shot down in the harbor of Charleston, " That old flag!" South Carolina. I listen and watch in mournful silence, " It is up again on a lower staff !" " Yes!" and hear the beating of my heart as the "No!" "It is a white flag!" flames rise higher and higher. What does A white flag waves from the walls of it mean? Anderson can't be in the fort! Fort Sumter, and the colors which have He must be on boai-d the fleet, or they been repeatedly lowered to-day as a sig- could not stand idly by. nal of distress in vain have fallen at "He has probably left slow matches to last. some of his guns. He means to burn up The firing ceases, and Anderson surren- the fort—to blow it up!" ders unconditionally, with the fort a blaz- " Captain Foster intimated that it was ing furnace. undermined," says another. Still the flag- staff stands, though the The school went on, and everything flames are red around it. there was as usual, except perhaps a shade "It would be a bad omen if the flag of added gravity, and a sense of sorrow should stand all this fire," says a gentle- for the parting which flung its shadow man at my side as he hands me his glass. over teachers and taught; if it had been I level it and look. possible,-an increased docility and loving A vessel has dropped anchor just be- gentleness on the one hand, a greater ten- tween, and the flag of the Confederate der watchfulness and earnestness on the States, fluttering from the fore, completely other. The shadow grew heavier and the conceals the staff at Sumter. I move im- parting nearer as the months went on, full patiently to the right to get rid of it, and of stir, till the day in early June when I see with throbbing heart the flag still safe, left my class to meet the chairman of the and watch with sickening anxiety. special commissioners for our school in Another explosion, which scatters the the dome-room, not to stand there again. smoke for a while. Mr. Bennett had brought me my salary, " He is'blowing up the barracks to pre- then due; he paid me as usual in gold, vent the fire " from spreading," says one. and he said : We are very sorry that you Can it be that he is still there? feel you must go. We want you to say Still the flag waves as of old. The that when this trouble is over you will flames die down, and the smoke somewhat come back to us," and he reached out his clears away, and the shells explode as be- hand for a leave-taking with the old-time fore, and Major Stevens fires continually. courtesy of which we had so much since "It is West Point against West Point we had made our home in Charleston. I " to-day," says one. said : Mr. Bennett, I am so sorry to go! "Stevens was not at West Point." But I cannot promise to come back. I am "No, but Beauregard was a pupil of afraid that neither you nor I nor any one Anderson's there." knows how long this trouble is going to —!

HARPER'S NEW MONTI II A" MAGAZINE. last, and I cannot say anything- about and much to the astonishment of that coming back." functionary. But they are not valueless, And so I had to turn away from my for all that. There are many things girls, and travel to Massachusetts by way which the banks will not take, and yet of Georgia, Tennessee. Kentucky, Indi- which are worth more than all the silver ana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York. in the Treasury vaults at Washington, I have the notes of that journey still, kept and realer than real estate in New York. in pencil as we went, full of excitement These bills stand to-day for such assets and wonder. As the war went on, the as those, for "he who can prevail upon schools had to stop; all the beautiful fab- himself to devote his life for a cause, ric so wisely and so nobly planned was however we may condemn his opinions destroyed, and the labor seemed to have or abhor his actions, vouches at least for been in vain. The shells went ploughing the honesty of his principles and the dis- their way through the roof into the old interestedness of his motives. . . . He is no class-rooms, so full of sweet and gracious longer a slave, but free. The contempt

- memories, and fell in the flower-planted of death is the beginning of virtue. ' garden where we had walked with the And surely the old South needed no les- eager girls. Trouble and anguish fell sons in virtue from us. upon the dear old city. And when her But the work on those schools was not people fled to Columbia, fire and destruc- lost, for one by one they who had been tion met them there, such realities as we our girls took up the task with the spirit at the North never knew, even with all we had helped to inspire in them, and one that came to us. That was the time when of them has made not only on her city, a young woman remarked to my friend but on the wide Southern country from one evening, " Well, whatever happens, I which her girls come to her wise guid- am sure that we shall notbe utterly ruined, ance, an abiding mark. After the war for my father has put our goods in seven was over, and the time of mismanage- different places in the city, so that we ment and misuse, the seed that had been shall be sure to have something," and sown in earnest faith, unswerving pur- said "Good-night." In the lurid glare of pose, and singleness of spirit brought the next morning, before daybreak, the forth a hundredfold. same girl knocked at the same door with And the two cities, so alike in so many

' the piteous appeal : ' Have you got a dress ways, so different from all the other cities you can lend me to wear? I have not one of the land, even through the bitter war thing left." That was what war meant learned to know each other better, and to to those people. We thought it was hard recognize more fully their common char- I turn over the relics in my possession acter. As is the case often with two with gratitude and affection never waver- humsn sisters, they repelled each other ing and with profound respect—the pass simply because they were at heart and in for gray -headed " Paris," in its faded ink, all that constitutes true nobility so much with the strong, manly signature of his alike. But as two sisters, taught better master at the foot; letters, records, and, to understand each other by the experi- given to me long after, postage-stamps ence of life, find their former repulsion bearing the name of the Confederate changed into attraction, and finally into States; sheets of note-paper with the pal- a complete unity that no outside influence metto flag and the Confederate flag in can in the least affect, so is it with Boston colors at the head; a newspaper printed and Charleston. When fire and earth- on -wall-paper, bearing date, " Vicksburg, quake fought for the possession of their July 4, 1863"; and bank-bills of all de- beauty and their old and sacred places, nominations, from five hundred dollars they reached out tender hands to each to five cents. These are coarse in execu- other; for in the new dispensation the tion and on a poor quality of paper; but Lord was in both fire and earthquake. they used the very best they had. I know The great and strong wind bears now that no New York bank will take them only peace and good-will for message on on deposit, for I tried them once at the its Northern and Southern way, and if desk of the receiving- teller of the Sixth ever henceforth there be need of defend- National, with as inexpressive a face as I ing "that old flag." no two States will can command from a long experience in stand closer shoulder to shoulder than teaching—which is saying a great deal Massachusetts and South Carolina. LANDMARKS OF POE IN RICHMOND

INCLUDING SOME HITHERTO UNPUBLISHED PORTRAITS OF HIS FRIENDS BY CHARLES MARSHALL GRAVES

EARLY in the seventies a strange-look- People stared at her and passed on. ing woman, with a look of poverty Once or twice an elderly man or woman and wretchedness in her shallow eyes, ap- stopped to speak to her, and she would peared upon the streets of Richmond, Vir- almost cry with joy at sight of a familiar ginia, trying to sell little photographs. They face. Before she let them go she spoke of were likenesses of her brother, she said. her want and loneliness, and they readily

5

n r 5 mm*" liiia; iii

Drawn by Harry Fenn from a photograph

THE "SOUTHERN LITERARY MESSENGER " BUILDING (STILL STANDING), AT FIFTEENTH AND MAIN STREETS, RICHMOND

Here Poe edited that magazine. The printing was done on the first floor. The building adjoining it is the house which Ellis & Allan used for their store in 1820. 910 THE CEN I URY MAGAZINE bought the picture she offered. The brother streets. It was burned on the night of was Edgar Allan Foe ; the woman, Rosalie December 26, 1811. It was the benefit MacKenzie Poe, his only sister. performance of Mr. Placide, one of the Poe loved Richmond as he loved no most popular actors of Green's company, other place on earth. His happy childhood of which Mrs. Poe had been a member, was spent there — the only period of his and as it was in the Christmas holidays

MRS. SUSAN ARC! ER TALLEY WEISS troubled life which was free from want. the theater was crowded. That night sev- Here he found his foster-father, John Allan, enty-two perished in the flames. Scarcely who was proud of the orphan boy, and a family of prominence in the city but lost the only mother he ever knew, who was a member or a close connection. Three sweet and gentle with him to the end. years after the burning of the play-house, Here were the friends and playmates of the Monumental Church was erected on his boyhood, and here lived the gentle the site. The ashes of those who perished woman who was the " Helen " of the most in the theater are preserved in a marble beautiful of his early poems. Here, after urn in the vestibule of the church, and a first ceremony in Baltimore, he was mar- their names are inscribed upon it. ried by a second to lovely and youthful Mrs. Poe appeared for the last time on Virginia Clemm, and here they spent the her benefit night early in the October happiest year of their married life. Here, preceding the fire. Rosalie Poe was as editor of the " Southern Literary Mes- only a few months old, having been bom senger," he did of his best work. in the summer of the same year Edgar much ; At one time Richmond was full of houses was nearly two, and William Henry four. and localities closely associated with the Mrs. Susan Archer Talley AVeiss, who knew poet. It is a wonder and a pity, it would Poe intimately during his last visit to Rich- seem, that his biographers have not pointed mond, in 1849, and to whom, says Pro- these out. The theater in which Poe's fessor Woodberry, in his excellent life of " mother played stood on the north side of Poe, is due the most lifelike and detailed Broad street, between Twelfth and College portrait of him that exists," has given me LANDMARKS OF POE IN RICHMOND 911 a connected and unquestionably correct remember this man's Christian name, and account of the last days of Poe's father there are no directories of Richmond as and mother. far back as that. His place was on the David Poe, his father, died of consump- south side of Main street, in the " Bird in tion late in the spring of 1811, while the Hand " district, consequently near where family was living in Norfolk. Mrs. Weiss Shockoe Creek now flows, going under the says that her mother's sister, Mrs. Butt, street, but then through it. In her damp and the Poes occupied a double tenement- cellar the delicate actress contracted pneu- house on Bermuda street, Norfolk, ami that monia, and on Sunday, December 8, 1811, David Poe was buried in one of the ceme- died. She was probably buried at the ex- teries of Norfolk. Rosalie Poe was born pense of the city. Her grave, says Mrs. about this time, whether before or after the Weiss, is in the burying-ground of old St. death of her father, Mrs. Weiss does not John's Church, by the eastern wall, but one remember. In the summer of that year looks for it in vain. This church is known Mrs. Poe came to Richmond that she might to all the world for the immortal words " take her place in Green's company, which spoken there by Patrick Henry : Give me opened its engagement at the Richmond liberty, or give me death." Theater in September. Mrs. Weiss says that The good people of Richmond had been the widowed actress, broken in health and considerably wrought up by the appeal " utterly ruined in fortune, engaged a cellar made through the Richmond " Enquirer for herself and her children under the store of November 29. Mrs. Poe was desper- of a milliner named Phillips. She does not ately ill and in great want, the paper said.

Mr?

ft

'r

Drawn by Harry Fenn from a phutugraph

ST. JOHN'S CHURCH, RICHMOND Poe's mother was buried in the churchyard — a fact hitherto unpublished. Patrick Henry's famous speech, ending "Give me liberty, or give me death," was delivered in the church.

1 !

!:; ! : ;i,: ' ;•' >-7~ V 77: - v v

fe A A site i

- - - MSHi--. .77 ' - : C),

J I i TO HELEN

BY EDGAR A. POE

HELEN, thy beauty is to me Like those Nicean barks of yore;

That gently, o'er a perfumed sea, The weary, way-worn wanderer bore I : To his own native shore.

On desperate seas long wont to roam, 7' 7 Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, 7 Thy Naiad airs have brought me home To the glory that was Greece, i And the grandeur that was Rome. 1 Lo ! in yon brilliant window-niche

How statue-like I see thee stand,

The agate lamp within thy hand ! Ah, Psyche, from the regions which Are Holy-Land

L. 914 THE CENTURY MAGAZINE

The little paragraph, which is addressed to say that Mr. Allan was then a wealthy "The Human Heart," concludes by say- man. He and Charles Ellis were doing a ing that this would probably be her last general merchandise business at the corner plea for assistance. It was. of Fourteenth street and Tobacco Alley, rhe children were not long homeless. on a site opposite that of the Exchange William was sent to his grandfather in Hotel, on Fourteenth street, where, many Baltimore. Mrs. Jane MacKenzie took years after, Foe made his two appearances

From a painting owned by his granddaughter, Mrs. W. R. Pryor. Half-tone plate engraved by H. Davidson JOHN ALLAN, FOSTER-FATHER OF EDGAR A. POE

Rosalie. Mr. and Mrs. John Allan took before Richmond audiences. Mr. and Mrs. Edgar. Dr. John F. Carter, who obtained Allan lived over the store. This was the his information from his mother and other modest temporary home which they gave elderly ladies who were intimate with the the boy. Allan family, says that Mr. and Mrs. Allan Dr. Carter says that for weeks corre- had then no idea of adopting the boy, but spondence was conducted by Mr. Allan were to take care of him until his mother's with the Baltimore connections of the or- relatives in Baltimore could be reached. phan. Their responses were not at all The biographers are mistaken when they satisfactory, and in the meantime Ed- f —

LANDMARKS OF POE IN RICHMOND 915 gar, no longer a baby skeleton, had had a store on Franklin street, between grown to be such an attractive child that Fourteenth and Fifteenth, and did an im- Mrs. Allan begged her husband to keep mense tobacco business. His success prob- him. They had no children, though they ably turned the thoughts of Ellis & Allan had been married several years, and Mr. toward an exclusive trade in tobacco, and

Allan consented, lint 1 )r. Carter insists with a view to opening a market for the that Mr. Allan never adopted the orphan famed Virginia leaf, Mr. Allan went to in a legal way. England in 1814, taking with him Mrs. Mrs. MacKenzie was at the time con- Allan, her sister Miss Valentine, and ducting a school for girls in a frame house Edgar. As every one knows, the boy was

daguerreotype owned by her niece, Mrs. George W. Mayo THE SECOND MRS. JOHN ALLAN at the northwest corner of Fifth and Main put at school at Stoke Newington. 1 While streets, just opposite the house which Mr. Mr. Allan was away, the Fourteenth-street Allan bought in the summer of 1825, and store was given up. The first directory of which was Poe's home for some months be- Richmond ever published — that of John fore he went to the University of Virginia. Maddox, 1819 — places the store of She had a number of children of her own, "Ellis & Allan" on the east side of and her motherly heart could not turn the Fifteenth street, south of Main, second baby Rosalie into the street. So Poe and door from the corner. It is interesting to his sister were destined to grow up very note that while the first building is now near each other, and to see each other long in the dust, it stood just across the daily, as the families were intimate. alley from where now rises the big printing Mr. William Gait, Mr. Allan's uncle, house of Mr. John W. F'ergusson, who was

1 Mr. J. II. Ingram, a biographer of Poe, in ormed Professor Harrison last summer that the school-house where Poe was a puj )il has been pulled down. Editor. From a daguerreotype. Half-tone plate engraved by H. Davidson MRS. SARAH ELM IRA ROYSTER SHELTON, POE'S FIRST SWEETHEART

a "devil" in the office of the "Southern H. Clarke. Clarke, a fiery Irishman Literary Messenger" when Poe was its from Trinity College, Dublin, gave up

editor ; and the second stands to-day ad- teaching in the fall of 1823. Poe was joining the " Messenger " building, where selected by the boys to deliver the fare- Poe wrote his spiciest criticisms and the well ode, and did so with grace and with early instalments of " Arthur Gordon Pym." satisfaction to all. Master William Burke The biographers carelessly say that, succeeded Master Clarke. Dr. Creed when Mr. Allan came back, his house was Thomas, who was Poe's desk-mate at leased and he went to Mr. Ellis's residence. Burke's, and who lived until February 23, The fact is that Mr. Allan had no residence 1899, said in an interview a short time upon his return in the summer of 1820. before his death that the school was at the Mr. Ellis had a comfortable home on Frank- southeast corner of Broad and Eleventh lin street, between First and Second. The streets, where the Powhatan Hotel now residence was on the south side of Frank- stands. lin, while opposite he had a fine vineyard. It was while under these masters that Poe Mr. and Mrs. Allan and Edgar remained with accomplished the swim from Richmond to the Ellises nearly a year, when Mr. Allan Warwick Park, six miles down the James. rented a small frame dwelling on North This famous swim was made later by Mr. Fifth street, nearthecornerof Clay. Thiscot- Charles M. Wallace, the Richmond anti- tage — for it was scarcely more — was stand- quarian. One of Poe's playmates told this ing within the last ten years, and was torn gentleman that he started the swim with down to make room for a more pretentious Poe, but the imperious youth was so furi- brick residence. A livery-stable stands on a ous that another should attempt to rival part of the yard in which Poe played. him that he yielded to Poe and got into the It was while in this house that the poet boat accompanying them. attended the classical school of Joseph Poe, Dr. Creed Thomas, Beverly An-

916 LANDMARKS OF POE IN RICHMOND 917 derson, and William P. Ritchie, all des- A young man had hurt Poe's feelings. He tined to be men of note, were at that time held himself too high to associate with the members of the Thespian Society, and son of an actress and a pauper, and let the gave their amateur theatrical perform- high-strung boy understand it. Soon a ances in the old wooden house which poem appeared on the street ridiculing this stood at the northeast corner of Marshall young man unmercifully. The girls at Mrs. and Sixth streets, where the Second Police MacKenzie's school, then at No. 506 East Station now is. It was from Burke's school Franklin street, got hold of the poem and that one afternoon Poe went home with were laughing over it and wondering who Monroe Stanard, one of his few intimate its author was. That evening about dusk friends, to meet that lad's mother, the gen- Poe dropped in at the school, where his tle Jane Stith Craig Stanard, whom the boy sister lived and where he came and went loved at first sight, and who became the at pleasure, a privilege denied to other " Helen " of one of the most exquisite young men of the city. A number of young poems ever written. He thought the name people were in the parlor, and one of the of Jane ugly, and addressed his lines " To girls asked him to read the poem aloud. Helen " instead. When Mrs. Stanard died, This he did by the fading light, reading his young heart was almost broken, and with a readiness that one could not pos- night after night he would go to her grave sibly have shown without really repeating " " and weep upon it. Mrs. Stanard was the it from memory. You wrote it ! they wife of the Hon. Robert Stanard, a lawyer all cried, and he did not deny it. When of great ability and for a number of years the young man who had drawn the fire United States attorney for the district of appeared on the street, he was peppered Virginia. with allusions from the poem, with jests Dr. Carter tells me the story of " Don and gibes, and at length he was driven Pompioso," one of the early poems, now lost. from the city. The MacKenzie school is Drawn by Harry Fenn from a photograph THE ALLAN HOUSE, FIFTH AND MAIN STREETS, RICHMOND

This was Poe's home before he entered and a short time after he left the university. Here both Mr. and Mrs. Allan died. The picture was taken about fifteen years ago, just before the house was torn down. standing yet, and is in good condition, Poe lived in the new home from late in considering its age. Dr. Carter identifies it the summer of 1825 until the middle of positively, as he knew the MacKenzies in- February, 1826, when he entered the Uni- timately. versity of Virginia. In March, 1825, Poe left Burke's school He came back to the Allans in Decem- and began his preparation for the Uni- ber of the same year, but, not liking the versity of Virginia. It was about this time counting-room work which Mr. Allan set that he met Miss Sarah Elmira Royster, him doing, after a few days' trial he ran his first sweetheart, afterward Mrs. Shelton. away. He returned when Mrs. Allan died, This year was also eventful to Mr. Allan. February 28, 1829. Mr. Woodberry says His uncle, Mr. Gait, died in March, and it was not until some days after her death. Mr. Allan came in for one third of his He was seeking appointment to the AVest estate, valued at approximately one million Point Academy, and had been advised to dollars. Mr. Robert Lee Traylor of Rich- get Mr. Allan's influence. Mr. Allan gave mond has a certified copy of Mr. Gait's it in a letter in which he took pains to dis- will. It shows that Mr. Allan received own him. more than three hundred thousand dollars Mrs. Weiss and Dr. Carter assert with in money and property, a great fortune in equal positiveness that Edgar Poe left the that day. This was really the first time in Allans on account of unpleasant words his life that Mr. Allan had more than a with the second Mrs. Allan. Mrs. Weiss comfortable living. Less than two months says that this lady took Poe's room from after Mr. Gait's death Mr. Allan bought him and gave him one in the back of the the house at the southeast corner of Fifth house, not nearly so attractive. This made and Main streets, long known locally as him furious, as it is easy to imagine, and the "Allan house." He did not give up a wordy war followed. This was the rea- the cottage home, however, for two or son, say she and Dr. Carter, that Mr. three months. Allan sent Poe away. But it is apparently

918 LANDMARKS OF POE IN RICHMOND 919 impossible, with the admitted dates before said, seized his walking-stick, and waving one, to reconcile the inconsistencies. If it menacingly, bade him leave the house these two reputable persons are right, there forever. are yet some missing links in the poet's Mr. Allan died in the latter part of biography ; for the second Mrs. Allan is March, 1834. In the summer of the next said to have stated that, in all, she saw the year Poe came to Richmond to help Mr. poet but twice. Thomas W. White edit the " Southern The Allan house was torn down fifteen Literary Messenger." The old " Messen- years ago. For a long time the lot re- ger " building is not only standing yet, but mained vacant. Until a year ago the is in excellent condition. The " Messen- Young Men's Christian Association had ger " was printed on the first floor, while an athletic field on it, but now it has been Mr. White and the poet had their offices built up with residences fronting on Fifth on the second floor, overlooking the street. street and with stores fronting on Main. In the spring of 1836 Mrs. Clemm and On St. Valentine's day of 1826, Poe Virginia came to Richmond and obtained entered the University of Virginia. His board with Mrs. James Yarrington, whose happy days in the Allan household were house was at the corner of Twelfth and gone. He came back to Richmond under Bank streets. The flames of 1865 swept it a cloud, but soon ran away, breaking forever away. It is virtually certain that here Ed- the tie which bound him to his benefactor. gar and Virginia were married. The date, Tradition says that Mrs. Allan made an May 16, 1836, is well known. The Rev. appeal to Mr. Allan on her death-bed to Amasa Converse, editor of the " South- do all he could for Edgar, and this was the ern Religious Telegraph," a Presbyterian reason Mr. Allan consented to use his in- weekly, performed the ceremony. Thomas fluence to get the appointment to West W. Cleland went on the marriage bond, Point. The story of his life there and his swearing that Virginia was twenty-one, movements for five years afterward belongs when she was but fourteen. to his biographers. He came to Richmond " There never was a more perfect gen- only once in this period. That was just tleman than Mr. Poe when he was sober," before the death of Mr. Allan. The story says Mr. Fergusson, " but he was a very is that he rushed to Mr. Allan's room and devil when drunk. He would just as soon found him sitting in a chair. Upon seeing lie down in the gutter as anywhere else." the wayward young man, Mr. Allan, it is It was on account of " lying down in 920 THE CENTURY MAGAZINE the gutter " too often that Mr. White an- reading at the Exchange Hotel. Dr. Carter " nounced in the first number of the Mes- and ten other persons attended, and this senger" of 1837 that "Mr. Poe's attention was Poe's first audience in his old home. has been called in another direction." There is no accounting for the small at- Early in August, 1849, Poe was again tendance. Poe certainly did not understand in Richmond. it. Dr. Carter says he never saw any one One of his new friends was John R. more cast down. He went through the Thompson, the poet, who two years before reading in a mechanical way, and at once had purchased the " Messenger." Another went out. new friend was little Miss Susan Archer Poe was asked some time later to deliver Talley, who, though but seventeen years his lecture on " The Poetic Principle." He old, had written some admirable poems. was assured of a good attendance, and the

She had heard much of the distinguished lecture was announced. Financially it was poet from her mother, the MacKenzies, a tremendous success. Three hundred and Rosalie, and had read almost every- tickets were sold at five dollars each. The thing he had written. Miss Talley is now proprietor tendered the parlors of the Ex- the Mrs. Weiss who has already been men- change free of charge, and so the poet's tioned in this article. She is still living and pocket was replenished, and he was as is a beautiful old lady. deeply gratified now as he was downcast Poe took lodgings at Swan Tavern, on before. the north side of Broad, between Eighth One of the eleven persons who attended and Ninth streets. This famous old build- the reading of "The Raven" was Mrs. ing was erected about 1795 and was the Elmira Shelton, already referred to as leading tavern in Richmond for a quarter Poe's first sweetheart, Sarah Elmira Roy- of a century. But when Poe came there in ster. When he came to Richmond in 1849 1849 the prestige of the place was gone. he sought her out, then a widow with It was hardly more than a cheap boarding- youthful comeliness retained and an abun- house. The poet did not go there first, but dance of this world's goods. She was living to the United States Hotel, at the southwest on Grace street between Twenty-fourth corner of Nineteenth and Main streets, in and Twenty-fifth streets, directly behind the Bird in Hand neighborhood, where his St. John's Church. mother had died. The building is standing, The place where Poe felt most at home and is now used as a Methodist mission was Duncan Lodge, the home of the Mac- house. Kenzies. The old place looks to-day very Poe changed to the Swan, to be nearer much as it did during that summer and his friends the MacKenzies, who were autumn fifty-four years ago. The only al- living at Duncan Lodge, a mile out on the teration to the house since Poe knew it is Broad-street road. The Swan building is the addition of a story. It is now used as in bad condition and is soon to be torn an industrial home for men. down. In exterior appearance it has On the south side of Broad street the changed but little since Poe's eyes saw it girlhood home of Mrs. Weiss yet stands. — just a little older and a little more bat- The poet was a frequent visitor there. The tered. house is unchanged in appearance, though Naturally, Poe went at once to see the Mrs. Weiss tells me that the surroundings MacKenzies, for they had ever been faith- are greatly altered. All the beautiful trees ful to him, and his sister was there. Here are gone. It was at this house that Poe he met many of his old friends and was spent the evening of his last night but introduced to others who knew him by one in Richmond. Sitting with the Talley reputation and soon became warmly at- family until bedtime, he came down Broad tached to him. One of the latter was Dr. street to Duncan Lodge and spent the John F. Carter. Dr. Carter is still living night. The poet met some gay friends in in Richmond. He says that one night, Sadler's "Old Market Hotel" the next when no one was there but the family and night, and they talked, laughed, and drank two or three intimate friends, the poet re- together until early morning, when the cited "The Raven." He did it so admir- boat left for Baltimore. It carried Poe ably that he was persuaded to give a public away from Richmond forever.

Drawn by Jules Guerin. THE COLONNADE OF THE VARIED INDUSTRIES BUILDING. i "

Scribneks Magazine

VOL. XXXV APRIL, 1904 NO. 4

THE ARCHITECTURE OE THE ST. LOUIS FAIR

By Montgon ery Schuyler

Illustrations r Jules Guerin

illustrator having "seen visions" But he need not make believe at all in THEof the coming World's Fair at St. order to be astonished both at the scale and Louis, the scripture would be fulfilled the promise of the preparations. Nothing if his collaborator, the text-writer, should which he is likely to have heard will have " dream dreams." And indeed, at the time prepared him for what he sees. The arts of drawing or of writing some optimistical of publicity and promotion have not been imagination is required for an enthusiastic exercised, at least as yet, in behalf of the forecast of the Exposition. Not that it Louisiana Purchase Exposition, to any- must body forth the shapes of things un- thing like the same extent as in behalf of known, for the great palaces upon the its predecessors. Chicago at no time hides aggregation of which the spectacular suc- its light under a bushel, and when it had cess of the show must mainly depend are the Columbian Exposition to give, it put already in a state of such forwardness as to the light in a colossal candlestick and be fairly seen and apprehended in their brandished it in the attitude of Chicago design, barring only the effect of the color Notifying the World. When Buffalo had decoration of such of them as are to wear a Pan-American to give, every American it. But their sculptural accessories are for wayfaring man was fully " charged with the most part still in the modellers' yards, knowledge" through the medium of poly- and the whole setting of them is to be.. chromatic posters, that Niagara was har- Instead of the ample promenades that are nessed and prepared to draw, and fully to connect them, there is a Serbonian bog apprised of what Buffalo hoped the fair of mud of a peculiar viscosity. The plan- would be like. But outside of St. Louis tations or transplantations have not been there is as yet no such notion beforehand made of the trees that are to replace those of the Terrace of the States and the Cas- doomed to destruction in the preparation cade Gardens as scarcely anybody, in any of the site. The water that is to play so part of the country, could have escaped large a part in the general effect is of course having beforehand of the Court of Honor, not turned on, the fountains and cascades or of the plaza which was the foreground through and in which it is to play are still of the Electric Tower. " Mr. Dooley " has wanting, the great lagoon into which they accurately enumerated, among the consola- are finally to be collected is still a yawning tions of world's fairs, that " when a city has excavation of an impressiveness as little had one, it doesn't need to have another. artistic as that of the great Culebra Cut of The remark is accurate, at least with the the Panama Canal. Decidedly the visitor notable exception of Paris, which is, to be whose aim it is, at this stage, to realize the sure, a permanent exposition, but which intended effects, must, with Mr. Swiveller's finds it pay to let its chronic spectacularity Marchioness, "make believe very much." become acute every ten years or so. But

Copyright, 1904, by Charles Scri ler's Sons. All rights reserved. :;s(i The Architecture of the St. Louis Fair certainly one of the lessons of experience is had been quite empty, they would have the desirableness, when your turn comes to drawn a far greater concourse than what " have a world's fair, of deaving the gen- was to be seen within them if it had been eral ear" and dazzling the general eye with stored in mere unpretending sheds, how- the proclamation as long in advance as ever well it had been disposed for inspection. possible. A world's fair out of which the architects And then, too, the nature of such an- are to get no credit is a foredoomed failure. nouncements in advance as have been Happily the practice of the Fair has been made, or at least as have been forced upon much better than the theory of the official the public notice, has been less pictorial in question. The plan, like that of its suc- than statistical. The acreage, or mileage, cessful predecessors, was arrived at by a of the forthcoming Fair has been duly im- consultation of the architects chosen by pressed upon the reading public. It is direct selection beforehand, on the prin- that public's own fault if it does not know ciple adopted at Chicago and Buffalo, of that the Louisiana Purchase Exposition dividing the work nearly equally between has "inside its fences" twice as many acres local architects and architects from outside. as were enclosed at Chicago in 1893, and The site selected, or imposed as being in four times as many as were enclosed at the line of least resistance, was a tract of Paris in 1900, or at Buffalo in 1901, and quite virgin soil, a parallelogram roughly half as many again "under roof" as were a mile by two, and, if we must mention it, sheltered by the "record" now broken. 1240 acres in exact extent, a part of the The superlative degree has seldom been so public pleasure ground, four or five miles, systematically worked. Every structure is and three-quarters of an hour by trolley, the biggest or the longest or the widest or from the heart of St. Louis, which is de- the tallest ever devoted to a like purpose scribed as well as called by its name of "in the world." Put surely it is known "Forest Park." The part chrsen to be that there is room enough in the- State of cleared was known as " The Wilderness," a Missouri to break all world's-fairrecords in tangle of " brush" interspersed with prime- the respect of spaciousness! val trees, virtually a level, but skirted to Not, indeed, that all the advertising of the southward and eastward by a ridge the Fair has been of this kind, but only the which attains a height at one point of sev- loudest and the most diffused. There is a enty feet, rising rather abruptly from the still, small pamphlet, an " illustrated hand- plain. At Chicago the only natural " feat- book" of the Exposition, written by Dr. ure" was the lake. At Buffalo there was Kurtz, of the Art Department, which is a no feature which could determine the de- model in its kind, which sets forth what are sign. But this skirting ridge is the deter- the real distinctions and attractions of the mining feature of the plan at St. Louis. show, and lets the stranger know accurately From its central summit were drawn the just what it is that he is expected to go out radiating avenueswhich give the " lay-out" to St. Louis "for to see." But unfortu- the likeness of a fan. The central avenue, nately the circulation of this admirable com- wider than the others, is the waterway of pendium seems to be too much confined to the broad lagoon, or rather is lagoon for St. Louis itself, where it is least needed. half its length and plaza for the other. Although one having more or less au- Two of the great palaces, those of Educa- thority in the councils of the Louisiana tion and Electricity, offer, the one the stately Purchase Exposition has declared that it is colonnades of its wings and the grandiose not the object of the Fair " to immortalize quadriga-crowned mass of its central por- its architects," the obvious fact is that, tals, the other its huge Greco-Roman arches since Chicago, at least, the success of a framed in projecting " orders, " to the mir- world's fair must be a spectacular success, ror of the land-locked basin, or of the sub- and it is the result of the architectural dis- ordinate canals by which they are com- positions that makes or mars that success. pletely islanded. Indeed, for purposes of popular attractive- As far outward as these palaces extend, ness, the outsides of the buildings count for the stream that flows down the opposite more than the exhibits inside. It seems hillside in ordered cascades is diverted to safe to say that if the palaces at Chicago the lateral avenues and to the transverse Drawn by Jules Gu&rin.

Education Building, reflected in the Grand Basin, early morning.

The Architecture of the St. Louis Fair :;s: avenue tlul connects them. It is an ar- along the ridge. It is only the central rangement that had its effect at Buffalo, avenue that commands the direct view and it is introduced here on a far larger across the plaza and the basin to the crown- scale and with promise of a corresponding ing temple. The vista of each of the increase of effectiveness. Observe that the lateral avenues is closed by the circular transverse avenue, the waterway that con- colonnaded pavilion which forms the ter- nects the three diverging ribs of the fan, is mination of the quadrant on that side. not a curve, but rectilinear, with the result Manifestly, the scheme is noble and of making a rather abrupt angle in the cen- impressive. It was a happy thought to tre of each "block" of palaces, salient for take the one distinctive natural feature of the rears of these two inner buildings, the site and work it up into the cynosure re-entrant for the fronts of the wider build- of the show. Apparently it was an after- ings of longer radius from the centre of the thought. At any rate the "Terrace of the Festival Hall that crowns the opposite States" that flanks the Festival Hall and hill, and is the centre and cynosure of the crowns the ridge, has the unfortunate whole display. Behind the Palace of effect of effacing the one palace of the Education spreads out the huge Palace of Exposition that is destined to permanence, Manufactures, behind that of Electricity the Art Building, which is no longer appre- the corresponding bulk of that of Varied hensible, in the view for which one may

Industries, the former a pompous and suppose it was chiefly designed. It is a festal series of Roman arches, declining substantial and dignified structure in brick into detached peristvlar colonnades at the and limestone, of which the composition corners and rising into triumphal arches is a tall nave, fronted by a hexastyle Co- of entrance at the centres, the latter rinthian portico, above which appears the reminiscent, as it seems, of the Machinery large lunette that promises abundant light Building of Chicago, showing pedimented for the interior, with similar and similarly and steepled entrances at the centres, pedimented openings along the sides, and domed and arched pavilions at the angles, flanked by a singularly bold expanse of low- and between these central and terminal wing wall, left blank but for the small features curtain walls fronted with a colon- grilled squares at the top, and for a simple nade standing on an arcaded basement, feature near each end— a pair of columns excepting that the basement is not really carrying a pediment and enclosing a niche a basement, since there is no floor to divide — the feature corresponding, apparently, to it from the colonnade. an interior corridor, although it has no On the outside, again, of these ribs, or opening. All this is of a classic severity, radii, are more palaces, flanking that of though severe rather in the modern Pari- Education that of Mines, flanking Manu- sian than in the ancient Athenian sense. factures, Liberal Arts; and, on the other But on the garden front, which the tem- side, Machinery beyond Electricity, and porary annexes convert into a quadrangle, Transportation beyond Varied Industries. the designer has relaxed himself and be- It is a huge show, sure enough, that is come unscrupulously "amusing" with a constituted by these eight palaces. It is to free and fantastic treatment of motives be noted that the similitude of a fan, obvi- from the Italian Renaissance. There is no ous and taking as it is, is not accurate. gainsaying the amusement, and this gar- The pin of the fan may indeed be repre- den front is noteworthy as affording the sented by the Festival Hall that crowns only employment, at this time of writing, the centre of the slope. But the "nub" of exterior color in the Fair and indicat- or nucleus of the display is not a point, not ing, whatwas so abundantly shown at Buf- even a point of two hundred feet in diam- falo, the festal possibilities of that device. eter, which is that of Festival Hall. If it The main building is not, as it was not re- were, each of the diverging ribs would at quired to be, of an "expositional" char- its outward extremity command the view- acter, and its gravity might have struck a across the grounds and waters, and up the sterner note than would have comported hillside to the central cynosure. The cen- with the Fair. But it seems a pity, all the tre is in fact a quadrant of a quarter of a same, that it should have been hidden to mile in extent, the "Terrace of the States" make a local holiday. The concealment Drawn by Jules Guerin.

Monumental shaft to commemorate the Louisiana Purchase. Drawn by Jules Guerin.

The Festival Hall and the Great Fountain at the head of the Basin. 390 The Architecture of the St. Louis Fair

was attended with every circumstance of design it much morenearly recalls the baptis- consideration, for it was the architect of the tery of Pisa, is as yet but a pyramidal bulk of Art Building, Mr. Cass Gilbert, who was scaffolding. One has very frequent occa- himself invoked to efface it by interposing sion, in making the tour of the grounds, to Festival Hall between it and the vulgar gaze congratulate the managers of the Fair on for the period of the Exposition. Nobody having secured the services of Mr. Mas- could say fairer than that. The Festival queray as Chief of Design, and in this

Hall, which with its flanking colonnade so crowning feature not least. For it is upon completely, for the time being, hides the Art the design of the incidental and accessory building, is a cupola rising from an en- elements of a great decorative scheme like circling colonnade of less than its own this that the ultimate effectiveness very height. The "circumscribing parallelopi- largely depends; and this is here unfail- pedon" of the structure would be very ingly successful. The colonnade itself, nearly a cube of two hundred feet. W hen the great quadrant made up of lesser quad- a structure of this kind is set on a hill even rants, is not only an effective setting for its of seventy feet, to be looked at from what is statues, but an effective connection between virtually a plain below, it is adapted to the tapering bulk of the central hall and dominate the scene, as this Festival Hall the smaller but similar masses of the undoubtedly dominates the Fair. And when terminal pavilions, which, for their festal it is flanked by a furlong of continually purpose, are of admirable design. Their curving and recurving colonnade, punc- practical destination as restaurants has tuated with colossal seated statues, each compelled the interposition of a gallery mid- in its own "exedra," the "Terrace of the way of the circular enclosing colonnade,

States," representing the commonwealths which is of course a solecism; but it is a (up to date twelve States and two Ter- solecism so associated with Southern build- ritories), th.it freedom lias developed out ing, since the days of Jefferson, that one of the Louisiana Purchase during the cen- welcomes it in a Louisiana Purchase tury, and terminated by a domed pavil- Exposition. The execution of this whole ion skilfully designed with reference to it; crowning feature of the Fair is worthy of when, finally, from the central structure its conception. An equally effective erec- and from each of the terminal structures, tion in its kind, the Louisiana Purchase there streams down the slope and into the Monument, to be crowned by Mr. Bitter's great basin at the base a series of sym- colossal "Peace," is the one structure on metrized and formal waterfalls, sparkling the grounds that is called a "monument," in the sun, and, when the sunlight fails, though but a monument in staff, destined susceptible of the more various and iri- to pass away with the rest of the "insub- descent illuminations of electric light— it stantial pageant." The design of it seems will be agreed that here is an attractive to entitle it to a greater duration, although novelty in the central features of world's that design has been determined with strict fairs. It is, in fact, the Administration reference to its place in the decorative

building of Chicago plus the electric illu- scheme. In function it quite corresponds minations of Paris—with this difference in to Mr. French's "Columbia" in the its favor, that the electric fountains play Court of Honor at Chicago, bearing the against the hill of the Trocadero, as it were, same relation to Festival Hall that that and are witnessed from the plain of the bore to the Administration Building, al- Champ de Mars. Festival Hall, with its though at a much greater distance, and, diverging colonnade and its descending cas- according to L'Enfant's happy expression cades, promises to be worth going a long about his plan for the " Federal City," way to see. Assuredly it will be if the "preserving reciprocity of sight" between indications of the plan are carried out. two principal objects. At the edge of the And although the landscape work and the basin and the centre of the plaza, with its water work and the sculpture and the color height of 128 feet, and a bulk more than and the illumination are all to come, the corresponding, according to the columnar architecture, at least, is secure, and this conception of a monument, it will form although this central feature of it, the Pan the point of convergence for the view theon, so to say, although in form and in from the ridge, as Festival Hall for that of

;

:!'.»•_» The Architecture of the St. Louis Fair

spectators on the plain. The columnar outer ribs of the fan. The thirteen-hun- conception, according to which a member dred-foot flank, for example, of the Trans- designed with a spreading capital to take portation Building, the front of which I a superincumbent weight of distinctly have just been praising, affords ample greater area than its own, is employed to scope for it. But here it tends to mo- support a statue of distinctly less, is here notony — through no fault of the designer, I frankly abandoned in favor of the more hasten to say, but because the repetition, logical arrangement of a bulky and solid at the centre of each of the flanks, of the tower as the pedestal of the statue, an colossal triplet of arches that appears at arrangement which is more effective as each end, shown in the drawings, has been

well as more logical for a monument to be omitted from the execution. In no art is seen like this. In his own Transportation the effectiveness of rests and interludes Building the architect has effectively re- more important than in architecture. But peated on a smaller scale, and by way of an architectural "rest" of a quarter of a "imitation," the form of the monument mile becomes necessarily monotonous.

in the fmials of the massive abutments of Monotony, however, as it is by no means his vast triplet of wheeling arches. the worst of architectural faults, so is by This, then, is the heart of the Fair, this no means the fault of the least successful three-ribbed fan of which the pin is the buildings of the eight great palaces, but Festival Hall, the handle the quadrant of rather miscellany. Redundancy of " mo- the colonnaded Terrace, the ribs the three tives," or, more vernacularly, " thinginess," broad avenues, of waterways out to the is the drawback of such erections as the transverse avenue and landways beyond, building of Liberal Arts, which has got whic h are bordered by the eight great itself promptly nicknamed the Building palaces. It seems a pity that the trans- of the Varied Architectures, or as that of verse avenue should not have been a curve Machinery, with its "grand choice" of instead of the broken line of which the colonnades and arcades and steeples and angle occurs in the centre of blocks of round pediments and pediments triangu- palaces, offering indeed, on one side —the lar. The equal division of the chief build- side of the salient — an architectural oppor- ings between local architects and architects tunity, of which several of the designers outside worked excellently at Chicago, have effectively availed themselves, al- where the work of the local men quite held though at least one has "refused" both the its own in the competition, and surprisingly opportunity and the entrance, but on the well at Buffalo, where it resulted in giving, other an architectural difficulty which a national reputation to designers who be-

some of them have found insoluble, and of fore had only a local reputation. If it has which the most eligible solution is perhaps not worked quite so well at St. Louis, that that to which the designers of the Varied cannot be because "home talent" is want- Industries have resorted in masking it with ing. The architects of the Education the convex segment of a colonnade. It Building were known already to their pro- was probably the practical difficulties of fession as architects of cultivation and ac- building round the curve that resulted in complishment, as had been attested by the choice of the artistic difficulties of build- their brilliant design for the reconstruction ing round the corner. But one disad- of West Point, which indeed failed to meet vantage of the choice is that the longest the approval of the judges as a practical fronts do not get the benefit of their length project, but as a " concours" was applaud- that there can be no such effect of " mag- ed by all to whose notice it was brought; nitude, uniformity, and succession" as was and, later, by their success in an exacting attained by the interminable series of competition for the new custom-house of the flank of the Liberal Arts at Chicago. San Francisco. The architect of Mines The most impressive examples at St. Louis and Metallurgy is an architect of ideas, as of this simplest but most unfailing of all is strongly attested by that building and architectural effects are attained in the had been previously attested by the Union shorter but unbroken fronts of the inner Station of St. Louis, which is, of course, buildings, or in the Hanks of the outlying locally, "the biggest in the world" (though buildings of which the inner fronts face the I seem to have heard that same claim put Drawn by Jules Guirin. Electricity Building by moonlight

Plan of the Fair grounds.

forward in behalf of the South Union, in Chicago, it aims to be a reality, an actual Boston itself), but which is considerable, structure of plaster in the midst of simu- architecturally, on better grounds than that lacra of masonry, and which, with its wide of mere bigness. Excepting these, one overhanging eaves and solid shadows, goes need not be very familiar with the archi- further in the direction of the prototype. tecture of St. Louis to recall some designers Evidently its design, like that of the proto- who were left out who were quite as deserv- type, contemplates the free external use of ing of consideration as some who were color, and it cannot be fairly judged until chosen. One infers, from remarks dropped the addition has been supplied. And, re- by some of the chosen, that that harmoni- garded as a protest, it is, much more dis- ous co-operation and discussion among the tinctly than the prototype, lacking in authors which led to the architectural comity. For the Transportation Building harmony of Chicago have been displaced at at Chicago was isolated, whereas the build- St. Louis, after the manner of architects, ing of Mines at St. Louis is one of the group by more Ephesian controversies. The pre- of the principal palaces, and necessarily to scription of a "free treatment of the be seen in connection with other members Renaissance" instead of the "classic" of of that group, so that it may at the same Chicago, or the Spanish-American adopted time be successful in itself and a failure in in deference to the Pan-American purpose its environment. Of none of the other of of Buffalo, has everywhere received a suffi- the eight great buildings can this be said. ciently liberal interpretation. The architect They are designed under a sense of the of Mines has construed it even to include desirableness of congruity and the obliga- Egyptian, in a building of which the dis- tions of comity. For the most part, they tinction is that, like the Transportation at are scholarly and even academic essays Vol. XXXV—41 393 394 The Architecture of the St. Louis Fair within the lines of the general consensus building. It would be worth while to no- of style. Education, Elc< trii it v, Manufac- tice the rage for reproduction that has tures, Varied Industries and Transportation taken the designers of the foreign buildings, would have taken their places with credit insomuch that, instead of the pretty and and propriety among the edifices that lined exemplary cottage of Chicago, Great Brit- the Court of Honor, as worthy examples of ain sends us an extreme example of the the " expositional" style. And the execu- sadness with which the Englishman takes tion of even the less successful is not often his pleasures, in a grim reproduction of in detail, and scarcely ever to any flagrant the Orangery of Kensington Palace; and degree, unsuccessful enough to nullify the France, a reproduction of the Grand Tri- effectiveness of the general scheme. anon; and Germany, in place of those With unlimited spa< c it would be pleas- specimens of " Gemuethlichkeit," the Ger- ant to go on talking about the buildings man buildings of Chicago and Paris, a re- that lie outside the essential architectural edification of the Schloss of Charlotten- scheme. One would like especially to burg. But it would not be fair to close dwell upon the practical and the artistic without saying how much the success of advantages the Exposition derives from the Fair will depend upon the works of being able to employ, for the time of its "the allied arts" which are not yet in evi- duration, the admirable buildings of the dence, upon the gardening and the sculpt- Washington University, albeit composed, ure and the color. In these latter depart- as they are, in the collegiate Gothic, which ments, doubtless we may trust Mr. Bitter is probably the least expositional of all and Mr. Millet and their coadjutors. It is architectural styles. It would be interest- proper to point out how not only the build- ing to point out the distinct advance that ing of Mines fairly clamors for color and has been made since Chicago, in the fitness will be incomplete till it gets it, but how, of and merit of the State buildings, beginning the outlying buildings, such important and with the imposing structure, not much less extensive buildings as that of Agriculture, in frontage than the Capitol, which Uncle that of Horticulture, and that of Forestry, Sam has erected for the housing of his have evidently foregone modelled decora- exhibit. At Chicago our revered relative tion in the expectation of the designer that played the unflattering part of Helot amid they would receive painted decoration, and the classic Spartan boys, or divided that without that addition cannot be fairly part with the State of Illinois. At St. Louis judged. But it is not premature to say he occupies with dignity his commanding that, with accessories as well executed as position of stopping the view at one end of the architecture, the Louisiana Purchase the crooked cross-avenue, while the other Exposition will be a spectacular success. is stopped by the French pavilion. Of Whether it will fulfil the apparently pri- course the only building that Virginia mary purpose of some of its projectors by could fitly reproduce for a Louisiana Pur- "beating Chicago," is quite another mat- chase Exposition is Monticello. Equally, of ter. Very many .of us would regard it as a course, the only architectural representa- disaster to have the recollection of Chicago tion of Louisiana must be the old " Cabildo" effaced. And the invidiousness of com- at New Orleans, in which the transfer was parisons is exaggerated and complicated actually made. And there is manifest a when the comparison is between a memory general tendency among the States to re- and a hope. It ought to suffice that St. call their respective traditions in their Louis promises to be so well worth seeing, architecture, a tendency carried to a alike by those who did, and by those who questionable extreme by Texas in making did not, have the opportunity of seeing its the "Lone Star" the ground plan of its predecessor. Drawn by Jules GiUrin. Facade of Transportation Buiiding at night.

SONG IN A GARDEN. •11

Tim seemed in high good humor, and ing to him; but Tim, drawing the back by the stable lantern his face was one of his hand across his eyes, said hastily: broad smile. "That's all right, Judge; get inside " Come out, old fellow," he called to and go to bed, for you'll have congratula- me. " Just a little more for your coun- tions from all over to attend to to-morrow. try. They say we shouldn't wake the old I believe you are the only man of your Judge this time of night; but I say that party elected in the State; they'll want good news is in order any time of night. you for Governor next." He needs what we have to tell him more He grasped me by the mane and led than medicine." me into the shed, where the last words he We walked down the road, by that hour said to me were, dark and deserted, and presently he was " Sherry, I wouldn't be surprised if the knocking at our own door. It was opened old woman kissed me for this," and I after a little time by the master him- hope she did. self, who looked sick and deadly pale in When I awoke the next morning I the light of the candle he held. discovered that Sancho had nibbled off He seemed amazed to see us; and Tim, my ribbons, but I was too happy in think- bidding me stand, pushed him indoors ing of the change that had come over and entered himself. What he said there our master the night before to bite him. I don't know, but in a very few minutes I did ask him, though, what had made the master threw back the door and him bray so rudely at the meeting the stepped out as strong as any man. He night before. placed his arms about my neck and his He said that a man whom he saw talk- head against my own. " God bless you, ing to Tim Cannon had twisted his tail, old comrade," he said. " You have given which always made him bray. me a new life." But he is so crafty, in spite of his " That's right, Judge," interrupted stupid appearance, that I did not believe Tim. " Let him know how you feel it, and suspect him of plotting before- about it. I tell you that old horse can hand with Tim, for some deep reason I think and sympathize," which of course cannot explain. I know that he can be the Judge knew as well as he did. bribed to do anything undonkeyfied with " Tim Cannon," cried the Judge, turn- a handful of sugar.

i

Song in a Garden BY ARTHUR DAVISON FICKE THE Rose shall go away, And the Nightingale be still, And a silence shroud the hill For the loves of yesterday.

But if his rapturous singing Has trembled in her ears, Shall not his hopes and fears Still unto her go winging?

And if her sweets have been His solace and his pain, Shall not her bloom again Shine through his covert green?

Eor the Rose shall go away, And the Nightingale shall cease; But death gives not release To the love of yesterday. —; ;;

Philadelphia BY CHARLES HENRY WHITE

is generally conceded, at least among miracle of miracles!—the first car he ITsome New-Yorkers, that Philadelphia signals stops dead at the corner, and is not a place to be visited by those not half-way up the block with a comet- in pursuit of happiness. In fact, it has like tail of frenzied citizens stumbling become quite common for the New- along in its wake; nor only for the aged Yorker, before going there, to mention and decrepit, but for able-bodied men and unavoidable circumstances and state his women in good condition and quite case clearly to avoid being misunder- capable of sprinting! stood. Perhaps the comic papers are There is something delightful about largely responsible for this; at any rate, the manner in which the Philadelphia the persistent facetious allusions to Phila- car takes you from the crowded business delphia's shortcomings must have become centre and a moment later rambles leisure- in the lapse of years as depressing to ly along with you into what seems anotb- the Philadelphian as it is for the resident er century. Long rows of colonial brick of Ossining to be continually reminded houses half shrouded in the shadow of their of his proximity to the State's prison. heavy overhanging cornices—the steep It matters little how inopportune our dull-red roofs with the interminable pro- sally may be: we must get rid of it, and cession of dormer-windows and the strange are anxious and unhappy until we do. fantasia of chimneys with their pots It may occur to a man just as your train askew—have come and gone before it is for Philadelphia is moving out of the possible for one to realize the significance station, and away he goes along the plat- of what is passing. The charm, sim- form, butting into people, getting his plicity, and, above all, the exquisite sense hat punctured for his pains, until, almost of propriety of the Georgian period are suffocating with the fun of the thing, he felt in the workman's cottage or in the finally catches up with you and stam- meanest of Chinese laundries, lending to " !" mers, Good-by . . . have a good sleep the turning of the Philadelphia corner and you leave him standing there, grop- a certain excitement and joyous expecta- ing helplessly about him for air and tion peculiar to the byways of Venice. writhing in innermost merriment. If Go where you will in this Quaker City, you are making for Ossining, it will be, the beautiful meets you at every turn " When do you get out ?" followed by it follows you home at night; it pre- the same convulsions and indiscriminate vents you from undertaking any serious slapping of people on the back. It is a work, and frustrates any attempt one may very distressing thing to witness. make to follow a straight course across The truth of the matter is we are sin- the city. cere in our desire to better the condition In New York there is little mystery of the Philadelphian : he is so near and in the mere turning of the street beyond yet so far from the lights of Broadway we know almost to a certainty what it will but he is a difficult person to en- reveal to us— a peanut-stand, a robust lighten: he will not have light; he guardian of the peace generously helping is stubbornly contented, and we New- himself to its contents, distant elevated Yorkers secretly loathe a contented man. structures, saloons ablaze in gilded iron- Who has not given the subject of Phila- work, and those irrevocable rows of delphia conditions mature consideration houses with their miserable stamped zinc on his first journey there, and once in cornices completing the sky-line. the thoroughfares of Philadelphia vainly Balzac, somewhere in his Histoire des striven to conceal his emotion when Treize, writes: " To whom has it not hap- Vol. CXIII.—No 673 —6 1 —

1 EARPER'S MONTHLY MAGAZINE. pened to leave liis house in the morning the rare versatility of these master to go to tlie extremity of Paris, with- workmen in democratic bricks. out having gone any farther than the The sordidness and squalor of similar centre of the city at midday?" Tt is this places in New York are absent; they are quality that Philadelphia and Paris have (lean, decent, well-scrubbed alleys; and in common. You choose your suhject from their coved cornices to the most in Philadelphia, after endless deli he ra- insignificant moulding in the door panels tion, and on the morrow start out with there is a well-bred formality and sim- the intention of commencing it, only to plicity of motive. When once the in- fall a prey to grave doubts that possibly sidious charm of their unaffected ele- the distant roofs may reveal a point of gance has taken hold of you, nothing view a little more unusual, and forthwith else will do; Independence Hall and pack up your sketching paraphernalia, Christ's Church must wait: under this only to find yourself, at sunset, he- influence the artist degenerates into a smirched with dirt, still shamelessly mere amateur of alleys, and there is no crawling through garret doors to bestride way of redeeming him. lie becomes the housetops. narrow and supersensitive; he carefully There is a fascination about these selects his particular alley, opens his housetop vistas, for they reveal a foreign camp-stool with great deliberation, and character in Philadelphia that constantly anchors himself there, so to speak. calls to mind some Continental proto- There is no way of dragging him out of

it type—a thing a closer and more detailed ; his friends, his code of ethics, his inspection rarely if ever reveals. Water social obligations, even his wife and .Street, where it intersects Delancey child, all become subservient to his alley. Street, is surely distinguished enough to If he worked in his alley, one might cause even the layman to gape in wonder- overlook his irregularities, but he rarely ment, but its real significance does not does; half of the time you see him lean- disclose itself until you have mounted to ing languidly against the buildings, peer- the roof of the deserted sugar-refinery ing through half-closed eyes at the eaves- across the street, when this Revolutionary trough or obstructing the traffic by talk- pile of buildings seems to elongate into ing to people who pass. Worse still, in a mighty concrete, defiant mass of ma- an effort to make converts he will waste sonry, dwarfing everything in the vicinity. hours of valuable time, and offensively Above the dull-red roofs rises a forest of persist in dragging disinterested parties gaunt chimneys, while in the faint per- to his alley, only to threaten them with spective Philadelphia, with its gables and premature imbecility when they cannot slender tapering steeples, stretches out see it as he does. Ask him why he is not into the tender delicacy of the distant working, and he flares up and shouts horizon. But for the gable ends this might that he is waiting for conditions. I have be the Place Maubert in Paris ; the sombre, since learned that many a man who hur- equivocal aspect and that mystery and riedly leaves you in Philadelphia, osten- suppressed agitation so overpowering in sibly to see his wife, is secretly making the latter's finer moods are realized here for his alley, and when you meet him with equal intensity if not poignancy—it later and point knowingly to the fresh is dramatic where its prototype is tragic. plaster-marks on his back, he becomes as Apart from this remote and distantly intolerant and overbearing as if he had beautiful phase of Philadelphia, one finds a wife. the antithesis of this cold formality in Of course I have my alley, and am the intimate quality of its half-forgotten justified in feeling that nobody can teach byways. There is a peculiar unobtrusive me anything about alleys; I am alley- perfection in the realization of the limi- wise, as it were. First in importance tations and possibilities of a mere alley in my alley is a comfortable saloon, that even in Philadelphia, where the which is at once an educational centre, abundance of the beautiful causes one a starting-point, a meeting - place, a to constantly reject material which else- point of convergence, or a vanishing- where one would accept eagerly, over- point — as you will; and from this shadows all one's preconceived ideas of quiet corner you catch a glimpse —

PHILADELPHIA. 45 but I shall nut attempt any description; by an unfinished roof that sweeps it is a thankless task, and if I were to in undulating curves until it ends tell the truth respecting it, I might be with the alley, making the second story, the means of bringing- discord into the with its row of dormers and massive happy home of some man who thinks chimneys, appear as an afterthought. that he has a finer alley. For one week I occupied this corner, The sidewalks are in dovetailed bricks, watching the people come and go. Long- and the cobblestones under the pressure shoremen and stevedores from the water- of many generations now rise and fall front, truckmen and clerks with a turn in many delightful hollows. The weather- for afternoon diversion, and venerable beaten facades of the houses are rapidly old gentlemen who knew the tavern in shedding their coat of paint, revealing its original state—as Enoch Story left it bricks in checker-board design, bleached —cume now to take their glass of ale for to a delicate salmon, with here and there sentiment's sake and disappear between soft golden umbers and liquid grays the swinging doors. I amused myself the color quality of a faded tapestry. checking them off as they appeared; to- Sheltering the first row of windows day it is a truckman who gives me a there is a heavy coved cornice capped racy account of the early history of the

Cuthbert Alley Etched on copper by C. H White —

hi EAKPEK'S MONTHLY MAGAZINE

alley, and to-morrow it is a prosperous, might ever hope to find even at a period well- fed undertaker—a man of senti- when shameless exhibitions of brotherly ment—who requests mc to visit his house, love were common in the highways of formerly occupied by Duche; or Jimmy, the Quaker City. the bartender from the adjacent tavern, Drinks were ordered, and at this point wlio thinks his collection of early his- the chronicle calls attention to the fact torical data relating to the alley might that the " Police take a drink," and interest me. " You'll see it ain't changed proceeds: "While they were emptying much since Billy Penn was fired out o' I heir glasses, Constable James Wood and here," he ventured, before disappearing night-watchman James Dough, as such to serve a customer. officers would do in those days, dropped I was well repaid by my visit to Jimmy in to warm themselves." — in fact, there is nothing else for one All might have been well with this to do who desires information of a histor- little Quaker company, and Billy's name ical incident which is as fresh to-day in have become lost to us in the oblivion the minds of old and young in this alley of some obsolete Philadelphia social as it was that morning in 1796 when the register, had the conversation not turned good old Quaker City awoke scandalized to the militia. The nature of the argu- to learn that William Penn's son was ment is not stated, but the fact remains in jail for aiding and abetting a bar- that at this juncture Billy playfully room brawl. In the tender and conflict- made for James Dough, and was rapidly ing accounts of this affair which have kneading him into the form of one of been whispered in my ear while I oc- those Vienna rolls with a big dent in cupied my corner and attended more or the middle, when Alderman Willcox ap- less to business, I might have been left peared and, as the chronicler of Coombes hopelessly at sea had nut Jimmy kindly Alley puts it, " gave him a severe beating, placed at my disposal such documents in whereat he felt sore in all his joints." his possession as had direct bearing on It has never been quite clear to Jimmy the incident known in the alley as or to me exactly what the worthy alder- "Billy Penn's Folly." man was doing in the alley at such an From data I have gathered it appears unseemly hour, nor have I looked up that on a winter's night in 1796 Billy his portrait in the Historical Society Penn, with a few intimate friends or if it be there,—but prefer to accept him " fellow roysterers," as the chronicle puts as he unconsciously looms up in one's it, had become intoxicated, but not in fancy as Hamlet's robustious periwig- that state where a man wantonly glories pated fellow, nimble for all his bulk, in the fact. This was rather a dignified dodging the flying pewter tankards, inebriety, the direct outcome of a united taking a blow to land one, and finally effort on the part of these good Quakers when the happy opening presents itself, to temporarily forget certain depressing assaulting Billy. And thus he fell an ethical conditions then prevailing, and easy prey to the guardians of the peace, prompted this little company to mutter who had been hastily summoned. unintelligible invectives at the wavering Even without these old associations, perpendiculars and the restless, heaving which contribute their share to the charm pavement as they rolled up the alley, of the place, there is enough of interest heading for good old Enoch Story's tav- in the friends one makes in a day's idling ern, to conclude the evening in one among the floating population of this final nightcap. quaint corner to leave a lasting impres- One is safe in presuming that when sion of the Philadelphian's happy ca- they eventually found the tavern's heavy pacity for an intelligent appreciation of brass knocker and rapped—as only those an infinite number of things apart from who for years have known nothing but the mechanical daily routine. It is this the Quaker restraint can rap—for assist- civic character of the Philadelphian that ance and refreshment, there stood in the forms such a striking contrast between warm genial glow from the tavern's him and his matter-of-fact brother in threshold as innocent and kind-hearted New York. His mode of living, the a group of chronic hand-shakers as one happy tradition of his environment, and ST. PETER'S SPIRE Etched on copper by C. H. White 1- HARPER'S MONTHLY MAGAZINE

) lie fortuitous conditions which enable happens before you are aware. Von look him to touch tlic past ;it. innumerable from your copperplate to find the sun points are largely responsible for it. and departed and the court blossoming out in make it a common occurrence for the countless spots of red and white and

Philadelphian to daily pass the house faded turquoise bine iii the flying frocks formerly occupied by his grandfather as of children, racing back and forth, and a matter of course, while we New- wearing their tiny faded shawls with a Yorkers, who have long since sold our daintiness and a faint 1830 air in keep- granclsires' hricks to the wrecking firm, ing with the quarter. pass them without a twinge of conscience, Hut there comes a time in this lovely even though they stare at us in mute Colonial city when the merry hum of protest from the rear wall of some Har- voices ceases in these byways, when ev< n lem dwelling. the open-air element on the park benches At times, in my alley, reminders of grows serious, and somethi] g inexpres- the outer world appear in the form of sibly heavy takes hold of one's generous a ponderous truck, which turns the nar- impubes and prompts each man to bolt row corner only with its front wheels, his heavy shutters and seek the darkness. trusting to the curbstones and the heavy This is the Philadelphia Sunday, which iron posts at either side of the street a wise and just Providence has ordained to send the rear wheels skidding side- shall come but once a week. ways around the bend with a file-like On this day I had teen warned to screeching of iron and a pounding of sleep late by a man in whose judgment hoofs |h;it scatter the frightened chil- I had every confidence. " Never mind dren like multicolored pigeons to points my reasons," he insisted, with some bit- of safety within the doorways. terness, when I questioned him. "Take This is an event which is to be ex- my advice and keep to your bed." So, pected once or twice daily, and to the profiting by his advice, I left orders not driver it means a sort of Hell Gate to be called next morning, and it was

triumphantly overcome without a pilot. not until I had patiently investigated And so. the excitement past, the alley that I discovered the origin of the un- once more resumes its quiet dignified natural restlessness that had taken hold demeanor. The clientele from the tav- of me, it seemed, with the dawn. ern behind me come and go with much the At first I thought it was in the ad- same leisurely gait as they were accus- join ing room, and opened my door cau- tomed to in the good old Enoch Story's tiously, only to have the sound die away; time, apologizing first before pausing to but on closing it, back it came with watch the progress of your work. The renewed fervor, and I made a hurried robust, hearty party from the wagon- exit to the bath. It was there too, yard beyond makes his tenth visit, op- only more suppressed, and I was glad to timistically trusting that his boss will have it go while filling the bath-tub; but overlook the irregularity; with the wan- when the water stopped running it was ing light come, one by one, the stragglers there again—less distinct, but with far from the water-front and disappear greater pathos. It was plain that some- through the tavern's swinging doors ; the body was in distress on this bright Sab- aged tippler bows me good evening and bath morning, and I suddenly became

follows suit ; deep shadows form in seized with a selfish desire to do for him strange arabesques on the weather-beaten what others had only half accomplished. walls, gradually consuming the lingering After dressing hurriedly I traced the copper-colored spots of sunlight, when a thing to the park, whence the sounds led childish voice whispers in my ear, " Say! me, and discovered in the midst of a !" me aunt sez yer gettin' stuck on her tired group of inoffensive townsmen, and T know that school is out and Alice deserving of better treatment, a thin, is beside me. oily, determined man fumbling with a This is the hour when Cuthbert Alley small pine organ, or harmonium. Be- awakens from its monastic silence to the hind him stood an irregular row of pre- rush of many little feet and rings with maturely gray citizens who muttered the clear voices of children. The thing things while a buxom lady sang. Washington Market Etched on copper by C. H. White

This frail contrivance that creaked strain himself. Self-restraint is a good and palpitated under the sustained pun- tiling, and the early cottage organ had ishment he administered was no organ a roAson d'etre. Then again the medieval in its prime—fully developed and round- dilettante could only afflict his own do- ed out,—but a sort of embryonic organ mestic circle: he could not carry the box with many painful and obvious limita- out with him. But in Philadelphia to- tions. In early medieval times the man day they have produced an organ that who first foisted organs upon us might brings organ-playing within the reach of have been supremely happy to play with the poorest man. One might tolerate it in the seclusion of his workshop, for this in a less thickly populated com- it was impossible for him to do much munity; but the worst of it is, this harm with the medieval organ: the limit- Philadelphia organ is a collapsible, port- ed scale, the ignorance of counterpoint, able, folding affair, a little larger than and the lack of sufficient wind-supply a dress-suit case, the possessor of which made even a man of temperament re- immediately becomes his own tabernacle Along the Schuylkill Etched on copper by C H. White and goes where he will, for there is noth- But with my second organist, inex- ing to prevent him. His organ is a thing pressibly busy beneath the shade-trees, that is neither here nor there: first you the difference between the owner and the see him playing on it in the park and fly consignee of an organ was written all in consternation, only to hear the thing over the operator, so to speak. There open with a pop, like an opera-hat, some- was a sustained and feverish impulse to where up tlu- alley — he has outflanked his efforts that placed him in a class you and is at it again! by himself. Something in the curve of This is a subject lending itself to his spine and in the manner in which minute classification and subtle analysis. the head is firmly embedded between the In passing through Washington Square shoulders, together with the bewildering I discovered a new organist, in whom it piston-rod activity of the legs, so free became immediately apparent that there from all restraint, makes one feel that is something distinctly aggressive and it is no proprietor of an organ who can vigorous in the method and hearth -- at- thus recklessly throw science to the titude of a man who rents his organ or winds and belabor this frail contrivance pays instalments on it, with the option until the thin legs quiver convulsively of discontinuing at his pleasure, not to beneath it. You feel instinctively that be found in the proprietor of one of these he is going to get his money's worth or machines. The first organist I had en- blow out a cylinder-head, and doesn't countered had impressed me; at times he care who likes it. was capable of getting things out of his Surely this is throwing the rights of machine that lots of decent people would man to the four winds. Poor as I am, not tolerate,—but now I know that he if I wish to make people feel in one hour was a guileful hypocrite, and never for all the. aching vicissitudes of a painful a moment intended to let the thing open past, it is only necessary for me to pay up and expand, as it were. It was clear a small deposit on one of these tele- to me now that he owned the music-box, scoping organs, take the thing out with and ci mid not afford to take the chance me, open it where I see fit, and beat and of fouling his mechanism. thrash it until 1 have satisfied my spleen. PHILADELPHIA. 51

By pulling out a harmless-looking white must have, if only to live up to ; and button I can fetch a long-drawn purga- beyond, the Beaux-Arts School reveals torial wail from the depths of this small itself in colorless white patches, destroy- pine box that will cause the most God- ing what might possibly have been a fearing man to rush straight home and dignified row of Georgian buildings, wilfully slap his inoffensive little brother. while here and there the New-Yorker Of course he will be sorry when it is too may note, not without considerable dis- late to repair the damage. tress, the unmistakable touch of Harlem In an effort to avoid these things I had Gothic superseding the Colonial. unconsciously wandered into the colored Vague suspicions that this might not quarter, and was relieved to find it com- be Rittenhouse Square came over me paratively free from organs, although after a cursory examination, but I soon there, as elsewhere, the missions were dispelled these lingering doubts by mak- having a busy time of it. Colored gentle- ing inquiries. " This is the place," re- men in immaculate frock coats shouted marked a coachman whom I questioned revival hymns at every other corner to concerning this in a cul-de-sac between drowsy groups of negroes sprawled about two houses facing the square. " Yes, the door-steps or festooned on the neigh- you've got to have blue blood to get in boring fire-escapes. On retracing my here," he continued, giving the harness footsteps, I found the same minstrel in a vicious rub before resuming: "I've the same place, apparently as strong worked for 'em all and know what I'm physically as when I first passed him, talking about; it doesn't matter how and I demanded of a negro the reason much you have, but you've got to be the of it all. " Ah don' know, sah," he re- original article if you want to make it. plied, "but you kain't stop him singin'." Nowadays the codfish aristocracy has Go where you will, there is a purged, been driving a lot of the old people out sanctified, evangelistic something floating of here; why, right at the corner some in the air that frustrates any attempt people bought a house and tried to butt to escape. Solemn vistas of red brick in—gave a reception and got icicles for meet the eye at every turn, with here and their pains. Yes, sir, the old aristocrats there a weary citizen dragging his feet just handed them out ice-water, and listlessly in an aimless promenade. plenty of it. You'd hardly believe it, I approached one of these pedestrians but some of the old men down here has on the question of Sunday divertissement such blue blood they could stick a pen- in Philadelphia, and he answered wearily, knife in their only son if he married " Those that has rooms is sleepin' ; those up-town people." that ain't got rooms is walkin' the I must have appeared puzzled at the " streets"; but in spite of the significance term, for he replied shortly : North of of this I shaped my course for Ritten- Market Street—nothing doing; the trou- house Square, elated at the thought of ble is in a town of this size people know invading a park which, in addition to all about you, and a decent Philadelphian being beautiful like other Philadelphia from up-town would look like a canned squares, you feel must have a certain article down here, where a soup-slinger exquisite distinction and recherche air from Baltimore would pass aS the orig- entirely its own, to properly harmonize inal unadulterated." with the exclusive character of its resi- " North of Market Street " explained dents, so careful of their surfaces. And it all; things that had previously seemed in this mood you enter a square com- shrouded in mystery suddenly became full monplace enough not to be wondered at of meaning when the young lady said, in New York, the home of the common- " You know the West Walnut Street peo- place. In vain you look for the Phila- ple are so sorry that the Academy of delphia sky-line of chimney-pots and Fine Arts is situated on Cheery Street, dormer-windows: nothing meets the eye because, you know, it is absolutely im- but that which is inexpressibly modern, possible for any of us to go there and for Philadelphia. At one corner stands learn anything." The meaning escaped a massive white stone building like a pub- me. And now in turning the matter lic library, such as the rich New-Yorker over in my mind there were other things Vol. CXIII.-No. 673.-7 52 HARPER'S MONTHLY MAGAZINE. that this accounted for. I remembered, a matter like this, and determined to on returning to New York for a short find out whether this tradition was mere- visit, being questioned by my artist friend ly confined to coachmen and the better who wished to know whether there was classes. In the centre of Rittenhouse really anything worth etching in Phila- Square I espied a policeman, and began, delphia's streets. It was only by the " How does this square compare with barest accident that I advised him to go Logan Square?" there, and he remarked with ill-concealed His face showed a curious mixture satisfaction: "Well, you know, I have of pain and amusement. " This is the been there—that is to say," he put in place just where we're standin'," he be- rapidly, " I visited some very nice people gan, sternly. " Logan Square is north on West Walnut Street . . . they were of Market Street; but it's all right, you really . . . Well—ah, really, don't you know,—people boards there, . . . there's know, and I stayed right in the house." nice trees, but"—after an eloquent pause " !" But I am nothing if not thorough in he suddenly exclaimed, O H , no

The Hedge BY HELEN HAY WHITNEY

LIVE in a beautiful garden I All joyous with fountains and flowers; I reck not of penance or pardon, At ease thro' the exquisite hours.

My blossoms of lilies and pansies, Pale heliotrope, rosemary, rue, All lull me with delicate fancies As shy as the dawn and the dew.

But the ghost, Gods, the ghost in the gloaming, How it lures me with whispers and cries,

How it speaks of the wind and the roaming, Free, free 'neath the Romany skies.

'Tis the hedge that is crimson with roses, All wonderfully crimson and gold, And caged in my beautiful closes I know what it is to be old. THE WITNESSES. (iii.-,

David's face whitened. All his visions but he would not go. If trouble must had been true visions, his dreams true come, then he would be with the Chris- dreams. Brave Eenn Claridge had called tians in their peril. At last he saw with to him at his door — "Good-morrow! me the truth. He had a plan of defence Good-morrow! Good-morrow!" Had he and safety—for escape. There was a not heard the knocking and the voice? Christian weaver with his wife in a far Now all was made clear. His path lay quarter—against my entreaty he went to open before him—a far land called him, warn them. The storm broke. He was 1 his quiet past was infinite leagues away. the first to fall, smitten in that street Already the staff was in his hands and the called Straight.' I found him soon after. cross-roads were sinking into the distance Thus did he speak to me — even in

' behind. He was dimly conscious of the these words : The blood of women and wan, shocked face of Faith in the crowd children shed here to-day shall cry from beneath him, which seemed blurred and the ground. Unprovoked the host has swaying, of the bowed head of Luke turned wickedly upon his guest. The Claridge, who, standing up, had taken storm has been sown, and the whirlwind off his hat in the presence of this news must be reaped. Out of this evil good of his brother's death which he saw writ- shall come. Shall not the Judge of ten in David's face. David stood for a all the earth do right?' These were moment before the great throng numb his last words to me then. As his life and speechless. ebbed out, he wrote a letter which I have " " It is a message from Damascus," he brought hither to one —he turned to said at last, and could say no more. David—" over whom his spirit yearned. Ebn Ezra Bey turned a grave face At the last he took off his hat, and lay upon the audience. with it in his hands, and died. ... I am "Will you hear me?" he said. "I am a Moslem, but the God of pity, of justice, an Arab." and of right is my God ; and in his name " Speak—speak !" came from every side. be it said that this crime was a crime " The Turk hath done his evil work in of hell." Damascus," he said. " All the Christians In a low voice the chairman put the are dead—save one; he hath turned Mos- resolution. The Earl of Eglington voted lem—and is safe." His voice had a note in its favor. of scorn. " It fell sudden and swift like Walking the hills homeward with Ebn a storm in summer. There were no paths Ezra Bey, Luke, Faith, and Friend Fair- to safety. Soldiers and those who led ley, David kept saying to himself the them shared in the slaying. As he and words of Benn Claridge: "I have called I who had travelled far together these thee so often of late. Good-morrow! many years sojourned there in the way Good-morrow! Good-morrow! Can you of business, I felt the air grow colder, not hear me call?" I saw the cloud gathering. I entreated, [to be continued.]

The Witnesses BY MILDRED HO WELLS

GOD fashioned the earth with skill, And the work that He began, He gave, to fashion after his will, Into the hands of man.

But the flower's uplifted face, And the sun and wind and sea, Bear witness still of the beautiful place God meant the world to be. Boston Town BY CHARLES HENRY WHITE

With Etchings by the Author

AFTER a few days spent in Idling casion seems to warrant it, he can be as about the city, I flattered myself impersonal and detached as a sigh com- ^ that among all the delightful resi- ing to you through a fog-bank. dential sites of Boston, I had chosen, by Yet there is one spot in his impene- a happy accident, in Beacon Hill the trable armor of stoicism. When once most desirable; and I am still convinced this is reached, his look of abstraction of it. For three full weeks I actually vanishes, and his face beams with a sun- gloried in it. Mount Vernon Street, ny, kindly radiance. Indeed, in moments loveliest of Boston's byways, witli ii~ like this, when you have him off his wealth of wrought-iron, its quiet gardens guard, he might almost be persuaded and terraced lawns,'lay close at hand ; and into believing that you too may possibly I had only to turn the corner to enter be one of God's creatures. It is in the streets arched like cathedral naves, with casual mentioning of family connections lufty elm-trees through which one caught that the polished surface of his exterior a glimpse below, where the road took a seems on the point of bursting, that the steep decline, of what appeared to be a buttons of his waistcoat creak ominous- quiet valley with a gray belfry, and the ly, and, lo and behold, the Bostonian has shimmering expanse of some drowsy river lost his grip on himself, and become hu- winding its way placidly beneath the dis- man like the rest of us! tant span of bridges. He will tell you all about it: how great- I mention these things merely to make grandfather's father was connected with clear the fact that what fault there was So-and-So, who in turn was a great lay not in Boston but in me, when, in the stickler for form; which will call to mind midst of this rural charm. I gradually a funny occasion when the former was became unhappy, and vaguely conscious at large one day in the neighborhood of of an indefinable something in my person India Street, and met his old friend slap- that jarred with my surroundings, and ping John Quincy Adams on the back; which subsequent events have proved to how they were always together, like three me was nothing more nor less than the brothers, in such delightful intimacy, lack of "poise.'' In this respect I am com- and on another occasion— Away he pletely barren ; and it is the absence of goes, completely beyond control. this virtue so inseparable from the The feeling for caste, so strong among Bostonian that made it extremely diffi- Boston's gentry, I found, could be met cult for me to adapt myself to new con- with in almost equal intensity in many ditions on the Hill : conditions, I may of the middle rungs of society. In the add, hardly conducive to a conversazione, petite oourgeoisie, to whose outer edge I if one knows what that means, or indis- clung desperately while on the Hill, it criminate hand-shaking. is equally imperative that a man should No idling here at midday with the have a past—some genealogy to speak of. crowd, listening to racy gossip of the I realized this soon after engaging rooms. quarter, no strolling with the policeman My neighbor, Mr. Bird, who occupied on his beat, or the warm spontaneity of the room opposite mine, was in all re- New York's sidewalk joviality! Each spects a Bostonian whom one might man moves blithely down the street an admire, and while among other little even and perfectly adjusted being, past conceits of his that have slipped my master of his emotions and his equi- memory he pronounced Tremont Street, librium; and when he speaks, if the oc- "Tremont Street," he was hardly the Etched by C.H. White A BIT OF MOUNT VERNON STREET

Vol. CXI 1 1 —No 677.-83 —

Etched by C. H. While Brimstone Corner type of man one would expect to see that what at first was merely a nodding leading Boston's sang pur in a cotillion, acquaintance should have ripened, as the if the former ever indulges in this time wore on, into a formal Boston in- harmless relaxation. timacy. It was through him that I be- Living as we did, each looking into his came acquainted with two gentlemen neighbor's room, and unconsciously ex- a Mr. Montague Jones and a certain Mr. erting a wholesome, sustained vigilance Archibald Berry; and while neither of on the other's habits, it was only natural these was indirectly involved in the "

BOSTON TOWN. 669

Declaration of Independence, each had From a perfectly frank, open-hearted something of a past, and at times made believer, I too became distrustful and me feel its pressure. If the occasion had sceptical. However, I pleaded extenuating arisen, all three would have taken their circumstances for Bird. Under the se- coats off their backs to assist me in time rene influence of a Boston sunset stream- of need, and yet on dull days I found ing across the Common what man. if them more or less encumbered by vague he possess a soul at all. would not be ancestral suspicions which grew, as the seized with a creative impulse? Artists time passed, into a distrustful attitude. are doing this sort of thing continually, Late one evening- at an hour when each and still ripen to a fine old age, loved and grove of trees, and plot of grass dotted respected, in a community. Bird at. mid- with pigeons, released from the consu- day would have been an entirely different ming heat of a midsummer's day seem to man from the individual who stood with

exhale their fragrance, and the air was m i the Hill watching the city slowly heavy with a pungent earthy aroma, we fading into the darkness. On the spur crossed the Common together, and stood of the moment I felt convinced he fully leaning on the Beacon Street rail, watch- believed what he said: the mood, the ing the shadowy mass of rustling foliage hour—these were the things that had above us. The long shadows of greal prompted him in test his wings. Even rows of elms, soaring aloft in the strange as we were discussing the matter he was arrested movement of twisting, writhing probably writhing in the torments of a branches, fell in luminous arabesques guilty conscience. over each winding pathway, and on the Jones turned a deaf ear to my reason- stillness of the evening came a dull de- ing. " While no one can deny that Bird clining murmur, the distant rush of is one of God's noblemen," he began, with many feet, homeward bound, on Tremont suavity, "yet he is one of the most prac- Street. Save for a glowing spot of light tised liars in the community, and I have still lingering on a pathway, night had always suspected that in a social way come beneath the canopy of foliage, as he— in a valley, with its great envelopment The sound of approaching footsteps and mystery. brought this to an abrupt end. leaving "You couldn't imagine a finer place to me a prey to vague fears and unhappy live in!" I exclaimed suddenly, breaking speculation. That very night was to wit- the pause. ness our little circle broken up, and each It was some time before Bird spoke. of us drifting away in mutual distrust, "Think wdiat it must mean to a Bos- and it is on Bird that I heap the burden tonian like myself to stand here on of the responsibility for the coolness that Beacon Hill and realize that on almost eventually sprang up between us. His the same spot one of your own flesh and remark was uncalled for, but remarks of blood had been the first to apply the this particular character, while not un- torch to the skillet of the old beacon! common elsewhere, I found peculiar to

Somehow it brings a man in closer touch Boston. with the place." If you would keep a great-grandfather, He spoke with intensity while I silent- a grandmother, a father, an aunt, a third ly measured the great gap that stood be- cousin— in short, any distant or near con- tween us, touched by finding such senti- nection—fresh in the memory of man, ment in a man who for years had been you must make your own opportunities in identified with the hardware business; Boston; or have an ancestor so festooned

and on returning to my lodgings I men- with cobwebs and mildewed that if the tioned the incident to Jones, who greeted occasion does arise for you to introduce my remarks with a sepulchral laugh. him, which is unlikely, you will have al- "Didn't you know." he began, "that most forgotten what excuse lie had for while the original purpose of the beacon living, and his own mother would not was to give an alarm in case of an attack recognize him. Any pretext will do; his by Indians, it was never used for this advent need not have any connection purpose, and no fire ever burned in its with the subject nt hand. " Speaking of " skillet?" baseball," the stranger begins, I don't —

i.;n HAULER'S MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

know whether I told you that my father byways, past pale Ionic porticoes and

was ii personal friend of So-and So, whose rows whose weat her-licatcn bricks flutter great-grandfather was one of those fine with ivy, climbing each gable end and old East-India merchants and," etc.,—he falling in graceful cataracts over the has made a safe start, and nobody thinks formal iron balconies. My vocation af- any the less of him. It was this formula forded me ample opportunity to witness, that Bird adopted to introduce his beacon as a vagabond from my camp-stool in incident; when he had finished a -trained the street, the even tenor and moderation feeling existed between us. The only of the life one leads in unpretentious conservative remark I can recall on this Boston. most unfortunate of evenings was made The old mansion just across the way, by Montague Jones, who, just as we were with its long driveway hemmed in by silently and suspiciously bidding one an- stucco walls tufted with wistaria, the other a frigid good night, said that he rows of dormer windows dotting the guessed there had been a Jones just sloping roofs, and in the distance a mod- about as long as there had been a Boston. est sanctuary, with its cross rising above I could always love the man who makes the sky-line, gave to the most familiar a statement that leaves his audience path traversed in the day's routine a life groping hopelessly about them for an and interest far from commonplace. Now alibi; and I saw that .Jones and I might that I had left the Hill and was able to be drawn more closely together by what see it all in retrospect, I missed the gentle had occurred, and form a ring, so to speak, Sabbath pressure of sundry quiet corners. eventually pushing undesirable parties How often during the day was I made to out of the house. My ambitions were feel my spiritual shortcomings, when in short-lived. going back and forth on my way to my Little I knew of what the future and lodgings I had almost formed a speak- Archibald Berry had in store for me, un- ing acquaintance with the dark, uncom- til I met the latter on the following day, promising doorway over whose sombre passing through Park Street. Neither entablature hung the appropriate legend: of us turned out to let the other pass " More Light," and its sister niche across in fact, I felt that he wished to speak to the street whose quaint escutcheon, half me. In our embarrassment at being face hidden among creepers, asked one boldly " ?" to face again after what had transpired, in Roman capitals : Shall there be Hell I blurted out the first thing that came Watching for these, and trying to an-

into my head : had he seen Montague ticipate their alterations and the new

Jones ? I had unconsciously played enigma I knew the following day would directly into his hands. No, he had not bring, had unconsciously become a habit seen him; but he had some information with me. The burden of the them'e that might interest me concerning him. seldom varied; it was usually a discon- " While Montague Jones is one of the certing query: something that caught best fellows that ever lived, salt of the you unawares and kept you guessing earth, you know, and all that sort of while you crossed the Common, oblivious thing, yet his attitude of constant de- and unreceptive to the beauties of the ception has rather worn on me. I have early summer morning, but in its way taken the time to investigate—I have it must have been beneficial. made the time, sir," he continued with They creep up everywhere—these de- dignity; " and found that it was old man votional signs— in Boston; and when you

Jones's ' foster-brother who was the consider that the Hub is the sanctum pioneer and married a Montague, so sanctorum of all new sects and cults, and

Jones, you see, isn't a Jones at all. . . . that the man who serves your coffee in the Good evening, sir." He had taken the morning may be an occult scientist, your starch out of my collar, and I moved hatter a Buddhist, your cabman a Sev- next day before I actually became sus- enth - day Adventist, your neighbor a picious of myself. Christian Scientist, your druggist a Spir- I still look back with fond regret to itualist, your roommate and the man who Beacon Hill, and often since have roamed gave you the spurious coin—Lord knows again in spirit through its unfrequented what; after considering these things, Etched by C. H. White

ST. MARY'S— BOSTON SLUMS —

672 HARPER'S MONTHLY MAOAZINK. you must inwardly rejoice in a random fresh "catch." The Italian dory fleet stroll along Tremonl Street to linil the in an almost Oriental display of brilliant good old-fashioned religions still making color, •'till obstinately clinging to a a brave show of it. Mediterranean rig of sail, hoists its tat- It was on just such an errand that I tered canvas, and with sails swelling and stopped one day before the announce- motors whirring is soon lost in a distant

ment: "Signing a Pact with Satan i remolo. Personal Experiences," in large cap- At every turn one meets with new re- billboard, itals on a when a stranger minders of the sea's colossal harvest : tubs enlightened me. of fish, dories heaped with fish, wagon- " " Brimstone Corner," he began : fa- loads of (ish, tons of fish ; in actual figures, mous place for a powerful sermon. W hy. one hundred million pounds of ocean- only a few years ago some denomination cant- lit fresh fish are delivered in Boston was in there, and got so excited that some alone from the fishing-schooners ; to which of 'em heeled right over—had to be may be added forty millions more landed fanned and slapped on the back to bring at other points along the New Lngland 'em round." coast, and distributed by rail and boat If yon were to follow Tremont Street over the United States and Canada! through Scollay Square, past Tremont All that is picturesque and uncon- Row, once delightfully reminiscent of formable to the chaste symmetry of old Boston days, and to-day swamped captions Boston seems to have found beneath the wild fantasia of signs that along these wharves an outlet. The place reach from basement to chimney-pot. recks with pei'suasivc motives, and yet shrieking to Heaven in flaming orange one may search in vain from Commercial paint each merchant's listed wares, you to Long Wharf for one American artist might, after working yonr way out of busy with his work in this Elysium. numerous alleys and sombre streets rich There was a Portuguese, however, and as in historical legend, stumble upon the fine a man as ever used up good color, spot where Boston drops her prim for- who, when he saw me working on the mality and impenetrable reserve; for Tea dock below, descended from the shack Wharf, the retrospective, stretches far out above to minister to my comfort; and into the opalescent haze of the river, leaving his card with a request that I losing itself in a confusion of spars and join him after-hours in opening a bottle shrouds. of Portuguese port, made for his dilapi- Along the broad quays moves a eon- dated staircase, and soon was lost among fused mass of seamen and idlers; market the grotesque rookeries that fringe the hands rattle past pushing trucks; the water-front at this point, threatening whining cry of the Italian fisherman, daily to topple overboard into oblivion. calling his wares, mingles with the hoarse It was in this obscure corner that I shouts of seamen and the rattling of pul- found him later, swinging in his ham- leys in their blocks as baskets, crammed mock, and listened while he drifted, be- to overflowing with cod and haddock, tween his cigarettes and port, into the rise from the hold and swing out on the current of narration; indeed, drifted so dock where marketmen, pitchfork in far that when I rose to go, and we looked hand, send them flying in a continuous out of his window across the mournful cascade that empties itself into the deserted stretch of wharves, all that re- ponderous carts that lie in waiting, mained of a brilliant summer's day strung out along the wharf in long lingered in luminous gold upon the dis- procession. Tugs ply back and forth; tant top-masts. His was an old story, great hundred-and-fifty-tonnors quiet- kindled to life again by the intense and ly slip their moorings in twos and charming personality of the man who threes and move out gracefully into the told it. Seven years previous to our stream, to be immediately replaced by meeting he had taken this room as a winners of a fleet whose stragglers are studio, and had been moored here ever still beyond Boston Light, racing under since, intending to paint each mood, a desperate head of sail for the market each hour, of what lay just within his and the advanced price paid for the reach. BOSTON TOWN. 673

" 1 This is one of the early things I tin price of lii-, resolution, Mill ringing wanted to do," he explained at this point, in my ears, might have resulted in his wiping the dust off a delightful study being- pushed into still humbler quarters, of the market at sunrise, and placing it and I determined to trace him. My ef- on his easel. "But I soon found that, forts in this direction met with little first of all. a man must live, and I turned or no success, until a few days prior to from that to this." lie had replaced the my departure from Boston, some for- sunrise by a monstrosity in water-color tuitous circumstance led me to wander of a schooner under a full head of sail. into Dock Street, where the dregs of the "All of the lines are actually done with a day's traffic still echoed faintly: the ruler, and while the price is small it sells solitary shopman furling his awnings, readily and keeps me going." He seemed the belated push-cart making its home- to get a morbid and grim sort of pleasure ward journey, and the small familiar in dwelling on the artistic depths to group clustered about a saloon entrance. which he had sunk, hut possibly the But for these, Dock Street was desert- sense of his humiliation thus brought ed. I had turned to leave, when across home to him is what prompted him to the street, swinging along like some take a solemn oath, as we parted, to do Grand Duke of Aragon in a new fifteen- no more. dollar suit of worsted, came a fa- Weeks passed without my getting a miliar figure. glimpse of him; and as I had knocked Here in this wonderful metamorphosis frequently at his door after the day's I discovered my artist friend—not as I work, without an answer, I feared that had known him, rubbed shiny at the el-

Etched by C. H. White

The Tea Whai^f ' "

- a 4>

Etched by C. H. White A Corner of Dock Street

bows with frayed cuff and collar—but water-front. You know the kind—had to prodi- have one just like it —understand—and my Portuguese lifted upon some — gious wave of prosperity, resplendent in ready money; so, you see, I costly raiment. "Kuled them, eh?" I wanted to help " Sold three pictures," he explained, him over the difficulty. when we were each seated behind a tall " Everything except the water," he an- glass with ice and things floating in it. swered firmly, with an inward chuckle; " Negative sort of triumph, however," he and then suddenly becoming serious " that added, hastily, as if to put a damper again, he whispered fervently : Now to turn on my enthusiasm. " You see, it all came I have a little start I'm going at once—three skippers, you know, who over a new leaf." saw one of those safe, conservative water- I have often wondered since whether colors of mine in a cigar-store along the he would.