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Title: The Chautauquan, Vol. III, January 1883
       A Monthly Magazine Devoted to the Promotion of True Culture.
              Organ of the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle

Author: The Chautauquan Literary and Scientific Circle

Editor: Theodore L. Flood

Release Date: February 5, 2015 [EBook #48165]

Language: English

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The Chautauquan, January 1883

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A MONTHLY MAGAZINE DEVOTED TO THE PROMOTION OF TRUE CULTURE. ORGAN OF
THE CHAUTAUQUA LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC CIRCLE.

Vol. III.             JANUARY, 1883.              No. 4.

Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle.

President, Lewis Miller, Akron, Ohio.

Superintendent of Instruction, J. H. Vincent, D. D., Plainfield, N. J.

General Secretary, Albert M. Martin, Pittsburgh, Pa.

Office Secretary, Miss Kate F. Kimball, Plainfield, N. J.

Counselors, Lyman Abbott, D. D.; J. M. Gibson, D. D.; Bishop H. W. Warren, D. D.; W. C. Wilkinson, D. D.

Contents

REQUIRED READING
FOR THE
Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle for 1882-83.

JANUARY.

HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

By Mrs. MARY S. ROBINSON.

CHAPTER V.
THE GRAND PRINCIPALITY—VLADIMIR MONOMAKH.

One of the illustrious successors of Iaroslaf the Great upon the throne of Kief, was his grandson Vladimir, grandson also of the Greek emperor Constantine Monomachus, whose surname he bore;[A] a man of wisdom, of valor, and of integrity—a singular instance of elevation of character in an age and among a people but partly emerged from barbarism. He waited long for his right to rule, having respect to the national law that gave precedence to the oldest member of the deceased sovereign’s family. “His father was older than mine, and reigned first in Kief,” he said, deferring to his cousin Sviatopolk Isiaslavitch.[B] Certain of Monomakh’s kinsmen had been wrongfully deprived of their lands by Vsevolod and Isiaslaf, respectively father and uncle of Monomakh. The latter accepted Tchernigof as his share of the spoil; for beyond the right of the strongest, no right was seriously considered in the Russia of that age. Oleg, one of the injured princes, called the Polovtsui barbarians to his aid, and harried the lands of those who had robbed him. Monomakh, moved by the distress of the people, offered to restore the wrested lands that had fallen to his share. To his efforts was due the assembling of the more powerful princes in Congress at Lübetch (1090), on the Dnieper, to effect means for the suppression of the civil wars that afflicted the realm. Seated on a carpet, the princes drew up a treaty, each prince taking oath and kissing the cross, as he declared that thereafter “the Russian land shall be held sacred and dear, as the country of us all. Whoso shall dare to arm himself against his brother, becomes our common enemy.” As nearly as is known, this treaty is the first written assertion of the unity that was incipient in the administration of Ruric, that took form and strength from the administrations of Vladimir and Iaroslaf, and that has been steadily developing through a thousand years of national existence: a unity that holds in an apparently inviolable bond a hundred tribes and nationalities.

The good faith of the members of the congress was soon put to the test by David, Prince of Volhynia, who made war upon his nephews, Vasilko and Volodar, to whom the assembled princes had apportioned certain lands, coveted by their uncle. The latter went to Sviatapolk, Grand Prince of Kief—for Vladimir Monomakh had not yet come to his throne—and represented that Vasilko had designs upon Sviatapolk’s lands and life. The latter lent an ear to David’s calumnies, and joined with him in a plot to seize the person of Vasilko. The youth in fetters was brought before an assembly of Kievan boyars (nobles) and citizens, to be sentenced as the enemy of their prince. To this arrangement the boyars replied with embarrassment: “Prince, thy tranquillity is ours, and it is dear to us. If Vasilko is thine enemy, he merits death; but if David has calumniated him, God will avenge upon David the blood of the innocent.” Sviatapolk hesitating to do violence to the youth, delivered him to his uncle, who wickedly burned out his eyes. The crime aroused the wrath of Monomakh, and of the other kinsmen of the victim. These formed an alliance, in which Sviatapolk was compelled to join, for the punishment of David, who fled first to the Poles, and later to the Hungarians, but was ultimately deprived of his principality.

Monomakh conducted successful wars against the Polovtsui, the Petchenegs, the Torki, the Tcherkessi, and other pagan nomads. In one engagement with the Polovtsui, seventeen of their chiefs were among the captured or the slain. One of the khans offered enormous ransom, but the prince refused the gold, and cut the khan in pieces. These khans were brigands, who subsisted on the booty obtained from the Russian merchants and travelers. Monomakh deeply felt these injuries to his Christian subjects, nor would he treat with princes who kindled civil wars. To the end of his days he remained “the guardian of the Russian lands.” In his reign, the Slavs were established in Suzdal, and founded there a city called in his honor, Vladimir; a city of renown in the subsequent history of the empire. The magnanimity of this prince was shown in his giving refuge to the remnant of the Kazarui.[C] In the construction of fortifications and other buildings, and in other industrial arts, these people were more skilled than their conquerors. They had also numbers of flourishing schools. In the seventh century their empire included the regions of the lower Dnieper, the Don, the lower Volga, the shores of the Caspian and Azof seas; an area of 765,000 square miles.

The commercial importance of this empire gave it high rank in Byzantium, Arabia, and other Mohammedan countries, these being the only civilized states of the world in that era.

[180]

The paper of instructions left by Monomakh, for his sons, indicates the moral superiority of this half-barbaric prince. As early as his day, monasticism had become a recognized element of the national life. But he wrote: “Neither solitude nor fasting, nor the monastic vocation will procure for you the life eternal. Well doing alone will help you in this world, and be put to your credit for the next. Do not bury your riches in the earth”—a custom still practiced in Russia—“for that is contrary to the precepts of Christianity. Judge yourselves the cause of widows, and extend a fatherly protection to orphans. Put to death no one, not even the guilty; for the most sacred thing our God has made is a Christian soul. . . . Strive continually to get knowledge; and when you have learned aught that is useful, put it away carefully in your memory. Without ever leaving his palace, my father Vsevolod spoke five languages. This ability to learn foreign tongues, foreigners admire in us. . . . I have made altogether twenty-three campaigns, without counting some lesser ones. With the Polovtsui I have concluded nineteen treaties of peace, have taken at least a hundred of their princes prisoners, and have restored them their liberty; besides more than two hundred whom I threw into the rivers. No one has traveled more rapidly than I. If I left Tchernigof early in the morning, I arrived at Kief before vespers.” The distance between the two cities is eighty miles. The Russians are rapid travelers to this day. “Sometimes amidst sombre forests I caught wild horses, tied them together, and subdued them. How often have I been thrown from the saddle by buffalos, thrust at by deer, trampled upon by elands! A furious boar once tore my sword from its belt. A bear threw my horse, and rent my saddle. In my youth how often did I narrowly escape death, when, thrown from my horse, I received many wounds! But the Lord watched over me.” Such was the Russian hero-prince of the eleventh century,—valiant, hardy, magnanimous, pious; a sovereign whose duty did not permit him to repose on rose leaves.

The regalia that, according to a tradition circulated by the tsars of Moscow, belonged to their illustrious Kievan ancestor, is still preserved in the museum of the former city. It consists of a “bonnet” or crown, and collar of Byzantine elegance; with them is a throne and a cornelian cup, the latter said to have belonged to the Roman emperor Augustus. According to the tradition, the whole were gifts from the Greek emperor to his Russian kinsman, sent by the Bishop of Ephesus, who, in solemn state, crowned Monomakh sovereign of all Russia. The legend is an invention for the interest of the Muscovite tsars, but the crown and collar are still used at the ceremony of coronation: the collar representing the burden imposed upon him whose “shoulders” receive the weight of government. The first manifesto of the present tsar alludes to this painful “perilous burden.”

CHAPTER VI.
IURI DOLGORUKI, AND ANDREI BOGOLIUBSKI, FOUNDERS OF SUZDAL.

Chief among the sons of Monomakh were Iuri Dolgoruki, father of the princes of Suzdal and of Moscow, and Mtsislaf, father of the princes of Galitsch and Kief. The dissensions between kinsmen, that had been allayed by the firmness of Monomakh, and by the congress of Lübetch, broke forth anew upon the death of this guardian of Russian unity. Uncles, nephews, brothers, after the fashion of royal families in past times, fell upon one another with tooth and talon. Iuri, bent on obtaining Kief, disturbed the repose of the hoary Viatcheslaf, his elder brother, the grand prince. “I had a beard when thou was brought forth,” remonstrated the old man, citing the national law. The intractable Iuri obtained an ally in Vladimirko, prince of Galitsch, a renegade member of the congress of Lübetch. When reproached for his perfidy, this Vladimirko attested the light faith of his race, by his retort: “It was such a little cross—the one we kissed when we took oath.” After many years of contention, Iuri made his entrance into the capital, and had the short-lived honor of being grand prince, but died while a league was forming for his expulsion from the principality. (1157.) Upon hearing of his death, one of the conspirators exclaimed, “Great God, we thank thee for having spared us the obligation of shedding the blood of an enemy, a kinsman!” The lineage and name of Iuri have been preserved through eight centuries. The paramour of the late Alexander II, and an official attached to the Russian embassy in England are Dolgorukis, of the blood of Rurik. But the character of their ancestor Iuri, is not one to be adduced with pride by his descendants. In it lay the germs of that tenacious baseness, that persistent, unscrupulous rapacity, that are still further developed in the succeeding princes of his line.

The rivalry of the princes, together with the increasing power of Suzdal, the remote northeastern division of Russia, were destined to bring ruin to the ancient, magnificent capital of the realm. Andrei Bogoliubski, son of Iuri Dolgoruki, and prince of Suzdal, assembled an army composed of the men of his three cities, Rostof, Vladimir, Suzdal, and descended upon Kief. The Russia of the Forests, remote from Byzantine and from western civilization, had been silently developing resources of strength and of wealth from within; and was ready, at this time, to measure lances with the Russia of the Steppes, a region ever exposed to the invasions of barbarians, and of rival princes who were willing to take the barbarians into military service against Russian kinsmen. In this state of affairs, the peaceful advance of industrial civilization, or a firm system of government could no longer be hoped for upon its soil. The northern Russians took the city by assault. “Many times had she been besieged and brought to extremity,” writes Karamsin. “She had opened her Golden Gate to her foes; but till that day, none had ever forced it. To their shame, the victors forgot that they, too, were Russians. For three days the grandson of Vladimir Monomakh pillaged the mother of his own cities. The houses, monasteries, churches, the Temple of the Tithe, the sacred Saint Sophia were demolished. The precious images, the priestly vestments, the books and the bells”—the latter especially dear to the Russian heart—“all were despoiled or borne away by the ruthless soldiery of Suzdal.”

Thus dishonored (1169) fell the capital of Oleg, Iaroslaf, and Vladimir the Baptist; and with her was obscured the prestige, the power and glory of Southern Russia. The metropolis of the realm, in the course of subsequent events, was transferred from the Dnieper to the Moskova. The Russia of the Steppes, gorgeous with Byzantine art, illustrious with the learning, the wisdom of the Orient, the fertile, beautiful realm whose fame had reached the ends of the earth, was left a prey to the hordes that swarmed along its river banks, and to the Olgovitchi of Tchernigof, unrelenting foemen, though kinsmen of her princes. Her ancient glory was departed. Nothing was left save the “warm soil,” the genial airs and golden sun that in the former days had allured the mighty Variags from the borean forests of the north.

Russia Slavonia was without a center. The old Slavic love of liberty predominated again over the Variag compactness, the cohesion necessary for the organization of a state, Tchernigof, Galitsch, Suzdal on the frontier, and other principalities, maintained an independent existence, and their civil contentions waiting apparently for the coming of another Rurik, another Iaroslaf, another Monomakh who should bind together the divided sections of the country,[181] and reëstablish its unity. Reëstablished it was in time, but with marked modifications; nor were those who restored it the simple, strong-hearted men, the fathers and heroes of the opening era of the national history.

In far off Suzdal appears a new type of prince. Unlike his gallant, light-hearted ancestor of the happy south, swayed by conflicting passions, frank, impulsive—the men of the new dynasty were ambitious, subtle, intriguing. Mephistophelian in the power of their intellect, the coldness of their affections, the inhuman absence of moral qualities. Pitiless, unscrupulous, cruel, they attained their ends at whatever frightful cost, at whatever sacrifice of justice. The same type in Spain became its grand inquisitors. “Gloomy and terrible of mien, they bore on their brows the stamp of destiny.” Patient under ill-fortune, alert to profit by good, they could wait many years for their opportunity, but they never abandoned a purpose once formed. Such were the princes of Suzdal, founders of the dynasty of the Tzars of Moscow.

Iuri Dolgoruki gave form and name to this dominion of the frontier forests, but he spent most of his time and energy upon the conquest of Kief. To his son, Andrei Bogoliubski, was left the care of developing the incipient state, and of indicating in his own character and temper the type of the future rulers of the Russias. Andrei, ill at ease in the cities of the Dnieper, where the freedom of the citizens sometimes conflicted with the will of the princes, withdrew from his palace at Virishegorod and established himself upon the Kliasma, at Vladimir, which he enlarged by a suburb, named from its princely builder, Bogoliuboro. A successful campaign against the Russian Bulgarians, a compulsory alliance of several of the minor princes under his standards, and his destruction of Kief, caused him rightfully to be regarded as the strongest, the foremost of all the princes. After the violation of the mother of Russian cities, he turned his arms against Novgorod the Great, capital of the glorious principality of that name, the state that had chosen and called Rurik, the mighty republic of the north. But the subjugation of this powerful city was another affair from that of Kief. “The Kievans, accustomed to a change of masters, fought only for the honor of their princes,” writes Karamsin, “while the Novgorodians were to shed their blood in defense of the laws, the institutions, the liberties founded for them by their ancestors.” When Mstislaf Andreivitch, captain of the army that had pillaged “the holy city” of Kief, appeared at the gates of the free city of Novgorod, the inhabitants took oath to die for Saint Sophia, the citadel of their faith and their freedom. Their Archbishop, Ivan, bearing aloft an image of the Mother of God, moved at the head of a solemn procession around the ramparts. Tradition tells us that the beloved Ikon, struck by a Suzdalian arrow, turned her face toward her city, and moistened the episcopal vestments with her tears. An ecstasy of rage seized the freemen. A panic smote the besiegers. “Novgorod! Saint Sophia!” a sharp cry rushed as in a whirlwind around the ramparts. The Suzdalians fell as falls the flock of small birds beneath the swoop of the eagle. After the victory, the markets of Novgorod were so crowded with Suzdalian slaves that any number could be bought for a marten’s skin.

Yet in time, even the Novgorodians made terms with their powerful subtle neighbor. Suzdal controlled the Volga, by whose waters came the corn supplies for the great, free city. Its citizens, “of their own free will,” according to the invariable phrasing of their documents, agreed to accept for their prince one of Andrei’s choosing.

The princes of Smolensk had been forced into an alliance with the autocratic Andrei, but chafed under his despotic rigors. The brother princes, Rurik, David, and Mstislaf, disregarding his menaces, possessed themselves of Kief, whither soon came a herald of Andrei, with the message: “You are rebels. The principality of Kief is mine. I order Rurik to return to his patrimony: David shall go to Berlad; and as for Mstislaf, the guiltiest of you all, I will no longer endure his presence in Russia.” Now the chronicles aver that Mstislaf the Brave “had fear of no mortal being: he feared none but God.” He cropped the hair and beard of the herald—a mark of ignominy—and bade him take to Andrei this response: “Up to this time we have respected you as a father; but since you do not blush to treat us shamefully, since you forget that you have to deal with princes, we will pay no heed to your menaces. Execute them if you can. We appeal to the judgment of God.” Twenty vassals of Andrei were sent “to demonstrate the judgment of God” under the walls of Virishegorod. Mstislaf ingeniously succeeded in dividing the assailants, and by a sudden sortie put them to flight.

Andrei so far cast off the Slavic customs of his ancestors as to decline sharing his domains with any of the members of his family, although the testamentary provisions of his father, Iuri, had included these. Iuri’s widow, a Greek princess, with her three remaining sons, was compelled to leave Russia, and take refuge at the court of her kinsmen, the Emperor Manuel. Nor did this first of Russian autocrats adhere to the Variag custom of fellowship with his drujïna. Properly speaking, he had none. His boyars were his subjects, bound to accomplish his will, but never consulted. If they chafed under their servitude, they were banished from the country. Nor did he regard with greater favor the ancient municipal liberties of the great cities; liberties time-honored, and dating back to the original occupancy of the Slav race. The Vetché, or assembly of citizens, he would in no way recognize. His violation of Kief, and his attack upon Novgorod the Great, sufficiently indicated his hostility to their liberal institutions. In like manner Rostof and Suzdal, the two chief cities of his State, were obnoxious to him on account of their Vetché. At the risk of alienating the more powerful of his boyars, he held his residence in the suburb or town of his own founding, alleging a divinely inspired dream and a miraculous interposition as directing him to this spot. He essayed to develop a new Kief out of his city, Vladimir on the Kliasma, by crowding it with monasteries, erecting a golden gate, and a Church of the Tithe, decorated by Byzantine and western artists. Recognizing the priesthood as a strong force in the civilization of a nation, he conferred wealth and honors upon it, and propitiated its favor. He made assumptions of unusual piety; practiced ostentatious vigils, and gave large alms in public. Commemorative feasts were established on the days of his more signal victories; and strenuous efforts were made to procure the religious supremacy of Suzdal, by instituting a Metropolitan at Vladimir. The Patriarch of Constantinople would not consent to this act, but later the Metropolitan for the Russia of the Forests was secured. The designs of Andrei were vast and premature. Ten generations of princes, ruling through four successive centuries, were required for their ultimate accomplishment. He outlined in the twelfth century what was executed in the sixteenth by Ivan the Fourth, the Terrible. Like the despots who were to spring from his loins, he had implacable enemies; and he was overtaken by the fate ever impending over the autocrats of the Orient and of Russia. His boyars, exasperated beyond measure by his iron tyranny, assassinated him in his favorite residence of Bogoliuboro (1174).

[To be continued.]

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A GLANCE AT THE HISTORY AND LITERATURE OF SCANDINAVIA.

By L. A. SHERMAN, Ph. D.

III.—THE EASTERN VIKINGS—THE BEGINNINGS OF LITERATURE.

We have watched, in the dim twilight preceding the dawn of history, the coming of the first Norsemen to the sea. They are a spirited and fearless people, and they have chanced, if chance it is, to come to that sea on which navigation is most hazardous and difficult. We marvel they so quickly learn the arts of seamanship, and make the fierce new element their dwelling place. They seem now to have reached the country of their choice: its natural beauties kindle in their breasts an immediate and romantic response of affection. They are enamored of its wild haunts, its fjords and mountains, and they are inspired by the surging fury of the storm. But we witness, after a few centuries of comparative inaction, a strange transformation. The whole Norse people, without concert, without occasion, becomes a nation of wandering pirates. They urge forth their dragon ships, no matter whither, if only they shall find new foemen or new coasts. With the outbreak of this passion for booty and adventure we mark the beginning of the viking-age. We then count two weary centuries of violence and bloodshed, of plunder and conquest. A new continent is discovered and colonized, a Danish dynasty is set up in England, a Norwegian duchy is endowed in France. Thus we witness the decline—not in defeat, but in triumph, not by overthrow from without, but by suppression from within—of viking-supremacy in the West. It remains to speak of another chapter of viking-history, enacted during this same period in the East, and by vikings of the land.

In the ancient sagas frequent mention is made of Ostrogardia or Garderike. This was the modern Russia, then a barbarous wilderness, and inhabited by shifting tribes of Finns. Just at the beginning of the historical era a new people appears—the Slavs. It is another member of the Aryan family of nations, which has sent out already into Europe the Celtic, the Greek, the Roman, the Gothic, and the Scandinavian; and it is probably the last remnant of the race. These Slavs, already divided into various tribes, move westward, take possession of the country, and lay the foundation of the two cities of Novgorod and Kiev, destined later to become the capitals of two Slavonic empires. Three centuries pass. The Slavs have become attached to the home of their choice, and are beginning to develop a civilization. But it is the day of viking restlessness in the North, and Scandinavian rovers are moving eastward as well as south and west. In the early Russian chronicles we are told that in 859 A. D. a band of Varangians or Northmen, under the leadership of Rurik, invaded the country and began to spoil the native tribes. In due time they attack and capture Novgorod itself; but after a brief triumph the invaders, who were but a handful, were expelled by an uprising of the Slavs. Rurik and his followers made haste, not to return to Sweden, but to push their way southward through the wilderness, as many Northmen had done before. They reach Constantinople, and are welcomed as recruits for the imperial army. The vikings who had come before them had already won the praise and esteem of the imperial court; and so much do the Northmen grow in favor, that we soon find the emperor will entrust himself to no other guard of honor than a regiment of Varangian foot.

The Slavs and Finns in Novgorod meanwhile find the blessings of freedom harder to bear than the authority of their late conquerors. After two years of anarchy and internal dissension they send messengers to Constantinople, inviting the Norsemen, whom they had thrust out, to return and resume the government. “We have a goodly country,” say they, “and large. All we need is the strong arm to keep it orderly. Come, then, be our princes, and rule our state.” In response to this petition Rurik and his two brothers, Sindf and Truvor, with a large following of Varangian families, returned to Novgorod. Here Rurik established himself as supreme ruler; and to prevent the success of a fresh uprising of the Slavs, invited into the country a large accession of Varangian population. To his brothers he gave the principalities of Bielozero and Izborsk; but they soon dying, Rurik assumed again authority. So strong did this new Scandinavian kingdom become that we find ere long an army raised for the storming of Constantinople. The project was, however, abandoned, and the vikings who had planned it contented themselves with seizing the little province of Kiev. This also in a few years was brought under the dominion of Novgorod. Thus was laid the foundation of the great “Empire of All the Russias.” The bulk of the population was composed of Slavs and Finns: the nobles were Varangians, and Rurik was the first Czar.

It was but just that the superior race thus installed in the government of this vast region should give its name to the new nation. The first Varangians or Swedes who traversed Russia on their way to Constantinople had been called by the Finnish natives “Ruotsalaiset,” or Russians, from the name of the district (Roden or Rosen) whence they had come.[D] This name adhered to Rurik and his followers, and so the whole empire came finally to be called Russia. The line of Rurik continued to furnish Czars to the Russian throne until the death of Feodor, in 1598.

The work of the vikings is now finished: what is its sum? Three-fourths of the European continent has become Scandinavian, or has submitted to Scandinavian rule: thousands of lives have been sacrificed, and perhaps half the wealth of Europe has been plundered or destroyed. What is the compensation? We can only look to history for the answer. Here has been a great revolution; but revolutions are steps in human progress. Progress always demands as its price the best the age or generation has to give. The installation of the Goths and Teutons in Europe cost five centuries of woe and strife,—we can now see why; for it was destined to give the world a better civilization and a better leadership. But this leadership could not come from the Teuton alone: he is never prompted to enterprise in the world at large; he is never aggressive, he is strong only at home. Why then those six generations of viking conquest and mingling with the conquered, if not to supply this lack through the evolution of the British nation?

That England is the leader of this Teutonic age, that she alone has extended and is extending the borders of Teutonic influence, that it was she who enabled Protestantism to triumph and freedom to prevail, that it was she only who could lay the phantom of mediæval despotism which Napoleon raised—all this is undoubted. But is her leadership after all due to admixture of viking blood? Has she not become mistress of the seas simply because she is encompassed by them?

But island states do not grow strong by privileges of the sea; else would Ireland and Scotland have rivalled the power of England. Then there is a much larger Scandinavian element in the English people than is commonly supposed. We forget that Sweyn and Canute won England more through the Danes who were living there already than by the aid of new invaders from Scandinavia. We can also trace clearly in later England the Norse disposition and character. We can find it depicted in Chaucer’s Shipman[183] (prologue to the Canterbury Tales, 388-410), who, after the lapse of four centuries, is still a viking of the old sort.

We find also the old quality of defiance well perpetuated. In his work on monarchy (written about the middle of the fifteenth century), Sir John Fortescue thus compares the Frenchman and the Englishman: “It is cowardice and lack of heart and courage that keepeth the Frenchman from rising, and not poverty; which courage no Frenchman hath like to the Englishman. It hath been often seen in England that three or four thieves, for poverty, have set upon seven or eight true men, and robbed them all. But it hath not been seen in France that seven or eight thieves have been hardy to rob three or four true men. Wherefore it is right said that no Frenchman be hanged for robbery, for that they have no hearts to do so terrible an act. There be therefore more men hanged in England, in a year, for robbery and manslaughter, than there be hanged in France for such cause of crime in seven years.”

We pass now to inquire what literary monuments or record the Northmen of the viking era have left behind them.

They wrote, as is well known, by means of an alphabet of runes. These were sixteen in number, corresponding in value to our F, U, Th, O, R, K, H, N, I, A, S, T, B, L, M, and Y. Their origin is unknown. From the Scandinavians they were borrowed by the Germans and Anglo-Saxons, and though never a common means of communication, were nevertheless at one time written and understood from Constantinople to Iceland. They are found preserved especially in monumental inscriptions, of which we take the following specimens from Stephens’s Runic Monuments, and Wimmer’s Runeskriftens Oprindelse:

Roman equivalents.
s a i l g æ r (th) r-h u i l i r-h e r-k u (th) g a t i e (th) i n a
a s l a k r-m a r k a (th) i m i k

Translation.
Salgarth rests here. God keep thee!
Aslak marked me.


2.—INSCRIPTION ON THE SO-CALLED SNOLDELEV STONE, FOUND 1768, NOT FAR FROM ROSKILDE, DENMARK.

Roman equivalents.
kun-ualtstain-sunar-ruhalts-(th)ular-osalhaukum

Translation.
Gunvald’s stone, son of hoald, speaks (or speaker—priest) at Salhowe.

Of the literature proper of the early Northmen, we will consider first the Sagas. These record the exploits of great chieftains, and are sometimes of historical value. They were never written out in runes, but owe their preservation to the Norwegian colonists who settled in Iceland. Some of them were composed there, but the greater part seem to have been brought over from the continent; and all were kept alive by tradition, like the Odyssey and the Iliad, until the age of writing.

In our last chapter we alluded to the attempts made by the vikings who discovered Vinland, to establish a colony there. For our first specimen we will translate from the Saga of Thorfin Karlsefne that part which describes the voyage of a band of these colonists, and their landing, as some believe, on the shores of Cape Cod.

“Now is to be told of Karlsefne, that he, together with Snorre and Bjarne, with their men, sailed southward along the coast. They sailed for a long time, until they came to a river which flowed down from the land above and into a bay and so into the sea; there was a broad beach and shoals there, so that it was impracticable to go up the stream except at high water. Karlsefne with his people sailed into the mouth of the stream, and called the place ‘Hóp’ (haven). They found there self-sown wheat-fields where there were lowlands, and grapevines wherever hills showed themselves. Every brook was full of fish. They dug ditches where land met water when the tide was highest, and when the tide went out there were halibut (holy fishes) in the ditches. There was a great plenty of game of all kinds in the woods. They stayed there half a month, for pleasure, and noticed nothing [of importance]; they had their cattle with them. But early one morning, as they were looking around, they saw a great number of skin boats; and poles were swinging in the air on board the boats. It seemed as though they were swinging a wisp of straw, and they swung them with the sun. Then said Karlsefne: ‘What does this mean?’ Snorre Thorbrandson answered him: ‘It may be that this is a token of peace; let us take a white shield and carry toward them;’ and so they did. Then the men in the boats rowed toward them, and looked with wonder at those that were there, and went ashore. They were dark men and ill-favored, and had ill-looking hair. They were large-eyed, and with high (broad) cheeks. They tarried awhile, and wondered at those they met there, and afterward rowed away southward past the cape.”

We will add also something from the celebrated Saga of Njál. This is the story: Gunnar, a friend and neighbor of Njál, had been sentenced to exile for murder. Njál had prophesied, in case Gunnar should not keep his word and leave the country, that it would lead to his death. Gunnar did not go, and becoming thus an outlaw, was not long after attacked by his enemies, and after a fierce resistance, killed. The prophecy of Njál was in this way fulfilled.

“When all of Gunnar’s goods were put on board, and the ship about ready for sea, then Gunnar rode to Bergthorshvál, and to other neighboring farms to speak to the men, and thanked them for standing by him—all those who had given him succor. The second day after, he got ready early to go to the ship, and told all his retinue that he was about to ride away never to return. It seemed heavy tidings to the men—though they looked for his coming back some day. Gunnar bids farewell to all his friends, when he is ready to go, and the men all went out with him. He thrust his halberd down against the ground and swung himself into the saddle, and Kolskeg and he rode away. They rode forward as far as the Markarfljot. There his horse stumbled, and Gunnar was thrown from the saddle. He chanced to glance up at the slope, and the farm at Hlidarenda. Then he said: ‘Fair is the sloping homestead, so that it has never seemed so fair to me,—the whitening acres and the smooth-mown lawn,—and I shall ride back home and not go at all.’ ‘Do no such favor to your enemies,’ said Kolskeg, ‘as to break your agreement; for no man would look for that from you. And you may believe that so will it all come to pass as Njál has said.’ ‘I will not go at all,’ said Gunnar, ‘and I would that you did likewise.’ ‘That shall not happen,’ said Kolskeg; ‘I shall not play the dastard in this, nor in anything else in which my word is honored; and there is but this alternative left: that we part here. And tell my mother and my kinsmen that I do not expect to see Iceland again; for I shall hear tidings of your death, my brother, and then I shall have no desire to sail out hither again.’ Therewith they part. Gunnar rides home to Hlidarenda, and Kolskeg rides to the ship and sails away.”—Njála: Chapter lxxv, line 20.

[To be continued.]

[184]

PICTURES FROM ENGLISH HISTORY.

By C. E. BISHOP.

IV.—THE MEADOW-PARLIAMENT.

Old historians generally gave kings bad characters, but in the reaction from this indiscriminate censure we get a school of writers who praise too much. Treacle has taken the place of vinegar in writing history. Thus, Green makes heroes of the coarse Saxon savages and heathen; Froude has painted the picture of Henry VIII so his own mother—much more his multitudinous wives—would not recognize it; even Benedict Arnold and Judas Iscariot have their eulogists. Nevertheless, no one, so far as I have read, has had a good word to say of King John. Green vouchsafes “the sober judgment of history” in ratification of the Billingsgatish opinion: “Foul as it is, hell itself is defiled by the fouler presence of John.” I have no kalsomine to mix for him who seems by all accounts to have been worse than his Satanic Majesty, in that John is “as black as he is painted.” Yet it is to this royal monster that England owes her Great Charter of Rights and Freedom, and one of her red letter days.

The boy whose impudence and mean spirit made everybody detest him; the youth who so embittered the last hours of his fond father, Henry II, that he died cursing him; the prince who plotted the dethronement and death of his brother, King Richard, absent on a crusade, and murdered the rightful heir, the boy Arthur; the husband who deserted his own wife and abducted the wife of his friend; the soldier who was always provoking quarrels and always running away from fighting, and abandoned all his continental possessions to his enemy without striking a blow; the churchman so abjectly superstitious that he dared not go hunting without a string of relics around his neck, yet quarrelled with the Pope about the right to rob the Church revenues, and ended by basely resigning his crown into the Pope’s hands and kissing the toe of his legate; the lawgiver of his realm who reduced bribery to a department of the royal exchequer, and opened book accounts with the subjects whose hush-money and blood-money bought justice and the perversion of justice, wherein it was recorded that one man paid to have the king’s anger appeased, another “that the king should hold his tongue about Henry Pinel’s wife,” and that a poor woman paid two hundred livres for the privilege of visiting her husband in prison; the father of his people who hired foreign plunderers to rob and murder his children, who starved women and children to death in dungeons, crushed old men under loads of lead, extorted rich men’s money by pulling their teeth, one each day; who was so licentious that noble ladies had to flee the realm to be safe from his approach or his violence—this “awful example” of the race of kings was the chosen instrument for inciting England to demand a charter as complete in its guarantees as his encroachments, as beneficent as he was pestilent, as monumental grandly as he was meanly. And so at last it came about that King John had not a friend left at home or abroad.

He had one opponent whom both interest and principle moved to lead the national demand for justice, which now took shape. That was Stephen Langton, the Archbishop of Canterbury, whose appointment by the Pope had been resisted by John. This worthy Saxon successor of Anselm and Becket had hunted out in the garret of a monastery a copy of the charter which Henry I, in the days of his honeymoon with his Saxon wife, had granted to his people; he had called together the barons and bishops, and proposed that John be made to renew that bill of rights, and they had all laid their hands on the high altar of St. Edmondsbury and sworn to make him do so, by arms if need be. Christmas Day, 1214, was grandly celebrated, for then the burly knights in armor came to John in London Temple and made their demand. The crafty king asked time to consider of it, and to study the document. “How long?” demanded Langton. “By Easter you shall have my answer,” promised the king.

He employed the interval in begging the Pope to order Langton to cease his opposition, which the Pope did, and the archbishop did not. On the contrary, Langton gave to the barons’ movement religious sanction and the title “The Army of God and Holy Church,” thus neutralizing the moral and spiritual influence of John’s only supporter, Rome. John tried to buy off the opposition with promises, but no one would trust the champion prevaricator of the age. He sent out proclamations to all bailiffs to put down his enemies, but everybody took pride in being his enemy, so there was no one to execute the writs. He made a great pretense of going on a crusade and took the cross, but even that all-compelling appeal was laughed at. John a crusader! See how necessary it was that this king should have been so bad that no one would trust or believe him, even with the Pope at his back and the cross in his hands.

We of this country and time—all mankind, in fact, have to thank John for all this resistance, for the more he struggled and plotted and lied, the more they advanced their demands, so that by Easter “the Army of God and Holy Church” had a far different charter to offer from that they had sworn to before the last Christmas; like all nature at that spring-dawn, the charter had put out new shoots. Freedom, too, had come forth from the tomb.

On Easter day, 1215, the barons were assembled in large force at Stamford; a committee headed by Langton went to the king with the articles drawn up on parchment; the document made a big bundle; you can see it yet in the British Museum. If the king was astonished at the growth the document had made, he was more so at the growth of the demands put forth in it, and he swore up and down he never would sign it and grant liberties to his subjects which would make him a slave. The barons seemed to think he would sign, nevertheless. May was nearly gone before they brought the king to book. He tried to raise an army at home, but no one came to his banner. He sent abroad to hire soldiers, but they did not come. May 22, 1215, “the Army of God” marched triumphant into London, and the kingdom was in its hands. Scotland and Wales offered aid, and the northern barons came marching with their retainers to the common cause. For two weeks John skulked about London with seven horsemen only, and all England in arms against him. Thanks to John again for this resistance! The barons improved the time adding new and stricter conditions. But there was an end to it at last, and the king sent to know when and where the papers should be executed.

“Let it be at Runnymede, and on the fifteenth day of June,” was the answer. All circumstances conspire to make this appointment ideally, even romantically, appropriate. Rune-mede was the Meadow of Council, a grassy strip between the Thames and the foot-hills of Surrey, where since old times earls and kings and the wise men had used to deliberate and treat, in the open air as they lived. It spoke of a time when men dared not trust each other in enclosures; of a people in thought and temper as free and large as “all out-doors.” On that historical spot the powers of England who could not trust her king met the king who would trust no one.

It is the middle day of “the leafy month of June,” 1215. [How green and beautiful England is in June!] “The Army[185] of God and Holy Church” has marched out from London with a great crowd of citizens, and sat down along the Council Meadow. A rude table is set, and on it are spread out the fairly-engrossed parchment and writing implements. The king rides thither from Windsor Castle. Only three or four are with him, and they belong to the barons’ party. John stands absolutely deserted, a picture of regal isolation such as has been never seen before or since. Distinguished monarch! He is smiling, courtly and complaisant, as he well knows how to be. Yes, it affords him great pleasure to do this for his beloved subjects.

“Hold,” says Langton, as the too-eager king grasps the pen, “there is more to be considered. Your signature is to be affixed only of your free will and desire, and you are to here swear not to renounce this instrument on account of anything that has taken place up to this moment, and to keep this covenant faithfully inviolate forever.”

Yes, the smiling John would so swear.

“Then for the better fulfillment of all these conditions, you will consent to the appointment of five-and-twenty knights, who shall have power to enforce this contract; you hereby give them power, in case any article is infringed by you or your officers, to punish the offender by fine, or, if necessary, to destrain your goods, and, in case of resistance, to levy war against you and your castles, saving only the safety of your person and your family; and all your subjects shall be like yourself sworn to obedience to the twenty-five barons, executors of this contract. In further security of all which, the Tower and city of London are to remain in possession of the Archbishop until this act shall be duly and faithfully so put in execution by you.”

Ah, the smile has faded from the king’s face, and pale and trembling he abruptly leaves the council and returns to the castle. Once there he raves and stamps like a caged madman. He froths at the mouth, rolls on the floor and bites at every object near him. “They have given me five-and-twenty over-lords,” roars the king repeatedly.

A week passed before all the formalities were complied with, the barons remaining obstinately in camp, yielding not one jot of their demands, and at last tiring out the king and securing his assent to everything.

What is Magna Charta? What are its provisions, what reforms did it work, what good has it done? Everybody has heard of it, not one in a thousand probably can answer these questions. It undertook two things—reform of existing abuses and provisions for further justice; remedy for the past, security for the future. Its great mission in the cause of civilization has been as a rallying-point for popular rights against royal encroachments. Kings and ministers in succeeding centuries were again and again patiently brought back to that ground and made to swear obedience to the principle of limitation of authority. On this one point British obstinacy stuck and never budged, and it is due to that resistance and persistance for Magna Charta that limited monarchy, and constitutional, representative government stand where they do on the earth to-day.

A remarkable thing about the instrument itself is the lawyer-like accuracy of its language and the minuteness and fullness of its provisions, showing care in its preparation and affording evidence of the state of the jurisprudence and scholarship of the time, and of the extent of the ramifications of the executive wrongs it sought to remedy.

But this is not a constitution, not a statement of rights; it is a statute-law of the sort then possible, viz: in the form of a royal edict. In each section the king ordains so and so. Nor is it a charter in the interest of the rights of man. The bondsmen, who made the bulk of the population of England at that time, are not included in its benefits, and not mentioned save once, and that exception was doubtless inserted for the benefit of the masters, for it exempts from execution the tools of the slave, which of course belonged to his owner. So much for what the charter is not and does not.

A large share of its articles are devoted to defining and regulating the feudal tenure, duties and rights of the barons, and were quite selfish in their scope, although they mark progress as reducing ill-understood relations of king and feudatories for the first time to a written form. But they went further, and stipulated that all these privileges and immunities should apply to all classes of freemen—an important point, as it made Normans and Englishmen equal before the law. Much space is devoted to regulating business and commercial matters; as leasehold rights, treatment of the estates of wards and widows, fixing the widow’s right of dower, freeing of trade, home and foreign, from restrictions and imposts, regulating fisheries, bridge-building, highways, weights and measures.

Advancing into the domain of property and personal rights, it fixed the terms and places of courts and opened them freely to all; no man could be tried without witnesses, or detained in prison without trial; borough franchises were declared inviolable. Then came three sections which struck at the heart of the tyrannical practices of John’s reign:

Foreign officers, temporal or spiritual, were to be removed and their holdings filled by Englishmen; and mercenary troops were to be removed from the realm.

“Justice or right shall not be sold, delayed or denied to any man.”

And then came the declaration of civil rights, which has never ceased to echo wherever free institutions aspired to live:

“No freeman shall be taken, or imprisoned, or disseized of rights and property, or be outlawed or exiled, or otherwise destroyed but by lawful judgment of his peers or the law of the land.”

This grand declaration was five hundred years ahead of the times, and was not made a fact sooner than that; but all the same, it made the condition of “freeman” in England a great prize for the slave to struggle for, and under all the stormy vicissitudes of royal, baronial and clerical oppression of succeeding ages; made the condition of men in England infinitely superior to that of subjects of other realms—in fact, and in the end, made England what she is, America what she is as to free institutions.

So, on the whole, those iron-fisted old barons did their work well, according to their light and the condition of their times; and Runnymede has become, by their great act, a shrine of freedom.

But here our thanks to John must cease. His phenomenal wickedness had done the world all the good it could. He did not mean it, of course. When he had signed the charter, and as soon as the Army of God had dispersed, he sent to the Pope for absolution from his oath, and to the continent for an army of murderers and marauders. He hurled upon his realm the excommunications of the Church and the torch and sword of his mercenaries. He went through England from end to end, as if determined to annihilate all life and property in his wild, insatiable revenge. His career of ruin was short. We regret that it could not have been terminated by the sword of justice, instead of by nature, and so have rounded up the measure of retribution. But every writer and every reader of English history, from that day to this, has in thought and wish constituted himself John’s executioner, and, setting off against the glory of Runnymede his detestable career, has learned to loathe injustice, treachery, cowardice, and sin in high places.

[To be continued.]

We can not be just if we are not kind.—Vauvenargues.

[186]

SUNDAY READINGS.

SELECTED BY THE REV. J. H. VINCENT, D. D.

[January 7.]

HISTORY OF GOD’S BOOK.

By Rev. FRANK RUSSELL, A. M.

The word of God began to be spoken to the first of the race in Eden, and such is the beginning of the Bible. It was only a spoken word, doubtless, for nearly twenty-five hundred years. From generation to generation through all the patriarchal ages it was preserved by fathers carefully teaching it to their children. Many fragments may have been lost, but it is no taxation of our belief that for many centuries much of the early Word may have been carefully treasured through the exercise of memory. We know of marvelous instances of the power of memory. It is supposed that the works of Homer, an elaborate poem with careful divisions, were preserved for centuries in critical form, by one generation repeating it to the next while it was unwritten. It does not bear the marks of change during these generations of its history, but is unique, precise, and giving every evidence of being the original work of one author, Homer. Sir Robert Peel is stated to have been able to listen to a speech in Parliament one and a half or two hours long, and then repeat it all verbatim, and it is also said at the present time that Gladstone has learned Homer so thoroughly that on hearing any line of it repeated he is able at once to repeat the following and the preceding line. Now Shem lived upon the earth after he came out of the ark five hundred years, and could have thoroughly taught the new race in Asia the story. Snatches of song and old tales which he related might have been verbally composed in the antediluvian period, and many think that specimens of the same still hold their place, set like pearls in the earliest Scripture writings. There is little doubt that Job is the first writer whose productions are preserved. That he wrote before Moses seems quite evident from statements easily understood; viz., his descriptions are only of the manners and customs of the ancient patriarchs, his religion is purely patriarchal, the only idolatry he mentions is the worship of the sun and moon, thus seeming to antedate the time of their idol worship, and lastly, he makes no mention of Sodom, Gomorrah, or Abraham, which would scarcely have been the case had he written after Moses. Moses may likely have read Job and have received added inspiration from it, if, indeed, he should need more than to have received the tables writ with God’s own finger. There are, thus far, six pamphlets bound with sixty of later date that make up our book. Look at the antiquity of these six venerable fragments, written one thousand years before Homer sang, one thousand years before either Herodotus or Confucius was born.

Following these earlier Scripture writings there came to be mentioned the rolls of the prophets, songs and sketches of genealogies and history, so that gradually fragments, here and there, came forth by divine direction, which, preserved by divine care, were to enter the canon which we have of sixty-six pamphlets, by about forty writers, the entire authorship spanning a period of about sixteen centuries, geographically ranging over the cities of Chaldea, the plains of Arabia, and the mountains of Palestine. The range of mind is equally varied; written by men who sat on thrones, by some who lived as hermits in the mountains, and by some who were shepherds and fishermen.

About 600 B. C., it is recorded in Jeremiah xxxvi that Jehoiachim, while listening to the reading of the roll, became so enraged at its contents that he took his penknife and defaced it, and then cast it into the fire-place and saw it consumed. He has had many descendants of the same temper, and his race is not yet extinguished.

In about 450 B. C.—I am careful to give approximate dates in round numbers—the sacred rolls were so mutilated that when Ezra and Nehemiah returned from the eastern captivity and reorganized the old worship in the city of Jerusalem, they added to their other improvements the establishment of a district library, Ezra collected and translated all the copies of the Bible, writing in a kind of Chaldaic Hebrew, the old language modified by the eastern dialect, with which the Hebrews in their captivity had grown familiar, so that now there were two languages of Scripture, the Samaritans clinging tenaciously to the old Hebrew of Job, and Moses, and the prophets after them.

About 280 B. C., marks another epoch in the development of the book. Ptolemy Philadelphus, the ruler of Egypt, desired to enrich the great imperial library of Alexandria with a complete and careful translation of the sacred writings into Greek, which was the popular language of his time. He organized a college of seventy or seventy-two eminent scholars, and classified the work among them; and the result was the Septuagint translation, the foundation of all our translations of the Old Testament since. It is said that the last transcript of this work was made by the hand of a woman named Techla. This was the edition which the Savior and the apostles used, the very language which they quoted and mostly spake. Between 130 and 140 B. C., Antiochus distinguished himself by attempting to burn all the Bibles in the world, thus acting the part of Jehoiachim No. 2.

In 128 A. D., Aquila made another translation, it is thought in favor of the more zealous Jews and to the prejudice of Christians, and not as fair a work as the Septuagint, and in 300 A. D., Diocletian added to the infamies of the tenth great persecution an attempt to destroy the Bible by seizing and burning all copies that could be found. He is Jehoiachim No. 3. Such attempts in fulfillment of the declarations of the text are like the effort to exterminate a ripened head of wheat by stamping it beneath your feet; the next year many thrifty growths will laugh at the result.

In the early part of the fifth century good Saint Jerome, one of the most distinguished of the Latin fathers, profound in learning and devout of heart, collected all the important translations that preceded him, took up his residence in Palestine and made a very thorough version, called the Latin Vulgate, and used by our Catholic friends ever since, an important aid in all subsequent Bible work.

In 500 the Emperor Justinian decreed, to quell some discussion about the preferences of versions, that either might be used with entire liberty in any part of the realm. It is supposed that the Jewish sentiment, vacillating for some time between liberal views and their characteristic conservatism, rebounded at this decree and led to a tenacity for their own ancient language, to which they have since scrupulously adhered, reading mostly throughout their wide dispersion the ancient characters of Job and Moses, but some, as at Frankfort in Germany, using the Chaldaic shading of Ezra’s version. From a little before 600 we are able very definitely to trace the way of the book in England. There was dense ignorance among the masses of common people throughout the middle ages, but the convents and the great monasteries were some of them nevertheless centers of great learning. The Jews of England from the first kept a clear knowledge of their old writings, and furnished men in every century eminent in scholarship. Monks, so inclined, had little else to do but to eat and study, and God perpetuated through their work the knowledge of his word. I was shown in the British Museum a copy of the Gospels in Latin, of exquisite beauty, done by Eadfrid in the seventh century. It is on excellent paper, in red and black characters, executed almost with the precision of type. Near the close of that[187] century Cædmon, the father of English poetry, translated portions of the Scripture into the Saxon or early English.

A fragment of manuscript written by Aldhelm, a bishop, in 706, praises the nuns for their fidelity in the daily reading of the holy Scriptures, a circumstance that indicates both that there was something of education among the convents, and also that they doubtless had many copies of Scripture manuscripts. Aldhelm himself is known to have translated fifty of the Psalms into the early English.

A bright picture comes to us by the pen of Saint Cuthbert in 735. On the 26th of May—Ascension Day—cloudless and beautiful toward its closing, there were silent tread and hushed voices among the monks of a great monastery in the county of Durham, in England. All attention along the cloisters was directed toward the passageway of one cell, and eager inquiries of all who came thence if the dying one were still alive.

Within the cell, on a low white bed, was the feeble form of an old man, bolstered up that his eye might rest upon either of the manuscripts supported in position on and about his bed. At a table near him was seated a scribe writing every word which the pale lips spake. One listening heard the scribe say, “There is only one chapter left, master, but you are too weary now, and you must sleep.” “No, go on, it is very easy, write rapidly,” was the reply; and so the writing proceeded according to the faint dictation of the exhausted old man, until he seemed to fall asleep. The scribe awoke him again, and the glassy eyes brightened as the old man heard, “Master, there is but one verse now,” and with an effort to fix the drooping eyes upon the adjusted scrolls, there came slowly forth, one by one, the words of the last verse of John’s gospel, and when the “Amen” was pronounced, the whitened head sank among the pillows lightened with the last rays of the setting sun, as it streamed through the grated window, and the bloodless lips murmured forth, “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost,” when the form of the Venerable Bede was still, and the awful silence of death followed immediately the ending of his translation.

Portions of the Word were also translated in the ninth century, and were authorized by King Alfred. He himself did something at translating, and was careful to have nicely executed, as a preface to every published code, the manuscript of the Decalogue. It might exercise a salutary effect if our statesmen, every law they read, might also have the ten commandments before them. King Alfred made the declaration more than once that he desired to see the day when all men in his kingdom would be able to read God’s word.

Elfrac also, after Alfred, from 1004 to 1030, translated portions of the Scriptures into English.

But the last manuscript translation of the English Scriptures is greater than any which preceeded it, and the only one which can be called a popular edition. The quaint old stone church of Saint Mary is still standing in Leicestershire, where John Wycliffe preached when in 1830 he completed his translation. He had long been the fiery lecturer at Oxford, and had come into sore conflict with ignorant priests of the papacy for his enunciations of religious liberty and his schemes for the better education of the masses of the people. So that when his translation was finished a strong hatred sought his life. He was cited to Rome, but being too feeble to go, he was buried in his own parish. Forty years afterward, however, the same council which burned John Huss exhumed the bones of Wycliffe, and having burned them, they gathered the ashes and scattered them into the river which had the significant name of “Swift,” down which they found their way through other rivers into the ocean, and were washed, it would seem, with the strength of Wycliffe’s spirit, upon every shore of the world. There were as many as one hundred and seventy copies of the Wycliffe version made with busy pens, and circulated secretly, but widely read, thus preparing the way for greater works thereafter, and confirming the propriety of calling their author “The Morning Star of the Reformation.”

A few years since I stood long before the great bronze statue of Gutenberg in Mayence on the Rhine, a place now of over fifty thousand population. All citizens are eager to show any American that can make out to ask it, the site of the building where the invention of printing with movable type was made about 1450. The house still stands where Gutenberg lived, and another in which he did his first work with his press. Twenty-five years later printing began in England, and in another twenty-five years there were in the world over two hundred and twenty places where printing was done. I took a walk on the heights back of Bristol, in England, and was asked if I was seeking Sudbury, the old manor, which I was not, but accidentally had it pointed out to me where Sir John Walsh lived, when he employed for the instruction of his children a young priest, a fine scholar and a great reader. The fact that he devoted so much of his time and thought to the Scriptures, and even taught children to read it, produced some sensation in the community. In June, 1523, at a dining, the young priest suffered some rebuke for his liberal handling of the Scriptures by the pompous parish priest, who was present, and who, among other things, declared that it was better even to disobey a law of God than a law of the Pope. At this the opposition in the heart of the young priest became very decided, and his reply was almost in these words: “I hope to live to see even the ploughboys of England knowing more of the Word of God than either yourself or the Pope.” That young priest’s name was William Tyndale. When it was noised about that his pen was busy preparing a translation of the Bible for print, he was obliged to fly abroad on the continent, where at Cologne on the Rhine he printed a few sheets, then fled again to Worms, where he printed all of his translation, and was soon thereafter imprisoned in Antwerp for six months, during which time he converted the jailor and his family. He was then strangled and burned at the stake, his last words being, “May the Lord open the King of England’s eyes.”

It was Henry the VIII who was then King of England, and who assisted the bishops to buy up Tyndale’s edition and burn the books in a heap before St. Paul’s in London.

I saw a fragment of one of the books, mostly burned, rescued from the flames, and now in the British Museum. This is Jehoiachim No. 4.

It is said that a young man named Coverdale had been greatly interested in Tyndale’s edition; that he was a fine scholar, and that he, with several others, finding that the edition would be destroyed, succeeded in selling many copies for the flames, thus erecting a fund with which they proposed another edition. The prayer of Tyndale in less than two years was answered. Henry the VIII, with increasing disgust at the ignorance and corruption of the religious teachers in every community, determined that, after all, the Bible should be printed and extensively circulated. So Coverdale, with strong patronage, was employed to issue it, which he did, under the care of Archbishop Cramer, in 1527, in Zurich. Two thousand five hundred copies of Coverdale’s edition were seized and burned by the Inquisition in France. This is Jehoiachim No. 5.

Following Henry VIII, Edward VI ordered that every parish priest should own a copy and read therefrom a chapter at each service.

In 1558 John Calvin, with able associates, published an edition called the Genevan edition.

In 1614 King James commissioned forty-seven scholars to make a careful and complete edition, which was authorized[188] as standard. This is our own edition or translation in common use since. As Tyndale commenced his work in 1511, you will see that it took just a century and more than fifty years after the time of printing to produce a complete and authorized version of God’s word. The race of Jehoiachims in many parts have attempted to destroy it, especially in Spain, for the last few years.

During the time of the preparation of King James’s version, our Catholic friends completed an edition more to their liking, which was published in 1609 in Douay, France, and which they have in whatever common use it is proper to say, called the Douay version.

In 1604, the same year that King James moved for his version, John Eliot was born. In 1631 he joined the church in Boston, and became a learned and pious missionary among our American Indians. In 1661 he published his translation, and lived to see over twenty Indians educated and using his edition in their own tongue, in the pulpit. Eliot died when he was eighty-six years old. There are now about thirty copies of his translation remaining, about equally divided between England and America. There is a copy in the Astor Library in New York, and one in Yale College library. A copy was sold at auction in New York a few years since for $1,130, the highest known price ever paid for one book. There is no man now living who can read Eliot’s Bible.

In 1870 a movement was started, appropriately by the Church of England, for a thorough revision of our Scriptures. The New Testament has been in our hands for some time, and we now eagerly look forward to the appearance of the Old Testament in the new version.

[January 14.]

FROM THE BEGINNING TO ABRAHAM.

By W. F. COLLIER, LL. D.

The Creation of Man involved the necessity of preparing a dwelling-place for him. The Bible informs us that the world passed through successive changes, which transformed an unshapely mass to its present condition of beauty and fitness. God said, “Let there be light,” and the rays of the sun burst upon the surface of the earth. Then the land appeared from under the waters, and was clothed with vegetation. The fishes, reptiles, and birds were called into existence. Next, quadrupeds appeared. Finally, as a crowning act, man was created in the image of God, his Maker. “Then the woman was formed from the rib of the man, in token of the closeness of their relation, and the duty of man to love his wife as his own flesh.”

Man having been created, means were employed for his occupation. In order to develop his mind and body activity was necessary. He was to dress and keep the garden, to subdue the lower animals, study them, and subject them to his control and use.

Distinguished from all other created beings around him by the gift of speech, he was enabled to classify and name the animals, hold converse with his wife, and engage in oral acts of praise and worship of his Heavenly Father.

The locality of the Garden of Eden is believed to be in the highlands of Asia Minor, near the sources of the rivers Euphrates and Tigris. The whole district drained by these rivers is represented by travelers as one of surpassing beauty. Mountains rise, by easy slopes, to the height of five thousand feet; their sides are clothed with gigantic forest trees, underneath which the box, bay, and rhododendron flourish. The valleys and lowlands are studded with villages, and checkered by orchards, vineyards, and gardens, yielding both the cereals of the temperate zones and the fruit of the tropics. Somewhere in the eastern part of this charming district the garden was located, on the shore of Lake Van. This lake is described by travelers as follows:

“The shores of Lake Van (a noble sheet of water, two hundred and forty miles round), are singularly fine. They are bright with poplar, tamarisk, myrtles, and oleanders, whilst numerous verdant islands, scattered over its placid bosom, lend to it the enchantment of fairy land. In one direction the gardens cover a space of seven or eight miles long, and four miles broad. The climate is temperate, and sky almost always bright and clear. To the southeast of the lake extends the plain of Solduz, presenting in one part an unbroken surface of groves, orchards, vineyards, gardens, and villages. The same description is applicable to the tract extending along the Araxes, which, for striking mountain scenery, interspersed with rich valleys, can scarcely be equalled. This district accords, in every respect, with the best notions we can form of the cradle of the human race.”

Here, say the Armenians, was the Vale of Eden. On the summit of Mount Ararat, at no great distance from this, the ark rested; and here, also, the vine was first cultivated by Noah. It is impossible to say whether further investigation in this comparatively unknown district will ever guide us nearer to the spot where the Lord planted the garden; but there can be no doubt that these plains, lakes, and islands must have given birth to the images of Elysian fields and Fortunate islands that continued, age after age, to gild the traditions of the world.[E]

The Fall of Man.—This expression signifies the loss of the innocence and perfection with which he was endowed at his creation. The Fall was the consequence of disobedience.

Milton thus describes the momentous event:

Eve’s act—

Adam’s act—

At what period of the existence of our first parents their fall occurred the inspired writer does not inform us. The fact is only stated. There is reason to infer that it occurred soon after their creation.

Before the fall they lived in the garden, whose enchanting beauty has already been described. Their employment was to dress, admire, and enjoy the lovely spot, and to praise and glorify their Maker.

Having disobeyed, they were driven forth from the garden, and the ground, which before brought forth, spontaneously, an abundant supply of fruits to satisfy all their desires,[189] became changed, and needed cultivation to produce the food their desecrated bodies needed.

“Adam and Eve went forth into the wide world, carrying with them the fallen nature and corrupt tendencies which were the present fruit of their sin, but with faith in the promise of redemption.”

The chief object of their life was yet to be accomplished, the earth was to be peopled and subdued. The curse was accompanied by a promise. The toils of the man were to be rewarded by the fruits the earth would yield to cultivation; and the woman, in her suffering, was consoled by the hope of a Redeemer.[F]

The Flood.—Sin and wickedness had become so wonderful that God determined to destroy the whole race, except Noah and his family.

Noah was directed to construct a vessel sufficiently large to accommodate his family and such animals as he should need. In this vessel, called in the Bible the Ark, he embarked with his wife, three sons, and their wives, making in all eight souls. He took, according to Divine direction, clean beasts and birds by sevens, and of such as were not to used for food or for sacrifice by pairs, with a supply of food for all. The age of Noah at the time he entered the ark was six hundred years. When all had embarked, the ark was shut by the hand of God, and immediately the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the clouds sent forth torrents of water, which increased and bore up the ark. The Bible does not describe the terrific character of the consequences of such a storm. We are left to imagine the scenes that followed. The mountain streams must have swollen so suddenly as to forsake their channels and find new outlets, sweeping away, in their angry force, hamlets, villages, and even cities, washing down hills, and undermining mountains. But, most prominent, there rises before the fancy a scene of terrible conflict—brawny men fighting with the tempest, carrying their families from height to height, but still pursued by the remorseless, unwearying foe.

The next scene is one of defeat and death.

Bleached and bloodless corpses float everywhere, like pieces of a wreck over the shoreless sea; the poor babe, locked in the arms of the mother, having found even nature’s refuge fail.

Last of all, there is a scene of awful stillness and desolation, not one object being seen but the dull expanse of the ocean, nor one sound of life heard but the low moan of its surging waters.

On the seventh month the ark rested on the mountains of Ararat. But nearly a year elapsed, after the mighty vessel grounded, before Noah emerged from this temporary prison. Immediately upon landing he erected an altar, and offered sacrifice to God for preserving him from the watery grave which had engulfed all mankind except his family, with which act, God being well pleased, he made a covenant with him never again to destroy the world by flood, and to seal the promise, he set his bow in the cloud.

Noah, as has been stated, on going out of the ark, celebrated his deliverance by a burnt offering of all the kinds of clean beasts which he had preserved in the ark with him.[G]

Babel.—The next great event in man’s history was the confusion of tongues, and the consequent dispersion of mankind into three great lingual families.

On leaving the ark new privileges were granted, new laws imposed, and a new covenant made. In addition to the plants, all animals were allowed for food. They were forbidden to eat blood, and murder was made a capital offence. “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed.” We may infer that the sons of Noah, and their descendants, moved naturally toward the south, until, after many years, they reached and settled the plains south of Ararat; until Assyria, the plains of Mesopotamia, and Chaldæa swarmed with busy multitudes, pursuing the various avocations of life.

It was on the plains of Chaldæa, south of Mesopotamia, that the mighty city of Babylon arose on the banks of the river Euphrates, where the inhabitants, in their pride, attempted to erect a tower that should reach to the heavens. This tower was, no doubt, intended to serve as a place from which to expose signals to call the people together, hence it was to be high enough to be seen from all parts of the plain.

To humble their pride, and to people other sections by distribution, God arrested the work by confounding of tongues, so that when the workmen asked for brick the laborers brought mortar. It is not certain to how great an extent the confusion of tongues was brought; but it is not believed that each person spoke a different dialect from every other. But, on the other hand, there is reason to believe that the whole was divided into three great lingual divisions or families.

Men now grouped together, from necessity, into tribes or families, composed of those who understood each other, sought new regions and neighborhoods where they might settle, and engage in the various departments of human industry then practiced.

In that mild climate and generous soil men were greatly tempted to become shepherds and herdsmen, a mode of life at once simple and healthful, and one highly calculated to extend the borders of occupation, and increase the population.

The government was patriarchal—a mode of government which seemed to have been especially acceptable to God, and well calculated to prevent centralization.

Social Life of the Ancients—Job.—It would be utterly impossible, in any single picture, to present a view of the state of society during a period of so great extent, and embracing such a variety of nations and countries. We can but follow the example of the Bible itself, and make choice of a single spot, and a single family, to convey some idea of the life and manners of the age. It is probable that it was during this period that the patriarch Job lived, suffered, and triumphed. Job was probably a descendant of Shem; his residence is said to have been “in the east” (Job i. 3)—the term usually applied to the district where the first settlement of men took place. (Gen. ii. 8; iii. 24; xi. 2). The Sabeans and Chaldæans were his neighbors; and at the time when he lived the knowledge of the True God seems to have been preserved, without material corruption. The adoration of the heavenly bodies had begun to be practiced (Job xxxi. 26, 27), but there seems still to have been a general belief in one Almighty God.

The picture of social life in the book of Job is in many respects extremely beautiful. We dare not regard it as a sample of what was usual over the world, but rather as exhibiting the highest condition of social life that had been attained. There were even then cases of oppression, robbery, and murder; but, for the most part, a fine patriarchal purity and simplicity prevailed. The rich and the poor met together, and to the distressed and helpless the rich man’s heart and hand were ever open: “When I went out to the gate through the city, when I prepared my seat in the street, the young men saw me, and hid themselves: and the aged arose and stood up. . . . When the ear heard me, then it blessed me; and when the eye saw me, it gave witness to me; because I delivered the poor that cried, and the fatherless, and him that had none to help him. The[190] blessing of him that was ready to perish came upon me, and I caused the widow’s heart to sing for joy.” The sweet bonds of family affection retained all their power in the household of Job; his children feasted by turns in each other’s houses; while the affectionate and pious father rose early in the morning to offer sacrifices for them all, lest any of them should have sinned. The simple burnt-offering retained its place as the appointed ordinance of heaven, and was the sacrifice that Job, as the high-priest of his house, presented on behalf of his children.

In the book of Job mention is made of kings, princes, nobles, judges, merchants, warriors, travelers, and slaves. The pen of iron had begun to engrave inscriptions upon rocks; the mining shaft was sunk for gold and silver; and palaces that had been built for kings and nobles had fallen into ruin. Astronomy had begun to acquaint men with the heavenly bodies, and many of the stars and constellations had received well-known names. Altogether, the state of civilization was highly advanced. The more closely we study those early times, the more erroneous appears the opinion that man began his career as a savage, and gradually worked his way up to refinement and civilization. The reverse of this is nearer the truth. “God made man upright”—civilized and refined, as well as intelligent and holy; but as man departed from God, he lost these early blessings. Sometimes a considerable degree of refinement has been reached by other paths; but by far the richest and best civilization is that which has come with true religion—with the pure knowledge and simple worship of the one True God.

[January 21.]

FROM ABRAHAM TO THE OCCUPATION OF CANAAN.

By W. F. COLLIER, LL. D.

Call of Abraham.—The next important step chronicled in the Mosaic history of man is the call of Abraham, ten generations after Noah. Abram was born 1996 B. C. Ur, a Chaldæan city, was his birthplace. Terah, Abram’s father, removed from Ur to Haran, in Mesopotamia.

The Lord spake to Abram while residing in Haran, when he was seventy-five years old, and commanded him to leave his father’s house, to separate himself from his kindred, to depart from his country, and to go to a land that should be shown him.

The Lord said to him, “I will make thee a great nation, and will bless thee, and make thy name great, and thou shalt be a blessing. And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee. And in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed.” Abram, in obedience to this command, set out with his wife Sarai, and his nephew Lot, taking with him his flocks and herds, and journeyed into the land of Canaan. Having arrived, his first act was to erect an altar, and sacrifice to the Lord. From this place he moved to the east of Bethel, and again built an altar and worshipped. A famine drove him from his new home into Egypt, where was an abundance of food. Having spent some time in the land of the Pharaohs, he returned to Canaan, greatly enriched by his sojourn in Egypt. Soon after the return from Egypt Lot separated himself from Abram, and settled in the valley of the Jordan, while Abram sought the hill country, and finally sat down in the neighborhood of the ancient city of Hebron. The king of Chaldæa made a raid on the cities of Canaan, and carried off Lot, with other prisoners. This fact coming to the knowledge of Abram, he immediately set out to rescue his relation. Having over three hundred servants, he attacked the camp of the invaders at night, set them to flight, and rescued his nephew.

This is the first battle recorded in history.

When Abram was one hundred years old the Lord’s promise was renewed to him. His name was changed to Abraham, the name of his wife to Sarah; and Isaac, through whom the promise of a great progeny was to be fulfilled, was born. When Isaac was forty years old, Abraham sent his servant to Mesopotamia to obtain a wife for him. His second cousin, the grand-daughter of his father’s brother, was selected, and she consented to go back with the servant and marry her kinsman. From this marriage two sons were born, Esau and Jacob. By the right of birth Esau possessed certain advantages, which Jacob purchased of him by dressing him some food when returning faint and hungry from the chase, thereby supplanting him. He afterwards, by deceiving his father, who was nearly blind, obtained from him the parental blessing conferred only upon the first born. This so enraged his brother, that Jacob sought safety in flight, and went to his mother’s brother in Mesopotamia. There he was kindly received, and after a short time had elapsed he entered into the service of his uncle, and agreed to labor for him seven years for his youngest daughter. Having fulfilled his part of the contract, Laban, his uncle, gave him his eldest daughter. When Jacob discovered the deception his father-in-law had practiced upon him, he demanded Rachel. Laban, however, required him to serve another seven years, which he did. After the second marriage he continued still to live with Laban, and received as pay a share of his flocks. In securing this share, he was thought by his brothers-in-law to have practiced unfair means, hence they became hostile to him. His father-in-law also having become unfriendly, he fled, and returned to his native land with his family and his flocks. Laban pursued and overtook him, and though their meeting was far from being friendly, they entered into an agreement, and gave pledges that they would not annoy each other in future. Jacob then pursued his journey. As he approached his native country he sent presents to his brother Esau, who came out to meet him, and they became reconciled.

Jacob journeyed on to Canaan, and sat down in the city Shalim. Soon after he removed to Hebron, the home of his childhood. He was rich in flocks and herds, and his neighbors respected and feared him. In accordance with the patriarchal mode of life, his twelve sons and one daughter remained with him, who, with their wives, children, and servants, made a large family or tribe.

Joseph.—Jacob treated the children of Rachel, his beloved wife, with greater tenderness than he did those of Leah, his first wife, and Joseph was his favorite. The partiality shown to this son so enraged his brothers that they determined to get rid of him. They found an opportunity to carry out their design under the following circumstances. The older brothers having been absent with their flocks so long that their father became anxious about their safety, and sent Joseph to search for them. As they beheld him afar off they plotted to murder him; but, taking the advice of Reuben, they imprisoned him in a pit in the wilderness. Soon after his confinement a caravan of traveling merchants passed, and to these they sold Joseph into slavery, telling their father that he had been destroyed by wild beasts. The merchants carried him into Egypt, and disposed of him to Potiphar, the commander of the king’s guards. In Potiphar’s house he rose to great eminence as a servant; but falling into disgrace through a false accusation, he was thrown into prison. While in prison his conduct was so exemplary and submissive, that he gained the favor of the jailor, and was allowed the freedom of the prison. Later on he was summoned to appear before the king to explain certain dreams which troubled Pharaoh. Appearing before the great monarch, Joseph disclaimed all power in himself to explain the meaning of what had appeared to the mind of the king, but[191] modestly and reverently said the Lord of his fathers would show the signification. The king having told his dreams, Joseph predicted seven years of great plenty, to be succeeded by seven years of dearth, and advised Pharaoh to build vast granaries and fill them, during the years of abundance. The advice was immediately acted upon, and Joseph was elevated to the rank of governor of all Egypt, and the erection of storehouses, and the filling of them with grain, was entrusted to him. The years of plenty came and passed away, and were succeeded by tedious years of sore famine. While the Egyptians had stores of food laid up by the providence and foresight of Joseph, the neighboring nations, having exhausted their stock of provisions, were obliged to go to Egypt to buy. The dearth oppressing the inhabitants of Canaan, Joseph’s brothers came down to purchase also. While on a second visit to buy food, they were made aware that their despised and hated brother, whom they had sold into slavery, was the governor of Egypt.

Having made himself known to them, they were overwhelmed with surprise and fear; but he most magnanimously pardoned and comforted them by saying, “Be not grieved or angry with yourselves that ye sold me hither, for God did send me before you to preserve life.” (Genesis xlv: 5, 7.) “God sent me before you to preserve you a posterity in the earth, and to save yourselves for a great deliverance.”

Joseph’s father and all his family were at once brought into Egypt, and established with their flocks and herds on the eastern bank of the lower Nile, where Joseph nourished them, and where they prospered for many generations, until a new king arose, who knew not Joseph.

The Exodus.—The part of Egypt in which Joseph had settled his family was one of the most fertile parts of the valley of the Nile. Skirted on the south by hills, it sloped off to the northwest toward the Mediterranean Sea, thus affording the most favorable exposure for the purpose of the pastoral life which the Israelites led. For more than a century they pursued their quiet employment, and were treated by the Egyptians with respect and consideration, in memory of Prince Joseph. The prosperity and increase of the Israelites, with their distinctness as a people, alarmed the Egyptian powers, who turned their attention to some means to cripple them and arrest their increase. Oppression was resorted to. Privileges were withheld, and severer tasks imposed, until one tremendous groan went up from the land of Goshen to the God of their fathers. In spite of all the oppression and injustice practiced upon this people, they throve and increased in numbers.

The Lord heard the cry of the outraged Hebrew slave, and permitted his enemies to afflict him, that he might find the country hateful, and feel that he was only a sojourner, who was to seek a promised land, the land promised to his father, Abraham. Their burdens became intolerable. Moses, their leader, applied to Pharaoh to allow them to depart from the country; but the king refused, and God afflicted the Egyptians with dreadful plagues, until they prayed the Israelites to depart. They set out with all their effects, moving toward Arabia, and on reaching the shores of the Red Sea they became aware of the fact that Pharaoh, with his army, was pursuing.

Hemmed in on either side by hills, the sea before them, and their enemies behind, they were overwhelmed with despair. But now the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, their fathers, delivered them with a great deliverance, for, at his command, the sea opened and allowed them to pass over in safety. Pharaoh, pursuing, led his chariots and horsemen into the bed of the sea, and the returning waters engulfed them. All were destroyed, not one escaped; a terrific exhibition of the wrath of the Almighty. The Israelites journeyed on toward Canaan, the land of promise, spending forty years in the desert of Arabia, living in tents, subsisting on manna, which they found on the ground in the morning, and on the flesh of birds, which came to them every evening, making their whole journey a series of miracles and special providences. They finally reached the Jordan, which, like the Red Sea, opened for them, and allowed them to pass over dry-shod. The inhabitants of the land were driven out, and the weary wanderers, who had crossed and recrossed their path in the rocky wilds and desert sands of Arabia, sat down in the land of their fathers, and became dwellers in permanent habitations.

[January 28.]

THE ISRAELITES AFTER REACHING THE LAND OF PROMISE.

By W. F. COLLIER, LL. D.

Between the time of the entry of the Israelites into Canaan and the birth of our Savior, a period of 1,451 years elapsed. It is not our object to follow out the history of this wonderful nation, yet it would seem necessary to state briefly their progress.

For several centuries they remained much in the same state as Joshua, their great captain, left them; contending with the surrounding tribes whenever their encroachments were disputed, at other times living friendly with them; not only intermarrying, but allowing themselves to be seduced into idolatry; for which sin the Lord permitted the neighboring nations, in more than one instance, to conquer them, to break up their government, and carry the principal inhabitants into captivity. In each case, however, after long and weary years of captivity, their country was restored to them, and the spoilers themselves were made instruments in the hands of God to reconstruct the nation.

Social and Religious Condition.—During the forty years of wandering in the wilderness, very little opportunity was afforded for the exercise of the arts of life. It is difficult to conjecture the employment of that vast multitude during all those years.

The construction of the tabernacle and its furniture called into use the skill and workmanship of the best artisans; but, aside from that, there was nothing to tax their talent. During the forty years they lost the arts they had learned in Egypt.

For many years after they entered the Holy Land their mode of living was rude and simple, depending mainly upon the produce of their flocks and herds for sustenance. We have reason to infer that they also drew upon the same source for many articles of clothing.

The forty years of pilgrimage in the wilderness swept into the grave nearly all the vast multitude that left Egypt with Moses. Those who entered the Holy Land had not witnessed the idolatry of Egypt. Moreover, their very existence had depended upon the fall of the manna. Witnessing this daily miracle, a spirit of dependence and submission must have engrafted itself upon this new generation.

The dreary chastisement of the forty years, the plagues that once and again made such havoc, the sad fact that the bones of their fathers were left to whiten in the wilderness, must have produced a terrible impression. The people who came out from Egypt were haughty, unbelieving, rebellious. Their descendants, humbled by chastisement, made dependent by their helplessness, became gentle, submissive, and obedient. We must hence infer that they remained for many years simple in habit and devotional in spirit.

For three hundred and thirty-two years after the death of Joshua, the successor of Moses, the Israelites were governed by judges. During this period the Jews were a nation of farmers, and each farmer was the proprietor of his own farm. The size of the farm allotted to each family may at first have averaged from twenty to fifty acres; and as there were[192] very few servants or laborers, except such hewers of wood and drawers of water as the Gibeonites, each family had to cultivate its own estate. The houses were seldom built apart from each other, like the farm houses of our own country—that would have been too insecure; they were placed together in villages, towns, and cities; and when the place was very much exposed, and of great importance, it was surrounded by a wall.

The lands were adapted chiefly for three kinds of produce—grain, fruit, and pasture. Wheat, millet, barley, and beans were the principal kinds of grain; flax and cotton were also cultivated, and small garden herbs, such as anise, cummin, mint, and rue. (Mat. xxiii: 23.)

The orchards were exceedingly productive. The olive, fig, pomegranate, vine, almond, and apple were all common; and a great part of the time of the Hebrews, in days of peace, must have been spent in cultivating these fruit trees.

As beasts of burden they had the ox, the camel, and the ass; while sheep and goats constituted the staple of their flocks.

Their grain harvest began about the beginning of our April, and lasted for about two months. Summer followed, in June and July, and was the season for gathering the garden fruits. The next two months were still warmer, so that the sheep shearing would have to be overtaken before they set in. During all this time little or no rain falls in Palestine. The country becomes excessively parched, the brooks and springs dry up, and almost the only supply of water is from the pools and reservoirs that have been filled during the winter.

October and November are the seed time. “The former rain” falls now. It often falls with violence, fills the dry torrent-beds, and illustrates our Savior’s figure of the rains descending, and the floods coming and beating upon the houses. (Matt. vii: 25, 27.) December and January are the winter months, when frost and snow are not uncommon; February and March are also cold. “The latter rains” fall at this season. About the end of it, “the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in the land; the fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grapes have a good smell.” (Song of Sol., ii: 11, 13.)

Among the wild trees and vegetable products of the country were the cedar, stable and lofty, an emblem of usefulness and beauty (Ps. xcii: 12); the oak, both the smooth and the prickly sort, which grow in great luxuriance in Bashan; the terebinth, or turpentine tree (translated oak in our Bibles), a large evergreen, with spreading branches, often growing singly, and so striking as to mark a district—like the terebinth of Shechem, of Mamre (or Hebron), and of Ophrah; the fir, the cypress, the pine, the myrtle, and the mulberry. The oleander and the prickly pear flourished in most situations. The rose and the lily were the common flowers. Altogether, the number of vegetable products was large and varied; and, in such a country, Solomon’s memory and acquirements could not have been contemptible, when “he spake of trees, from the cedar that is in Lebanon unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall.”

The ordinary employments of the Hebrew farmer were thus ample and varied, but not very toilsome; and often they were pleasantly interrupted. Thrice a year the males went up to Shiloh, to the three great festivals—Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles. Each seventh day was a holy Sabbath to the Lord, devoted to rest and worship. At each new moon there was also a holy day. Each seventh year was a year of rest, at least from the ordinary occupations of the field and the garden: it was probably turned to account in repairing houses, clothes, and implements, and particularly in the religious instruction of the people. The education of the children was chiefly in the hands of their parents, assisted by the Levites, who were scattered over the country, and paid from the tithes of the whole produce. On the whole, the Hebrews, in times of peace, led, during this period, a quiet, unambitious, country life.

Occasionally, as in the song of Deborah, we meet with proofs that music, and song, and literary culture were not neglected; and the “divers colors of needlework on both sides,” for which the mother of Sisera waited so anxiously at her window, showed that the Hebrew ladies had acquired no mean skill in the use of their needles. But, on the whole, neither learning, nor the mechanical arts, nor manufactures, nor commerce, nor the fine arts, were very vigorously cultivated, or made much progress during this period. Each man was content to sit under his vine and under his fig tree; and the children of a family were usually quite pleased to divide the possessions, and follow the occupations of their fathers.

The government of the country was carried on chiefly by local officers. It is not easy to ascertain the precise number and nature of the departments of the government, or of the officers by whom they were carried on. But each of the twelve tribes seems to have had a government of its own. Each city had its elders, and each tribe its rulers and princes. In ordinary cases, justice seems to have been administered, and local disputes settled by the tribal authorities. There seem also to have been certain central tribunals. In particular, there was “the whole congregation of Israel”—a sort of house of commons, or states-general, composed of delegates from the whole nation, by whom matters of vital importance to the whole country were considered.

In ordinary times, the high priest seems to have exercised considerable political influence over the nation; and in pressing dangers, the judges were invested with extraordinary powers. The whole of the twelve tribes were welded together, and had great unity of feeling and action imparted to them, through the yearly gatherings at the great religious festivals. When idolatry prevailed in any district of the country, these gatherings would be neglected, and the unity of the nation consequently impaired.

No important addition was made during this period to the religious knowledge of the people. There was no new revelation of the Messiah, except in so far as the several deliverers who were raised up foreshadowed the Great Deliverer. The ceremonial law of Moses was probably in full operation during the periods of religious faithfulness. The great lesson regarding sin—its hatefulness in God’s eyes, and the certainty of its punishment—was continually renewed by the events of providence.

Those who really felt the evil of sin would see in the sacrifices that were constantly offered up a proof that God can not accept the sinner unless his sin be atoned for through the shedding of blood. But even pious men had not very clear ideas of the way of acceptance with God. A humble sense of their own unworthiness, the spirit of trust in God’s undeserved mercy for pardon, and a steady, prayerful endeavor to do all that was right in God’s sight, were the great elements of true piety in those days. There was great occasion for the exercise of high trust in God, both in believing that prosperity would always follow the doing of his will, and in daring great achievements, like those of Barak and Gideon, under the firm conviction that he would crown them with success.

But in a religious point of view this period was a very checkered one; sometimes one state of things prevailed, sometimes another. The people showed a constant inclination to forsake the pure worship of the true God, and fall into the idolatry of their neighbors. The oppressions which those very neighbors inflicted on them, and the wars which ensued, generally produced an antipathy to their religious[193] and other customs, which lasted for some years; but the old fondness for idolatry returned again and again.

It clearly appears that a pure, spiritual worship is distasteful to the natural heart. Men unconverted do not relish coming into heart-to-heart contact with the unseen God; they are much more partial to a worship conducted through images and symbols: for this reason the Israelites were always falling into idolatry; idolatry led to immorality; and both drew down on them the judgments of their offended God.

[End of Required Reading for January.]

THREE AGES.

By JOHN ALBEE.

STAGES.

By BENJAMIN R. BULKELEY.

I.

II.

III.

DRIVING.

There is now no branch of outdoor education of greater importance than that of an ability to “handle the ribbons.” Not a man or woman but would be ashamed to say that they were incompetent, if in fair health and strength, to pilot their own carriage. And yet, though so large a proportion of society can boast a smattering of the science, there is no pursuit in which perfection is proportionately so rarely attained.

The first requisite for a tyro is to learn to sit well, and so to acquire the proper scope for his own power over his horse.

The seat should be above, or at least on a level, with the horses’ heads, not below them; and it should, moreover, be so placed that the driver can use his legs and feet to restrain the pull of the horses if necessary, and that can not be done if the reins pull down over the splash-board into the driver’s lap.

Though most tyros begin their essay with a horse in a single harness, yet in a general way it is easier and safer to drive a pair than one. If the single horse is perfect in manners, all that has to be learned is to keep him straight, and to direct him without collision. But if a horse has faults he is safer with a companion; though if the two have coincident faults, or could confabulate mischief together, they would be more dangerous than a single animal, yet it is in practice long chances against the two both doing wrong simultaneously. Each is a check on his fellow: the one may not want to bolt when the other does, or if one falls the other will probably keep his legs.

The tyro should take his seat uprightly and squarely, plant his feet well in front of him, grasp his reins firmly, and let his left arm play lightly from the shoulder (not the elbow), his elbows both well squared. Nothing looks so slovenly, or entails such waste of necessary power, as a slouching back, and hands sunk in the lap.

The whip should not always be used because it is handy; it is wanted to make a horse take hold of his collar if he shirks, and to feel his bit if he hangs back when there is difficulty in navigation. Unless he runs up to his bit there is little or no communication between him and his driver. The whip should be used from the wrist, not from the arm; a lash delivered from the shoulder is far less effective and much more ugly than a stroke from the wrist. A good fly-fisher never makes a bad whip in this respect.

Let the beginner commence by casting an eye over his harness; at first, rather that he may learn by inspection the place for everything and that everything is in its place; but later, when he has passed his apprenticeship, he should still do the same, and this time with a master’s eye, to see that nothing is wanting before he mounts to his seat. Let him note that the breeching, if in single harness, is neither so loose as to be useless, nor so tight as to hamper the action of the horse and to rub the hair off. Let him see that the rein is on the proper bar of the bit; else, if the horse has been accustomed to be driven from one bar, and his bitting is suddenly altered, his manners will probably change at the same time. If he is driving double harness, let him note the length of his traces, and see that his horses are properly “poled up,” else the carriage will overrun them down hill.

Having cast a careful glance round his harness, the driver will then proceed to mount.

Let him take the reins in his hand before he mounts the box, then, when seated, let the “near” or left hand rein pass between the forefinger and thumb, the “off” or right-hand rein between the fore and middle fingers—palm of the hand uppermost. Then let the grasp of all the fingers close tightly on the loop of the rein, which should pass out under the remaining fingers. Though the grasp should be tight[194] the touch should be light; let not the exercise of the muscles of grip confuse the driver into adding to this a tug from his shoulder upon his horse’s mouth. However light a horse’s mouth is, or supposing he is a slug, that does not take his collar and run up to his bit, still the driver should always feel the mouth, else he has no control over him in sudden emergency if the reins are hanging loosely. There is more danger in driving a sluggish or dead-mouthed horse in a crowd than a free goer. The latter runs up to his bit at once, and so feels your orders; the slug does not feel, and may interpret a touch of the reins to direct him into an order to stop in the teeth of a Pickford’s van, or on a level railway crossing in sight of an express. Whipcord must keep a slug to his collar, and so to his bit, or the absence of constant communication between his mouth and his driver’s hand may lead to collisions.

And now in the seat, and the grasp of the reins first secured, let the tyro make a start; not in a hurry, not with an instant dose of whipcord—a word of encouragement to his horse should suffice at first. Let him learn to allow free room for his own wheels in turning corners or passing obstacles: he has got two things to provide for, his vehicle as well as the horse. Better give a wide margin at first than collide; though before long his eye will guide him, and he need not then make himself conspicuous as a greenhorn by giving too wide berths at corners and rencontres. Go steadily round a corner; remember there is such a thing as centrifugal force; and a two-wheel vehicle, high hung, may easily be upset to the outside by a hasty whisk round a sharp corner, even without the help of a bank to lift the inner wheel.

Then, as to the rule of the road. If he meets anything coming the opposite way, he must take it on his right hand; if he overtakes it, on his left; if he is overtaken he must keep to the left, and be passed on the right.

Down hill he should progress carefully, especially when on two wheels, for then the extra weight of the cart hangs on the pad or saddle on the horse’s back. A stumble and fall will probably break the shafts, certainly cut the horse’s knees, and may pitch the occupant over the splash-board. Let him hold well in, sit well back, play firmly and lightly with his hand, ready to hold up sharply in event of a stumble. Even a sure-footed horse may make a false step from the pain of a loose, sharp-pointed bit of stone cutting his frog. A judicious and timely support from the rein may save the horse and preserve his balance, by thus suddenly shifting part of the weight of his head and neck on to the carriage itself.

Next to a powerful seat, the mouth of the horse and the lightness of the hand upon it are the requisites. “Half the value of a horse is in his mouth” is an old maxim. Few owners are aware how much “manners” depend upon the bitting and handling of a horse. Shifting the rein from one bar to another makes all the difference in the going of the horse. The mouth is the link of communication between him and his driver; the bit must control him without fretting him, and the touch of the hand, unless light, deadens its own injunctions.

As the whip progresses in his craft, he will note many other minor details, apart from mere safety, which conduce to the welfare of his horse and carriage also. Though he is bound by rules of road at rencontre, he may choose his own path when all is clear; he need not take his share of rolling into shape newly-laid stones, if a smoother passage presents itself. Even if he can not altogether avoid stones, he may yet ease the draught if he can manœuvre only one wheel on to a smooth surface.—Cassell’s Sports and Pastimes.

EDUCATION FOR AND AGAINST CASTE.

By W. T. HARRIS.

We often hear in our time the fear expressed that there is a danger in too much education, and especially in a too great extension of free education at the expense of tax-payers. “Where shall society obtain its hewers of wood and its drawers of water?” is asked in an anxious tone. “Education renders people unwilling to earn their living by hand labor alone, and they resort to crime rather than work at an honest trade.” Investigation, however, does not confirm these fears. We find, upon studying social science, that those states of the world that enforce universal education are by far the greatest wealth producers and accumulators of wealth.

The statistics of the seventeen states in our nation (the seventeen that kept statistics of illiteracy in jails and prisons in 1870), show that out of a total of 110,538 prisoners, 27,581, or 25 per cent. could not write, while only 3½ per cent. of the adults of those seventeen states were illiterate—that 3½ per cent. of the population, if illiterate, furnish as many criminals as 32 per cent. of the people, if able to read and write—or that the one who can not read and write is nine times as liable to get to prison as the one who can read and write. Of course we must remember that the education of the school is powerfully reinforced by the education of the family, the community, the State, and the Church, and that the school is not the only educational influence, nor the most potent one. We must not place a too high estimate on the phase of civilization that merely keeps men out of prison. Chinese education does that, although it does not produce scientific thinkers, a literature of freedom, or a people that worship the true God, or any god that allows man to participate in his being.

We shall learn this lesson again in studying the caste education of India. The duties of each person to members of his own caste and then to the members of the other castes form the chief staple of Hindoo education. There the hewers of wood and the drawers of water are effectually provided for, first by birth and then by education.

If we desire to behold the effects of caste-education made supreme over all others, we must look carefully into East Indian life, and interpret it by its laws, religion, and philosophy. The division of labor is necessary in order that men may gain the requisite skill to conquer nature. Food, clothing, and shelter are rendered necessary by nature—that is to say, by our bodies—and can be supplied only by nature—the mineral, vegetable, and animal realms. Besides food, clothing, and shelter, there is the fourth want, that of culture or spiritual direction, and the fifth want, or that of protection,—the realm of religious and scientific education, and the realm of the political government.

In India one caste is devoted to spiritual direction—the Brahmin, which reads and interprets the Vedas and gives counsel to the rulers of the state. Next is the Kshatrya, or warrior caste, that manage the secular or political government, with the counsel and advice of the Brahmins. Then the food, clothing, and shelter providers, who devote themselves to agriculture and the arts and trades of commerce, form a third caste, the Vaisyas; and lastly is the Sudra caste, which consists of day-laborers, or servants. The caste is determined by birth, not by the free choice of the individual, but by an accident of nature. For the East Indian the division of labor is the great divine fact of life. Brahma, the highest god, created the caste of Brahmins from his head, the warriors from his arms, the trades peoples from his loins, and the servants from his feet. Manu says that the first part of the name of a Brahmin ought to[195] express sanctity; of a warrior power; of a merchant wealth; of a laborer contempt. The second part of the Brahmin’s name should express blessing; of a warrior protection; of a merchant means of subsistence; of a Sudra menial servitude.

Caste being of divine origin and imposed upon man, how shall it be preserved and transmitted? The answer is a perpetual education in the duties of one’s caste and in the abnegation of all that looks toward the recognition of identity of human nature and the equality of all in the substance of manhood. The greatest possible care is taken not to educate children beyond the position into which they are born and which has been occupied by their ancestors (if they belong to one of the regular castes). By marriage other castes are produced. The Hindoo must have for his first wife one of his own caste, and then he may take one more from each caste below him. Thus the Brahmin may have four wives, three being from the lower castes; the warrior may have three wives and the merchant two, while the Sudra can have only one. The children of the wives from the lower castes are classified according to a scheme invented by one of the kings, and there are more than thirty castes in all. The chandalas have for their vocation the removal of corpses, the execution of criminals, and such impure offices. General duties, common to all castes, are very few.

What is a virtue in one caste may be a sin in another. The duties are prescribed with such minuteness that a very complex system arises for each person, which must be obeyed in its smallest particular, under penalty of excommunication from one’s caste. The observances and formalities are more numerous with the higher castes. Hence even for the Brahmin, who is as a god to the other castes there is such a weight of formalities and observances that life is not worth living for him. He must perform tedious ceremonies of purification to remove the effect of the most casual accidents. Should he walk abroad and meet one of a lower caste, he must turn back and purify himself. If he should step over a rope to which a calf is tied, he must purify himself. If he should happen to look up and see the sun when setting, or at any time see it reflected in the water, he must purify himself. If he should chance to go out and get caught in a shower, he must purify himself; and so, too, if he happens to step on the wrong foot when he rises from bed. He must not look at his wife when she sneezes or gapes or eats. He must not step on a cotton seed, on a piece of broken crockery, or on ashes. When out in the sun he must look northward; when under the stars, southward; only when under a tree or a roof he may look in any direction. If he should fail to purify himself he will be excommunicated from his caste, and can be restored only by a painful ceremony.

The first, second, and third castes are of the twice-born, and they may hear the Vedas, but the Sudras must not read, nor hear read, those holy books. Burning hot oil poured into his ears was the penalty for breaking this law. If the Sudra were to speak evil of a Brahmin or warrior or merchant, the code of Manu decrees that a red-hot iron bar shall be thrust into his mouth.

There is more respect shown toward cows than toward the lowest caste of human beings. In fact, the Hindoo will not tread upon ants nor kill brute animals, but founds hospitals for sick or aged cows and monkeys, while he is entirely indifferent to the sufferings of a man from a lower caste.

The women, even of the highest caste, are treated like lower castes in spiritual things,—no woman is allowed to read the Vedas or to become learned. The children of whatever caste, too, may be sacrificed to the deities by their parents. A mother may throw her child, especially if it be a girl, into the Ganges, or any sacred river. The women are excluded from education, and are given in marriage in their seventh or eighth year. A woman who is discovered to possess a knowledge of reading and writing draws down upon her head the most severe condemnation. There is one exception to this in the dancing girls, and the bayaderes, who are purchased from poor parents for service at the temples. These are taught by the priests reading and writing, music, dancing, and singing, as well as the female arts of coquetry. They are dedicated to the gods, and do not learn housework.

Although the warrior caste and merchant caste may read the Vedas, they must do it under the supervision of the Brahmins.

Elementary instruction to the regenerated, or twice born, includes reading, writing, and arithmetic. The children learn to form letters on the sand first, and afterward on palm leaves with an iron pencil; at last with ink on plantain leaves. The monitorial system is practiced—one child hearing the other recite his lesson and assisting him to learn it. The Brahmin’s children are in all cases treated with partiality.

The chief branch of study in school is, of course, the Vedas, or holy books. This exercise must be approached with due ceremony—of girding with bands, purification, consecrated fires, and solemn ceremonies performed morning, noon, and night. The pupil must seize his teacher’s feet before he begins, and then read with clasped hands, and at the close of his reading again seize his master’s feet. This ceremony of greeting his teacher he performs by crossing his hands and taking his master’s right foot in his right hand and the left foot in his left hand.

Pupils generally reside with their teachers—in a sort of boarding-school—each teacher having the care of ten or twelve pupils. A very strict surveillance is kept up.

“Without his teacher the pupil must not enter a house nor look to the right or left, but bend his look to the ground as he follows behind his teacher.” “When reading the holy scriptures one must not cough nor take any food or drink. In blowing the nose one must not make too much noise—nor spit in a clean place—nor offer tea with his hand—he must hold his arm-sleeve before his mouth when he gapes—he must not smack his lips when he eats nor scratch his head.” Such directions are found in the educational code. We often find sublime moral duties intermingled with trivial details of ceremonial. If the pupil does not say “Om” on beginning and ending his reading of the Vedas, the exercise will do him no good.

The moral maxims are taught in the form of fables. The book used is what we know as the Fables of Bidpai (“Friend of Science”) from an Indian work, which was rewritten as the Hitopadesa (“Friendly Advice”) some centuries ago. It contains profound ethical wisdom, mixed with some things whimsical and absurd. Proverbs are quoted at every turn, being strung on the thread of the fable, like glittering stones on a necklace.

The instruction of the Brahmin’s son extended to the philosophic doctrines of Hindoo pantheism. To understand the nature of this pantheism is most important. There is Brahm—above all the individual gods. Brahm expresses pure abstraction from all distinctions—merely to think it is to become unconscious of all things. Brahma is the personification of that substance (Brahm) as the creator, Vishnu as the preserver, and Siva as the destroyer. Below these high gods there are terrestrial ones presided over by Indra, the Hindoo Jupiter, ruler of the sky. Creation is not an act of the will of deity, but a sort of emanation “like the growth of plants from seed or the hair from the head.” The world proceeds from nothingness, growing out of Brahma, and returns into nothingness—it is all an illusion, a sort of dream, which the Hindoo calls “Maya.” Brahm[196] is the substance of all the gods, and of the beings of the world, and hence all their differences vanish to the Brahmin, who meditates long enough to reach the idea of Brahm. Hence the highest aim of education is to reach this annihilation of all distinction—passing beyond all the gods, even to Brahm.

The Sankhya philosophy expresses this doctrine of annihilation of all particular things and beings through reflection: “So through the study of principles the conclusive, incontrovertible, one only knowledge, is attained, that neither I am nor is aught mine, nor do I exist.”

One must not suppose that the Hindoo education is so complete that the lower castes remain without aspiration. They learn by degrees in what rests the power of the Brahmin to ascend above the gods by the exercise of meditation and abstraction. This is taught in the Bhagavad Gita—even a Sudra can by meditation come to Brahm.[H] The lower castes may become partakers of the divine life through regeneration—“immense self-denial, torture and penance” are requisite. They become “yogis,” and undertake some painful exercise, such as standing for twelve years without once lying down, then clasping the hands over the head for another twelve years; then a third grade by standing between four fires and the tropical sun, afterward swinging backward and forward over a fire for nearly four hours; lastly, if life is not extinct, being buried alive for the same length of time. If he lives still, the devotee has now become a Brahmin.

From the bondage of caste there is therefore one possible escape—through self-torture and penance,—but the remedy is as bad as the disease. It was Buddha who taught a doctrine that furnished a real relief from all this in the utter abolition of the caste system. Driven out of India, this doctrine spread throughout Ceylon, Farther India, China, Thibet, and among the Tartars of Siberia, and to this day numbers more human beings in its faith than any other form of religion. It gives all families a chance to ascend to the highest state of religious culture.

Buddhistic emancipation is from the rigid bonds of family as well as from caste. Any family having four sons must devote one to a monastic life. This demands the renunciation of all personal wishes and longings—all desires, all pride, and anger, and stubbornness; then the devotee reaches Nirvana and all will and consciousness have sunk into the rest and quiet of non-existence, and are purified of all finitude and special existence. In Nirvana ceases all change—no more beginning and ending—no more birth and death—perfect rest.

In the catechism of Chinese Buddhism there are ten duties prescribed: (1) Slay no living being; (2) steal not; (3) be chaste; (4) speak nothing wrong; (5) drink nothing intoxicating—these are also found in primitive Buddhism—another five duties are added relating to external rules of the order: (6) Do not perfume the hair on the top of the head, nor paint the body; (7) do not listen to songs nor attend the theater; (8) do not sit or lie on a large cushion or pillow; (9) do not eat except at meal-time; (10) do not own gold or silver, or anything of value as private property. The ideal is that of mendicancy—pious beggary.

Its ideal of the divine is no higher than that of India. God is conceived, not as a personal being having consciousness and will and love (our Christian conception), but rather as a being above personality and consciousness (the Hindoo conception). Hence the Buddhist still strives for the annihilation or extinction of his conscious individuality, just as the Indian devotee, but without those frightful penances, and without cruel laws of caste.

We can not commend the views of those who find in Buddhism, as portrayed in the “Light of Asia,” a doctrine almost or quite equal to Christianity. To us it seems to be infinitely below Christianity. Its conception of God and of God’s creation is just the opposite of the Christian conception, for in Christianity we believe God to be a personal being, who reveals himself in nature and man, and even becomes human in his Son, and dies on a cross out of love for the human race. Man can grow forever into the image of God, realizing that image in his will, his love, his intellect, because God is all there in an infinite degree, while to the Buddhist God is none of these but a being who is the negative of nature and of man too. Hence the education of Brahminism and Buddhism is based on an idea radically opposed to our own.

CONTENT.

By A. E. A.

Before the Wedding.

[197]

ROUMANIAN PEASANTS AND THEIR SONGS.

By C. F. KEARY.

A special interest, as it seems to me, belongs to every attempt to restore to a place in literature the genuine peasant speech of the Roumanians, with all its Slavisms undiluted, and showing by those Slavisms that it is not a sham peasant literature with the thoughts of educated men put into the language of a lower class. The task of contributing to this restoration has been undertaken by M. Ricard Torceanu. He has spent much time and labor in going from village to village to collect the songs, the customs, and lore of the peasants. Everything which he amassed was orally communicated to him. What he gained was often fragmentary and uncouth, but it had the advantage of being a genuine product. It would almost seem as if the villagers were beginning to forget their village songs. In a few years’ time, perhaps, these songs will be no longer to be heard, having been driven away by the new education code and by the new language which has been to a great extent substituted for the old tongue. Then these poems will remain like the last echoes of bygone days.

M. Torceanu has invented nothing, he has extenuated nothing. He has set down what he heard, and no more; he needs, therefore, to make no apology, although the poetry is often meagre and is always absolutely simple. In actual form these songs have some points of likeness to Mr. Barnes’s Dorset lays. In both the beat of four is much the most usual measure of the line; only that, owing to the difference in the accent, while in English the four-beat is often reached in only seven syllables, in the Roumanian eight are nearly always employed. A great variety of accentuation prevents the monotony which would naturally arise from the frequency of this form. And as this variety of accent can not be rendered in the English translation, more freedom has been used in the number of syllables contained in a line than is used in the original. At the same time the four-beat, when found in the original, has been generally preserved.

Alternate rhyme is the exception, the most usual thing being the couplet. Very frequently, however, four of five lines rhyme or sound together. These poets are not very particular about accurate rhyme. Untrained ears are never very exacting on this head. Our ballad literature could show countless instances of such assonance as wind, begin, him, them, am, man, etc. The Roumanians are much more liberal still—at least as appears to our ears. Some of their rhymes recall the loose assonance of old French poetry, such as the Chansons de Geste. Little distinction seems to be made between the liquids l and r, so that are and ale would pass for a proper rhyme. In singing each line is repeated twice, with a variety of accent.

The songs have one peculiarity: almost all begin with the words frunză verde, that is, green leaf. To this follows sometimes “of the so and so.” This reminds us of the beginnings of the snatches of rhyme in Mr. Browning’s “Fra Lippo Lippi”:

Occasionally the frunză verde is followed on by the name of a flower unconnected with it by any conjunction. Thus the following song begins with a line which, literally translated, is simply “green leaf, three violets;” but to make it intelligible we will borrow the form from Mr. Browning’s songs.

The same phrase frunză verde is frequently introduced into the middle of the poem. One might be tempted to suppose that when it is found there, it has been the result of the welding together of two different songs. But there are some instances where this certainly has not been the case.

Now take for a specimen the following song, characteristic enough of the greater number of these village lays:

Curious little conceits such as these, drawn from the common imagery of nature, are very characteristic of the poems. In that respect some of the songs resemble not a little some of the popular songs which one may hear in Italy, and resemble much less the popular songs of northern lands, wherein these conceits are more rare. Here is a still more simple fragment:

And here one which is far from ungraceful:

The following might seem like an imitation of Shakspere; but it is a quite true rendering from the mouth of peasants to whom Shakspere was not even a name:

This is the lament put into the mouth of a girl who has disgraced herself so far as to marry a tzigan (gipsy).

Or here again a woman’s complaint:—

This is a more passionate vein, with some adumbrations of a story in it:—

Most of the poems collected are short ones, of a kind not dissimilar from the specimens given above. There are, however, some pieces which approach more nearly to the ballad form, which are considerably longer, and contain some sort of story. Our specimens would not be representative unless we included one poem of this kind. Let this ballad stand upon its own merits, merely as a representative one, without attempting to explain or apologize for its obscurities and want of harmony. The inequality of the metre here will represent the, to our ears, irregularity of the original:—

Whether this is anything more than a fragment one may reasonably doubt, but no more than this was known to the reciter. This is of course the disadvantage of orally imparted poems, that a great portion is very often left out of the beginning, the end, or the middle. Sometimes, again, two different songs are combined into one. We can understand without much difficulty what was meant by sending the moon with a letter or message, and sending back the sun; it is not so obvious what the letter written upon the hazel-nut leaf implies. The explanation which seems the most probable is: This Roumanian peasant lover could not write. He had no means of sending a message unless the sun would be the messenger, nor of receiving a reply unless the moon would bring it. The peasants sometimes make calls by whistling against a leaf, as our peasant boys do with a piece of grass. This apparently is what is meant by the answer sent by a hazel-nut leaf. Possibly the rest of the poem, if there had been a remaining part, would have made the difficult points of this ballad more clear. We might have had a tragedy of the Ugo and Parisina sort. But all that is now covered up in night.

With one poem of a simple kind we will end this short selection:

[199]

HOME LIFE IN GERMANY.

Housekeeping in Germany is reduced to a science; an accurate knowledge of principles, gained by experiment, experience and reflection. Personal and domestic expenditures are regulated in strict accordance with the best theories in consumption of capital and consumption of labor. This is especially true in the large cities where the houses are built to accommodate eight or ten families in addition, various people below in the basements, such as shoemakers, seamstresses, and washerwomen, who are ready to give service to the herrschaften above. These houses are generally built of brick, stuccoed, and oftentimes in the early years of their existence present a very handsome front, deceiving a stranger’s eye with the impression that they are stone. The massive front door opening to the corridor which leads to the porte-cochère, is in modern houses, most ornamental. Wrought iron, in arabesque patterns, with the monogram of the owner, serves to protect the plate-glass behind. The panels of wood below are elaborately carved. This door opens to the touch of a bell attached to a rubber tube and bell which remains in the basement where the portier lives. Invariably on the inside of the door one sees in large German letters, “Bitte die Thür leise zu zumachen.” Every person entering or going out reads this request, and, while occupied with reading, naturally lets the door slam the louder. Only sly young men returning from the kneipe in the darkness feel obliged to bear it in mind. The slamming of the great corridor door, however, makes no impression upon the numerous families above, and if it chanced to be a friend of Frau Schültze who just entered the house, there is yet time for the gracious lady (gnädige frau), who probably lives up the second flight of stairs, to take off her morning cap (which a German woman is apt to wear until she hears some one coming) before her friend has time to ring the bell to her own apartment.

On each floor in the largest houses are two apartments, usually of seven or eight rooms—large enough, the Germans think, to accommodate a family of eight or nine. And if you are a foreigner, examining these houses with a view to renting, the portier frau will accompany you around, exclaiming how comfortable it all is! There is a salon in the front, a large, finely-proportioned drawing-room, with bay-window and frescoed ceiling, and inlaid floor. Then the smaller room to the right, or left, as it may chance to be, looking also on the street with two windows, and generally a balcony, is intended for the library or sitting-room. Then throwing the folding-doors wide open, between the salon and dining-room, she explains how handsome the two rooms look during a dinner party. The dining-room has an alcove with a large window looking down into the court. Then you follow her through a narrow hall, passing perhaps the bath-room, with the servants’ room above—only five feet high—coming next to the kitchen. “But the bed-rooms, where are they?” you ask, not being able longer to suppress your anxiety on this point. “Ach, hier sind die!” exclaims the astonished frau, and opens the door to two small rooms, about 10x12. You look at your companion, the significant glance is returned and you start for the next house, or up a second flight of the same, to see if the division of rooms be there as ridiculous. After visiting about twenty-five houses, however, and finding them all alike, you conclude a bed-room with a German is a secondary consideration, and as to “guest chambers,” they have never dreamed of them! Goethe was a true German in this respect, and no wiser than the rest of his countrymen. Lewis, in his biography of Goethe, never fails to express astonishment at the small, dark room, in which the great man slept and finally died. In the handsome old house at Weimar the spacious reception rooms and commodious dining-room contrast strangely with the dark little closet which is called the bed-room. I heard a German gentleman, who came to America at the time Mr. Schurz did, but who was not so successful, and who returned to Germany, and was consequently embittered with everything, say, “The Berlin houses remind me, with their swell fronts and elegant drawing-rooms, of the fashion of wearing embroidered chemisettes when the rest of the toilet is mean and contemptible.” “The Germans,” said he, “put all the elegance on the front of their houses, while the sleeping-rooms are miserably ventilated little holes.” This does not apply to the houses built recently. There is no longer such discrepancy between bed-room and salon—economy, convenience and rich designing characterize many German houses now, which would have astonished the German mind a half-century ago.

The system by which these houses are rented or occupied is worth our attention, since it has come to be a matter of great expense for one family to rent or own a single house in our large cities. Let us suppose the man who owns an apartment house in a large German city to have a capital of $60,000 invested. He lives himself with his family in the parterre wohnung, or what we would call the first floor. The bel étage, or second floor, is the choice apartment, and rents, if the house be in a desirable part of the city, for 3,000 marks (a mark equals 25 or 24 cents). If the house be a double one, and this is generally the case, the first étage would bring 6,000 marks, the second étage 4,800 marks, and the third étage 3,600. He has also his own apartment, and below, the shoemaker, furnishes shoes for the family; the seamstress does the sewing and the washerwoman is the family laundress. From his capital he realizes a large percentage. The taxes are heavy, but the outlays are not great, being in most cases incidental, for the water, gas, and garbage, etc., are met by the different tenants.

As to the housekeeping in one of these apartments or wohnungs—the windows are casement style, with double glass, easy for washing but difficult for drapery. The floors are inlaid with different colored woods, and waxed. The walls are papered with rich and dark colors, and the ceilings finished in stucco. A characteristic German house will be furnished about as follows: Grand piano in the drawing-room or upright if preferred; in front of the sofa, a good imitation of Smyrna rug, (made in Silesia generally). A table stands on the rug removed from the sofa only far enough to allow a stout matron to squeeze in for a seat in one corner, which is her prerogative. Around the sofa are arranged a half dozen chairs, all belonging in color and form to the sofa. It would be unjust here not to say that the modern craze for bric-a-brac, for elegant hangings and unique furniture has penetrated the German mind as it has the English and American, and the revival of house decoration is appreciated in Germany by those who have the means to investigate the subject, but the house we describe is “pre-æsthetical” and stands for characteristic German taste, and it will be found compares most favorably with an American house before the “highly æsthetical” fever developed. The dress circle of Smyrna rug, sofa, table and chairs, is the center of attraction, but the opposite walls and the corners of the room are not neglected. The piano occupies a conspicuous position, and one or two pedestals, with choice copies from the antique, are hid in the corners. A lady’s writing desk, with delicate note paper ready for her use, a beautiful chair for her service, and a rich robe for her feet, completes a German lady’s drawing room. If she can not afford good pictures, she will have none. Steel engravings from the old masters are frequently found, but seldom oil paintings unless the parties be very wealthy or where artistic home talent prevails. How shocking many houses in America are made, by horrid crude pictures—in[200] color, houses which maintain some beauty in wood work, carpets, walls, and furniture. The portfolio of etchings which are now sent to the farthest west and all over the United States for inspection, are creating a higher taste, and it is a laudable scheme, although accompanied with exorbitant prices.

The arrangement of our Teutonic lady’s drawing-room is so national that the palace and the poor man’s house has the same link of resemblance; for if a man owns but one table and one sofa, the table will stand in front of the sofa, and the chairs around it. This impresses a foreigner as being stupid and dull, and the American or French or English woman living in Germany conscientiously avoids all proximity of sofas and tables. There is some excuse for this stupid regularity in the circles which still have the kaffee klatsch; an old and artless entertainment which traveled women eschew, and women of high rank long ago ignored, but which remains a blessing to women of moderate means and unpretentious life. The hour for the kaffee klatsch is always 4 o’clock, and each guest is requested to bring her knitting or fancy work, to take her seat at a table spread with a white cloth, upon which the kaffee stands, covered up with a quilted hood to keep it warm, and flanked on either side by large baskets of cakes. Here these innocent women sit for hours sipping coffee and knitting and gossiping to their hearts’ content. It is the hour sans-souci for the genuine “hausfrau.” In such society one can recognize the simplicity and ingenuousness of the German woman, and contrast the startling differences of education and habit with her American sisters.

Returning to the furniture of the house, we find the library, or sitting-room (wohnstube), for private libraries are rare, and only found in the house of the gelehrte. It is true that every house has Goethe, Schiller, Wyland, Heine, Schlegel’s translation of Shakspere, Humbolt’s travels, and, it may chance to be, Kant, Hegel, and Strauss, if the paternal mind cares no longer for Martin Luther. In the neighborhood of the old wartburg the memory of Luther is too sacred to allow David Strauss to lie on the same shelf with the Reformer. If the family taste runs to æsthetics more than ethics, a cabinet of rare porcelain will take the place of a book-case in the sitting-room. But in either case the inevitable sewing table stands by the window with an easy chair by its side. If the gentleman of the house has writing at home, or any business engagements, then the sewing table finds its way to the big window in the alcove of the dining-room. This room is more comfortable than an American dining-room, inasmuch as it has, in addition to the set of dining-room chairs, a sofa and some easy seats, two closed cabinets for the damask, on either side of the buffet, which glistens with glass and china. Sofa pillows and footstools are abundant, which one can not say are easily discovered in the American home. But first of all a German house is comfortable, then ornamental. “Wine, wife and song,” is the motto, as it was in the days of Martin Luther, and gemüthlich, which may mean friendly, well-disposed, good-natured, kind-hearted; snug, comfortable, lack-a-daisical, is the word which expresses the tone of home life. The bed-rooms are unattractive, as we have said. Two mahogany bedsteads, side by side, “too short than that a man can stretch himself on them, and the covering narrower than that he can wrap himself in it.” These German beds are fearfully and wonderfully made, feathers below and above, pillows hid during the day under the covers, and finally, a white spread thrown over the entire mountain, in such a manner that it is impossible to distinguish head from foot.

Of late the sense of the beautiful has brought to light in the shop windows blue silk quilted spreads and lace coverings for these monstrosities, and corresponding materials for the toilet table. But the genuine hausfrau considers them a “snare and delusion.” A German lady who had just returned from a visit to America, said to me, “How do the American women make up their beds? I must come and learn. But,” added she, in the same breath, “I should think you would die under such thin covers!” The floors of the bed rooms are painted with yellow ochre and varnished. Small rugs lie in front of each bed, and before each piece of furniture. A candle, matches, and water carafe stand on the table by the bed. During the Philadelphia Exposition, a German, writing from an American hotel, observed: “How exasperating it is to go to bed in a room with no candle, only gas in the centre of the room, and innumerable chairs between one and the gas at midnight; and how dreadful to awaken and find white walls staring at one and reflecting the morning sun into one’s eyes.” Just criticism! The Germans are too highly cultivated in art to tolerate white walls, and the Americans are rapidly becoming so.

The kitchen is the German woman’s pride, and no wonder, with its shining rows of brass and copper kettles and cooking utensils, hanging so orderly against the gray wall, and the white porcelain oven, brass-doored and brass-knobbed. Does it surprise you that she likes to take a seat there every morning and talk over the menu for the day with Frederika, then unlock the pantry door and survey the clean shelves, all dressed up in perforated paper, or red leather and brass tacks, and loaded with groceries and confectioneries. What woman’s heart would not swell at the sight of such a pantry and kitchen, and such a capable, white-capped, white-aproned girl as Frederika? It is an ideal picture, but one often and often seen in Germany.

We shall make the acquaintance of German servants presently, but first some reference to the German ovens will be necessary, for it is with these that the servant’s time is first engaged in the morning and last at night. Next to the Dutch stove, the German oven is probably the most economical, and as far as mere temperature is concerned, the most effective of all warming arrangements. They are built of brick covered with porcelain and are part of the house, being built in with the walls. The cost is about seventy-five dollars for those finished with plain white tiles; but frequently the tiles are colored like majolica, and are highly decorated. In the Gewerbe Museum, of Berlin, there is a collection of tiles used in Nürnberg on the old ovens—some are most curious and beautiful. Since the spirit of decorative art is reviving in Germany, as elsewhere, the artists of highest rank do not consider it beneath their dignity to paint tiles or panels, or anything that can ornament the “house beautiful.” These ovens are generally built in the corner of a room, and are oftentimes eleven feet high. The fire is burned in a furnace near the bottom, and the heated smoke is made repeatedly to traverse the structure from side to side along the winding passage before it reaches the top, where a pipe conveys it, when comparatively cold, into a flue in the wall. The heated mass of brick continues to warm the room long after the fuel is burned. The same quantity of fuel which heats a German oven for a day is consumed in an open grate in three hours. In Northern Germany the poorer classes burn turf and charcoal, the better classes use the turf to mix with the stone-coal. Wagons of turf are brought to the front of the house early in the morning, the horses unhitched and taken away. The fuel is then carried basket by basket full, on the backs of old women, to the attic or fifth story of the house, which is divided into store rooms for the different herrschaften. On this floor is stored the wood, the coal, the turf. Early in the morning the back stairs are crowded with the various servants, from the different apartments, going up and down with their baskets of fuel. The fire must be lighted one hour before the rooms become comfortable. While the fires[201] are beginning to burn the waxed floors are being polished, which is the time in our American or English economy for cooking the breakfast. If our German friends however prefer polished floors to gladden their sight on rising, to heavy beefsteaks to warm their stomachs, what reason have we to criticise? Frederika is lighting not the kitchen fire, but a little spirit lamp underneath the “coffee machine,” or boiler, and carrying in the fresh (but cold) rolls which she has just received from the baker’s wife at the back door, and in ten minutes she will formally announce to the gnädigen herrn and the gnädiger frau (gracious lord and gracious lady) that “frühstück ist fertig” (breakfast is ready). The gnädiger herr will appear wrapped up in a heavy morning wrapper (made of gray cloth, trimmed in mazarine blue) with newspaper in hand, and the gnädige frau will take her seat at the table where the coffee is sending up its smoke. She looks, in her morning cap and white apron, surely as healthy as her English sisters, and much more so than the beautiful but frail American woman, who sits eating her mutton chops and warm muffins. Who shall settle the question if doctors disagree? Continental Europe has existed on coffee and cold bread and eggs and never had dyspepsia, while England and America have grown fat or nervous on the beefsteak and muffins.

The German washing is so well-known, and has afforded so much amusement, that I would not overthrow the traditions; yet after a long residence in Germany, and an experience of years in keeping house in a German apartment, I learned to regard the “grosse wäsche” as a necessary development of the apartment system of keeping house. For instance, there is one common wash-room, and one drying-room; the family in the parterre wohnung engage it the first two days in the week, then it belongs to the family on the opposite side of the house, and successively to the other inmates of the house, so that weekly occupancy is out of the question. But a foreigner can escape this egregious imposition by sending the washing out of the house every week and waiting patiently for it to return in ten days.

I was asked repeatedly by my German lady friends, “Where is your wedding chest of linen?” meaning a carved cedar chest containing a wedding dowry of linen, enough to last through four generations, which is quite the thing to be inspected by one’s intimate friends, more than the trousseau. How should an American woman answer such a question, or place herself in the favorable estimation of her good German friends again after shocking their education and hereditary taste by confessing that her house linen was only sufficient for present use. There is a sense of pride in the monthly washing in Germany little dreamed of by the general observer.

A cook, a house-girl, or kindermädchen, and a man-servant (diener) are the usual number of domestics employed by a well-to-do German family where there are children. If there are no children, a cook and diener are sufficient help, even in a large city. In the country one girl is enough. She is “Jack-of-all-trades,” and gets poor pay and less praise for her proficiency. Her brawny arms and rosy cheeks are only found admirable by some wandering artist, who makes a hasty sketch of her carrying water from the village fountain. Among people who keep up any social style a diener in livery is indispensable. He opens the door, serves at table, sets the table, polishes the floors, does the errands, carries the invitation, walks behind the ladies when they go out, or sits on the box with the coachman when they are driving. Above all, he keeps Frederika in a good humor by polishing the doors of her oven, and sipping coffee with her while the herrschaften are sipping theirs. She learns to call him her “lieber Schatz,” and by and by, Frederika’s head becomes turned, and the cooking is not so perfect. The wages of this diener are not large according to American ideas; he receives, according to his ability, per month, twenty thalers, ten thalers, five, or even two and a half, if he is young, and has never served outside a restaurant. In addition to his wages, he gets good food, or the equivalent in money, which he generally prefers, for he can then go to the bier garten and get his meals, or eat with the family of the porter below. A servant must understand his or her work distinctly before entering into an engagement. Each must have a book in which the employer can read the date of birth, place of birth, the occupation of parents, the character of the employe, the recommendation or condemnation of the last employer. This book is kept by the lady of the house as long as the servant remains in her service, and when leaving, if the person has been faithful, she is expected to write a good recommendation in the book. There are two classes of cooks in Germany—the finished cook (die fertige köchin), and the cook who is willing to do any kind of work. Die fertige köchin is an educated queen in her department, and like every autocrat, her power renders her unaccountable for her actions. She prefers to do the marketing, and is in league with all the grocers and butchers. This coalition of butchers, bakers, grocers, and cooks in Germany is a confederacy which threatens the hausfrau, the baroness and royal household alike. Socialism is a ubiquitous monster, and who feels it more than the helpless woman with her account books before her, knowing there is no remedy if the cook says “Meat has risen, and the butcher would not take less.” An unending task in a European kitchen is dish washing, for six dozen plates in serving the dinner there go no farther than one dozen in the ordinary American way. The diener is expected to help the cook in this work, and once a week a schauer frau (scouring woman, or woman inspector), comes to help. It is a distracting day in the wirthschaft, and serves as a weekly reminder of what is to come before Christmas and Easter. This schauer frau comes early in the morning, tears down all the kitchen utensils, takes off the brass oven doors, sets all the copper kettles and tin ware in a row, and goes to work scouring them as bright as we would think necessary for a spring cleaning. Then she washes the windows, scrubs the floors, and returns with her fifteen silver groschen in the evening as contented as a woman in America would be with a dollar. Christmas and Easter are the seasons above all other times of the year for thorough cleaning. Then the floors are so highly polished, and the brass knobs and doors of the porcelain ovens made so brilliant that the servants go around in felt slippers and old gloves, for fear of dimming the luster before the dawn of the sacred days. Christmas is an expensive season for the herrschaften—so many presents expected: the cook, the diener, the porter and the portier frau, the lamp lighter, the gas man, the butcher, the baker, and candlestick-maker, and above all, the letter carrier. Eight and five dollars are small amounts for the cook and diener. But we must remember the cook’s small wages during the year (from five to twelve dollars is the usual monthly wages), before pronouncing the Christmas gift too much.

Feiertage, or holidays for servants in Germany, are a great annoyance to the order of domestic life. They are so importunant in their demands, and so obstinately disagreeable if not gratified, that it is better for the family to go to the restaurant for dinner and “eat bitter herbs where there is peace,” than to remain at home for “a stalled ox,” with angry servants to serve it. While they demand so much for themselves, they are equally disappointed if the herrschaften do not celebrate every birthday of their own. The extra work is no consideration, and by touching little ways they show their pleasure when extra company is expected. Bouquets are placed on the coffee table by the plate of the[202] member of the family whose birthday has arrived; a cake, with the number of candles to indicate the age of the person is found burning, and Frederika and August have broad smiles on their faces as they come in and rattle off some poetry which they have committed to memory for the occasion, wishing the person whose birthday they are celebrating glück and heil.

Dinner parties are the most frequent and most formal entertainments in Germany. They are stereotyped, but the type belongs purely to Germany. When the ladies enter the room, after the introductions they are invited to be seated on the sofa and chairs of the “dress-circle” which we have described. The gentlemen stand around the fair ones, bending or breaking their backs in the effort to talk, or the more unconcerned stand off in groups, learning from the hostess at the earliest moment which ladies they are to escort to the table. The seat on the sofa is the seat of honor, and if a lady of inferior rank has arrived first and occupied that place, she rises immediately and resigns it on seeing her superior enter the room; so that a captain’s wife will offer the seat to a major’s wife, and a major’s wife to a general’s wife, and so on. The white-gloved diener throws open the doors of the dining-room ten minutes after the arrival of the guests, and the guests have the privilege of speaking to each other at the table if an introduction has failed in any case in the salon. The dinner is served entirely from the buffet; the snowy damask, flowers and glass are only presented upon the table for the guests to feast their eyes upon. The meats are all carved in the kitchen, and handed around by the servants. A good menu resembles the French taste and order somewhat, although a discerning eye will detect the German element in the following:

There is much leisure, much conversation, and much “toasting,” at a German dinner. Instead of the ladies retiring when the cigars and coffee are served, as they do in England, the gentlemen and ladies leave the table at the same time, and upon entering the salon each guest goes to the host and hostess and offers his or her hand, saying in the most gracious manner, “gesegnete malzeit.” The guests all shake hands with each other and repeat the same, and then the gentlemen go into the library to smoke, and coffee is taken to them, as it is also brought to the ladies in the salon. The German hostess does not dress for her dinner parties as much as the English women. She is never décolleté—generally appears in light or black silk, square neck and half sleeves, with long white gloves. When the hour for departure comes, the diener goes down to the street corner, orders a droschke (cab) for those who have not private carriages, for one mark (twenty-five cents), the old kutcher will drive away the happy or weary guest, and the diener returns with a bright countenance and full pocket, having received from each guest in the corridor below enough “five silver groschens” to take Frederika to twenty concerts, and buy as many glasses of beer as they want. And so goes life in the “Vaterland!”

THE VALUE OF GOOD FOOD.

The food which you give to your body keeps it for long years unwasted and unworn, besides giving it the power by which it works and moves. The food, to you, is maintenance as well as strength. You do not destroy yourself by the labor you get through.

The bread and meat which you eat, first get changed into the substance of your body; actually become flesh and blood; then as flesh and blood they perform a certain amount of useful labor. Like the iron of the steam engine, they are worn away by the work; but that is not of any real consequence, because fresh food will make fresh flesh and blood, capable of doing fresh work. You therefore are fed, not only that you may be able to work, but also that you may be kept in repair while you are working, at least during some three-score years and ten.

The food first renews the worn body, and then it is the renewed body which is worn again by work, yet again to be renewed. Here, indeed, is a wonderful difference between the divinely-planned mechanism and the mechanism made by human hands.

Coal does something for the steam engine besides setting it to work—it makes it warm. Soon after the fire has been lit in the furnace, the iron gets furiously hot, and the water in the boiler turns into scalding steam; all this heat really comes out of the coal. It was hidden away in the black mass, and only required that to be placed in the furnace, to be set light to, and to be blown upon by a draught of air, in order that it might be brought out and made serviceable. One pound of coal has heat enough hidden away in it to boil sixty pints of water.

But your body is too warm. And where do you think it gets its heat from? Starve yourself for a day or two, and you will find this out. You will, under such circumstances, feel colder and colder, as well as getting weaker and weaker. A good nourishing meal on the other hand, will directly make you glow with warmth. Food warms the body, as it furnishes it with strength. There is as much heat produced in your body in a single year, as would be sufficient to turn eleven tons of ice into steam; as much in a single day, as would boil eighty pints of water.

Food, then, does three distinct things for the living body, and the living body must be duly fed at proper intervals, in order that three distinct ends may be gained. It keeps the body warm. It maintains it in a state of repair, notwithstanding the wear and tear to which it is exposed while laboring. And it gives it strength and power. Weigh out two pounds of bread and meat, and look at them. The two pounds make no very great show. But eat them, and in the wonderful contrivances of your body, those two pounds of bread and meat will sustain its machinery unwasted during the exertion of a fair day’s work, and in addition to this will supply heat enough to make eighty pints of water boil, and strength enough to lift a ton weight one mile!

In order that food may render these important services, it is necessary that it shall be wisely chosen, and no less wisely used. Many men get wasting disease and death out of food, in the place of nourishment, warmth, and vigor. If we were to heap up wet sand in the furnace of the steam engine, instead of coal, fire would be smothered, and the movement of the machinery stopped. If we were to heap up gunpowder there, the whole would be blown into fragments in a moment. Or so again, the fire of the furnace might be extinguished by smothering it with too great an abundance of coal; or it might be allowed to smoulder and die out for want. Exactly in the same way the fire and strength of the living body may be smothered by a too heavy load, or by a bad kind of food. Or it may be fanned into the explosion of destructive inflammation and fever. It is important, therefore,[203] that everyone should know what right food is, and how good food requires to be managed. When I go down to see my friend’s yarn-spinning steam engine, I find that a very great amount of care is bestowed upon its feeding. Only the most suitable coal is supplied for its consumption, and the stoker who feeds it is chosen from among his companion workmen for his judgment, and he is trained to be exceedingly careful, watching its wants, and studying its appetite, so as to give exactly what it can manage, a little and often, never allowing the furnace to be either too hungry or too much gorged.

My friend is ten times more particular about the feeding of his steam engine, than he is about the feeding of himself, and in this respect he is pretty much like the rest of mankind. Men select and regulate, with the most careful thought, what they put into the furnaces of their machinery; but into those delicate and sensible living furnaces which they carry about in their own bodies, they toss with reckless indifference, now, as it were, lumps of lead, and now explosive gunpowder. There is, indeed, sad need that men should be made more thoughtful than they are about feeding their bodies. As a guardian and supporter of the health, good food stands close by the side of fresh air and pure water. Bad feeding, on the other hand, is the ally of foul air and deficiency of water, in bringing about disorder. Improper management in feeding, then, is another way in which men lay up for themselves disease and suffering, and cause sickness to take the place of health.

Man’s food consists of an almost endless variety of substances. The surface of the earth is covered with things which man can eat, and get strength out of. This is a very bountiful arrangement, made by Divine Providence, in order that the rapidly increasing multitudes of the human race may be supported. Into whatever diversity of climate or country man can go, there he finds a rich abundance of the nourishment which the continued well-being of his body requires. In the hot tropics he gathers bread-fruit from the trees, and plucks rice from the ground. In temperate lands he covers the soil with corn, and pastures beef-yielding oxen and mutton-affording sheep upon the grass. In the frozen wastes that lie near the poles, he gets whale-blubber and seal-oil from the inhabitants of the ocean. The water teems every where with fish, the air with fowl, and the solid ground is literally painted green with fattening grass. Nearly all food substances are, however, more or less solid bodies, in order that they may be kept conveniently in store until they are immediately needed, and it is, therefore, a natural result of this arrangement that they have to undergo a sort of preparation before they can be put to use. The several parts of the body which have to be nourished are far more delicate than the finest hairs. Now suppose that you were set to get beef and bread into hairs, I fancy you would find yourself rather puzzled by the task. God however is not so puzzled. He pours beef and bread into fibres that are as much smaller than hairs, as hairs themselves are smaller than men six feet high and three feet round. You will, no doubt, like to learn how this is done.

The All-wise and Almighty Designer of life has seen fit to employ in the work an agent that is already familiar to us. This agent is pure water. God washes food into the body, exactly as he washes worn-up material out of it. The very water, indeed, which carries away the waste, has in the first instance carried in the food. God has laid down pipes of supply which run every where through the structures of the body, exactly as he has laid down the drain-pipes. These pipes branch out to the hair, the eyes, the head, the feet, the flesh, the bones, and the skin. At the beginning of the supply pipes there is a great pump always at work, pumping on the supply. This pump is called the heart. Place your hand on the left side of your chest, and you will feel how this heart is springing at its pumping work. You will be sensible that it is raising itself up at its labor, at every stroke, so determined is the exertion of its strength. The supply-pipes are termed arteries. One large arterial pipe comes out from the heart, and then sends out branches in all directions, very much like the water-pipes sent out from the great reservoir into all the houses of a town. The branch-pipes get smaller and smaller as they go from the main, until at last they are many times smaller than the smallest hair. The food that is washed through the branching supply-pipes, by the strokes of the heart, is called blood. There are about twenty pounds of blood in the body of a full grown, active man; of these twenty pounds nearly sixteen are nothing else than pure water, the other four pounds are the finely divided food which is being hurried along by the water. This then is what I mean when I say that the food is washed into the body, by the agency of water. Take the finest needle you can find, and stick its point any where into your body, and you will find that blood will rush out of the hole. This will show you what great care has been taken to send supply-pipes everywhere. There is no spot, however small, into which a needle point can be thrust without wounding a supply-pipe. When the heart pumps, red blood thus flushes through every portion of the living frame, repairing and warming it, and supporting it in its offices. But you will say I have not yet proved my case. Food is washed out of the heart to all parts of the body. This heart, however, is already in the body. There is therefore no washing of the food into the body here. It is already in, when it is pumped from the heart; but where does the heart get the blood from, which it pumps onwards? How can it be shown that the blood comes from the food? This is to be my next step. I am going on to explain to you that the heart gets its blood from the food which is eaten; that the blood indeed is finely divided food given up to the carrying power of water; food finely prepared for its task of nourishing the living frame. How then is the food thus prepared? how is solid food turned into liquid and easily flowing blood?

Food is turned into blood by being digested. Men have digesting bags, more commonly known under the name of stomachs, inside of them, into which portions of digestible substances are placed from time to time. These inside digesting bags are particularly convenient, because when a fair quantity of food is once packed away there, men may move about in pursuit of their business without having to give any further heed to the digesting work that is going on in their behoof. Before, however, food is passed down into the digesting bag, it is first ground in a powerful mill, and mixed up with liquid into a sort of paste. The mill has many pairs of very hard stones set in rows over against each other. It is called the mouth, and the stones are termed teeth. The liquid, which makes the ground food into paste, is poured out from little taps laid on in the mill or mouth, and is called the saliva.

When the ground and moistened food has been deposited in the stomach, more liquid is poured out upon it there. This liquid is termed the “gastric” or stomach juice. Next it is shaken, and churned up, and turned over by the movements of the stomach-bag. After a few hours’ churning, it has become so soft and pulpy from the soaking, that it is ready to advance another stage. Then a sort of sluice-gate at the end of the stomach is opened, and down the pulp goes into the bowel, there to be mixed with another liquid called bile, or liver juice, and the soaking or digestion is completed. The pulp then consists of two things—a white milk-like liquid; that is the rich and nourishing part of the food, ground and soaked down to the utmost fineness, and mingled with some of the water which has been drunk. And a coarse solid substance, still undigested; that is the[204] waste part of the food which has resisted the dissolving power of the stomach, and is on its way to be rejected as good for nothing. The white milk-like essence of the food gets sucked up, by a quantity of little holes or mouths that lie all over the lining of the bowel, as the pulp moves down this canal. Then it is carried by tubes provided for the purpose into one main channel. This channel runs upwards until it ends in the great forcing pump. Poured into the heart, it reinforces the blood which it finds there, and is sent onwards with it through the supply-pipes. This is how food becomes blood.

But there are certain distinct and different principles which the body requires should be furnished to it, out of food. You stand there very firmly on the ground, and you look jolly and substantial enough. I should think from your appearance you have been in no way stinted in the matter of supplies. I estimate, at a guess, that your substantial body would weigh, some one hundred and fifty pounds, if placed in the scales. Now what do you think the greater part of those one hundred and fifty pounds is composed of. Bones? Not exactly, you are too soft for that. Flesh? There seems plenty of flesh, but the flesh is not the most abundant element. Brains? I am afraid they are less than the flesh. No. You will wonder indeed when I tell you that three-quarters of that firm and well-knit frame are nothing else but water. If I were to take your body and dry it until all its water was gone, there would remain behind nothing but thirty-seven pounds of dry mummy-substance, in the place of the original one hundred and fifty pounds; one hundred and thirteen pounds of water would have steamed away. You will see then that water must be furnished in fair quantity, with or in the food. You have heard, I do not doubt, many horrible and sad things which have happened when people have been kept a long time without water. Thanks to the bounty of Providence, this privation is, however, one that very rarely occurs.

But now, supposing that we have steamed away the one hundred and thirteen pounds of water, and that there are left behind thirty-seven pounds of dry substance, what does that substance consist of? It still contains several distinct things, which have had entirely distinct offices to perform in the living frame.

First, you know, there is that flesh, which makes so comely a show. Now, we shall be able to find out how much there really is of flesh. Of dry flesh-substance, including a little skin and jelly, there are seventeen pounds, and that is the working part of the frame. It is by its means the ton-weight can be lifted one mile high in a single day, and that all the moving and acting, of whatever kind, are effected. Remember, then, that the acting part of the living body is flesh-substance, and that of that flesh-substance there are not more than seventeen pounds in a full-grown man.

While your body is alive, there is a hard frame-work inside of it, upon which the soft flesh is fixed, in order that it may be kept in a convenient and durable form, and around which the water is packed in a countless myriad of chambers, and vessels, and porous fibres. The hard internal frame-work is composed of what are called bones. In the dried mummy, left when the moisture is all gone from the body, there are rather more than nine pounds of this mineral bone-substance. But there are also nearly three-quarters of a pound of other mineral substances, which were scattered about in various situations, and which were employed for various purposes. There is salt which was in the saliva, in the gristle, and in the blood. There is flint which was in the hair. There is iron which was in the blood. There is potash which was mixed with the flesh-substance. There are lime and phosphorus in the hard millstones—the teeth; and there is phosphorus, which was in the nerves and the brain. These mineral substances with the bone-earth, which is principally a kind of lime, form together the ash or dust which is returned to the ground after the body has decayed. It is the flesh-substance which flies away to become poison-vapor in the air.

But besides water to do transporting work, flesh substance to do active mechanical or moving work, and mineral substance to do passive mechanical or supporting work, there is yet another kind of material within the body. You have as much as six pounds of fat, scattered about or packed away amid the seventeen pounds of dry flesh. What can that be for? What use do you think you make of your fat? You have, I dare say, a sort of comfortable sense that it keeps you warm. You know that some of your lean neighbors cast envious eyes towards you in severe winter weather, and have chattering teeth and goose’s skins, when you are quite free from such tokens of chilliness. But you will nevertheless be surprised when I tell you what a really fiery piece of business this warming by fat is. Your fat is a store of fuel, which you are going to burn to heat your body, exactly as you burn coal in the grate to heat your room in the winter. It is oil laid by, to be consumed gradually, as a sort of liquid coal, in the furnace of the living machine. Of this, we shall, however, have to say more, by itself, by and by. For the present merely bear in mind that fat is the fuel substance which furnishes warmth to the body. It also combines with the phosphorus and with water to make up the nerve-substance and the brain-substance, which do the feeling and thinking work. These too, however, will have to be spoken of hereafter by themselves.

Let us now then take stock of the stores we have on hand, within the skin of a living body of 150 pounds weight. We have

We still want four pounds more to make up our 150. Where are we to get these? Why we have got them already. Have we not already learned that there are four pounds of freshly-digested food being washed along through the supply-pipes of the body?

As the blood is the direct source of supply to all the structures of the body, the material which is being poured out through the supply-pipes,—it follows that those four pounds must contain within themselves flesh-substance, mineral ash, and fuel. There are in twenty pounds of blood, sixteen pounds of water to wash along the more substantial part through the supply-pipes, three pounds ten ounces of flesh-substance, four ounces of fuel, and about two ounces of mineral matter; salt, phosphorus, lime, and the rest.

The blood is speedily exhausted of its richness, because it gives up its several ingredients to the different parts of the living frame to confer warmth, repair, and active strength upon them. The warmth is procured by burning the fat; you will easily understand that; you know that an oil lamp gets very hot whilst its flame is kept up. The repair is effected by the plastering of new matter out of the blood, upon all the different structures as they wear away. Each structure chooses for itself out of the blood what it wants, and arranges what it takes in due order. But you would now like to know how active strength is supplied by the blood. It will not be possible just now to tell you concerning[205] this, all which might be, and indeed ought to be told, because we have other and more practical things to bend our attention to. But this much you will easily comprehend. The power comes out of that very change of substance, which we call wear. The “wear” is actually the turning of the substance into power. Upon another occasion this may be made more plain.

The blood supplies what every part of the living body requires, and of course itself loses what it gives out. But the exhausted blood is in its turn renewed and refreshed by occasional supplies of food. Here then we at last arrive at the pith of the subject we are speaking of. The food supplies the blood, and the blood supplies the body. Therefore efficient and good food must have in it all the several principles required by the body—flesh, fuel, and mineral. No kind of food is sufficient to maintain vigorous life and health, which does not contain a due amount of every one of these.

When the young animal comes first into the world, its powers of digestion are weak, and it is fed for some time entirely upon a food already digested for it by the parent. This parent-prepared food of the young animal, which is called milk, of course contains within itself all the several matters which have been spoken of above, as necessary for the supply of the body. Thus when the dairy-maid curdles milk with rennet, and draws off the whey, afterwards pressing and drying the curdled part, the curd at length comes out of the press as cheese. That is the flesh-substance which was contained in the milk. When the dairy-maid turns and twists cream about in the churn, until butter collects in the midst of it—that butter is the fuel-substance, or fat, which was contained in the milk. The whey which is taken off from the cheese, or butter, is principally water; but if this water were steamed away by heat, there would remain behind a small quantity of fixed ash, which could not escape. This is the mineral-substance. Here then we have what we may term a specimen of Nature’s pattern-food. The relative proportion in which the several food-principles are contained in milk, becomes most excellent guide to the way in which they should be used in the more artificial feeding of later life. Take then as

A RECEIPT FOR PATTERN-FOOD,

the following, which expresses the relative quantities of cheese, butter, and ash, in milk:

• One ounce of Flesh-substance,
• Two ounces of Fuel-substance, and
• Ninety grains of Mineral-substance,
• To twenty-two ounces of Water.

The most extensively and generally used of all the articles of human diet is bread. It has been fittingly called “the staff of life.” Now it is a curious and remarkable fact that bread contains in itself just the same principles as milk; but it is of course drier, and has proportionally more fuel and less flesh-making substance. The flour, from which it is made, is composed of a stiff, sticky paste, and a fine white powder, well mixed up together. The paste is flesh-substance; it is nearly the same thing, indeed, as the flesh of the body, in all excepting arrangement. The powder is starch: just such as is used in the work of the laundry. Now starch is merely fat in its first stage of preparation.

When bread is well made, the rising of the dough marks the change of the store-starch into sugar and gum through fermentation. This is really a beginning of the work of digestion, and, in so far, a lightening of the task the stomach will have to perform. It is very important, however, that this change shall be carried to a proper point, and then stopped. Bread should be neither too heavy nor too light. If the former, it will not be easy enough of digestion; if the latter, some portion of the virtue will have been unnecessarily wasted. Bread contains a great deal of water, and so to a certain extent is both food and drink.

Brown bread is more rich in flesh-making substance, bulk for bulk, than fine wheaten bread, because the outer husk of the grain, which constitutes the bran, itself contains a large quantity of that material. When the dough is formed from whole meal, instead of fine flour, the cost of the bread is considerably diminished, at the same time that its bulk and weight are, even in a greater degree, increased.

Rye bread is not so pleasant in flavor as wheaten bread, but it is about equal to it in nourishment, and can be kept for months without being spoiled, which wheaten bread can not. Oatmeal can not be fermented like wheaten meal, but it is nearly as rich again in flesh-making substance. It is its very richness in this gluey material, which renders it incapable of being made into bread. Scotch men and women consume a great quantity of oatmeal as porridge and unfermented cake, and get both very fat and strong upon their food. This article of diet has, indeed, the recommendation of being very appropriate for young people, who are growing rapidly, and is fortunately, at the same time, comparatively cheap.

Milk, the pattern food, contains, it will be remembered, twice as much fuel as flesh-substance in it. But the bread contains eight times as much fuel as flesh-making substance. Consequently a great deal more bread has to be consumed to get the same amount of nourishment out of it, and then very much more fuel has been taken into the frame than is required, which has to be got rid of as waste. Hence it is both economical and wise to add to a bread diet, whenever this can be done, some other kind of food, which consists principally of flesh-substance. Butter and fat are also advantageously taken with it, because the fuel contained within bread is a great deal of it still only store-fuel, and unfit to undergo immediate burning.

The best addition that can be made to bread-diet is obviously that flesh substance which is already in a very perfect and condensed state—namely, Meat. Lean beef contains four times as much flesh-substance, weight for weight, as the most nutritious bread, and it is entirely destitute of the store-fuel, starch, of which bread has such a superabundance. Meat therefore is manifestly the natural ally of bread in the formation of a very nutritious diet. All wild animals have very little fat mixed with their flesh. It is, however, the great object of the grazing farmer to make his mutton and beef as fat as he can. Meat, as it is sent to market, commonly has one-third of its substance fat alone. Such meat approaches more nearly to the nature of bread, and indeed may almost be used instead of it, so far as its influence on the support and warming of the frame is concerned.

It is even more important how meat is cooked, than it is how bread is made.

A pound of meat loses an ounce more in baking, and an ounce and half more in roasting, than in boiling. Boiling is therefore the most economical method of the three. Meat should always be put first into boiling-hot water, because by this means the pores of the surface are at once closed fast, and the juices shut in. When meat is placed in cold water, and kept gently simmering, the juices all ooze out into the water. The latter plan is the best mode of proceeding, when the object is to make nutritious soup or broth. But when it is desired to keep the meat itself nutritious, the employment of the greater heat first is the more judicious course. So likewise in roasting, the meat should be placed at once close before a clear fierce fire, in order that by the curdling power of the heat a great coat may be formed upon it, through which the juice cannot flow; then it should be removed further away, in order that the inside may go on cooking more gradually by the heat of the imprisoned juices. When meat is placed before a dull, slow fire at the first, the[206] principal part of the gravy runs out, before the surface is hardened and closed.

The great object of cooking is the reduction of the several principles of the food into such a soluble state as will prepare them to be easily acted upon by the digestive powers of the stomach, at the same time that none of their virtue is allowed to be lost. Cooking is, indeed, properly the first stage of digestion; it is an art which the intelligence of man has taught him, in order that food may be made to go as far as possible in furnishing nourishment to living frames. By good cooking, hosts of things are converted into excellent nourishment, which would be entirely unmanageable by the stomach without such assistance. The art of cookery ought, however, never to be carried further than this. It should not strive to make men eat more than their bodies want, by furnishing the temptation of delicious flavors. Every meal should have brought together into it a due admixture of the several distinct principles, which have been named as the great requirements of the body; but there should be no greater degree of mixture than is just sufficient to ensure this. There should be flesh-substance in a half-dissolving, or tender stage. There should be a still larger amount of fuel-substance, partly fat, and partly such as is in a condition capable of being converted into fat in the stomach and blood. Mineral substance enough is sure to be present in every kind of food; and water, of course, can be added in any amount, as drink.

The potato contains twelve times as much starch as flesh-making substance; it is thus one-half less nutritious than bread. On this account it is very generally made the companion of meat.

It is of the very highest importance that any one who is likely to ever have the care of a household, whether large or small, should so far understand the objects of cooking and the principles upon which the process requires to be performed, as to be able to see that food is properly and economically prepared. If your means be small, remember that such knowledge can make that portion of your money which is devoted to the purchase of food, go as far again, and yield twice as much harmless gratification as it would otherwise do; if you have an abundance of means, then the knowledge may be made serviceable in providing only such food as is suitable to the maintenance of health and strength, and the avoidance of disease. If you have a family of children to bring up, and have plenty of money to do it with, you are perfectly right to furnish them with every accomplishment, and every advantage learning confers; but never forget that no woman is ever less accomplished because she knows something about homely household concerns,—cooking among them,—as well as a great deal concerning other things.

Fish very nearly resembles lean meat in its character; it is hence a very good companion to potatoes and bread. In a general way it requires to be eaten with butter or oil on account of its deficiency in this ingredient.

Fresh vegetables contain a very large proportion of water, but there is in their structure also a considerable amount of flesh-making substance, besides starch and sugar.

Fresh vegetables require, in most instances, to be boiled before they are eaten, because their juices contain disagreeable flavors, and in some instances unwholesome ingredients, which are, however, entirely removed by the influence of boiling water. Ripe fruits, on the other hand, are vegetable substances, which have been thoroughly cooked by the maturing powers of the sun, and which have also been endowed, by the hand of Nature, with the most delicious flavors, in order to tempt man to feed on them in due season; they are, so to speak, bouquets provided for the palate.

We have now to suppose that a wholesome but plain meal of good bread, and well-cooked meat and vegetables, selected and prepared according to the principles which have been explained, is set before you, and that you are about to apply these to their proper office of nourishing your body; how will you proceed? You will introduce the food, morsel after morsel, into your digesting bag. Now while you are doing this, take care to bear in mind what you are about. You are swallowing substances that will need to be brought most thoroughly within the power of the saliva and stomach-juices, in order that these may perform their wondrous dissolving work. Do not, then, forget the mill. Those ivory teeth have not been planted so firmly in your jaws for no purpose. They are meant for work, and for hard work too. Food is not intended to be bolted, but to be ground. Do not furnish one single morsel with its pass until it has been reduced to the finest pulp; then the saliva will get to every grain of the store-starch, and change it into serviceable sugar and gum, and the stomach-juice and liver-juice will get to every fibre of the flesh-substance, and reduce it to milk-white liquid, capable of entering the channels of the supply-pipes. If you bolt, instead of thoroughly grinding your food in the mill, be assured that the heavy lumps will prove too much for your digesting bag, however strong that may be. The greater portion, after having oppressed the offended stomach with their unmanageable load, will cause griping and all sorts of annoyance, and will at last be dismissed from it, undissolved and without having furnished any nourishment.

Another important thing is to get enough food if you can; the body requires to be sufficiently nourished. On the other hand, however, be very careful that you do not attempt to get more than enough. If you do try to accomplish this you will fail in the attempt, and have to pay a heavy penalty for your failure. Thousands upon thousands of people do try, and do fail, and then pay such penalties. You have heard it said that enough is as good as a feast. This is only a half-truth, it does not go sufficiently far. Enough is far better than a feast, if “a feast,” means more than enough. There is more danger really in over-feeding, than under-feeding. Countless numbers of underfed countrymen work through a long life in the fields, in happiness and contentment, and arrive at old age, almost without an hour of illness. But every overfed man sooner or later has to go to bed, and send for the doctor to help him to get rid either of rheumatism, or fever, or gout, or inflammation, which are forms of disorder into which superfluous food often changes itself. The life of labor and short commons, has upon the whole a much larger share of happiness, than the life of laziness and luxury.

But what is enough? That in regard to the feeding is a very serious question. At the first glance, too, it seems to be one which is not altogether easy to answer, because some men require more food than others, just as some steam engines consume more coal than others, to keep themselves moving; and just as some lamps take more oil than others, to keep up their flames. It is, nevertheless, a question which may be very easily answered. Every man who eats his meal slowly and deliberately,—not forgetting the mill,—has had enough when his appetite is satisfied. Appetite really is Nature’s own guard. It is ruled, not by the state of the stomach, but by the condition of the blood. When so much blood has been taken from the supply-pipes of your body, by the working parts, that those pipes begin to be comparatively empty, their emptiness makes itself felt in your frame as hunger. Obedient to the hint, you find up food and eat. But while you are eating what happens? First you seize the food with all the keen relish of a hungry man. Then as you eat on, the relish becomes less and less, and if your meal be a simple one, when you have had enough, all relish has disappeared, and the very things that[207] tasted so deliciously at first, are insipid, so that you find no farther enjoyment in the act of grinding and swallowing them. Go on eating after this, and the insipidity will be transformed into disgust; and if notwithstanding this you still persevere in forcing food into your stomach, that sensible organ will at last rebel against the tyranny, and return the whole which it has received upon your hands. Then it will be some little time before the stomach gets over the insult. Consequently the blood remains all this while in the impoverished state, and the result of the over-gorge is that the body itself is actually starved, instead of being feasted. If when your natural appetite for food is satisfied, and your enjoyment and relish of it have ceased, you have rich and high flavored dishes set before you, the high-flavors will then still prove agreeable to the palate, and act upon it as a sort of excitement, and the natural appetite will have its work superseded by a false and artificial one, and you will go on eating under this temptation, until your stomach is over-crammed. All the so-called luxuries of cooking are merely devices to make men eat more, who have already eaten enough.

But when men who have already eaten enough, eat more, what must happen? one of two things—either the stomach, being particularly vigorous, will get through an extra amount of work; then there will be more blood sent into the supply pipes than the body requires, and the frame will be everywhere stuffed and oppressed with the load, to the danger of inflammations, rheumatism, and other like disorders being set up: or the stomach will be unequal to the task of doing extra work; then the food which can not be digested will decay and putrify in the stomach and bowels, producing there all sorts of poison vapors and disagreeable products, which will lead to stomach and bowel disorders, until nature, or the doctor, finds some way for their removal, or until something worse takes place.

Thrice favored is he who is not daily exposed to the dangers of a luxurious table. Money, after all, is not in itself a blessing. It is only a blessing when it is possessed by those who know how to employ it for good purposes. In the hands of men who do not know how to employ it so, it often proves to be a curse.

Food which is already in a state of commencing putrefaction or decay, is always dangerous for this reason: it forms poison vapors and injurious products in the stomach, before its digestion can be completed in the natural way. If, however, meat about to be used is at any time found to be tainted, it will be at once rendered wholesome, if the most tainted part be cut away, the cut part being rubbed with a piece of charcoal, and the joint be then well boiled in water, in which a piece of charcoal has been placed.

Here, then, in conclusion, are two or three golden rules for the management of your feeding:

Never have any but the plainest and simplest food placed before you when you are hungry, whether you be rich or whether you be poor.

Eat of it until you find the relish for it disappearing.

There stop, and on no consideration swallow another mouthful, until the sense of appetite and relish comes back to you.

A PETITION TO TIME.

By B. W. PROCTOR.

A DREAM, AND PRACTICAL LIFE.

By GOETHE and ECKERMANN.

March 12, 1828.—After I had quitted Goethe yesterday evening, the important conversation I had carried on with him remained constantly in my mind. The discourse had also been upon the sea and sea air; and Goethe had expressed the opinion that he considered all islanders and inhabitants of the sea-shore in temperate climates far more productive, and possessed of more active force, than the people in the interior of large continents.

Whether or not it was that I had fallen asleep with these thoughts, and with a certain longing for the inspiring powers of the sea; suffice it to say, I had in the night the following pleasant, and to me very remarkable dream:

I saw myself in an unknown region, amongst strange men, thoroughly cheerful and happy. The most beautiful summer day surrounded me in a charming scene, such as might be witnessed somewhere on the shores of the Mediterranean, in the south of Spain or France, or in the neighborhood of Genoa. We had been drinking at noon round a merry table, and I went with some others, rather young people, to make another party for the afternoon.

We had loitered along through bushy and pleasant low lands, when we suddenly found ourselves in the sea, upon the smallest of islands, on a jutting rock, where there was scarcely room for five or six men, and where one could not stir for fear of slipping into the water. Behind us, whence we had come, there was nothing to be seen but sea; but before us lay the shore at about a quarter of an hour’s distance, spread out most invitingly. The shore was in some places flat, in others rocky and somewhat elevated; and one might observe between green leaves and white tents, a crowd of joyous men, in light-colored clothes, recreating themselves with music, which sounded from the tents. “There is nothing else to be done,” said one of us to the other, “we must undress and swim over.” “It is all very well to say so,” said I, “you are young, handsome fellows, and good swimmers; but I swim badly, and I do not possess a shape fine enough to appear, with pleasure and comfort, before the strange people on shore.” “You are a fool,” said one of the handsomest, “undress yourself, give me your form, and you shall have mine.” At these words I undressed myself quickly, and was soon in the water, and immediately found myself in the body of the other as a powerful swimmer. I soon reached the[208] shore, and, naked, and dripping, stepped with the most easy confidence amongst the men. I was happy in the sensation of these fine limbs; my deportment was unconstrained, and I at once became intimate with the strangers, at a table before an arbor, where there was a great deal of mirth. My comrades had now reached land one by one, and had joined us, and the only one missing was the youth with my form, in whose limbs I found myself so comfortable. At last he also approached the shore, and I was asked if I was not glad to see my former self? At these words I experienced a certain discomfort, partly because I did not expect any great joy from myself, and partly because I feared my young friend would ask for his own body back again. However, I turned to the water, and saw my second self swimming close up to me, and laughing at me with his head turned a little on one side. “There is no swimming with those limbs of yours,” exclaimed he, “I have had a fine struggle against waves and breakers, and it is not to be wondered at that I have come so late, and am last of all.” I at once recognized the countenance; it was my own, but grown young, and rather fuller and broader, with the freshest complexion. He now came to land, and whilst he raised himself and first stepped along the sand, I had a view of his back and legs, and was delighted with the perfection of the form. He came up the rocky shore to us, and as he came up to me he had completely my new stature. “How is it,” thought I to myself, “that your little body has grown so handsome. Have the primeval powers of the sea operated so wonderfully upon it, or is it because the youthful spirit of my friend has penetrated the limbs?” Whilst we enjoyed ourselves together for some time, I silently wondered that my friend did not show any inclination to resume his own body. “Truly,” thought I, “he looks bravely, and it may be a matter of indifference to him in which body he is placed, but it is not the same thing to me; for I am not sure whether in that body I may not shrink and become as diminutive as before.” In order to satisfy myself on this point, I took my friend aside, and asked him how he felt in my limbs? “Perfectly well,” said he; “I have the same sensation of my own natural power as before; I do not know what you have to complain of in your limbs. They are quite right with me; and you see one only has to make the best of oneself. Remain in my body as long as you please; for I am perfectly contented to remain in yours through all futurity.” I was much pleased by this explanation, and as in all my sensations, thoughts, and recollections, I felt quite as usual, my dream gave me the impression of a perfect independence of the soul, and the possibility of a future existence in another body.

“That is a very pretty dream,” said Goethe, when, after dinner to-day, I imparted to him the principal features. “We see,” continued he, “that the muses visit you even in sleep, and, indeed, with particular favor; for you must confess that it would be difficult for you to invent anything so peculiar and pretty in your waking moments.”

“I can scarcely conceive how it happened to me,” returned I; “for I had felt so dejected all day, that the contemplation of so fresh a life was far from my mind.”

“Human nature possesses wonderful powers,” returned Goethe, “and has something good in readiness for us when we least hope for it. There have been times in my life when I have fallen asleep in tears; but in my dreams the most charming forms have come to console and to cheer me, and I have risen the next morning fresh and joyful.

“There is something more or less wrong among us old Europeans; our relations are far too artificial and complicated, our nutriment and mode of life are without their proper nature, and our social intercourse is without proper love and good will. Every one is polished and courteous; but no one has the courage to be hearty and true, so that an honest man, with natural views and feelings, stands in a very bad position. Often one can not help wishing that one had been born upon one of the South Sea Islands, a so-called savage, so as to have thoroughly enjoyed human existence in all its purity, without any adulteration.

“If in a depressed mood one reflects deeply upon the wretchedness of our age, it often occurs to one that the world is gradually approaching the last day. And the evil accumulates from generation to generation! For it is not enough that we have to suffer for the sins of our fathers, but we hand down to posterity these inherited vices increased by our own.”

“Similar thoughts often occur to me,” answered I; “but if, at such a time, I see a regiment of German dragoons ride by me, and observe the beauty and power of these young people, I again derive some consolation, and say to myself, that the durability of mankind is after all not in such a desperate plight.”

“Our country people,” returned Goethe, “have certainly kept up their strength, and will, I hope, long be able not only to furnish us with good horsemen, but also to secure us from total decay and destruction. The rural population may be regarded as a magazine, from which the forces of declining mankind are always recruited and refreshed. But just go into our great towns, and you will feel quite differently. Just take a turn by the side of a second diable boiteux, or a physician with a large practice, and he will whisper to you tales which will horrify you at the misery, and astonish you at the vice with which human nature is visited, and from which society suffers.

“But let us banish these hypochondriacal thoughts. How are you going on? What are you doing? What else have you seen to-day? Tell me, and inspire me with good thoughts.”

“I have been reading Sterne,” returned I, “where Yorick is sauntering about the streets of Paris, and makes the remark that every tenth man is a dwarf. I thought of that when you mentioned the vices of great towns. I also remember to have seen, in Napoleon’s time, among the French infantry, one battalion which consisted entirely of Parisians, who were all such puny, diminutive people, that one could not comprehend what could be done with them in battle.”

“The Scotch Highlanders, under the Duke of Wellington,” rejoined Goethe, “were doubtless heroes of another description.”

“I saw them in Brussels a year before the battle of Waterloo,” returned I. “They were, indeed, fine men; all strong, fresh, and active, as if just from the hand of their Maker. They all carried their heads so freely and gallantly, and stepped so lightly along with their strong, bare legs, that it seemed as if there were no original sin, and no ancestral failing, as far as they were concerned.”

“There is something peculiar in this,” said Goethe. “Whether it lies in the race, in the soil, in the free political constitution, or in the healthy tone of education,—certainly, the English in general appear to have certain advantages over many others. Here in Weimar, we see only a few of them, and, probably, by no means the best; but what fine, handsome people they are. And however young they come here, they feel themselves by no means strange or embarrassed in this foreign atmosphere; on the contrary, their deportment in society is as full of confidence, and as easy as if they were lords everywhere, and the whole world belonged to them. This it is which pleases our women, and by which they make such havoc in the hearts of our young ladies. As a German father of a family, who is concerned for the tranquility of his household, I often feel a slight shudder, when my daughter-in-law announces to me the[209] expected arrival of some fresh, young islander. I already see in my mind’s eye the tears which will one day flow when he takes his departure. They are dangerous young people; but this very quality of being dangerous is their virtue.”

“Still, I would not assert,” answered I, “that the young Englishmen in Weimar are more clever, more intelligent, better informed, or more excellent at heart than other people.”

“The secret does not lie in these things, my good friend,” returned Goethe. “Neither does it lie in birth and riches; it lies in the courage which they have to be that for which nature has made them. There is nothing vitiated or spoilt about them, there is nothing half-way or crooked; but such as they are, they are thoroughly complete men. That they are also sometimes complete fools, I allow with all my heart; but that is still something, and has still always some weight in the scale of nature.

“The happiness of personal freedom, the consciousness of an English name, and of the importance attached to it by other nations, is an advantage even to the children; for in their own family, as well as in scholastic establishments, they are treated with far more respect, and enjoy a far freer development, than is the case with us Germans.

“In our own dear Weimar, I need only to look out of the window to discover how matters stand with us. Lately, when the snow was lying upon the ground, and my neighbor’s children were trying their little sledges in the street, the police was immediately at hand, and I saw the poor little things fly as quickly as they could. Now, when the spring sun tempts them from the houses, and they would like to play with their companions before the door, I see them always constrained, as if they were not safe, and feared the approach of some despot of the police. Not a boy may crack a whip, or sing or shout; the police is immediately at hand to forbid it. This has the effect with us all of taming youth prematurely, and of driving out all originality and all wildness, so that in the end nothing remains but the Philistine.

“You know that scarcely a day passes in which I am not visited by some traveling foreigner. But if I were to say that I took great pleasure in the personal appearance, especially of young, learned Germans from a certain northeastern quarter, I should tell a falsehood.

“Short-sighted, pale, narrow-chested, young without youth; that is a picture of most of them as they appear to me. And if I enter into a conversation with any of them, I immediately observe that the things in which one of us takes pleasure seem to them vain and trivial, that they are entirely absorbed in the Idea, and that only the highest problems of speculation are fitted to interest them. Of sound senses or delight in the sensual, there is no trace; all youthful feeling and all youthful pleasure are driven out of them, and that irrecoverably; for if a man is not young in his twentieth year, how can he be so in his fortieth?”

Goethe sighed and was silent.

I thought of the happy time in the last century, in which Goethe’s youth fell; the summer air of Sesenheim passed before my soul, and I reminded him of the verses—

“Ah,” sighed Goethe, “those were, indeed, happy times. But we will drive them from our minds, that the dark foggy days of the present may not become quite insupportable.”

“A second Redeemer,” said I, “would be required to remove from us the seriousness, the discomfort, and the monstrous oppressiveness of the present state of things.”

“If he came,” answered Goethe, “he would be crucified a second time. Still, we by no means need anything so great. If we could only alter the Germans after the model of the English, if we could only have less philosophy and more power of action, less theory and more practice, we might obtain a good share of redemption, without waiting for the personal majesty of a second Christ. Much may be done from below by the people by means of schools and domestic education; much from above by the rulers and those in immediate connection with them.

“Thus, for instance, I can not approve the requisition, in the studies of future statesmen, of so much theoretically-learned knowledge, by which young people are ruined before their time, both in mind and body. When they enter into practical service, they possess, indeed, an immense stock of philosophical and learned matters; but in the narrow circle of their calling, this can not be practically applied, and must therefore be forgotten as useless. On the other hand, what they most needed they have lost; they are deficient in the necessary mental and bodily energy, which is quite indispensable when one would enter properly into practical life.

“And then, are not love and benevolence also needed in the life of a statesman—in the management of men? And how can any one feel and exercise benevolence toward another, when he is ill at ease with himself?

“But all these people are in a dreadfully bad case. The third part of the learned men and statesmen, shackled to the desk, are ruined in body, and consigned to the demon of hypochondria. Here there should be action from above that future generations may at least be preserved from a like destruction.

“In the meantime,” continued Goethe, smiling, “let us remain in a state of hopeful expectation as to the condition of us Germans a century hence, and whether we shall then have advanced so far as to be no longer savants and philosophers, but men.”

[210]

TALES FROM SHAKSPERE.

By CHARLES LAMB.

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM.

There was a law in the city of Athens, which gave to its citizens the power of compelling their daughters to marry whomsoever they pleased; for upon a daughter’s refusing to marry the man her father had chosen to be her husband, the father was empowered by this law to cause her to be put to death; but as fathers do not often desire the death of their own daughters, even though they do happen to prove a little refractory, this law was seldom or never put into execution, though perhaps the young ladies of that city were not unfrequently threatened by their parents with the terrors of it.

There was one instance, however, of an old man, whose name was Egeus, who actually did come before Theseus (at that time the reigning duke of Athens), to complain that his daughter Hermia, whom he had commanded to marry Demetrius, a young man of a noble Athenian family, refused to obey him, because she loved another young Athenian, named Lysander. Egeus demanded justice of Theseus, and desired that this cruel law might be put in force against his daughter.

Hermia pleaded in excuse for her disobedience, that Demetrius had formerly professed love for her dear friend Helena, and that Helena loved Demetrius to distraction; but this honorable reason, which Hermia gave for not obeying her father’s command, moved not the stern Egeus.

Theseus, though a great and merciful prince, had no power to alter the laws of his country; therefore he could only give Hermia four days to consider of it, and at the end of that time, if she still refused to marry Demetrius, she was to be put to death.

When Hermia was dismissed from the presence of the duke, she went to her lover Lysander, and told him the peril she was in, and that she must either give up him and marry Demetrius, or lose her life in four days.

Lysander was in great affliction at hearing these evil tidings, but recollecting that he had an aunt who lived at some distance from Athens, and that at the place where she lived the cruel law could not be put in force against Hermia (this law not extending beyond the boundaries of the city), he proposed to Hermia that she should steal out of her father’s house that night, and go with him to his aunt’s house, where he would marry her. “I will meet you,” said Lysander, “in the wood a few miles without the city; in that delightful wood, where we have so often walked with Helena in the pleasant month of May.”

To this proposal Hermia joyfully agreed, and she told no one of her intended flight but her friend Helena. Helena (as maidens will do foolish things for love) very ungenerously resolved to go and tell this to Demetrius, though she could hope no benefit from betraying her friend’s secret, but the poor pleasure of following her faithless lover to the wood; for she well knew that Demetrius would go thither in pursuit of Hermia.

The wood in which Lysander and Hermia proposed to meet, was the favorite haunt of those little beings known by the name of fairies. Oberon, the king, and Titania, the queen of the fairies, with all their tiny train of followers, in this wood held their midnight revels.

Between this little king and queen of sprites there happened at this time a sad disagreement, they never met by moonlight in the shady walks of this pleasant wood, but they were quarreling, till all their fairy elves would creep into acorn-cups and hide themselves for fear. The cause of this unhappy disagreement was Titania’s refusing to give Oberon a little changeling boy, whose mother had been Titania’s friend; and upon her death the fairy queen stole the child from its nurse, and brought him up in the woods.

The night on which the lovers were to meet in this wood, as Titania was walking with some of her maids of honor, she met Oberon attended by his train of fairy courtiers. “Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania,” said the fairy king. The queen replied, “What, jealous Oberon, is it you?” “Fairies, skip hence; I have forsworn his company.” “Tarry, rash fairy,” said Oberon; “am not I thy lord? Why does Titania cross her Oberon? Give me your little changeling boy to be my page.”

“Set your heart at rest,” answered the queen; “your whole fairy kingdom buys not the boy of me.” She then left her lord in great anger.

“Well, go your way,” said Oberon; “before the morning: dawns I will torment you for this injury.” Oberon then sent for Puck, his chief favorite and privy counselor.

Puck (or, as he was sometimes called, Robin Goodfellow) was a shrewd and knavish sprite, that used to play comical pranks in the neighboring villages; sometimes getting into the dairies and skimming the milk, sometimes plunging his light and airy form into the butter-churn, and while he was dancing his fantastic shape in the vessel, in vain the dairy-maid would labor to change her cream into butter: nor had the village swains any better success; whenever Puck chose to play his freaks in the brewing-copper, the ale was sure to be spoiled. When a few good neighbors were met to drink some comfortable ale together, Puck would jump into the bowl of ale in the likeness of a roasted crab, and when some old goody was going to drink, he would bob against her lips, and spill the ale over her withered chin; and presently after, when the same old dame was gravely seating herself to tell her neighbors a sad and melancholy story, Puck would slip her three-legged stool from under her, and down toppled the poor old woman, and then the gossips would hold their sides and laugh at her, and swear they never wasted a merrier hour.

“Come hither, Puck,” said Oberon to this little merry wanderer of the night; “fetch me the flower which maids call Love in Idleness; the juice of that little purple flower, laid on the eye-lids of those who sleep, will make them, when they awake, doat on the first thing they see. Some of the juice of that flower I will drop on the eyelids of my Titania, when she is asleep; and the first thing she looks upon when she opens her eyes, she will fall in love with, even though it be a lion, or a bear, a meddling monkey, or a busy ape: and before I will take this charm from off her sight, which I can do with another charm I know of, I will make her give me that boy to be my page.”

Puck, who loved mischief to his heart, was highly diverted with this intended frolic of his master, and ran to seek the flower; and while Oberon was waiting the return of Puck, he observed Demetrius and Helena enter the woods; he overheard Demetrius reproaching Helena for following him, and after many unkind words on his part, and gentle expostulations from Helena, reminding him of his former love, and professions of true faith to her, he left her (as he said) to the mercy of the wild beasts, and she ran after him as swiftly as she could.

The fairy king, who was always friendly to true lovers, felt great compassion for Helena; and perhaps, as Lysander said they used to walk by moonlight in this pleasant wood, Oberon might have seen Helena in those happy times when she was beloved by Demetrius. However that might be, when Puck returned with the little purple flower, Oberon said to his favorite, “Take a part of the flower: there has been a sweet Athenian lady here, who is in love with a disdainful youth; if you find him sleeping, drop some of the love-juice in his eyes, but contrive to do it when she is near him, that the first thing he sees when he awakes may be this despised lady. You will know the man by the Athenian[211] garments which he wears.” Puck promised to manage this matter very dexterously; and then Oberon went, unperceived by Titania, to her bower where she was preparing to go to rest. Her fairy bower was a bank, where grew wild thyme, cowslips, and sweet violets, under a canopy of woodbine, musk-roses and eglantine. There Titania always slept some part of the night; her coverlet the enamelled skin of a snake, which, though a small mantle, was wide enough to wrap a fairy in.

He found Titania giving orders to her fairies, how they were to employ themselves while she slept. “Some of you,” said her majesty, “must kill cankers in the musk-rose buds, and some wage war with the bats for their leathern wings, to make my small elves coats; and some of you keep watch that the clamorous owl, that nightly hoots, come not near me: but first sing me to sleep.” Then they began to sing this song:—

When the fairies had sung their queen asleep with this pretty lullaby, they left her, to perform the important services she had enjoined them. Oberon then softly drew near his Titania, and dropt some of the love-juice on her eye-lids, saying—

But to return to Hermia, who made her escape out of her father’s house that night, to avoid the death she was doomed to for refusing to marry Demetrius. When she entered the wood, she found her dear Lysander, waiting for her, to conduct her to his aunt’s house; but before they had passed half through the wood, Hermia was so much fatigued, that Lysander, who was very careful of this dear lady, that had proved her affection for him even by hazarding her life for his sake, persuaded her to rest till morning on a bank of soft moss; and, lying down himself on the ground at some little distance, they soon fell fast asleep. Here they were found by Puck, who, seeing a handsome young man asleep, and perceiving that his clothes were made in the Athenian fashion, and that a pretty lady was sleeping near him, concluded that this must be the Athenian maid and her disdainful lover, whom Oberon had sent him to seek; and he naturally enough conjectured that, as they were alone together, she must be the first thing he would see when he awoke; so without more ado, he proceeded to pour some of the juice of the little purple flower into his eyes. But it so fell out that Helena came that way, and, instead of Hermia, was the first object Lysander beheld when he opened his eyes; and, strange to relate, so powerful was the love-charm, all his love for Hermia vanished away, and Lysander fell in love with Helena.

Had he first seen Hermia when he awoke, the blunder Puck committed would have been of no consequence, for he could not love that faithful lady too well; but for poor Lysander to be forced by a fairy love-charm to forget his own true Hermia, and to run after another lady, and leave Hermia asleep quite alone in a wood at midnight, was a sad chance indeed.

Thus this misfortune happened. Helena, as has been before related, endeavored to keep pace with Demetrius when he ran away so rudely from her; but she could not continue this unequal race long, men being always better runners in a long race than ladies. Helena soon lost sight of Demetrius; and as she was wandering about, dejected and forlorn, she arrived at the place where Lysander was sleeping. “Ah!” said she, “this is Lysander lying on the ground; is he dead or asleep?” Then gently touching him, she said, “Good sir, if you are alive, awake.” Upon this Lysander opened his eyes, and (the love-charm beginning to work) immediately addressed her in terms of extravagant love and admiration; telling her, she as much excelled Hermia in beauty as a dove does a raven, and that he would run through fire for her sweet sake; and many more such lover-like speeches. Helena, knowing Lysander was her friend Hermia’s lover, and that he was solemnly engaged to marry her, was in the utmost rage when she heard herself addressed in this manner; for she thought (as well she might) that Lysander was making a jest of her. “Oh!” said she, “why was I born to be mocked and scorned by every one? Is it not enough, is it not enough, young man, that I can never get a sweet look or a kind word from Demetrius; but you, sir, must pretend, in this disdainful manner, to court me? I thought, Lysander, you were a lord of more true gentleness.” Saying these words in great anger, she ran away; and Lysander followed her, quite forgetful of his own Hermia, who was still asleep.

When Hermia awoke, she was in a sad fright at finding herself alone. She wandered about the wood, not knowing what was become of Lysander, or which way to go to seek for him. In the meantime Demetrius, not being able to find Hermia and his rival Lysander, and fatigued with his fruitless search, was observed by Oberon fast asleep. Oberon had learnt, by some questions he had asked of Puck, that he had applied the love-charm to the wrong person’s eyes; and now, having found the person first intended, he touched the eyelids of the sleeping Demetrius with the love-juice, and he instantly awoke; and the first thing he saw being Helena, he, as Lysander had done before, began to address love speeches to her; and just at that moment Lysander, followed by Hermia (for, through Puck’s unlucky mistake, it was now become Hermia’s turn to run after her lover), made his appearance; and then Lysander and Demetrius, both speaking together, made love to Helena, they being each one under the influence of the same potent charm.

The astonished Helena thought that Demetrius, Lysander, and her once dear friend Hermia, were all in a plot together to make a jest of her.

Hermia was as much surprised as Helena; she knew not why Lysander and Demetrius, who both before loved her, were now become the lovers of Helena; and to Hermia the matter seemed to be no jest.

The ladies, who before had always been the dearest of friends, now fell to high words together.

“Unkind Hermia,” said Helena, “it is you have set Lysander on, to vex with mock praises; and your other lover, Demetrius, who used almost to spurn me with his foot, have you not bid him call me goddess, nymph, rare, precious, and celestial? He would not speak thus to me whom he hates, if you did not set him on to make a jest of me. Unkind Hermia, to join with men in scorning your poor friend. Have you forgot our school-day friendship? How often, Hermia, have we two, sitting on one cushion, both singing one song, with our needles working the same flower, both on the same sampler wrought; growing up together in fashion of a double cherry, scarcely seeming parted? Hermia, it is not friendly in you, it is not maidenly, to join with men in scorning your poor friend.”

“I am amazed at your passionate words,” said Hermia. “I scorn you not; it seems you scorn me.”

“Ay, do,” returned Helena, “persevere; counterfeit serious looks, and make mouths at me when I turn my back; then wink at each other, and hold the sweet jest up. If you[212] had any pity, grace, or manners, you would not use me thus.”

While Helena and Hermia were speaking these angry words to each other, Demetrius and Lysander left them, to fight together in the wood for the love of Helena. When they found the gentlemen had left them, they departed, and once more wandered weary in the wood in search of their lovers.

As soon as they were gone, the king fairy, who with little Puck had been listening to their quarrels, said to him, “This is your negligence, Puck; or did you do this wilfully?” “Believe me, king of shadows,” answered Puck, “it was a mistake; did not you tell me I should know the man by his Athenian garments? However, I am not sorry this has happened, for I think their jangling makes excellent sport.” “You heard,” said Oberon, “that Demetrius and Lysander are gone to seek a convenient place to fight in. I command you to overhang the night with a thick fog, and lead these quarrelsome lovers so astray in the dark, that they shall not be able to find each other. Counterfeit each of their voices to the other, and with bitter taunts provoke them to follow you, while they think it is their rival’s tongue they hear. See you do this, till they are so weary they can go no farther; and when you find they are asleep, drop the juice of this other flower into Lysander’s eyes, and when he awakes he will forget his new love for Helena, and return to his old passion for Hermia; and then the two fair ladies may each one be happy with the man she loves, and they will think all that has passed a vexatious dream. About this quickly, Puck; and I will go and see what sweet love my Titania has found.”

Titania was still sleeping, and Oberon, seeing a clown near her, who had lost his way in the wood, and was likewise asleep—“This fellow,” said he, “shall be my Titania’s true-love;” and clapping an ass’s head over the clown’s, it seemed to fit him as well as if it had grown upon his own shoulders. Though Oberon fixed the ass’s head on very gently, it awakened him, and rising up, unconscious of what Oberon had done to him, he went toward the bower where the fairy queen slept.

“Ah! what angel is that I see!” said Titania, opening her eyes, and the juice of the little purple flower beginning to take effect: “are you as wise as you are beautiful?” “Why, mistress,” said the clown, “if I have wit enough to find the way out of this wood, I have enough to serve my turn.”

“Out of the wood do not desire to go,” said the enamored queen. “I am a spirit of no common rate. I love you. Go with me, and I will give you fairies to attend upon you.” She then called four of her fairies: their names were Pease-blossom, Cobweb, Moth, and Mustard-seed. “Attend,” said the queen, “upon this sweet gentleman; hop in his walks, and gambol in his sight; feed him with grapes and apricots, and steal for him the honey-bags from the bees. Come sit with me,” she said to the clown, “and let me play with your amiable hairy cheeks, my beautiful ass; and kiss your fair large ears, my gentle joy!”

“Where is Pease-blossom?” said the ass-headed clown, not much regarding the fairy queen’s courtship, but very proud of his new attendants. “Here, sir,” said little Pease-blossom.

“Scratch my head,” said the clown. “Where is Cobweb?” “Here, sir,” said Cobweb. “Good Mr. Cobweb,” said the foolish clown, “kill me the red humble-bee on the top of that thistle yonder; and, good Mr. Cobweb, bring me the honey-bag. Do not fret yourself too much in the action, Mr. Cobweb, and take care the honey-bags break not; I should be sorry to have you overflown with a honey-bag. Where is Mustard-seed?”

“Here, sir,” said Mustard-seed; “what is your will?”

“Nothing,” said the clown, “but to help Mr. Pease-blossom to scratch; I must go to a barber’s, Mr. Mustard-seed, for methinks I am marvelous hairy about the face.”

“My sweet love,” said the queen; “what will you have to eat? I have a venturous fairy shall seek the squirrel’s hoard, and fetch you some new nuts.” “I had rather have a handful of dried peas,” said the clown, who with his ass’s head had got an ass’s appetite. “But, I pray, let none of your people disturb me, for I have a mind to sleep.”

“Sleep, then,” said the queen, “and I will wind you in my arms. O how I love you! how I dote upon you!”

When the fairy king saw the clown sleeping in the arms of his queen, he advanced within her sight, and reproached her with having lavished her favors upon an ass. This she could not deny, as the clown was then sleeping within her arms, with his ass’s head crowned by her with flowers. When Oberon had teased her for some time, he again demanded the changeling boy; which she, ashamed of being discovered by her lord with her new favorite, did not dare to refuse him.

Oberon, having thus obtained the little boy he had so long wished for to be his page, took pity on the disgraceful situation into which, by his merry contrivance, he had brought his Titania, and threw some of the juice of the other flower into her eyes; and the fairy queen immediately recovered her senses, and wondered at her late dotage, saying how she now loathed the sight of the strange monster. Oberon likewise took the ass’s head from off the clown, and left him to finish his nap with his own fool’s head upon his shoulders. Oberon and his Titania being now perfectly reconciled, he related to her the history of the lovers, and their midnight quarrels; and she agreed to go with him, and see the end of their adventures.

The fairy king and queen found the lovers and their fair ladies at no great distance from each other, sleeping on a grass plot; for Puck, to make amends for his former mistake, had contrived to bring them all to the same spot, unknown to each other; and he had removed the charm from off the eyes of Lysander with the antidote the fairy king gave to him.

Hermia first awoke, and finding her lost Lysander asleep so near her, was looking at him, and wondering at his strange inconstancy. Lysander presently opening his eyes, and seeing his dear Hermia, recovered his reason, which the fairy-charm had before clouded, and with his reason, his love for Hermia; and they began to talk over the adventures of the night, doubting if these things had really happened, or if they had both been dreaming the same bewildering dream.

Helena and Demetrius were by this time awake; and a sweet sleep having quieted Helena’s disturbed and angry spirits, she listened with delight to the professions of love which Demetrius still made to her, and which, to her surprise as well as pleasure, she began to perceive were sincere.

These fair night-wandering ladies, now no longer rivals, became once more true friends; all the unkind words which had passed were forgiven, and they calmly consulted together what was best to be done in their present situation. It was soon agreed that, as Demetrius had given up his pretensions to Hermia, she should endeavor to prevail upon her father to revoke the cruel sentence of death which had been passed against her. Demetrius was preparing to return to Athens for this friendly purpose, when they were surprised with the sight of Egeus, Hermia’s father, who came to the wood in pursuit of his runaway daughter.

When Egeus understood that Demetrius would not now marry his daughter, he no longer opposed her marriage with Lysander, but gave his consent that they should be wedded on the fourth day from that time, being the same day on which Hermia had been condemned to lose her life; and on[213] that same day Helena joyfully agreed to marry her beloved and now faithful Demetrius.

The fairy king and queen, who were invisible spectators of this reconciliation, and now saw the happy ending of the lovers’ history brought about through the good offices of Oberon, received so much pleasure, that these kind spirits resolved to celebrate the approaching nuptials with sports and revels throughout their fairy kingdom.

And now, if any are offended with this story of fairies and their pranks, as judging it incredible and strange, they have only to think that they have been asleep and dreaming, and that all these adventures were visions which they saw in their sleep: and I hope none of my readers will be so unreasonable as to be offended with a pretty harmless Midsummer Night’s Dream.

THE WINTER’S TALE.

Leontes, king of Sicily, and his queen, the beautiful and virtuous Hermione, once lived in the greatest harmony together. So happy was Leontes in the love of this excellent lady, that he had no wish ungratified, except that he sometimes desired to see again, and present to his queen, his old companion and school-fellow, Polixenes, king of Bohemia. Leontes and Polixenes were brought up together from their infancy; but being, by the death of their fathers, called to reign over their respective kingdoms, they had not met for many years, though they frequently interchanged gifts, letters, and loving embassies.

At length, after repeated invitations, Polixenes came from Bohemia to the Sicilian court, to make his friend Leontes a visit.

At first this visit gave nothing but pleasure to Leontes. He recommended the friend of his youth to the queen’s particular attention, and seemed in the presence of his dear friend and old companion to have his felicity quite completed. They talked over old times; their school-days and their youthful pranks were remembered and recounted to Hermione, who always took a cheerful part in these conversations.

When, after a long stay, Polixenes was preparing to depart, Hermione, at the desire of her husband, joined her entreaties to his that Polixenes would prolong his visit.

And now began this good queen’s sorrow; for Polixenes refusing to stay at the request of Leontes, was won over by Hermione’s gentle and persuasive words to put off his departure for some weeks longer. Upon this, although Leontes had so long known the integrity and honorable principles of his friend Polixenes, as well as the excellent disposition of his virtuous queen, he was seized with an ungovernable jealousy. Every attention Hermione showed to Polixenes, though by her husband’s particular desire, and merely to please him, increased the unfortunate king’s malady; and from being a loving and a true friend, and the best and fondest of husbands, Leontes became suddenly a savage and inhuman monster. Sending for Camillo, one of the lords of his court, and telling him of the suspicion he entertained, he commanded him to poison Polixenes.

Camillo was a good man; and he, well knowing that the jealousy of Leontes had not the slightest foundation in truth, instead of poisoning Polixenes, acquainted him with the king his master’s orders, and agreed to escape with him out of the Sicilian dominions; and Polixenes, with the assistance of Camillo, arrived safe in his own kingdom of Bohemia, where Camillo lived from that time in the king’s court, and became the chief friend and favorite of Polixenes.

The flight of Polixenes enraged the jealous Leontes still more; he went to the queen’s apartment, where the good lady was sitting with her little son Mamillus, who was just beginning to tell one of his best stories to amuse his mother, when the king entered, and taking the child away, sent Hermione to prison.

Mamillus, though but a very young child, loved his mother tenderly; and when he saw her so dishonored, and found she was taken from him to be put into a prison, he took it deeply to heart, and drooped and pined away by slow degrees, losing his appetite and his sleep, till it was thought his grief would kill him.

The king, when he had sent his queen to prison, commanded Cleomenes and Dion, two Sicilian lords, to go to Delphos, there to inquire of the oracle at the temple of Apollo if his queen still really loved him.

When Hermione had been a short time in prison, she gave birth to a daughter; and the poor lady received much comfort from the sight of her pretty baby, and she said to it, “My poor little prisoner, I am as innocent as you are.” Hermione had a kind friend in the noble-spirited Paulina, who was the wife of Antigonus, a Sicilian lord; and when the lady Paulina heard her royal mistress had got a daughter, she went to the prison where Hermione was confined, and she said to Emilia, a lady who attended upon Hermione, “I pray you, Emilia, tell the good queen, if her majesty dare trust me with her little babe, I will carry it to the king, its father; we do not know how he may soften at the sight of his innocent child.” “Most worthy madam,” replied Emilia, “I will acquaint the queen with your noble offer; she was wishing to-day that she had any friend who would venture to present the child to the king.” “And tell her,” said Paulina, “that I will speak boldly to Leontes in her defence.” “May you be forever blessed!” said Emilia, “for your kindness to our gracious queen!” Emilia then went to Hermione, who joyfully gave up her baby to the care of Paulina, for she had feared that no one would dare venture to present the child to its father.

Paulina took the new-born infant, and forcing herself into the king’s presence, notwithstanding her husband, fearing the king’s anger, endeavored to prevent her, she laid the babe at its father’s feet, and Paulina made a noble speech to the king in defence of Hermione, and she reproached him severely for his inhumanity, and implored him to have mercy on his innocent wife and child. But Paulina’s spirited remonstrances only aggravated Leontes’s displeasure, and he ordered her husband Antigonus to take her from his presence.

When Paulina went away, she left the little baby at its father’s feet, thinking, when he was alone with it, he would look upon it, and have pity on its helpless innocence.

The good Paulina was mistaken; for no sooner was she gone than the merciless father ordered Antigonus, Paulina’s husband, to take the child, and carry it out to sea, and leave it upon some desert shore to perish.

Antigonus, unlike the good Camillo, too well obeyed the orders of Leontes; for he immediately carried the child on shipboard, and put out to sea, intending to leave it on the first desert coast he could find.

So strongly was the king prejudiced against Hermione, that he would not wait for the return of Cleomenes and Dion, whom he had sent to consult the oracle of Apollo at Delphos; but before the queen was recovered, and while she still grieved for the loss of her precious baby, he had her brought to a public trial before all the lords and nobles of his court. And when all the great lords, the judges, and all the nobility of the land were assembled together to try Hermione, and that unhappy queen was standing as a prisoner before her subjects to receive their judgment, Cleomenes and Dion entered the assembly, and presented to the king the answer of the oracle sealed up; and Leontes commanded the seal to be broken, and the words of the oracle to be read aloud, and these were the words: “Hermione is innocent, Polixenes blameless, Camillo a true subject, Leontes[214] a jealous tyrant, and the king shall live without an heir if that which is lost be not found.” The king would give no credit to the words of the oracle; he said it was a falsehood invented by the queen’s friends, and he desired the judge to proceed in the trial of the queen. But while Leontes was speaking, a man entered and told him that the prince Mamillus, hearing that his mother was to be tried for her life, struck with grief and shame, had suddenly died.

Hermione, upon hearing of the death of this dear affectionate child, who had lost his life in sorrowing for her misfortune, fainted; and Leontes, pierced to the heart by the news, began to feel pity for his unhappy queen, and he ordered Paulina, and the ladies who were her attendants, to take her away, and use means for her recovery. Paulina soon returned, and told the king that Hermione was dead.

When Leontes heard that the queen was dead, he repented of his cruelty to her; and now that he thought his ill usage had broken Hermione’s heart he believed her innocent; and he now thought the words of the oracle were true, as he knew “if that which was lost was not found” which he concluded was his young daughter, he should be without an heir, the young prince Mamillus being dead, and he would give his kingdom now to recover his lost daughter; and Leontes gave himself up to remorse, and passed many years in mournful thoughts and repentant grief.

The ship in which Antigonus carried the infant princess out to sea was driven by a storm upon the coast of Bohemia, the very kingdom of the good king Polixenes. Here Antigonus landed, and here he left the little baby.

Antigonus never returned to Sicily to tell Leontes where he had left his daughter, for, as he was going back to the ship, a bear came out of the woods and tore him to pieces; a just punishment on him for obeying the wicked order of Leontes.

The child was dressed in rich clothes and jewels; for Hermione had made it very fine when she sent it to Leontes, and Antigonus had pinned a paper to its mantle, with the name Perdita written thereon, and words obscurely intimating its high birth and untoward fate.

This poor deserted baby was found by a shepherd. He was a humane man, and so he carried the little Perdita home to his wife, who nursed it tenderly; but poverty tempted the shepherd to conceal the rich prize he had found: therefore he left that part of the country, that no one might know where he got his riches, and with part of Perdita’s jewels he bought herds of sheep, and became a wealthy shepherd. He brought up Perdita as his own child, and she knew not she was any other than a shepherd’s daughter.

The little Perdita grew up a lovely maiden; and though she had no better education than that of a shepherd’s daughter, yet so did the natural graces she inherited from her royal mother shine forth in her untutored mind, that no one from her behavior would have known she had not been brought up in her father’s court.

Polixenes, the king of Bohemia, had an only son, whose name was Florizel. As this young prince was hunting near the shepherd’s dwelling, he saw the old man’s supposed daughter, and the beauty, modesty, and queen-like deportment of Perdita caused him instantly to fall in love with her. He soon, under the name of Doricles, and in the disguise of a private gentleman, become a constant visitor at the old shepherd’s house.

Florizel’s frequent absence from court alarmed Polixenes; and setting people to watch his son, he discovered his love for the shepherd’s daughter.

Polixenes then called for Camillo, the faithful Camillo, who had preserved his life from the fury of Leontes, and desired that he would accompany him to the house of the shepherd, the supposed father of Perdita.

Polixenes and Camillo, both in disguise, arrived at the old shepherd’s dwelling, while they were celebrating the feast of sheep-shearing; and though they were strangers, yet at the sheep-shearing every guest being made welcome, they were invited to walk in, and join in the general festivity.

Nothing but mirth and jollity was going forward. Tables were spread, and great preparations were making for the rustic feast. Some lads and lasses were dancing on the green before the house, while others of the young men were buying ribands, gloves, and such toys, of a peddler at the door.

While this busy scene was going forward, Florizel and Perdita sat quietly in a retired corner, seemingly more pleased with the conversation of each other, than desirous of engaging in the sports and silly amusements of those around them.

The king was so disguised that it was impossible his son could know him; he therefore advanced near enough to hear the conversation. The simple yet elegant manner in which Perdita conversed with his son did not a little surprise Polixenes. He said to Camillo, “This is the prettiest low-born lass I ever saw; nothing she does or says but looks like something greater than herself, too noble for this place.”

Camillo replied, “Indeed she is the very queen of curds and cream.”

“Pray, my good friend,” said the king to the old shepherd, “what fair swain is that talking with your daughter?” “They call him Doricles,” replied the shepherd. “He says he loves my daughter; and to speak truth there is not a kiss to choose which loves the other best. If young Doricles can get her, she will bring him that he little dreams of,” meaning the remainder of Perdita’s jewels; which, after he had bought herds of sheep with part of them, he had carefully hoarded up for her marriage portion.

Polixenes then addressed his son. “How now, young man!” said he; “your heart seems full of something that takes off your mind from feasting. When I was young, I used to load my love with presents; but you have let the peddler go, and have bought your lass no toy.”

The young prince, who little thought he was talking to the king his father, replied, “Old sir, she prizes not such trifles; the gifts which Perdita expects from me are locked up in my heart.” Then turning to Perdita, he said to her, “O hear me, Perdita, before this ancient gentleman, who it seems was once himself a lover; he shall hear what I profess.” Florizel then called upon the old stranger to be a witness to a solemn promise of marriage which he made to Perdita, saying to Polixenes, “I pray you, mark our contract.”

“Mark your divorce, young sir,” said the king, discovering himself. Polixenes then reproached his son for daring to contract himself to this low-born maiden, calling Perdita “shepherd’s-brat, sheep-hook,” and other disrespectful names; and threatening, if ever she suffered his son to see her again, he would put her, and the old shepherd her father, to a cruel death.

The king then left them in great wrath, and ordered Camillo to follow him with Prince Florizel.

When the king had departed, Perdita, whose royal nature was roused by Polixenes’s reproaches, said, “Though we are all undone, I was not much afraid; and once or twice I was about to speak, and tell him plainly that the self-same sun that shines upon his palace, hides not his face from our cottage, but looks on both alike.” Then sorrowfully she said, “But now I am awakened from this dream. I will queen it no farther. Leave me, sir; I will go milk my ewes and weep.”

The kind-hearted Camillo was charmed with the spirit and propriety of Perdita’s behavior; and perceiving that the young prince was too deeply in love to give up his mistress[215] at the command of his royal father, he thought of a way to befriend the lovers, and at the same time to execute a favorite scheme he had in his mind.

Camillo had long known that Leontes, the king of Sicily, was become a true penitent; and though Camillo was now the favored friend of King Polixenes, he could not help wishing once more to see his late royal master and his native home. He therefore proposed to Florizel and Perdita that they should accompany him to the Sicilian court, where he would engage Leontes should protect them, till through his mediation they could obtain pardon from Polixenes and his consent to their marriage.

To this proposal they joyfully agreed; and Camillo, who conducted everything relative to their flight, allowed the old shepherd to go along with them.

The shepherd took with him the remainder of Perdita’s jewels, her baby clothes, and the paper which he had found pinned to her mantle.

After a prosperous voyage, Florizel and Perdita, Camillo and the old shepherd, arrived in safety at the court of Leontes, who still mourned his dead Hermione and his lost child, received Camillo with great kindness, and gave a cordial welcome to Prince Florizel. But Perdita, whom Florizel introduced as his princess, seemed to engross all Leontes’ attention. Perceiving a resemblance between her and his dead queen Hermione, his grief broke out afresh, and he said, such a lovely creature might his own daughter have been, if he had not so cruelly destroyed her. “And then, too,” said he to Florizel, “I lost the society and friendship of your brave father, whom I now desire more than my life once again to look upon.”

When the old shepherd heard how much notice the king had taken of Perdita, and that he had lost a daughter, who was exposed in infancy, he fell to comparing the time when he found the little Perdita with the manner of its exposure, the jewels and other high tokens of its high birth; from all which it was impossible for him not to conclude that Perdita and the king’s lost daughter were the same.

Florizel and Perdita, Camillo and the faithful Paulina, were present when the old shepherd related to the king the manner in which he had found the child, and also the circumstances of Antigonus’s death, he having seen the bear seize upon him. He showed the rich mantle in which Paulina remembered Hermione had wrapped the child; and he produced a jewel which she remembered Hermione had tied about Perdita’s neck, and he gave up the paper, which Paulina knew to be the writing of her husband; it could not be doubted that Perdita was Leontes’ own daughter. But oh! the noble struggles of Paulina, between sorrow for her husband’s death, and joy that the oracle was fulfilled, in the king’s heir, his long-lost daughter, being found. When Leontes heard that Perdita was his daughter, the great sorrow that he felt that Hermione was not living to behold her child, made him that he could say nothing for a long time, but, “O, thy mother, thy mother!”

Paulina interrupted this joyful yet distressful scene, with saying to Leontes, that she had a statue, newly finished by that rare Italian master, Julio Romano, which was such a perfect resemblance of the queen, that would his majesty be pleased to go to her house and look upon it, he would almost be ready to think that it was Hermione herself. Thither then they all went; the king anxious to see the semblance of his Hermione, and Perdita longing to behold what the mother she never saw did look like.

When Paulina drew back the curtain which concealed this famous statue, so perfectly did it resemble Hermione, that all the king’s sorrow was renewed at the sight; for a long time he had no power to speak or move.

“I like your silence, my liege,” said Paulina, “it the more shows your wonder. Is not this statue very like your queen?”

At length the king said, “O, thus she stood, even with such majesty, when I first wooed her. But yet, Paulina, Hermione was not so aged as this statue looks.” Paulina replied, “So much the more the carver’s excellence, who has made the statue as Hermione would have looked had she been living now. But let me draw the curtain, sire, lest, presently, you think it moves.”

The king then said, “Do not draw the curtain! Would I were dead! See, Camillo, would you not think it breathed? Her eye seems to have motion in it.” “I must draw the curtain, my liege,” said Paulina. “You are so transported, you will persuade yourself the statue lives.” “O, sweet Paulina,” said Leontes, “make me think so twenty years together! Still methinks there is an air comes from her. What fine chisel could ever yet cut breath? Let no man mock me, for I will kiss her.” “Good my lord, forbear!” said Paulina. “The ruddiness upon her lip is wet; you will stain your own with oily painting. Shall I draw the curtain?” “No, not these twenty years,” said Leontes.

Perdita, who all this time had been kneeling, and beholding in silent admiration the statue of her matchless mother, said now, “And so long could I stay here, looking upon my dear mother.”

“Either forbear this transport,” said Paulina to Leontes, “and let me draw the curtain, or prepare yourself for more amazement. I can make the statue move indeed; ay, and descend from off the pedestal, and take you by the hand. But then you will think, which I protest that I am not, that I am assisted by some wicked powers.” “What you can make her do,” said the astonished king, “I am content to look upon. What you can make her speak, I am content to hear; for it is as easy to make her speak as move.”

Paulina then ordered some slow and solemn music, which she had prepared for the purpose, to strike up; and to the amazement of all the beholders, the statue came down from off the pedestal, and threw its arms around Leontes’s neck. The statue then began to speak, praying for blessings on her husband, and on her child, the newly found Perdita.

No wonder that the statue hung upon Leontes’s neck, and blessed her husband and her child. No wonder, for the statue was Hermione herself, the real, the living queen.

Paulina had falsely reported to the king the death of Hermione, thinking that the only means to preserve her royal mistress’s life; and with the good Paulina Hermione had lived ever since, never choosing Leontes should know she was living, till she heard Perdita was found; for though she had long forgiven the injuries which Leontes had done to herself, she could not pardon his cruelty to his infant daughter.

His dead queen thus restored to life, his lost daughter found, the long-sorrowing Leontes could scarcely support the excess of his own happiness. And as if nothing should be wanting to complete this strange and unlooked-for joy, king Polixenes himself now entered the palace.

When Polixenes first missed his son and Camillo, knowing that Camillo had long wished to return to Sicily, he conjectured he should find the fugitives there; and following them with all speed, he happened to arrive just at this, the happiest moment of Leontes’s life.

Polixenes took a part in the general joy; he forgave his friend Leontes the unjust jealousy he had conceived against him, and they once more loved each other with all the warmth of their first boyish friendship. There was no fear that Polixenes would now oppose his son’s marriage with Perdita. She was no sheep-hook now, but the heiress of the crown of Sicily.

Thus have we seen the patient virtues of the long-suffering Hermione rewarded. That excellent lady lived many years with her Leontes and her Perdita, the happiest of mothers and queens.

[216]

A TOUR ROUND THE WORLD.

By Mrs. MARY LOW DICKINSON.

[Continued.]

“If you are going to keep a journal at all, begin the minute you take off your waterproof.” This bit of wisdom descended upon the quartette from the lips of the special correspondent of the Perkinsville Gazette, one dripping morning when we found her taking notes in the British Museum. And surely she never said a wiser thing. First impressions may not be profound or correct, or reach in any way the heart and meaning of what passes under the eye, but they are the freshest and often the only impressions worth recording. One sees more in a first day in a new city than in many subsequent days. The eyes are open then, if ever, to all little peculiarities and characteristics; the ears catch every unfamiliar tone; the perceptions are quickened into a new and vivid interest, dissipated, alas, too soon! We Americans quickly make ourselves at home. The novelty of to-day is commonplace to-morrow, and the third day’s description of an event takes only a word, where the first day’s would have received a page. And there is no haunting demon of travel quite so fiendish as the journal that must be written, and that has “got behind.” One never can quite subdue its clamor, nor does any effort at writing up the half-forgotten record satisfy its insatiate demand. All the pith and the life are gone out of the neglected recollections, and we must accept the conclusion that it is NOT safe to wait after the “water-proof” is laid aside.

That some members of our quartette did wait was, perhaps, a mercy to their friends, for it would have taken a volume to describe what they saw and did in London. That they studied their guide-books, and maps and histories, as true Chautauquans should, goes without saying. They tramped a great many miles and jostled in cabs and omnibuses a great many more, and tried the tramways and the underground road, and the penny boats upon the noiseless highway of the Thames. Somewhere they had read that the united streets of London made a stretch of over three thousand miles, and they sometimes felt as if they had traversed them all. They must visit every portion of the city, for each had its peculiar interest or charm. How could they fail, for example, to drive through the aristocratic Belgravia, the district that, within the last quarter of a century, has become a region of fine streets and spacious squares and palatial residences, transforming as well as surpassing the old West End. It seemed worth while to gaze, if only from the windows of a cab, at the residences of the real aristocracy of Britain, and better worth while to drive on, through the once beautiful and rural Chelsea, now swarming with the multitudes of London’s poor. The old city of Westminster, now swallowed up in London, whose inhabitants average a dozen inmates to every wretched home, touches Belgravia on the southeast, lying, as one writer says, “Like a filthy beggar at the rich man’s gate.” Not all the efforts of public and private philanthropy, the theories of men like Ruskin, or the practice of women like Octavia Hill, have been able to stay its ever-swelling tide of misery and sin. Strange contrast all this to the monotonous regularity of Tyburnia, whose rows on rows of handsome dwellings constitute the homes of professional men and wealthy merchants. So-called middle-class London finds its home in the Regent’s Square district. Thence, eastward still, and we find ourselves in the Bloomsbury and Bedford Square region, whose old houses, once occupied by rank and fashion, are mostly given over to lodgers like ourselves, while resident middle-class foreigners make their homes largely in the region around Leicester Square. It takes no end of wandering to familiarize the stranger with the characteristics of each district, and if one can stay in London months, it is a better way to begin than to select the special points of interest.

London is large enough for a world, and has human interests enough, if there were no other place on the planet, to occupy the time and wisdom of angels and all good men. Somebody calls it a “province covered with houses;” Carlyle spoke of it as “the tuberosity of modern civilization.” The metropolis includes more than the city of London, more than old Westminster. Its arms have stretched out until it embraces nearly forty adjacent townships and districts. Some busy-brained statistician has amused himself by treating the place as if it were a great living monster, whose gigantic throat swallows yearly over nine millions of once living creatures, either fish, flesh or fowl, washed down by fifty millions of gallons of ale and wine. No wonder that there follows close upon this statement, the grave announcement that nearly three thousand physicians are constantly hastening to and fro, and that five hundred undertakers do not suffice to meet the city’s demands. The wine and liquor merchants number nearly ten thousand, and we do not wonder, this being so, that the paupers number nearly one hundred and fifty thousand souls.

And of this great living mass of humanity, vital in every part, the “city” proper is the pulsing heart. By it we mean the space that anciently lay within the walls, keeping still with few exceptions its narrow streets and shadowy lanes; the former being the avenues of retail trade, while in the latter the wholesale trade is carried on. As space could not be commanded on the ground, the magnificent buildings required for business that manipulates the wealth of the world have had to occupy the air. Business houses stand side by side with the dark low buildings of the seventeenth century; and he who has time to penetrate some of the picturesque old mansions now used as counting-rooms, will be repaid by a sight of much that is architecturally quaint and fine. No part of London is better worth exploring than this. Our wanderers never tired of strolling from St. Paul’s, after every brief rest under the stillness of its mighty dome, into Paternoster-row, and lingering in the world of books displayed on every hand; and the weaker half of the party did not care how long they were left in the book stores, while the more active wandered off into Lombard street, among the bankers, into the exchanges, or the less imposing though no less interesting Houndsditch, the haunt of the modern Jew. All day long, from morn to night, a mighty human tide swells and surges with almost turbulent haste all through these narrow streets. One lingers and watches daily as the never-ceasing throng pours on, fascinated as by the constantly-recurring beat of the breakers upon the sea. But come down here and stand under the shadow of St. Paul’s some night, or on some calm Sunday afternoon. The very air that hangs, heavy and still with the fog-damps, above the great cross there on the old clock tower, is not stiller than the ground beneath one’s feet. The hundreds of thousands of people that composed the human throng are gone, as if the earth had opened and swallowed them. The merchants are in their homes at the West End, the clerks in their humble homes in the suburbs. Over twenty thousand buildings are left alone in the care of the police, most of them houses once occupied as dwellings, and now used for purposes of trade. There are nearly sixty churches in the district, but the Sabbath stillness of the streets is not due to the throngs gathered within the house of God. They, indeed, are almost as empty as the streets, for the residents who once rendered each parish populous are no longer here. St. Paul’s, the cathedral church of the See of London, is the present center of religious attraction, and here our travelers passed many a quiet hour, to say nothing of the more active seasons when they walked from[217] tomb to tomb through all its length and breadth; paid their shilling and descended into the crypt and stood by the tomb of Wellington; paid another and climbed to the whispering gallery; and another and another, and went to the tower of the clock; and an extra sixpence and touched the great bell that strikes the hour. The only other service required of the bell is to toll at the deaths of members of the royal family, the bishop of London, the dean of St. Paul’s, and the mayors of London who may die in office. One and sixpence once more, and the more adventurous of the quartette climbed up and squeezed into the ball beneath the cross, while the others lingered at the golden gallery near the apex of the dome, and gazed down upon the fog, through which the roofs and towers and spires seemed like a strange shadowy spectre of a city, struggling for a tangible form. Seen from the river, or from Blackfriars Bridge, the wonderful dome stands out in all its beauty of outline; and early one morning they saw from the latter point the great cross glittering far above the city in the sunlight, which had not yet scattered the fog on which it seemed to float.

Not much time had our tourists, however, for puzzling their brains or harrowing their souls over the questions of human destiny, for their heads were filled with all sorts of associations with men and books, and they sometimes went wandering to and fro, to find the very houses where their favorite authors lived, the spots where events of interest had transpired, the places made immortal by their poets’ pens. They must have their visit to the Tower, long days in the Museum and the art galleries, for had they not, each and all, in one form or another, the genuine Kensington craze? They could not leave out any of the more common things, like a drive to Richmond Hill or an afternoon at the “Zoo.” They must go to Stoke Pogis and recite the elegy in the churchyard where Gray wrote it. They must have their day at Windsor, with its chance of seeing the queen driving in the park, and the visit to Sydenham’s Crystal Palace, and the afternoon at Hampton Court. They must stroll down by Hyde Park corner and see fashionable London dragging monotonously around the drive, or prancing on horseback through Rotten Row. They must visit the Parliament houses, and find many a still hour to linger and dream within the walls of the wonderful old Westminster Abbey, that is of itself worth crossing an ocean to see. It is not for Wesley’s grave alone that we go to the City-road Chapel, or for the grave of Watts that we enter the Bunhill Fields. It is not the tombs of the poets, statesmen and martyrs that hold our attention long, but we seek in the living of to-day for the spirit that animated the great, now dead; and eyes and ears alike are open to see and hear the indications of growth in the noblest things. It matters little that we see only the outside of Buckingham and St. James. There are fairer palaces in London than those of her princes, and to these, her edifices devoted to the alleviation of human suffering and the advancement of human progress, we turn with never-tiring interest and zeal. In this class stand her colleges and hospitals and asylums, her charitable organizations of every sort. London gives yearly in food and clothing, and in the relief of disease, over thirteen millions of dollars, to say nothing of a million more given privately by individuals. For educational and religious purposes she spends seven millions more, and yet the city is filled in certain localities with the most wretched of all citizens, the poor who are too far down to care to be lifted up.

We passed delightful days in visiting some of the oldest as well as some of the newest of the institutions of learning or charity. Among the former the famous old St. Peter’s College, founded as “a publique schoole for grammar, rethoricke and poetrie,” and the Charter House School, of which Wesley says, “I owed my health and long life to the faithfulness with which I obeyed my father’s injunction to run around the Charter House playing-green three times every morning,” and the blue-coat school, where the boys dressed in blue coat, yellow petticoat and stockings, and red leather girdle around the waist, seemed to have stepped down from the sixteenth century. Blue was originally a color only worn by dependents, and never by gentlemen, until after its use in the uniform of the British navy. In striking contrast to these we found Girton and the Wesleyan Normal College, for the training of teachers and the teaching of children. In another line of instruction the Government School of Design, at South Kensington, is doing a most interesting work. One feature of its service to the people is well worthy of imitation. Its library is rich in illustrated works, and these are open for the use, not only of artists, but of every poor working man or woman, at the price of one penny a volume. From this school large additions have been made to house decorators, designers and draughtsmen for the various manufactures and trades. All the collections of the wonderful museums of Kensington are intended to subserve the purpose of the school, of which branches have been formed in various manufacturing districts throughout England.

No philanthropic work in London will be more likely to attract the attention of Americans, than that done by the Peabody fund in the construction of the model lodging houses, where three rooms, comfortable and clean, can be hired for five shillings a week. The buildings in the various districts where they have already been erected are five stories in height, well lighted, well ventilated, and calculated in every way to make desirable homes for the very poor. Since the gift of Mr. Peabody, the corporation of London has given land and six hundred thousand dollars for the erection of model dwellings for the working people. Before them in this benevolent work has been the Baroness Burdett-Couts, whose heart has seemed to be as large as her purse. A morning spent in exploring the vicinity of Columbia Square Market showed us her four large blocks of neat houses surrounding a court all occupied now by a clean, orderly class of people. The adjoining market, built to accommodate the neighborhood on the site of the old “dust heap” was also her work. The place was one of the most filthy and pestilential haunts of vice and degradation in the city of London. Its refuse heaps were almost as high as its hovels, and foulness, moral and physical, made the spot a breeding place of disease to body and soul. These are only instances of what may be done, of what must be done, indeed, if cities like those of England and America are ever to be lifted from the pauperism that destroys soul and body alike. And the traveler, who makes his journey without securing a knowledge of what is stirring in other countries to solve the problem of helping people to help themselves, misses both the truth as to the realities of human conditions and the inspiration that comes from seeing what has been already done. The great consideration is time, which is always and everywhere too short. Our quartette labored faithfully and well, but, like other travelers, saw once what they wanted to see a dozen times, heard their favorite music in snatches and their favorite preachers sometimes once and sometimes not at all. They crowded ten objects of interest into the time fairly due to one, and left London with the feeling of a hungry man at a railway station whose bell rings just as he has taken the first bite of his dinner.

“Who was it, in Mother Goose, that ‘whipped his children and made them dance out of Ireland into France?’” asks the scribe of the quartette, lifting her pen with a characteristic motion that betrays an inclination to put it behind her ear. “’Twasn’t anybody,” answers the scholar, gruffly, who feels a coming talk in the air and does not like to be[218] disturbed at his book. “Yes, it was!” persists the scribe, “and whoever he was, the chief is just like him. Here he is fairly lashing us about Londontown to drive us over to France.” Behind his newspaper the chief smiles. “You will be glad I hastened you, when once you are there out of this wretched fog.”

“But I haven’t had half enough of London.”

“True, and you never would have enough. It’s a place to live in, not to visit!”

“Then I’d like to live on, straight along.”

“Very good! The rest of us must go around the world.”

“But we have made a mistake! no one could do it in the time we have set.”

“A common experience, again, sister,” said the chief, who, having the times and seasons in his hands, and having been indulgent enough to stay on from day to day, was at last in a somewhat inexorable mood.

And though there was still some coaxing to stay, one bright morning found us fairly started on our dance “out of England into France.”

The morning of our departure is fine; the air delicious, a fresh breeze blowing from the west. A good course of packing lasting well into the night added physical weariness to the rather thin layer of mental fatigue consequent on keeping a journal, and therefore London seems less attractive than it did. If it were not for a faint foreboding sense that the Channel lies just before, we could even begin to be glad that the metropolis is left behind. The chief does not say, “I told you so” as he sees our spirits rise, but then the chief is—not a woman. It is soon over,—the three hours of grace that it takes us to whirl down to Folkestone, and it’s three hours of pleasure, except the last few minutes when we catch the mocking toss of the saucy white-caps on the waves. We rejoiced this morning in the wind that scattered the London fog, but now we know how felt Lot’s wife in that dire day of Sodom. Bravely as possible we march to our fate. The wicked scribe can not forbear asking the chief whose white cheeks contradict his defiant expression, if he is glad he “made her dance.” We hear people in various stages of resistance saying “this is not bad; that the channel is often worse.” “No doubt! no doubt!” but we do not care to discuss it, and the photographs of the quartette would show them seated lugubriously, with their backs to the smoke-stack, not coldly unsocial, but each meditating profoundly on topics that are not to the others of the slightest concern. They are meditating only, and, meantime that smoke-stack rides up into the air, and they with it, and it fairly seems to be intoxicated at its upper end, yet they hold fast to it and to each other down below; and then it changes its mind and seems to go down and down, until they feel as if they were in the fast diminishing turret of a monitor, and that the bottom is dropping out of the depth of the sea.

And yet they live, and revive, and when the boat touches Boulogne-sur-Mer, are ready for the French-English table d’hôte served at the railway restaurant, and the scribe at least is ready for a walk to the heights above the town, “just to look back to old England, you know,” and see what Napoleon saw when he gathered his army of nearly two hundred thousand men along this coast, and filled the harbor with his ships, and watched and waited his chance to go over and take the British bull by the horns.

“Think, sister, how the fate of the nations might have been changed, if only Napoleon had gone”—says the chief thoughtfully.

“Now, brother, if you are going to meditate, or moralize, we shall miss the train,” answers the scribe.

He looks at her gravely. “I am afraid,” he says under his breath, “that my next duty will be to train that miss.”

(To be continued.)

THRIFT.

By CHARLES KINGSLEY.

A Lecture for Women.

Consider that word thrift. If you will look at Dr. Johnson’s Dictionary, or if you know your Shakspere, you will see that thrift signified originally profits, gain, riches gotten—in a word, the marks of a man’s thriving.

How, then, did the word thrift get to mean parsimony, frugality, the opposite of waste? Just in the same way as economy—which, first, of course, meant the management of a household—got to mean also the opposite of waste.

It was found that in commerce, in husbandry, in any process, in fact, men throve in proportion as they saved their capital, their material, their force.

Now this is a great law which runs through life; one of those laws of nature—call them, rather, laws of God—which apply not merely to political economy, to commerce, and to mechanics; but to physiology, to society; to the intellect, to the heart, of every person in this room.

The secret of thriving is thrift; saving of force; to get as much work as possible done with the least expenditure of power, the least jar and obstruction, the least wear and tear.

And the secret of thrift is knowledge. In proportion as you know the laws and nature of a subject, you will be able to work at it easily, surely, rapidly, successfully; instead of wasting your money or your energies in mistaken schemes, irregular efforts, which end in disappointment and exhaustion.

The secret of thrift, I say, is knowledge. The more you know, the more you can save yourself and that which belongs to you; and can do more work with less effort.

A knowledge of the laws of commercial credit, we all know, saves capital, enabling a less capital to do the work of a greater. Knowledge of the electric telegraph saves time; knowledge of writing saves human speech and locomotion; knowledge of domestic economy saves income; knowledge of sanitary laws saves health and life; knowledge of the laws of the intellect saves wear and tear of brain; and knowledge of the laws of the spirit—what does it not save?

A well-educated moral sense, a well-regulated character, saves from idleness and ennui, alternating with sentimentality and excitement, those tender emotions, those deeper passions, those nobler aspirations of humanity, which are the heritage of the woman far more than of the man; and which are potent in her, for evil or for good, in proportion as they are left to run wild and undisciplined, or are trained and developed into graceful, harmonious, self-restraining strength, beautiful in themselves, and a blessing to all who come under their influence.

What, therefore, I recommend to ladies in this lecture is thrift; thrift of themselves and of their own powers: and knowledge as the parent of thrift.

“To fit women for the more enlightened performance of their special duties;” to help them towards learning how to do better what we doubt not they are already doing well; is, I honestly believe, the only object of the promoters of this scheme.

Let us see now how some of these special duties can be better performed by help of a little enlightenment as to the laws which regulate them.

Now, no man will deny—certainly no man who is past forty-five, and whose digestion is beginning to quail before the lumps of beef and mutton which are the boast of a well-regulated kitchen, and to prefer, with Justice Shallow, and, I presume, Sir John Falstaff also, “any pretty little tiny kickshaws”—no man, I say, who has reached that age, but will feel it a practical comfort to him to know that the young ladies of his family are at all events good cooks; and understand, as the French do, thrift in the matter of food.

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Neither will any parent who wishes, naturally enough, that his daughters should cost him as little as possible; and wishes, naturally enough also, that they should be as well dressed as possible, deny that it would be a good thing for them to be practical milliners and mantua-makers; and, by making their own clothes gracefully and well, exercise thrift in clothing.

But, beside this thrift in clothing, I am not alone, I believe, in wishing for some thrift in the energy which produces it. Labor misapplied, you will agree, is labor wasted; and as dress, I presume, is intended to adorn the person of the wearer, the making a dress which only disfigures her may be considered as a plain case of waste. It would be impertinent in me to go into any details: but it is impossible to walk about the streets now without passing young people who must be under a deep delusion as to the success of their own toilette. Instead of graceful and noble simplicity of form, instead of combinations of color at once rich and delicate, because in accordance with the chromatic laws of nature, one meets with phenomena more and more painful to the eye, and startling to common sense, till one would be hardly more astonished, and certainly hardly more shocked, if in a year or two one should pass some one going about like a Chinese lady, with pinched feet, or like a savage of the Amazons, with a wooden bung through her lower lip. It is easy to complain of these monstrosities: but impossible to cure them, it seems to me, without an education of the taste, an education in those laws of nature which produce beauty in form and beauty in color. For that cause of these failures lies in want of education is patent. They are most common in—I had almost said they are confined to—those classes of well-to-do persons who are the least educated; who have no standard of taste of their own; and who do not acquire any from cultivated friends and relations: who, in consequence, dress themselves blindly according to what they conceive to be Paris fashions, conveyed at third-hand through an equally uneducated dressmaker; in innocent ignorance of the fact—for fact I believe it to be—that Paris fashions are invented now not in the least for the sake of beauty, but for the sake of producing, through variety, increased expenditure, and thereby increased employment; according to the strange system which now prevails in France of compelling, if not prosperity, at least the signs of it; and like schoolboys before a holiday, nailing up the head of the weather glass to insure fine weather.

Let the ladies educate themselves in those laws of beauty which are as eternal as any other of nature’s laws; which may be seen fulfilled, as Mr. Ruskin tells us, so eloquently in every flower and every leaf, in sweeping down and rippling wave: and they will be able to invent graceful and economical dresses for themselves, without importing tawdry and expensive ugliness from France.

Let me now go a step further, and ask you to consider this.—There are now a vast number, and an increasing number, of young women who, from various circumstances which we all know, must in after life be either the mistresses of their own fortunes, or the earners of their own bread. And to do that wisely and well, they must be more or less women of business; and to be women of business, they must know something of the meaning of the words capital, profit, price, value, labor, wages, and of the relations between those two last. In a word, they must know a little political economy. Nay, I sometimes think that the mistress of every household might find, not only thrift of money, but thrift of brain; freedom from mistakes, anxieties, worries of many kinds, all of which eat out the health as well as the heart, by a little sound knowledge of the principles of political economy.

When we consider that every mistress of a household is continually buying, if not selling; that she is continually hiring and employing labor in the form of servants; and very often, into the bargain, keeping her husband’s accounts: I cannot but think that her hard-worked brain might be clearer, and her hard-tried desire to do her duty by every subject in her little kingdom, might be more easily satisfied, had she read something of what Mr. John Stuart Mill has written, especially on the duties of employer and employed. A capitalist, a commercialist, an employer of labor, and an accountant—every mistress of a household is all these, whether she likes it or not; and it would be surely well for her, in so very complicated a state of society as this, not to trust merely to that mother-wit, that intuitive sagacity and innate power of ruling her fellow-creatures, which carries women so nobly through their work in simpler and less civilized societies.

And here I stop to answer those who may say—as I have heard it said—that a woman’s intellect is not fit for business; that when a woman takes to business, she is apt to do it ill, and unpleasantly likewise: to be more suspicious, more irritable, more grasping, more unreasonable, than regular men of business would be: that—as I have heard it put—“a woman does not fight fair.” The answer is simple. That a woman’s intellect is eminently fitted for business is proved by the enormous amount of business she gets through without any special training for it: but those faults in a woman of which some men complain are simply the results of her not having had a special training. She does not know the laws of business. She does not know the rules of the game she is playing; and therefore she is playing it in the dark, in fear and suspicion, apt to judge of questions on personal grounds, often offending those with whom she has to do, and oftener still making herself miserable over matters of law or of business, on which a little sound knowledge would set her head and her heart at rest.

When I have seen widows, having the care of children, of a great household, of great estate, of a great business, struggling heroically, and yet often mistakenly; blamed severely for selfishness and ambition, while they were really sacrificing themselves with the divine instinct of a mother for their children’s interest: I have stood by with mingled admiration and pity, and said to myself—“How nobly she is doing the work without teaching! How much more nobly would she have done it had she been taught! She is now doing the work at the most enormous waste of energy and of virtue: had she had knowledge, thrift would have followed it; she would have done more work with far less trouble. She will probably kill herself if she goes on: sound knowledge would have saved her health, saved her heart, saved her friends, and helped the very loved ones for whom she labors, not always with success.”

A little political economy, therefore, will at least do no harm to a woman; especially if she have to take care of herself in after life; neither, I think, will she be much harmed by some sound knowledge of another subject,—“Natural philosophy, in its various branches, such as the chemistry of common life, light, heat, electricity, etc., etc.”

A little knowledge of the laws of light, for instance, would teach many women that by shutting themselves up day after day, week after week, in darkened rooms, they are as certainly committing a waste of health, destroying their vital energy, and diseasing their brains, as if they were taking so much poison the whole time.

For let me ask you, ladies, with all courtesy, but with all earnestness—Are you aware of certain facts, of which every excellent medical man is too well aware? Are you aware that more human beings are killed every year by unnecessary and preventable diseases than were killed at Waterloo or at Sadowa? Are you aware that the great majority of those victims are children? Are you aware that the diseases which carry them off are for the most part such as[220] ought to be specially under the control of the women who love them, pet them, educate them, and would in many cases, if need be, lay down their lives for them? Are you aware, again, of the vast amount of disease which, so both wise mothers and wise doctors assure me, is engendered in the sleeping-room from simple ignorance of the laws of ventilation, and in the school-room likewise, from simple ignorance of the laws of physiology? from an ignorance of which I shall mention no other case here save one—that too often from ignorance of signs of approaching disease, a child is punished for what is called idleness, listlessness, wilfulness, sulkiness; and punished, too, in the unwisest way—by an increase of tasks and confinement to the house, thus overtasking still more a brain already overtasked, and depressing still more, by robbing it of oxygen and of exercise, a system already depressed? Are you aware, I ask again, of all this? I speak earnestly upon this point, because I speak with experience. As a single instance: a medical man, a friend of mine, passing by his own school-room, heard one of his own little girls screaming and crying, and went in. The governess, an excellent woman, but wholly ignorant of the laws of physiology, complained that the child of late had become obstinate and would not learn; and that therefore she must punish her by keeping her indoors over the unlearned lessons. The father, who knew that the child was usually very good, looked at her carefully for a little while; sent her out of the schoolroom; and then said, “That child must not open a book for a month.” “If I had not acted so,” he said to me, “I should have had that child dead of brain disease within a year.”

Now, in the face of such facts as these, is it too much to ask of mothers, sisters, aunts, nurses, governesses—all who may be occupied in the care of children, especially of girls—that they should study thrift of human health and human life, by studying somewhat the laws of life and health? There are books—I may say a whole literature of books—written by scientific doctors on these matters, which are in my mind far more important to the schoolroom than half the trashy accomplishments, so-called, which are expected to be known by governesses. But are they bought? Are they even to be bought, from most country booksellers? Ah, for a little knowledge of the laws to the neglect of which is owing so much fearful disease, which if it does not produce immediate death, too often leaves the constitution impaired for years to come. Ah the waste of health and strength in the young; the waste, too, of anxiety and misery in those who love and tend them. How much of it might be saved by a little rational education in those laws of nature which are the will of God about the welfare of our bodies, and which, therefore, we are as much bound to know and to obey as we are bound to know and obey the spiritual laws whereon depends the welfare of our souls.

Pardon me, ladies, if I have given a moment’s pain to any one here: but I appeal to every medical man in the room whether I have not spoken the truth; and having such an opportunity as this, I felt that I must speak for the sake of children, and of women likewise, or else for ever hereafter hold my peace.

Let me pass on from this painful subject—for painful it has been to me for many years—to a question of intellectual thrift—by which I mean just now thrift of words; thrift of truth; restraint of the tongue; accuracy and modesty in statement.

Mothers complain to me that girls are apt to be—not intentionally untruthful—but exaggerative, prejudiced, incorrect, in repeating a conversation or describing an event; and that from this fault arise, as is to be expected, misunderstandings, quarrels, rumors, slanders, scandals, and what not.

Now, for this waste of words there is but one cure; and if I be told that it is a natural fault of women; that they cannot take the calm judicial view of matters which men boast, and often boast most wrongly, that they can take; that under the influence of hope, fear, delicate antipathy, honest moral indignation, they will let their eyes and ears be governed by their feelings; and see and hear only what they wish to see and hear: I answer, that it is not for me as a man to start such a theory; but that if it be true, it is an additional argument for some education which will correct this supposed natural defect. And I say deliberately that there is but one sort of education which will correct it, one which will teach young women to observe facts accurately, judge them calmly and describe them carefully, without adding or distorting: and that is, some training in natural science.

I beg you not to be startled: but if you are, then test the truth of my theory by playing to-night at the game called “Russian Scandal;” in which a story, repeated in secret by one player to the other, comes out at the end of the game, owing to the inaccurate and—forgive me if I say it—uneducated brains through which it has passed, utterly unlike its original; not only ludicrously maimed and distorted, but often with the most fantastic addition of events, details, names, dates, places, which each player will aver he received from the player before him. I am afraid that too much of the average gossip of every city, town and village is little more than a game of “Russian Scandal;” with this difference, that while one is but a game, the other is but too mischievous earnest.

But now, if among your party there shall be an average lawyer, medical man, or man of science, you will find that he, and perhaps he alone, will be able to retail accurately the story which has been told him. And why? Simply because his mind has been trained to deal with facts; to ascertain exactly what he does see or hear, and to imprint its leading features strongly and clearly on his memory.

I could say much on this point: allow me at least to say this: I verily believe that any young lady who would employ some of her leisure time in collecting wild flowers, carefully examining them, verifying them, and arranging them; or who would in her summer trip to the sea-coast do the same by the common objects of the shore, instead of wasting her holiday, as one sees hundreds doing, in lounging on benches on the esplanade, reading worthless novels, and criticising dresses—that such a young lady, I say, would not only open her own mind to a world of wonder, beauty, and wisdom, which, if it did not make her a more reverent and pious soul, she can not be the woman which I take her for granted she is; but would save herself from the habit—I had almost said the necessity—of gossip; because she would have things to think of and not merely persons; facts instead of fancies; while she would acquire something of accuracy, of patience, of methodical observation and judgment, which would stand her in good stead in the events of daily life and increase her power of bridling her tongue and her imagination. “God is in heaven, and thou upon earth; therefore let thy words be few;” is the lesson which those are learning all day long who study the works of God with reverent accuracy, lest by misrepresenting them they should be tempted to say that God has done that which He has not; and in that wholesome discipline I long that women as well as men should share.

And now I come to a thrift of the highest kind, as contrasted with a waste the most deplorable and ruinous of all; thrift of those faculties which connect us with the unseen and spiritual world; with humanity, with Christ, with God; thrift of the immortal spirit. I am not going now to give you a sermon on duty. You hear such, I doubt not, in church every Sunday, far better than I can preach to you. I am going to speak rather of thrift of the heart, thrift of the emotions. How they are wasted in these days in reading[221] what are called sensation novels, all know but too well; how good literature—all that the best hearts and intellects among our forefathers have bequeathed to us—is neglected for light fiction, the reading of which is, as a lady well said, “the worst form of intemperance—dram-drinking and opium-eating, intellectual and moral.”

I know that the young will delight—they have delighted in all ages, and will to the end of time—in fictions which deal with that “oldest tale which is forever new.” Novels will be read: but that is all the more reason why women should be trained, by the perusal of a higher, broader, deeper literature, to distinguish the good novel from the bad, the moral from the immoral, the noble from the base, the true work of art from the sham which hides its shallowness and vulgarity under a tangled plot and melodramatic situations. She should learn—and that she can only learn by cultivation—to discern with joy, and drink in with reverence, the good, the beautiful, and the true; and to turn with the fine scorn of a pure and strong womanhood from the bad, the ugly, and the false.

And if any parent should be inclined to reply—“Why lay so much stress upon educating a girl in good literature? Is it not far more important to make our daughters read religious books?” I answer—of course it is. I take for granted that that is done in a Christian land. But I beg you to recollect that there are books and books; and that in these days of a free press it is impossible, in the long run, to prevent girls reading books of very different shades of opinion, and very different religious worth. It may be, therefore, of the very highest importance to a girl to have her intellect, her taste, her emotions, her moral sense, in a word, her whole womanhood, so cultivated and regulated that she shall herself be able to discern the true from the false, the orthodox from the unorthodox, the truly devout from the merely sentimental, the gospel from its counterfeits.

I should have thought that there never had been since the Reformation, a crisis at which young women required more careful cultivation on these matters; if at least they are to be saved from making themselves and their families miserable; and from ending—as I have known too many end—with broken hearts, broken brains, broken health, and an early grave.

Take warning by what you see abroad. In every country where the women are uneducated, unoccupied; where their only literature is French novels or translations of them—in every one of those countries the women, even to the highest, are the slaves of superstition, and the puppets of priests. In proportion as, in certain other countries—notably, I will say, in Scotland—the women are highly educated, family life and family secrets are sacred, and the woman owns allegiance and devotion to no confessor or director, but to her own husband or to her own family.

I say plainly, that if any parents wish their daughters to succumb at last to some quackery or superstition, whether calling itself scientific, or calling itself religious—and there are too many of both just now—they can not more certainly effect their purpose than by allowing her to grow up ignorant, frivolous, luxurious, vain; with her emotions excited, but not satisfied, by the reading of foolish and even immoral novels.

In such a case the more delicate and graceful the organization, the more noble and earnest the nature, which has been neglected, the more certain it is—I know too well what I am saying—to go astray.

The time of depression, disappointment, vacuity, all but despair, must come. The immortal spirit, finding no healthy satisfaction for its highest aspirations, is but too likely to betake itself to an unhealthy and exciting superstition. Ashamed of its own long self-indulgence, it is but too likely to flee from itself into a morbid asceticism. Not having been taught its God-given and natural duties in the world, it is but too likely to betake itself, from the mere craving for action, to self-invented and unnatural duties out of the world. Ignorant of true science, yet craving to understand the wonders of nature and of spirit, it is but too likely to betake itself to non-science—nonsense as it is usually called—whether of spirit-rapping and mesmerism, or miraculous relics and winking pictures. Longing for guidance and teaching, and never having been taught to guide and teach itself, it is but too likely to deliver itself up in self-despair to the guidance and teaching of those who, whether they be quacks or fanatics, look on uneducated women as their natural prey.

One word more, and I have done. Let me ask women to educate themselves, not for their own sakes merely, but for the sake of others. For whether they will or not, they must educate others. I do not speak merely of those who may be engaged in the work of direct teaching; that they ought to be well taught themselves, who can doubt? I speak of those—and in so doing I speak of every woman, young and old—who exercises as wife, as mother, as aunt, as sister, or as friend, an influence, indirect it may be, and unconscious, but still potent and practical, on the minds and characters of those about them, especially of men. How potent and practical that influence is, those know best who know most of the world and most of human nature. There are those who consider—and I agree with them—that the education of boys under twelve years ought to be entrusted as much as possible to women. Let me ask—of what period of youth and manhood does not the same hold true? I pity the ignorance and conceit of the man who fancies that he has nothing left to learn from cultivated women.

Surely that is woman’s calling—to teach man: and to teach him what? To teach him, after all, that his calling is the same as hers, if he will but see the things which belong to his peace. To temper his fiercer, coarser, more self-assertive nature, by the contact of her gentleness, purity, self-sacrifice. To make him see that not by blare of trumpets, not by noise, wrath, greed, ambition, intrigue, puffery, is good and lasting work to be done on earth: but by wise self-distrust, by silent labor, by lofty self-control, by that charity which hopeth all things, believeth all things, endureth all things; by such an example, in short, as women now in tens of thousands set to those around them; such as they will show more and more, the more their whole womanhood is educated to employ its powers without waste and without haste in harmonious unity. Let the woman begin in girlhood, if such be her happy lot—to quote the words of a great poet, a great philosopher, and a great Churchman, William Wordsworth—let her begin, I say—

Let her develop onwards—

But let her highest and her final development be that which not nature, but self-education alone can bring—that which makes her once and forever—

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C. L. S. C. WORK.

By J. H. VINCENT, D. D., Superintendent of Instruction, C. L. S. C.

The Sunday Readings of the January and February numbers constitute the “required” reading on “Bible and Religious History and Literature.” If now and then you consider the selections “a little too long,” read them carefully for your profit.

On the Sabbaths of January and February we read outlines of Bible History principally from the abridgement by Dr. Collier. It will be well (although it is not required) also to read and study the outline lessons in the History of the Bible and in Bible History, as given in Chautauqua Text-Book No. 36, “Assembly Bible Outlines,” pages 7-37. Price of Chautauqua Text-Book No. 36, only ten cents.

The people who most need the ministry of the C. L. S. C. are not likely to take it up at first, and therefore those who appreciate its advantages should seek out persons likely to be profited by it. Think over your list of acquaintances, rich and poor, people of wealth and people engrossed with business or domestic care. Go with personal explanations and appeals and induce them to join the Circle, or to take up some part of its work, the reading of one book, or the reading of a special course, like the Bryant or the Shakspere course.

I want to call your attention to a valuable book for every student’s table—“Roget’s Thesaurus.” It enables one to find a whole family of words by knowing one of them. The classification is well nigh perfect. Phrases, as well as words, are included in the list. For example, look into the index for the word “circle.” Your attention is called at once to paragraph 181, which gives synonymous words of circle, as defining a “region:” sphere, ground, soil, area, realm, hemisphere, quarter, district, beat, orb, circuit, circle; pale; compartment, department; domain, tract, territory, country, canton, county, shire, province, arrondissement, parish, township, commune, ward, wapentake, hundred, riding; principality, duchy, kingdom, etc. Or we turn to the word circle, as “form,” in paragraph 247, where we have: circle, circlet, ring, areola, hoop, roundlet, annulus, annulet, bracelet, armlet; ringlet; eye, loop, wheel; cycle, orb, orbit, rundle, zone, belt, cordon, band; sash, girdle, cestus, cincture, baldric, fillet, fascia, wreath, garland; crown, corona, coronet, chaplet, snood, necklace, collar; noose, lasso. Or take the word circle as a “party,” paragraph 712, where we find: party, side, faction, denomination, communion, set, crew, band, horde, posse, phalanx; family, clan, etc., etc.; community, body, fellowship, sodality, solidarity; confraternity; brotherhood, sisterhood, etc., etc., and so on through one thousand paragraphs, filling 429 pages, and then followed by a four-columned index on each page for 271 more pages. The book is indeed a treasury of the English language. Price, sent to members of the C. L. S. C., $1.60.

The Cincinnati local circle has great enterprise. It announces a third annual course of free lectures for the coming winter. Our correspondent, Miss Eleanor C. O’Connell, writes: “We are now planning for the organization of a branch ‘Society of the Hall in the Grove,’ for, besides having an alumnal meeting, it is our desire that next year, and each succeeding one, the older graduates shall give in October a reception to the last graduating class, and thus, by welcoming them into this fraternity, help keep up their interest in the Circle. I hope that when you come we will have a good report to make concerning ’82 welcoming those of this year.”

Have you put our “university property” in order? Have you a cozy corner in your house belonging to the C. L. S. C.? Is the “dormitory” well ventilated? Is the food in the “refectory” healthful? Are the “hours of reading” regularly observed?

Such words as these are refreshing: “Though only a two-year-old Chautauquan, I feel that these two years have been richer and more valuable to me than twice their number before. They have indeed changed the whole tenor of my life. Next year I expect to attend Michigan University as a result of the work of the C. L. S. C. I feel that whatever may be the degree of usefulness which I hope to reach, it will be owing to the inspiration received from my present course of reading.”

While members of the C. L. S. C. should read the whole series of books prescribed, each member should select one book to which he is to give especial attention. The others are books for outlook; this is a book for mental discipline. He must master it, drill himself on it, study it critically, doing with it what, if he had the time, he would do with every book of the course.

As far as practicable, follow the prescribed order of the reading, taking up each month the work prescribed for that month. There is no law of the Medes and Persians about it, but the work will be very much more satisfactorily done where this rule is observed. It is always easier to make reports, and fill out the memoranda, etc., when the work is performed in the prescribed order.

I suggest to all students the value of much conversation and council in the departments of study. Is there not some teacher or other specialist in your community who would be glad occasionally to give you helpful hints in history, or other branch of study? Is there not, for example, some one who takes a special interest in geology, and who, during the months devoted to this study, would be glad to guide you to a more practical knowledge than you can get from mere books? Learn to utilize the talent of your community. Ask questions. Do not be ashamed to betray ignorance. State your opinions. What if you make a mistake? You will not be likely to make it a second time. The introduction into your life of casual conversations on useful subjects will give both strength and dignity to your life. Watch therefore the people of your community; pick out those who know and can help. Get help out of them. They will delight to serve you, and the service will do both them and you great good.

It matters little whether a man be mathematically, or philologically, or artistically cultivated, so that he be cultivated.—Goethe.

Members of the C. L. S. C., in addressing the Plainfield office, are requested to give complete addresses, town, county, state, and also the class to which they belong. This will prevent the necessity of referring to the records before the letters can be answered. Secretaries of local circles in cities, in sending to the office, should always give the street address of each member to whom a fee is to be credited.

The filling up of the blank pages in Dr. Wilkinson’s Preparatory Greek Course in English, while earnestly recommended, is not required.

By a mistake, the Little Classical Dictionary, published by J. B. Putnam’s Sons, New York City, was announced at thirty cents, by mail. The price is forty cents. Let all students take note of this.

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Our friend, Miss Myrtie C. Hudson, from California, a graduate of the Class of 1882, has entered Michigan University, at Ann Arbor. She reports meetings of the students’ association. She says: “On Sunday morning the hall was filled for the opening prayer-meeting, and there was manifested a working Christian spirit which surprised and delighted me. I believe one can grow in grace in such a school. The crucial test of character will there be developed. The five o’clock quiet hour on Sabbath afternoon is growing very dear to me. That beautiful suggestion is one of the many things for which I can never thank you enough. If the hours help all the members as they do me, they are no doubt a power in the Circle. I am already looking forward to that time as the best in all the week. A portion of the time I spend in preparing Bible readings on themes suggested at Chautauqua, beginning with ‘God in Nature,’ with Romans i: 19, 20 for the key. I shall always look lovingly back to the weeks I spent at Chautauqua. They were wonderful weeks, and I lived more in them than in as many years before.”

There is strong temptation to take substitutes for the regular books. You have a great cyclopædia, and prefer to read articles on the appointed subject rather than to take up the book required. Or, you have some other history, or other scientific treatise. In order to economize, I have allowed substitutes. Comparatively few of our students have used them. It is much more pleasant for all members of the C. L. S. C. to travel one way. The sympathy of the members is increased by such unity. The reading of Green’s “Short History of the English People,” and Merrivale’s “Rome,” bound together by very strong cords the members of the Circle. While there may be other valuable books, we think that the “required” books are the best, and we desire our members as far as practicable to use them.

Edward A. Spring, sculptor, who has charge of the clay-modeling department, at Chautauqua, lingered for several weeks after the close of the Assembly the past season. He studied the old trees in St. Paul’s Grove, measuring them carefully, and also numbered them. He finds twelve maples, five beeches, one butternut, and one hemlock. “The largest maple, No. 6,” he says, “is nearly eight feet in circumference. It stands in front of the Hall. A butternut, No. 8, is a grand old tree, and full of nuts this year; but it leans very much toward the hemlock, and can hardly last long without some skillful forestry work. All the trees, except Nos. 2 and 9, are too large to reach around with my arms. No. 13 is one of the finest trees on the whole grounds—a very symmetrical tulip on the west side of Cookman Avenue.” He adds, “I had been all about the Grove many times, but now that I have held each one of these giants of the old forest clasped in my arms, I feel toward each as if I had said farewell to a dear friend. For five Sundays the setting sun has lighted a little band of friends in the Hall of Philosophy—five little gatherings, where a lovely spirit prevailed, and I think all there present will long remember it. Dr. Eaton and Mr. Martin have led the service, which took the form of devotional expression,

‘A song of service, of faith, of praise;’

with frequent allusions to our book-mates of the great Circle at whose center we were met. Several times each one in turn repeated a verse of Scripture; and, day before yesterday, upon closing, we joined hands and closed the circle, repeating in concert the three mottoes of the C. L. S. C. Now, I started out to tell you of these meetings with an express purpose, namely, to urge the desirableness of securing a sunset belt from the Hall of Philosophy, so that no intervening structures shall cut off this glorifying of the maples at the hour of the Round-Table, and other favored and favorite gatherings.”

C. L. S. C. TESTIMONY.

New England.—I am astonished at the wonderful system and workings of the C. L. S. C. It seems to me that this must be one of the most active agents for good extant, and its origination ought surely to be counted among the most progressive educational forces of the day. It was with some doubts and considerable apathy that I sent my name for enrollment among the students of the Circle, but I am now an enthusiast.

Massachusetts (Williamstown).—One year ago I began the Chautauqua course in connection with my regular college duties. While for me, a great part of the work was a review, I found that it served to clinch and make fast my previous knowledge of the subjects taken up, and also gave me much information that was new and not to be obtained in my college course. I have just entered on my senior year, and although I am very busy, I shall keep up my C. L. S. C. work, believing that any time I can take to devote to that, will be spent to the best possible advantage. To one who has the advantages of a college education the C. L. S. C. course furnishes a valuable auxiliary and material aid, while to those denied this advantage, it furnishes a means of education surely second to none, save perhaps the few best colleges. My purpose is to graduate and then to pursue some of the extra courses as I have time. With best wishes for the success of the “People’s College,” and of every true Chautauquan, I am yours, respectfully, etc.

Massachusetts.—I have nearly all of last year’s books to read up, but I am not one bit discouraged. I am behind from various causes; with a large family and many cares, and a great deal of church and temperance work, and foreign mission work to do, and a house full of company all last year, it kept me behind. But this year I shall make up and graduate in ’84, all in good time.

Maine.—I am a poor farmer’s daughter, and motherless. I have wished very much to go to some good school and graduate, but I am an only daughter and therefore must be my father’s housekeeper, and you cannot tell how glad I was to learn of the C. L. S. C. I shall try to complete the reading and study for this year if possible.

Vermont.—We are two years behind the class of ’83, but hope to be able to catch up and finish with that class. We are not discouraged, though laboring under difficulties. I shall never cease to be grateful for the C. L. S. C., which is giving pleasure and profit to so many thousands.

New York.—I have been for years a confirmed invalid, never leaving my room unless carried out, and unable to sit even in a reclining chair, but a short time. During these long, weary years, reading, and listening to reading, has been the one great pleasure left me. Having my attention directed, a few months since, to the list of required readings for the C. L. S. C., the thought presented itself to me that, in place of desultory reading, I might substitute a regular course, as I think there are but few days pass when I do not read at least forty minutes, still I dare not pledge myself to even that length of time regularly, and can only promise to do the best I can.

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Illinois.—For six weeks I have been very sick. Through it all I have continued my reading. Of how much value the past year’s reading has been to me it would be impossible to tell. But there are books in the library that have never been opened by me before, thinking they were too deep or dry until the beautiful “Mosaics,” printed in that valuable paper, “The Chautauquan,” touched the spring of curiosity and sent me searching through them from lid to lid.

A member writes: Five years ago I walked into an unguarded opening in the sidewalk and fell ten or twelve feet, causing spinal trouble, since which time I have not been able to ride or walk, until within the past year. I walk around my room some, and hope to entirely recover. I suppose I simply should have said, “I am an invalid,” but I don’t like the word, for I do try to make myself useful. I have a little private C. L. S. C. school in my room mornings, and find plenty to occupy my time.

New York.—A mother, whose daughter (also a member of the class of ’82) died last year, writes: “The diploma is a gem, weighted with meaning in the illustrations; and now I only regret that I was not more interested in the diploma, and had it on regular parchment. My husband was pleased with it, and wished me to have it framed and hung beside my son’s and daughter’s—the one from Harvard, the other from Fort Edward Institute. My son, who is an enthusiastic educator, sent his congratulations, saying: ‘Not many have received a diploma after being fifty-five years of age.’ But what afforded us all increased pleasure was the mistake of one of the initials, my own name being C. W. C., and my daughter’s being C. M. C. The name in the diploma is Mrs. C. M. C., so like the blending of our tastes and life pursuits. My son says: ‘The error of initials has increased the value of the diploma;’ and all of us so consider it. Well, she had commenced on the fourth year, and with quivering lip expressed a hope that she should live to finish the course. To her belongs the merit of inspiring her mother and others in this place, and her influence will continue. How appropriate that she shares in the diploma that I doubly value for her sake!”

Miss Norton, secretary of the Pacific Coast Branch of the C. L. S. C., writes: “The outlook for the coming year seems very hopeful thus far, in our office work, especially in the letters from the outlying States and Territories. The seed sown last year seems to be bearing good fruit.”

New Mexico.—From Las Vegas, New Mexico, there comes this message: I am a member of the C. L. S. C.; marched with the circle at Rome City last summer; was at the banquet and camp-fire, and heard Dr. Vincent lecture before the circle. I would like to organize a circle in New Mexico; send me papers and all the help you can for the work.

Indian Territory.—From the Wa-la-ka Creek nation, Indian Territory, a writer says: “We have a family of one hundred and twenty Indian youth and teachers. Can we become members of the C. L. S. C.?” The answer is, Yes. Thus the work is spreading into every State and Territory, and into many foreign nations.

California.—With my three little children and quite an extensive poultry business to look after, I have very few idle moments. Hence my failure to keep up with my class was unavoidable. I have enjoyed the course of reading more than I can express, though I am not at all satisfied with my year’s work. It troubles me sometimes to remember what I have read. I am very anxious to take up the Greek course. I have been trying to get some of my neighbors interested in the C. L. S. C., but do not succeed, so I am plodding on alone. I think you are doing a noble work, and the end is not yet. I will close in the language of Tiny Tim, “God bless us every one.”

West Virginia.—How much we have enjoyed the course of reading! We really did not study: had time only to go over once. One would read aloud, while the other sewed; and we would not take anything for what we learned. Mother would often ask, “Well, how much do you remember of all you read?” I often thought it was like the Centennial—we were there a week. Of course we can’t remember half we saw, and yet we have a pretty good idea of what was there, and what we saw; enough to make it a pleasure and a profit to think of. And so about the books we read. Perhaps we couldn’t answer one question in ten you’d ask us in Roman history, and yet we have a distinct idea of the way the people lived, of the characters of Julius Cæsar, Sulla, Nero, etc. We have a beautiful cat named Pericles, who was a kitten when we were reading history of Greece; and we had one named Antonius when reading Roman history, but he wasn’t nice, and we gave him away.

Illinois.—An Illinois miss writes: I am running all to music, and found some time ago that my thoughts were altogether too narrow for the music, and if I can branch out more, get new thoughts, and strange ones, I can stand up straighter in other ways. This is a great, strong, rough world, and it takes a strong heart and lots of courage. I am only a girl.

Maryland.—One of the most charming domestic scenes is reported to us from the “Bird’s Nest,” in Maryland, where there are several members of the Circle. A good woman, who is the light of the house, writes: There have been days when I could not study at all, but the shells that I was able to gather as I stood on the shore, helped me to listen to the waves as they came in from the other side of the great sea of knowledge, from away back before the coming of Christ. And I have learned that there is no god like our God, for he knoweth that we have need of this mind-furnishing. I feel sure that the C. L. S. C. has come to be one of the corner-stones in our home. Jesus Christ, I hope, is the chief corner-stone. Does not our Bible tell us that “every wise woman buildeth her house?” Does she wish to know how? “Through wisdom is a house builded, and by understanding is it established, and by knowledge shall the chambers be filled with all precious and pleasant riches.” I pray God that every mother may belong to the C. L. S. C. When I began my studies in October last, I soon felt I wanted my husband to study with me. Thus far in our married life we had always gone hand in hand together. I felt almost as if we were being separated. I did not urge the matter, because I saw that he felt that for me it would be impracticable. The more I studied, the more I felt it was right for me to keep on; that I could help them all in the home better by so doing. Last evening, after reading the Chautauqua Herald (we have taken it all through the course this summer), my husband laid down the paper and said: “My dear, I am going to join this Circle; and Nellie (turning to our daughter), you must join it, too, and we will all help each other in the home.” All my heart went out to God in thankfulness. * * * Last Sabbath was my birthday, and my two nieces and daughter told me on Saturday evening that I must not go into the dining-room Sabbath morning until the bell rang for breakfast. Accordingly, when the bell sounded, my husband escorted me to the dining-room. The table was beautiful with its linen, its basket of pears, peaches, and grapes in the center, and the lovely saucer bouquet at my plate. Just beside my chair[225] was a flower stand that father had made for me, and each shelf was laden with presents for me from the dear ones, not excepting my honored, faithful, colored servant. In the bay-window were the words, “Happy Birthday,” in phantom letters. When we were seated at the table, my husband asked a blessing. Each of us then recited a verse of Scripture, as is our usual custom. Just then my father handed my husband a paper, which he opened and read. It was a sweet little poem which he had written, closing with the words:

I think I never had anything move me so. I just bowed any head and thanked my Heavenly Father.

Ohio.—Since I began to study in the C. L. S. C., I have spent a summer in England and Scotland. Thanks to you and Green, I was thoroughly steeped in English history and literature, which made every place alive with interest. At Oxford did we not wander along the lovely Isis where Addison loved to walk, to ponder, and study? and did we not revel in a mild way under the solemn shade of the venerable trees, and gaze with intense interest at the manuscripts and books of the Bodleian Library? and did we not hear Gray’s Elegy in that very country churchyard? Then, too, we made a pilgrimage to Canterbury,

“The holy blisful martir for to seeke.”

There were six of us, and we were all of one mind. We crossed the border and made a short tour through Scotland, which included a visit to unfrequented Ayr,

and to Kirk Alloway, where poor Tam saw such a bewitching sight. The last weeks of the summer were spent in the English lake district, and long shall I remember the wonderful pictures seen from our windows at Keswick: mountains blue and hazy, and again with wreaths of vapor creeping up the sides and capping the summits, or perhaps clouds hanging in pillowy masses over them; and there in the sunlight was the Greta, rippling waves and leaping just as it enchanted Southey, and if I had not known about him, it would have been nothing to me. If there is a paradise upon earth, it must be at Grasmere and Rydyl, sacred with the memory of Wordsworth. There is nothing to disturb the serene, charming place. We sat by the clear, noisy Rothay, and wandered through Grasmere churchyard, where Wordsworth is buried. Dorothy lies beside him. The clergyman intoned the evening service in the church as if it were a tedious affair, and we were glad to be through with it. Maybe he did not think it worth while to be slow and solemn, as there were only five worshippers. May it be your good fortune some day to see the old creature known as guide to the principal fall of Rydyl. As she painfully hobbled along on her cane, she grew quite garrulous over her recollections of the past. H. asked her whether she ever read his poems. “Seeing him and knowing him,” said she, “is a better memory than reading his poetry.” To the C. L. S. C. is due much of the pleasure of the summer. Through the C. L. S. C. I received the first impulse to study systematically at home; and it is my desire to have my gratitude take a substantial form. I remember the scholarships you referred to that Commencement Day. Inclosed you will find ten dollars, which is my contribution for such a scholarship. It is my way to make acknowledgment of what the C. L. S. C has done for me.

Ohio.—The Madison Chautauqua Circle lost a valued member, by the death of Mary E. Galpin, on October 8, 1882. In the summer of 1878 she visited Lake Chautauqua. Having intellectual tastes, she soon became interested in the founding of the “People’s College.” On her return home, in her quiet and unobtrusive way, she endeavored to enlarge the Chautauqua Circle by awakening an interest among her young friends. In the summer of 1880 she visited Chautauqua, and enjoyed the Round-Table talks within the shade of the “Hall in the Grove,” and while watching the first C. L. S. C. camp-fire, Mary’s zeal and enthusiasm seemed to kindle anew. Those who have been closely associated with her know of her unabated interest, and somewhat of the disappointment she experienced in not being able to realize her long-cherished hope of being at Chautauqua on that memorable Commencement Day. In the providence of God she was prevented from passing under the triumphal arches at Chautauqua, but she was greatly gratified when she received her diploma, and expressed her determination to secure the white seal. “But it is not for man to direct his steps.” A few weeks after, wearing the white rose of a pure life unfolded by all-sufficient grace, and upheld by filial devotion, without a murmur, with a smile on her face, she passed through the golden gate into the heavenly city.

LOCAL CIRCLES.

[We request the president or secretary of every local circle to send us reports of their work, of lectures, concerts, entertainments, etc. Editor of The Chautauquan, Meadville, Pa.]

The friendships formed through the agency of the C. L. S. C. ripen with age, and in ten thousand instances the work creates strong bonds of union between fellow-students. The local circle is a favorite place for members of the C. L. S. C. who are searching for knowledge and truth. Love for the pursuit of knowledge will inspire its possessor to seek out kindred spirits, to band themselves together, and organize for work. We furnish our readers, in the following reports, with a glimpse into a number of local circles. Here we find variety in the methods for conducting the work, and unity in the aim of all C. L. S. C. students. A carefully prepared paper from the secretary of every local circle concerning your work, and the method of doing it, is solicited by us for the help it may be to other circles. Use this department of The Chautauquan (it is your magazine) for an interchange of plans and opinions concerning your work in your local organizations. [Editor The Chautauquan.]

Berlin, Pennsylvania, is located in a beautiful valley, twenty-five miles north of Cumberland, and only a few miles from the top of the Alleghenies. The town is old, not very enterprising, but favored with a moral and intelligent population. We organized our circle in the latter part of October and commenced our reading November 1st. Our membership numbers twenty-two. We have elected a librarian, hoping soon to need one. We do not appoint a leader for the circle, but a conductor for each department of work—one for geology, another for Greek history, etc. Having a number of professional men in our circle, such as doctors, ministers and teachers, we propose a division of labor, and thus we shall do more thorough work. We will have one regular meeting each month, and as many special meetings as we shall find profitable. Memorial days will come under[226] the head of special meetings. The C. L. S. C. idea is almost a stranger to the people of this town, but we hope soon to make for it many acquaintances and friends.

New Albany, Indiana.—Our meetings are very informal. While assembling a running conversation is kept up on the work done, and to be done. We have no special formality about opening or closing, but pass easily from the general conversation to the special work of the evening. So far this has consisted chiefly of a discussion of geology, aided by the diagrams. Considerable interest has been awakened on this subject. Usually we have had one or more essays at each meeting, but have had none yet this year. The questions for further study will hereafter form a part of the evening’s work. We meet every two weeks on Monday night, from house to house. There are two circles here, one of ladies, who meet on Friday afternoon, and ours, of both sexes. We have also a general organization. A number of the other circle always meet with us. The Pioneer Circle is composed almost entirely of teachers in the public schools, and they must catch time when they can, but they are enthusiastic workers.

Johnstown, N. Y.—Our method of conducting C. L. S. C. work is this: At each meeting, after the program of the previous meeting has been carried out, the leader requests one or two members to prepare essays on a certain part of the work, one or two members to bring a stated number of questions on a certain subject, another member to read a short article from The Chautauquan. Very often the leader asks for the opinion of various members of a character or an article met with in the reading. At our last meeting the circle authorized the secretary to appoint at each meeting—which occurs each alternate week—a critic, also what might be called an orthoëpist. We cannot inform you as to the benefit to be derived from this feature of our circle, as it is new to us.

Quincy, Michigan.—Were mine a thousand voices; yea, the voice of every Chautauquan who regards system and order, who enjoys the pleasure and strength there is in feeling they are each day and week going on with a large band of faithful Chautauquans, I would say please go on in the good old way of dividing the lessons of the month into weekly installments. It is a real help to have the week’s work laid out for us in The Chautauquan. It greatly facilitates the labor of the leader of the local circle. Our local circle, which numbered about ten members last year, has started out “boomingly” this year with about twenty, and the prospect is good for still widening the circle. We have weekly meetings. One, a most enthusiastic member, comes five and a-half miles to attend the meetings. Our president is a minister. He and his worthy wife take an active part in the work. We also have the principal and preceptress of our public schools among our active members. After a general history and geology lesson we have essays on the subject of the evening from the older members, that are inspiring to the younger ones.

The Northfield, Connecticut, local circle is situate in the old “Mountain County,” Litchfield, where rocks are convenient for geological study, and the pure atmosphere favors astronomical observations. It numbers nine members, six of whom are regular members of the C. L. S. C. All are young people, and six are, or have been, school teachers. Inasmuch as it is a new organization, with its method of work tentative and liable to change, or displacement, on further trial, its plan is only given because it may have a suggestion for those who would not adopt it exactly. The circle meets fortnightly, and on Friday evenings, so all the teachers can be present. Topics, from the required reading, are assigned in advance, and by lot. Then each member is responsible for his or her topic, but he is allowed to present it at the next meeting in the form of an essay, lecture, or recitation, or he may come prepared to be questioned upon it by the committee of instruction and the class generally. Thus far the plan works well, stimulating thorough preparation on the part of all, and furnishing all the work the circle can well do in an evening. Any considerable increase of members would of course make some modification of our method necessary, and the reports of other circles in The Chautauquan may reveal something so much better that we may abandon our experimental ways entirely. We send greeting to the whole C. L. S. C.

Gilroy, California.—We organized in 1879 and ’80 a local circle with about twenty-five members. In the study of history, besides the regular lesson, some of the members were appointed to read selections, and others to write short sketches of principal characters whose names are found in our lessons. The selections were mostly poems from Macaulay’s Lays of Ancient Rome and Tennyson’s King Arthur. In the study of biology, geology, etc., questions were distributed to the class on slips of paper by a committee appointed by the chair at the previous meeting. The questions and answers were read at the next meeting. Sometimes topics or subjects were given; the general divisions of the vegetable kingdom, glacial formation, the orders of Greek and Roman architecture, etc. Last year we were favored by having Prof. Norton, of the State Normal School, for one of our leaders. In the study of art we had the benefit of stereoscopic views exhibited by the aid of a magic lantern, of the ancient ruins and public buildings, and scenes of interest in Egypt, Greece, and Italy. In the study of geology and chemistry, the Professor gave us illustrative diagrams on the blackboard, and chemical experiments illustrating volcanic action, and various other phenomena resulting from scientific investigation. This year we have taken “a new departure.” We do not have a regular leader, as heretofore, but the person occupying the chair appoints a successor for the next meeting, who conducts the recitation, makes up the order of work, and then appoints a successor for the next meeting. Our plan of work is still the same as in former years. Prof. Norton is still with us occasionally; also Miss S. M. Severance, who has been a great help to the circle since its organization, not only as an efficient teacher at the regular meetings, but one to whom we could refer questions of importance, her extensive and varied information enabling her to be, as it were, a living encyclopedia for our benefit.

Reading, Pennsylvania.—To our own pleasant city has swept the “happy circle” and like its many members, we too, feel blessed that

Two weeks ago a dozen of us ladies and gentlemen organized ourselves into—

Through the kindness of Mr. Wm. Price, a spacious room in his residence has been put at our disposal, and herein we hold our meetings every Monday evening, and examine one another on the matters we have read during each preceding week, and the answers form vital topics for discussion of surpassing interest. But we are by no means selfish with our highly prized acquirements, and our circle is greatly honored by the leading Lyceum of this city, the management of which has graciously requested us to take charge[227] of the first half of their program. In response we send some one of our circle in a representative capacity, to each meeting to deliver a lecture upon one of the subjects of the course, and we expect to take up all in due season. Already much interest is awakened, and our circle promises to become famous for its capable and willing workers for Christianity and culture.

Holliston, Maine.—Our local circle numbers forty members. Our meetings are held monthly, and the program is arranged by a committee of two, and announced a month in advance. Synopses of readings are given, and essays on leading characters and topics. We have talks on subjects of general interest and Round-Table conversations. On memorial days we have readings from the authors whose day we celebrate. We allow considerable time for music, for the singing of class songs, and we expect all qualified to furnish music, to do so by making their own selections. Once a year we give an entertainment of a musical and literary character, inviting friends who are not members. From time to time we have public lectures, arranged on subjects of interest and connected with C. L. S. C. work.

The Rev. R. H. Howard writes from Saxonville, Massachusetts: Under what was at first deemed extremely unpropitious circumstances we have now what appears to be a flourishing circle in this place. At the outset all signs seemed discouraging; but the energy and pluck of a few young ladies were honored by the awakening of marked and very hopeful interest in the enterprise, and our meetings thus far have been fully attended and enthusiastic. Even the perplexing, though unavoidable, delay in obtaining the text-books has not perceptibly dampened or diminished the ardor excited. Meanwhile, not feeling able to purchase large and expensive maps and charts, one of our members, who wields a facile pencil, sketches, on a large scale, such maps and charts as we require as we proceed. A large map, in connection with a history exercise in a circle meeting, would seem to be indispensable. Certain charts, also, however simple or crude, illustrative of geological formations, and race and language relations, cannot but serve a very important purpose. Let me observe just here, that I learn that the same enthusiasm in C. L. S. C. work that has been developed in this place is obtaining in adjoining communities. Teachers in public schools, I am told, gather, after the labors of the day, in one of the school-rooms, and, for an hour or so, daily, read together. How interesting a spectacle! Yea, in view of this interest in these higher intellectual pursuits, thus awakened among these young people under my own eye, I have been impressed, as never before, as I have thought of the vast popular intellectual ferment produced throughout the country, not to say throughout the world, by this wonderful C. L. S. C. of Dr. Vincent’s. Arising from this very wide-spread, and ever-extending and deepening interest in, and devotion to intellectual and moral pursuits, crowned through his timely instrumentality, what could well have been more timely, aye, providential, in the best sense of the term, than this movement? Who can begin to estimate its results in the years and ages to come? Already the important fact is developed that the life, and doubtless the continued existence, of Chautauqua, Framingham Assembly, and other similar enterprises, are bound up in, and are destined to depend upon the support derived from the C. L. S. C. The mother thus already leans hard upon the young and vigorous daughter.

At Elkham, Wisconsin, local circle, the president appoints two or more members at each meeting to prepare questions on the lesson for the next week. These members teach that part of the lesson on which they have prepared questions. Some recite with open books, while others are prepared to answer the questions with closed books. The questions and answers published in The Chautauquan are always used as a review. Of course there is a free interchange of opinion and frequent discussions on points of the lesson, which are of peculiar interest.

Meriden, Connecticut.—The officers of our local circle constitute the Instruction Committee. The president appoints a committee of five, whose duty it is to assist the Instruction Committee. Said committee appoint leaders of reviews, and, in fact, they have charge of all work of the circle, memorial exercises, lectures, entertainments, etc. We have another committee of four, whose work it is to see all strangers at meetings of the circle, and invite them to join; also to welcome new members, and see that they are introduced to other members, especially to the officers and Instruction Committee. We number seventy members, thirty-four regular and thirty-six local members. We regret to say that we lost one member by death, last summer; quite a young man, and, so far as we know, the only one who has taken the White Seal course. We regret his death, as he promised to become a valuable member to our circle. A few have left the circle this year, but new members are continually being added, eight names being proposed at our last meeting. We meet the first and third Monday evenings of each month. Some of our members walk from a mile to a mile and a half to attend the meetings. Our method of work is as follows: We open the meeting with singing and prayer; all business is then transacted. We have about five reviews in an evening. At present the reviews are in Wilkinson’s Preparatory Greek Course, History of Russia, and English and Scandinavian History and Literature. These are prepared in the following manner: One member prepares from three to twelve questions on a subject, gives them to other members to answer at next meeting, and at that time calls for answers, and gives other members opportunity to ask any questions on the subject. Five-minute essays are sometimes read on other important subjects. We take up geology soon, on which subject Prof. Chapin, Ph. D., president of Meriden Scientific Circle, will give a few talks. The circle has just decided to purchase the set of geological diagrams. The committee intend all memorial days shall be celebrated this year. Last June we had a circle picnic, spending the day at a very pleasant place about twelve miles from here. It was a great success. Monday evening, September 18, we had memorial exercises for Garfield Day. On Monday evening, October 2, Rev. J. L. Hurlbut, of Plainfield, delivered a public lecture under the auspices of the circle, his subject being, “How to Spend our Leisure.” Both the lecturer and lecture have been very highly spoken of by all who attended, and we consider it the greatest success of all lectures as yet given. Our circle is growing, and we believe a great amount of good has been and is being done by it.

The local circles of the C. L. S. C. of Cincinnati, O., have this winter adopted the plan of visiting each other. This new arrangement was commenced on Tuesday evening, Oct. 31,—the Wesley, York street and Grace Church circles visiting the one at Christie Chapel. The lesson for the evening was a review of Grecian History, and was ably conducted by Mr. John A. Johnson, President of the Christie Circle. At the close of the lesson some minutes were passed in social intercourse, and then followed a comparison of the methods pursued in conducting the various circles present. All expressed themselves highly pleased with the meeting and it is the purpose to continue them throughout the year, as this system of visitation serves to make the members better acquainted with each other, which is desirable in a large city like Cincinnati. It also serves to strengthen the bond of[228] fellowship existing among those engaged in the common cause.

The first of the 3rd series of free lectures, under the auspices of the Chautauqua Circles of Cincinnati and vicinity, was given at Christie Chapel M. E. Church, corner of Court and Wesley avenue, in October. The church was filled with a highly intelligent and attentive audience. Rev. Dr. Blackburn, of Central Presbyterian Church, delivered a very instructive and eloquent lecture of an hour’s length on the subject, “The Origin and Spirit of the Greeks.” The lecturer traced the march of the Greeks from their Aryan fatherland, ranged them in the two main divisions of the Ionians and the Dorians; traced the rise of Doric Sparta and Ionic Athens; sketched their periods of successive overlordship; showed the want of political unity in all the Greek States, and emphasized the fact of a social unity in the Pan-Hellenic sentiment, the Greek language, religion, Amphictyonic council, festivals, literature, philosophy and art. The Greeks could appreciate a good thing wherever it originated. They caused art to stand out in its own beauty and on its own merits. The lecture closed with these words: “Greece had a mission to the human race, a noble work for the world. It was not in the domain of political government, nor of conscience, but in that of intellect. The lasting outcome of her work was culture. She fulfilled her mission. She ran her race among the nations and won the laurel. She fell, and thorns now bind her delicate hands, but the old olive wreath has not faded. The heritage of her culture has passed to the westward Aryans. We read our New Testament and remember her marvelous gift of speech. We run our Christian course and think of the Olympian races. Plato is studied where Paul is believed. The classics are recited where the Gospel is read for its wonderful words of life.”

Flushing, Michigan.—Our local circle meets every Friday evening. We have roll-call, and each member responds, either with a verse of Scripture or a gem from one of the poets, as decided on at our last meeting. Then singing and prayer. We next take the questions given in The Chautauquan, with additional questions on some of the required reading. We also have select reading or an essay each week. We had ten members last year; we now have eighteen. Our first meeting for this year was on the evening of September 29. The exercises were as follows: Reading of Psalms i:8-23; President’s greeting; essay on “The Excellencies of the C. L. S. C.;” recitation, “Hope Song of C. L. S. C.;” Bryant’s letter on the C. L. S. C.; paper on the “Design and Method in the C. L. S. C.” Then followed the enrollment of members by the secretary, and the appointment of committees by the president.

Nebraska City, Nebraska.—Two years ago our C. L. S. C. sprang into existence in the form of a triangle, widened into a circle in 1881, and now, in 1882, we have a membership of thirty. Monthly meetings have been held, at which we have had short oral accounts of subjects discussed in Geology, and questions and answers on Greek history. A noticeable feature of our last meeting was a “match” on the pronunciation of words selected from our reading. Were Herodotus or Thucydides present at our meetings, we think he would take pity upon us, and give to his places and men names less jaw-breaking to learn. The correct pronunciation of them seems to us like a “piling of Pelion upon Ossa.” Though our officers are ladies, we have able gentlemen in our circle. Some of the reading is a little “deep” for us, but, by perseverance, we hope to come up to it, “since the mountain can not come to Mahomet.” We all now see its beneficence insomuch that we present a unanimous vote of thanks to the projector of this grand scheme—the People’s College.

[Not Required.]

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS.

FIFTY QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ON “PREPARATORY GREEK COURSE IN ENGLISH,” COMPRISING THE LATTER HALF OF THE VOLUME, OR “HOMER.”

By ALBERT M. MARTIN, General Secretary C. L. S. C.

1. Q. After Xenophon’s Anabasis what is it usual for the preparatory student to take up next in order? A. The Iliad of Homer.

2. Q. What is sometimes taken instead of the Iliad? A. The Odyssey.

3. Q. What is the position of the Iliad of Homer in literature? A. It is the leading poem of the world.

4. Q. From what is the Iliad entitled? A. From the word Ilium, which is the alternative name of Troy.

5. Q. What episode in the siege of Troy is the real subject of the Iliad? A. The wrath of Achilles.

6. Q. What occasioned the siege of Troy? A. The carrying off of Helen, wife of Menelaus, a Grecian king, by Paris, son of Priam, king of Troy.

7. Q. Who engaged in the siege against Troy? A. The confederate kings of all Greece, with Agamemnon as commander-in-chief.

8. Q. What was the occasion of the wrath of Achilles? A. The arbitrary interference of Agamemnon to deprive Achilles of a female captive, Briseïs, and usurp her to himself.

9. Q. What at length incites Achilles to again return to the field? A. The death of Patroclus, his close friend, slain by the Trojans.

10. Q. What is the result as to Achilles? A. He slays Hector, the Trojan champion, and is himself killed by Paris.

11. Q. What forms the subject of the Odyssey? A. The adventures of one of the Greek chieftains, Ulysses, or Odysseus.

12. Q. When and how does the Iliad itself close? A. Before the fall of Troy, and with the death and funeral rites of Hector.

13. Q. What are some of the best known translations of the Iliad? A. Chapman’s, Pope’s, Cowper’s, Derby’s and Bryant’s.

14. Q. Of what are some of the most noted passages in the first book of the Iliad descriptive? A. The descent of Apollo, the wrangle between Achilles and Agamemnon, the promise of Jupiter to Thetis, and the feast of the gods.

15. Q. What does the second book of the Iliad recount? A. How Jupiter sends a deceiving dream to Agamemnon to induce that chieftain to make a vain assault on the Trojans.

16. Q. With what does the book close? A. With a catalogue of the Greek forces assembled.

17. Q. To us who read in the light of present views what is a feature of the Iliad fatal to any genuine interest in the story? A. The introduction of supernatural agencies into the action of the poem.

18. Q. What is one of the prominent scenes introduced in the third book of the Iliad? A. A duel between Paris, the thief, and Menelaus, the husband of Helen.

19. Q. What takes place at the crisis of the duel? A. Venus steps in and carries Paris off to his bed-chamber in the palace of Priam.

20. Q. In the fourth book what is described by a simile, one of the most nobly conceived and nobly expressed of all that occur in the Iliad? A. The advance of the Achaians to battle.

21. Q. What noted hero is introduced in the fifth book of[229] the Iliad? A. Æneas, the Trojan hero of Virgil’s poem, the Æneid.

22. Q. Of what is one of the most famous passages in the sixth book of the Iliad descriptive? A. The parting of Hector and Andromache, his wife, bringing with her their little child.

23. Q. Who among the Greeks takes the honors of the seventh book of the Iliad? A. Ajax.

24. Q. What constitutes a prominent feature in the eighth book of the Iliad? A. Another account of the Olympian gods in council.

25. Q. Technically described what is Homer’s verse? A. Dactylic hexameter.

26. Q. What is a dactyl? A. A foot of three syllables, of which the first is long and the other two short.

27. Q. In dactylic hexameter how many of these feet are there in a line? A. Six.

28. Q. Name a classic English poem written in dactylic hexameter. A. Longfellow’s “Evangeline.”

29. Q. In what celebrated descriptive passage does Homer exhaust all his art? A. In his description of the shield of Achilles.

30. Q. What does the Odyssey mean? A. The poem of Odysseus, or Ulysses, king of the island of Ithaca.

31. Q. When Troy was taken, for what place did Odysseus and his followers sail? A. Ithaca.

32. Q. On their way, to what land were they driven? A. That of the Cyclops, a savage race of one-eyed giants.

33. Q. Here what did Odysseus do to the Cyclop Polyphemus? A. He put out the eye of the monster after he had eaten six of the hero’s comrades.

34. Q. What did Poseidon, the god of the sea and father of Polyphemus, do in revenge? A. He doomed Odysseus to wander far and wide over the sea to strange lands.

35. Q. When the Odyssey begins, ten years after the fall of Troy, where is Odysseus? A. In the island of Ogygia, at the center of the sea, where for seven years the nymph Calypso has detained him against his will.

36. Q. Meanwhile what has befallen Penelope, the wife of Odysseus, in Ithaca? A. She has been courted by more than a hundred suitors, lawless, violent men, who feast riotously in the house of Odysseus as if it were their own.

37. Q. When Odysseus at length gets permission to sail from Ogygia, and starts on a raft, what occurs to him? A. Poseidon wrecks his raft, and he is thrown upon the island of the Phæacians, a rich and happy people near to the gods.

38. Q. Upon being entertained by the king of the Phæacians, what are the subjects of some of the adventures he relates? A. The Enchantress Circe, the sweet-singing sirens, and the passage between Scylla and Charybdis.

39. Q. After Odysseus is taken back to Ithaca by a Phæacian crew, what is the fate of the suitors of Penelope? A. They are all slain in the palace by Odysseus, assisted by his son Telemachus and two trusty servants.

40. Q. What are some of the most noted translations of the Odyssey? A. Chapman’s, Pope’s, Cowper’s, Worsley’s, and Bryant’s.

41. Q. In what form is Worsley’s translation written? A. The Spenserian Stanza, that adopted by Edmund Spenser for his great poem of the “Fairy Queen.”

42. Q. Name some other well-known poems written in the Spenserian Stanza. A. Thompson’s “Castle of Indolence,” Beattie’s “Minstrel,” and Byron’s “Childe Harold.”

43. Q. What part of the adventures of Odysseus does our author first give in an extended quotation from Worsley’s translation of the Odyssey? A. His stay in the country of the Phæacians.

44. Q. What was the name of the king of the Phæacians, frequently referred to in poetry containing classical allusions? A. Alcinous.

45. Q. What American author has written a version of the legend of Circe? A. Hawthorne in his “Tanglewood Tales.”

46. Q. Of what is the next extended quotation descriptive that is given by our author from Worsley’s translation of the Odyssey? A. The slaughter of the suitors of Penelope by Odysseus and his son.

47. Q. Of what are the remaining quotations given descriptive? A. Odysseus making himself known to Penelope, his wife, and to Laertes, his father.

48. Q. Who now intervenes to avert further bloodshed? A. Athene.

49. Q. In what manner is this accomplished? A. She stays the hand of Ulysses raised in fell self-defense against the avenging kindred of the suitors, and enjoins a solid peace between the two parties at feud.

50. Q. In this appearance what familiar form does the goddess Athene assume? A. That of Mentor, ancient friend of Ulysses.

[Not Required.]

QUESTIONS FOR FURTHER STUDY.

By ALBERT M. MARTIN, General Secretary C. L. S. C.

1. What is the origin of the expression, “Possession is nine points in the law?” [Page 124, Wilkinson’s Preparatory Greek Course in English.]

2. What was the preying sadness that Cowper sought to escape from by the work of translating Homer? [Page 130.]

3. Where is the original to be found of the quotation, “From the center to the utmost pole?” [Page 135.]

4. Who was “Macedonia’s Madman,” and why so called?

5. Give some of the features of the Cathedral of Cologne that render it famous? [Page 159.]

6. With whom did the expression originate, “Perish the thought?” [Page 163.]

7. In what particulars are the lines of Pope, “false and contradictory,” in his paraphrase of the moonlight scene, given in the closing part of the eighth book of the Iliad? [Page 185.]

8. When and on what occasion was Webster’s famous seventh of March speech delivered? [Page 193.]

9. Why is Athene called the “stern-eyed?” [Page 208.]

ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS FOR FURTHER STUDY IN THE NOVEMBER NUMBER OF THE CHAUTAUQUAN.

Geology.

1. The glacial streams from ice-caves that are the sources of the Arveiron and the Rhone rivers are milk-white from the presence of innumerable molecules of triturated rock which they bear suspended. This powdered rock is in the form of a very fine, impalpable mud. It is an unctious, sticky deposit, and only requires pressure to knead it into a tenacious clay. This mud owes its origin to the grinding power of the glacier, the stones and sand being crushed and pulverized upon the rock below.

2. The Grinnell glacier, discovered by Captain Hall, is just north of and adjacent to Hudson’s Strait, on the extreme southern point of Baffin’s Land, called Meta Incognita.

3. The Loffoden Islands are famous for the great maelstrom, which is a narrow passage between two of them. They are also noted for their fisheries. The evidences of the powerful wearing action of tidal currents is seen in their extremely rugged and precipitous coasts, and deep channels. Sharp pointed peaks three to four thousand feet above the sea, rise nearly perpendicularly out of the water.

4. The volcano of Jorullo is situated one hundred and sixty miles southeast of the City of Mexico. It is famous for its recent and sudden upheaval during a single night, in the midst of a fertile and highly cultivated plain.

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5. Earthquakes are spoken of as “convulsive movements of Old Vulcan” for the reason that the ancients ascribed the cause of them to that God. Vulcan was the god of fire, and his workshop was generally supposed to be in some volcanic island.

6. The connection of the former island of Tyre with the continent is not wholly due to the rising of the land from beneath. In the siege of Tyre by Alexander, 332 B. C., he united the island to the main land by an enormous artificial mole. This has been increased by ruins and alluvial deposits.

History of Greece.

1. Earth and water given to the Persian heralds were regarded as symbols of submission, because the earth represented the land, and the water the sea, and the meaning was that they were willing to yield dominion of both to the Persians.

2. The festival of the Karneian Apollo was a festival observed in many of the Grecian cities, especially in Sparta, where it was first instituted, in honor of Apollo Carneius. The celebration lasted nine days, and during the time nine tents were pitched near the city, and nine men lived in them after the manner of a military camp, obeying in everything the order of a herald.

3. The pæan, or war song of the Greeks, was a song originally sung in honor of Apollo, and was always of a joyous nature. It was also sung as a battle song, both before an attack on an enemy, and after the battle was finished. In later times it was sometimes sung in honor of mortals.

4. The tomb of Mausolus is one of the seven wonders of the world, associated with the name of Artemisia, queen of Halicarnassus, inasmuch as the Mausoleum was built by another queen of the same name, distinguished as Artemicia, queen of Caria.

5. According to Thucydides the sacrifice made by Pausanias during the battle of Platæa was made to Jupiter in the market-place of Platæa. It was a bloody sacrifice, probably of some domestic animal, and from the entrails or the manner of the death the soothsayers sought to interpret the will of the gods.

6. The Island of Delos was called sacred because it was said to have been the birth-place of Apollo and Diana. In 426 B. C. it was purified by the Athenians by having all tombs removed from it.

Geology.

1. The Fille-Fond, or Fille-Field, is a mountain plateau of Norway, connected with the Songe-Fjeld on the north and the Hardanger-Fjeld on the south. The summits vary in height from 4,900 feet to 6,300 feet.

2. The common name of the Chimæra is the Sea-cat. It is so called on account of its eyes. They have a greenish pupil surrounded by a white iris, and they shine, especially at night, like cats’ eyes. It is also called “King of the Herring.”

3. By the “Old Red Sandstone” of Europe is meant the Devonian Rocks. These rocks are called “red” on account of their color, and “old” to distinguish them from the New Red Sandstone, which appears in the triassic period.

4. Some of the eccentric features which probably caused the astonishment of Cuvier on examining the Plesiosauri for the first time are the following: to a lizard’s head it united the teeth of a crocodile, a neck like a serpent’s body, the trunk and tail of a quadruped, the vertebræ of a fish, the ribs of a chameleon, and the fins of a whale.

5. Some of the fossil footprints in the Connecticut Valley, made by colossal reptiles, are called “bird tracks” because they were at first supposed to be the tracks of birds, a large part of them resembling the impressions of birds’ feet more than those of any known animal.

6. The Loup Fork Beds are beds of Pliocene deposit which occur on the Loup Fork of the Platte River in the Upper Missouri region.

History of Greece.

1. The Helots were Spartan slaves. They were said to have been the native population of a portion of the Peloponnesus, and to have been subjected to slavery by the invading Dorians.

2. The “sacred wars” were wars relative to the possession of the Temple at Delphi and its treasures.

3. The Alkmæonidæ were a noble and wealthy family of Athens, descended from Alkmæon, who was a descendant of King Codrus. They were considered sacrilegious on account of the way in which Megacles, one of the family, treated the insurgents under Cylon. Having taken refuge at the altar of Minerva, on the Acropolis, Megacles induced them to withdraw on the promise that their lives should be spared, but their enemies put them to death as soon as they had them in their power.

4. The Untori, in the plague of Milan, in 1630, were persons suspected of anointing doors with pestilential ointment, and thus spreading the disease. Many persons were arrested and put to death on this suspicion.

5. Hermes was the Greek name for Mercury, the messenger of the gods.

6. The class Mothakes were emancipated Helots, who had been domestic slaves.

Correct answers to all the questions for further study in the November number of The Chautauquan have been received from Rev. R. H. and Mrs. Mary A. Howard, Saxonville, Mass.; Miss Maggie V. Wilcox, 605 North Thirty-fifth street, West Philadelphia, Pa.; Mrs. L. A. Chubbuck, New Bedford, Mass., and Miss Mary P. Whitney, Wagon Works, Ohio. A large number of other members have sent replies, and some of the papers show much diligent research, but as one or more of the answers in each paper are incorrect we have not given the names. A comparison of the answers as printed with those sent will show wherein the failures have been.

Members of the C. L. S. C. are not required to answer questions for further study. Those who are able to procure correct answers to all the questions for further study in this number of The Chautauquan will receive an acknowledgment if the replies are forwarded to Albert M. Martin, General Secretary C. L. S. C., Pittsburgh, Pa., so as to reach him not later than the 31st of January. Answers will be published in the March number of The Chautauquan. No answers need be sent unless they are to all the questions.

OUTLINE OF C. L. S. C. STUDIES FOR JANUARY.

For the month of January the required C. L. S. C. Reading comprises Prof. Wilkinson’s Preparatory Greek Course in English, the last half of the book, and readings in English, Russian, Scandinavian, and Religious History and Literature, and also readings in Bible History and Literature. The reading in Prof. Wilkinson’s Preparatory Greek course in English is from page 124 to the end of the book. The remainder of the reading for the month is printed in The Chautauquan. The following is the division according to weeks:

First Week—1. Wilkinson’s Preparatory Greek Course in English, from page 124 to page 158.

2. Reading in Bible History and Literature, in The Chautauquan.

3. Sunday Readings, in The Chautauquan, selection for January 7.

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Second Week—1. Wilkinson’s Preparatory Greek Course in English, from last paragraph on page 158 to last paragraph on page 198.

2. History of Russia, in The Chautauquan.

3. Sunday Readings, in The Chautauquan, selected for January 14.

Third Week—1. Wilkinson’s Preparatory Greek Course in English, from last paragraph on page 198 to last paragraph on 229.

2. Pictures from English History, in The Chautauquan.

3. Sunday Readings, in The Chautauquan, selection for January 21.

Fourth Week—1. Wilkinson’s Preparatory Greek Course In English, from last paragraph on page 229 to end of book.

2. Readings in Scandinavian History and Literature, in The Chautauquan.

3. Sunday Readings, in The Chautauquan, selection for January 28.

C. L. S. C. ROUND-TABLE.[I]

The lecturer of the afternoon, Colonel Daniels, of Virginia, was introduced.

Colonel Daniels: Your commander-in-chief and shepherd of this flock asked me to talk about “How to Teach Geology.” I did not come down here for any such purpose. I came to have a little rest and have a good time, and get acquainted with Chautauqua. But as I am here, I am glad to be set at work in any way to keep me out of mischief.

He said on a subsequent occasion that he did not want me to give a written lecture. That reminds me of a story that I heard Senator Nye tell years ago in a speech. He told of one of those excellent boys that die young, standing by the roadside, and a man was on a prancing steed. The man said, “Boy, when I get up to you, don’t you take off your hat and make a bow and scare this colt; he will throw me off.” Said the boy, with rustic simplicity, “I was not going to.” [Applause and laughter.]

I suppose that my excellent friend has to keep on guard. There are prowling around through these trees people with their pockets stuffed full of old sermons and lectures, and he is always on guard to keep them from firing them off to scare his pet C. L. S. C. So I was not mad a bit. [Laughter.]

Well, now, to plunge in medias res, it is a beautiful thing to study geology. This planet was our birth place. It is the way of God. And here in its strata is written by the finger of God himself the history of all that mighty series of events through which it passed from the time it emerged from primary chaos until to-day. It is scarcely possible that any person should believe in studying the works of God, and fail to see that this portion of his work, which lies in immediate contact with us, from which in so many ways we draw sustenance, in connection with which we have our being, and from out of which flows the stream of that abundant supply which God has provided for his children, and which for all our time is to be the theater of action of our race, should be studied.

But how, how taught? Don’t give any written lectures now. I will tell you how not to do it. If you are going to teach geology, don’t deliver written lectures. Write all you can about it, but don’t deliver it. I delivered a written lecture once, and that is the reason I never delivered any more.

I began studying geology when a boy, when I was put to studying a hoe-handle and ten acres of corn for about three weeks. There were lots of these pieces of stone, and my uncle, a good old Methodist class-leader, told me that God put those stones there at the time of the deluge. That satisfied me. But when I was on a government survey away in the West, I saw hundreds and thousands of feet of those rocks, such as I saw this morning when I picked up these stones. Here you see a complete mass of shells. Such rocks make up the bluffs of the Mississippi River. We have twenty thousand feet of these in Colorado. Major Buell told me that he got in one place twenty-seven thousand feet. Then I was not satisfied. I began to look a little further. By-and-by, in the district school library, I got hold of Randall’s Geology, that blessed old book, and it began to open my mind a little. I was on these surveys, and I began to have more and more practical lessons. Among the lead mines of Wisconsin I found the miners wanted practical knowledge, and I undertook to teach them a little. I remember my first attempt on a slate; then I took my bristol-board and made some diagrams. And then in a store, and then in a church; in the basement first, and then I got up into the church. So I taught the rudest kind of people, and from one lecture, I gave two, three, four, five, and on up to fifteen. I gained a local reputation, and got to be State Geologist of Wisconsin, and was tolerably well known in that country as a practical geologist. But I had no scientific knowledge of geology.

A good friend of mine wanted to see me advanced in life, and so sent word to me if I would come and deliver a lecture on geology before the board of their college, he thought I would get a professorship. It was an Old School Presbyterian college. I prepared myself without regard to expense. I went down to Boston, and saw Prof. Hitchcock and Prof. Agassiz, and I hunted through the books, and I made a lecture. You ought to have heard it. [Laughter.] You would not be here now. [Laughter.] It treated of all the cosmogonies; it went through primal chaos, through the azoic, the silurian, the devonian, and the various strata, until it introduced man on the scene. It took me two hours. It was a cold night, and they all shivered, and looked as if they wished I was in some warmer place. I did not get the professorship, and the college died the next year. [Laughter.]

Write all you can, it tends to make you accurate and fixes your knowledge, and then do with it as a good old Methodist presiding elder told me once on a time. We had planted some melons and cucumbers, but he did not seem to be pleased with them. He told the folks that we had splendid cucumbers, and he knew how to fix them: slice them up thin, put them in water, turn off the water, and put on pepper and salt, and throw them out of the window. That is what you are to do with the written lectures, read, write, and, as Emerson says, get drunk with your subject. You will not hear anything more of the dryness of your subject. It makes a subject dry because a man has not got enough of it in him to see the great connecting principles in him, so that he is aroused and sees the ultimate of it as well as the details, and the ultimate of it is man. It is for man and made for man. This being created here and being put in the midst of all of these things, is to make him greater, grander, and bring him into relation with the truth, and then by symmetrizing his being and aligning him with God in the great work of God, that is to make of this globe a heaven.

Geology will help you to do that, as the Bishop said yesterday, it will give you visions of the infinite possibilities of yourselves when you once align yourselves with God and live up to the truth. God has put into your hands the power to subordinate this globe, its storms, its climates, and their condition; you want geology for that. You want to begin to know these rocks at Chautauqua. I would like to put in your collection first, all the stones in the vicinity of Chautauqua.[232] Go out into the quarry, with its masonry that God has built. Here you find the stones all covered over with God’s hieroglyphics, here they are, corals, shells, and things that were alive. If you knew a way of petrifying these trees and plants, would you not think it was a pleasing way and do it? Here it is done. Here you have a study, a whole natural history, a whole natural creation that God made in order to make man possible, and capable of producing grain and grass and flower to make man live, all depending upon the fact that these rocks were built up as you find them to-day.

You find the old rocks arranged in strata, layers. You have them there by the depot. How was that? Go by the hillside. Let a portion of the drops of rain get together and make a stream, and they will form a gulley. What do you see? The soil has been washed out, and the material of the soil has been spread out. A pond, perhaps, will be there, such as you and I used to navigate, and then it dries up on the surface, and cracks at right angles. Here it is. There was a little mud puddle, and it cracked when it dried up. If you will take up a piece of it, you will find that it is arranged in layers. Here, see that. Through all that summer, and the previous summer, there was a succession of storms, and each one brought its contribution to the whole. If it was a big storm, it was thick, if a little storm, it was thin. Just like the exogenous trees. You count the lines of growth, and know the age of the tree. We have one layer spread over the other, all little volumes, but when it has quit growing, as in libraries, you will have a thick book. So, I say the layers write the storms of the past.

What else would we find there? If there were snails, leaves and sticks, they would be carried down and buried in the mud. If we take a section, and take out all that loose stuff, we have a section which gives a history of the different seasons, and the animals and plants that washed in there during the time that little mud puddle had been in existence. That is the beginning, the starting point of all the knowledge of the rocks; to begin right by us and see what is done now, and observe that wearing action. If you will go from that little gulley on the hillside to a larger valley, and still larger, to the great valley of the Mississippi, you will find the same thing repeated.

Here is a specimen that I got right here where they are ballasting the road. Here you could see a mass of sand and gravel. It goes on wherever there is sand and gravel and there is lime and water; it is compounded together. We have there fossils. Here, for instance, you have various forms of plants and corals, and so on, and you have here in the rocks right about you shells, coral, seaweed, preserved in the same way. Thus you get your petrefactions. Thus you get the layers that you call strata. All these layers of rock are simply sediment that was once carried down and spread out in a body of water. Is not that simple enough?

Here is that slab, all covered over with seaweed and shells, that was one time a bottom of the ocean; there was a volume of clay, and you see resting in there rolls of seaweed. Trailing over this all along these shores on the spot where we now stand, there were seaweed, and coral, and all the animal life. Here is a head of a large animal, a cephalopod, and here is a tail, and the rest of the body is probably under the railroad track. Here is a curved shell. This rock abounds in the ocean. They were the pirates of the ocean. They were the ancient devilfish. They had enormous arms. They were very fine in their time, but, as some one says about the Pilgrim Fathers, we should be thankful that they did not come down to us.

We have another class of rocks in our boulders and hard heads. Here are some without any section. Here is a mass of modern lava. Here you see this huge mass. All these landscapes show the different kinds of rocks in their relations. This irregular mass is the unstratified rocks. They have been melted and cooled from a state of melting. We know them to be crystals. They consist of quartz, feldspar, and mica, which are the alphabet of mineralogy. We have the crystals, which we know only exist when there has been a state of melting. These unstratified rocks are the material of all our quarries and great rocks.

There are two great classes: the stratified, in layers, which came from sediment deposited in the ancient seas, and the unstratified, which were once melted masses thrown out of the interior of the earth. The granite, the unstratified rocks, form the backbone of the continent; they are the underlying rocks. They occur as veins, coming up through the stratified rocks, and overflowing the surface.

Now, in this section of the rocks which we have as they are stratified, formed in layers one above the other, we come to the idea of time. I was going along this morning, with a basket and one of these stones in my hand, and a man’s attention was attracted, and he asked how long since those animals were alive. I said a million of years. He looked rather astonished, and expressed himself that I could not know. The idea of such great amounts of time strikes any one like the vast areas of space. At the first step in geology we have got to expand our notions of time. The six thousand years will not do. Some people think there is something in the Bible about six thousand years. There is no such thing. It is a chronology that has grown up like Milton’s Paradise Lost. Many people think that Milton’s Paradise Lost is a part of the Bible. In Genesis we are told of days, which everybody understands to mean periods of time, and of time since the beginning, when the earth was without form and void. We have nothing definite said in the Bible, or any other book, except the approximate indications which are found in the great stone book of Nature.

Let us look at the idea of time, and see how we get at it. If we should come again to the mud puddle dried up, we should get an approximate idea of how long it took to form the deposit. Suppose we do not know the history, we know about the number of storms that are usual, and the amount of rainfall, and we have some guide in that succession of layers that are there. In the ancient rocks we have exactly the same guide. Somebody says in answer to all this, that in some places deposits take place very rapidly, and we can not judge. For instance, a flood in the Mississippi bears down a vast amount of matter. There is a delta of the Mississippi that has been built out during the memory of man. Whenever we find coarse material in a delta we say it was rapidly formed; if it is fine material, we say it was formed slowly. To-day the Mississippi is bearing down a vast mass of material, and the coarser materials drop by the mouth, but the finer are carried out over the sea, perhaps along the shore. This fine silt settles down amid the corals, the sea-weed and the ships. If the ocean could be drained, we would find on the decks of the ships that have been sunk a hundred years, as the divers tell us, this deposition on the bottom of the sea. No one can doubt about these deposits which have so many shells, that the deposit was made very slowly, because it would have been impossible for the shells to have lived if the material had been thrown down rapidly.

Therefore, when we come to take the rate of deposit, and the vast thickness of these rocks into account, we have a basis for determining approximately the periods of the time during which these rocks have formed. Of course, it is only to those who become minutely intelligent in regard to the details that this thought will have weight. If, for instance, I should go along where a man was cutting a tree, and count the annular rings, and I had never seen a tree cut down; if he should say an hundred years ago that tree[233] was an acorn, I should be astonished, and it would have no weight with me, for I would not have the knowledge necessary. It is necessary to become familiar with this class of phenomena. Therefore in the beginning we want to study the phenomena that are taking place on the seashore, at the mouth of the rivers, and compare these with the phenomena that we find in the rock.

I recall a notable instance of this: That grand man, President Hitchcock, long since gone to rest, one of the greatest and most eminent scientists of his State, discovered tracks in the valley of the Connecticut River. He had to classify some sixty different classes of tracks, which are found in the valley of the Connecticut sandstone ledges, which, when it was soft, was admirably calculated to receive impressions. His attention was called to them, and he made them out to be bird tracks. The European naturalists were very reluctant to believe it. They did not believe that any such discovery could be made by any American. They sent over a man to see the alleged bird tracks, and he went all over the museum, and he went down to the quarry and saw all the specimens, and went away and came back again. President Hitchcock asked him about it, and he said that he did not think there were any bird tracks there. After dinner he took him out to the porch. A few days before he had found a flat stone, on which mud had been deposited, and a snipe had walked over it; the mud dried, and he thought it was an exact parallel with his bird tracks. So he put it on his porch. The gentleman said, “What have you got here?” There they were, the tracks of a bird, and a wader. He said nothing. He went away, and said they were bird tracks. He wrote afterward that he had for the first time to study how a wading bird walked on both sides of a median line. And so when he studied the habits of a bird, he saw that these fossils were bird tracks. I speak of this because it is a key.

I allude again to that sermon of Bishop Simpson’s, where Job asks these questions, and the Lord tells him to find out that right next to him. Why don’t you study that, and interpret it in that manner so sensible? You find everywhere we are doing that. On that account people can not get a knowledge of geology, because geology asks you to commence right at the door. Stoop and pick up the pebble there; learn the soil, and teach yourselves and your children what it was. This is a progressive world where we have all got to begin. It seems wonderful that we have not done that before. If you will try it, if you will get the first weed by your door, and teach your children about it, and go out further and study geology and all the other ologies in that way, life will be lifted on the highest plane for all. [Applause.] Everybody that has tried that has found an exceeding great reward.

I remember years ago a poem by James Russell Lowell, in which he describes the prophet going up to the hoary mountain to go and learn from God.

[Applause.]

Now, I simply say, if there are those who wish to pursue the study of geology, I will be very glad while I stay here to be of any assistance I can to you. I know the difficulty of starting without some help. The geology published here by Prof. Packard is an admirable little treatise, but with the reading of that you need observation and the knowledge to be gained by handling the specimens. If there are those who would like to learn, I am at liberty after 5 o’clock in the morning for a few days. I get up at 5 and keep very still. If you could keep those bells still that keep me awake until about 11:30: I like babies, but if you could put the babies in some babies’ retreat for a little while——.

The geological charts are excellent for teaching in a circle or a school. These are the charts that are published with Prof. Packard’s Geology. With the book they will enable one to get a very good idea of geology. If you will take up geology now, and start here, we will start from the quarry. These specimens will decay; one-half of them will go down into the lake very soon. I went out here and saw these splendid books being wasted, so I made use of a few of them. These will be a starting point in your museum, and then every C. L. S. C. on this continent will send from his locality a box of specimens, two or three of them, express paid, to your museum, and I will send my quota from West Virginia. And I will come over here some time and help label them. [Applause.]

[Pointing to the charts behind him.] Here is a section of rocks from below, and here are the different phenomena of volcanic action. Here is a picture of the ancient seas. There is one of these valleys. There are vast species of chambered shells. We have now only one species living, the chambered nautilus. The animal had the power of increasing or diminishing his density by absorbing or casting out water. Here is another representative of the animals that have been restored by the laws of comparative anatomy. Cuvier, or Agassiz, by a bone, or scale, even, could restore an animal. Here are some of your ancestors. Here is a specimen of the plesiosaurus and the iguanodon. These are marine animals. These are more modern. This is the period of bone caves. This was a great clawed animal, that was for a long time supposed to be a lion. Here is a representation of the ice period, of which you hear so much, the period when the huge boulders were brought down. The entire collection will be one of value.

I thank you for your attention. [Applause.]

After some conversation on preparation for Commencement day, the Round-Table adjourned.

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EDITOR’S OUTLOOK.

Our National Education.

From the time that Washington boasted of a system that proposes to furnish the means of education to “every child of the republic,” the educational spirit has been a prominent characteristic of our people. Amid all our national vicissitudes and struggles, defending the flag from foes without and within, cutting down the forests to make farms for cultivation, and clearing up the waste places to make them habitable, we have never lost our educational enterprise. In the far West, as well as in Maine and Massachusetts, you meet it. Not to be wondered at, either, is this in a people who had the courage and faith to launch such a governmental scheme as is ours. Indeed, it required little discernment to see that popular institutions could be served by no other handmaid than popular education.

It is gratifying to note that our zeal for education did not prove a transient impulse, but that of an abiding conviction. Never have the reports from all parts of the Union, taken as a whole, been so encouraging as now. Stupidity and demagogism are still to be found in many places, and, of course, as ever, doing their best to hinder progress. But in spite of all such influences, educators throughout the nation feel that the cause, with the modifications of better methods, is understood and appreciated by the better and larger part of the public. An examination of reports and statistics of all the States and Territories for ten years past, shows advancement in almost every instance. Financial depression or shifting population will explain the exceptions. In the State of Ohio in the single year of 1879-80, three-fourths of a million dollars was expended in new school-houses. The young State of West Virginia reports seventeen hundred more teachers employed at the close of the decade than at the beginning. The State of Missouri reports a like number, and an increased enrollment of nearly sixty thousand, exclusive of those who had come of school age, thus showing a deep inroad into the ranks of illiteracy. These citations illustrate the advance movement all along the line. And while our common schools are thus moving onward, it is no less a sign of national devotion to education that schools of higher grades are springing up everywhere. Special and charitable schools for the deaf and dumb, for the weak-minded, industrial training schools, etc., all of them upheld by the same national spirit. Nor to be forgotten are the schools for all classes at home, where by correspondence and concert of work, results which none can measure are attained. Let us rejoice and give thanks!

But the most hopeful thought that comes to us in connection with our national education, is of the fact that in nearly all parts of the country it is required that moral instruction be given in the schools. “Instruction in morals and good manners,” is the language of requirement in the school laws of many States. Others charge “all instructors to impress on the youth committed to them the principles of morality, justice, a sacred regard of truth, love of country, chastity, temperance, etc.” The school code of New Hampshire demands that “religion, piety, and morality be encouraged.” In several States the Bible is to be brought before the pupils by the prescribed daily reading of it, as in Massachusetts and the District of Columbia; and in many others the reading of it has express legalization. Herein is the sheet anchor of all our hopes. Cultured mind and heart alone give assurance of a successful national voyage.

Professor Henry Draper.

The scientific world has suffered a heavy loss in the death of Professor Henry Draper, of New York. He was the son of Dr. John W. Draper, one of the most eminent scientific men this country has produced. Professor Draper inherited the tastes and talents of his illustrious father, and, while yet a youth, began his scientific and physiological investigations. He received his early educational training in the public schools of New York, after which he spent two years in the Academic Department of the University of the City of New York. During all this time his studies were under the careful supervision of his father, who was a professor in the University. After completing his sophomore year he entered upon the study of medicine, and received his degree in 1858. After his graduation he spent a year in Europe in study and travel, and on his return to this country he received an appointment on the medical staff of Bellevue Hospital. He continued in this position for two years, when he was elected to the chair of physiology in the City University. When he entered upon his duties as professor he discontinued the practice of medicine, which he never afterward resumed, and gave himself wholly to teaching and to original investigation in natural science, but was especially devoted to the study of chemistry and astronomy. He was not, however, dependent upon the facilities afforded by the University to enable him to pursue his investigations in his favorite sciences, but, being possessed of ample means, he had a finely equipped laboratory fitted up in his own apartments, and also erected an observatory for his own use.

In order to facilitate his astronomical observations, Professor Draper constructed an equatorial telescope, with an aperture of twenty-eight inches, for his private observatory at Hastings, on the Hudson. This telescope was the work of his own hands, and when completed was the largest one of the kind in the United States. His astronomical investigations were principally of a photographical character. He was peculiarly adapted to this kind of work, since he had studied photography with his father, who was a pioneer in the photographic art, having taken the first photographic likeness of the human face ever obtained. By means of his large telescope, Professor Draper was able to take the largest and finest photographs of the heavenly bodies ever obtained, and by this means greatly advanced the interests of science. To him was due also the discovery of the gelatino-bromide dry process of photography, which has proven so useful to the art of photography, especially in its application to astronomy. In 1874, after much labor and many costly experiments, he succeeded in obtaining photographs of the fixed lines of stellar spectra, which no one before had ever been able to accomplish. By obtaining photographs of the spectrum of the sun he was able to demonstrate the existence of oxygen in that luminary, a fact never before known to astronomers. His numerous and successful efforts in this line of work rendered him so conspicuous that he was conceded to be without a peer in the department of sidereal photography. As a result of his grand achievements the commissioners appointed by Congress to make arrangements for the observation of the transit of Venus, in 1874, selected him as the superintendent of the photographic department. He performed his duties with such efficiency that Congress ordered a gold medal to be presented to him, bearing the inscription: “He adds lustre to ancestral glory.”

In addition to being an expert in astronomical photography Professor Draper was a fine analytical chemist, and in addition to his work as professor of physiology, for several years he taught analytical chemistry in the University. During the last few years of his life he was very much interested in the subject of electricity, and gave much time and study to the problem of overcoming the difficulties of adapting the electric light to practical use, and contributed much valuable information on this point.

Although so enthusiastically devoted to the interests of science, Professor Draper was not a recluse, but was of a[235] fine social turn. He was a fluent talker, an entertaining companion and a genial host. When the first symptoms of his fatal illness came upon him he was engaged in entertaining at dinner, in his hospitable home on Madison avenue, New York, the members of the National Academy of Science. He died in the prime of his years and in the fulness of his mental strength. The country can ill-afford to lose men of such mental ability and so enthusiastically devoted to scientific research.

Co-Education.

Rising in interest and importance above every other phase of the “woman question,” is that of her education, her higher education, and from this the question of co-education. The first cause which has associated the idea of co-education with the higher education of women, has been the fact that higher educational facilities are, with very few exceptions, limited to the colleges and universities established for the education of men. If woman is to receive higher education it is apparent at the start that the institutions called woman’s colleges and seminaries are inadequate to the work. Hence, whatever other considerations may enter into the co-education problem, this much is clear: if women now, or at any time in the near future, are to have these facilities they must come by some system of co-education, as only institutions now existing for men can furnish them. This suggests the economic and time element of the question. Colleges and universities of ability to do the work of higher education are not born in a day. The best representatives of such institutions in this country and in England are the growth of centuries, and their cabinets, laboratories, museums, libraries, and endowments the results of weary, slow accumulations.

Not to speak now of the other and more positive reasons in its favor, reasons growing out of the association of the sexes in recitation and lecture-room, and the wholesome influences on each thus secured, let us see what are the objections urged by its opponents. We hear a good deal about the tendency to make coarse the naturally fine fibre of woman, about constitutional differences of intellect, and difference of sphere and pursuits in life. Now, in all soberness, if there is anything in this idea that association of the sexes tends to rob woman of the charms of fineness and gentleness peculiar to her, how is it that she has managed to keep them from the days of Adam and Eve until now? And as to differences of intellect, they are neither so constitutional nor “unconstitutional” as to disqualify her for an even race with her brother. If the testimony of professors and college authorities, where the opportunity has been given her, can be relied upon, whenever the race is uneven it has been in her favor. The objection about sphere and pursuits in life misconceives the true purpose of education. The true conception is not addressed to pursuits, but is of a solid foundation on which the special education of pursuit or profession is erected.

Recognizing the force and truth of these and other considerations, and acting up to their convictions, the great and time-honored universities of the English speaking world, Oxford and Cambridge, have led the way, and thrown wide open their doors to young women seeking their privileges. At these honored institutions young women live in their own “halls,” as at some of our American colleges, under care of women of highest social standing, enter the same lecture-room and listen to the same lecture with the young men. The following from a leading educational journal, reveals the growing favor of co-education at Cambridge: “Since the modest beginning thirteen years ago of Girton College,—the woman’s college at Cambridge,—it has twice been found necessary to make considerable extensions. The students have proved themselves eager to profit by the advantages afforded to them, as was shown by their distinctions obtained at Cambridge this year. It is now once more intended to develop the work of the college by making further and more elaborate extensions. For some time past a number of applicants have been refused admission owing to the want of space, and plans have at last been adopted which will make room for more students.”

It is not a little strange the illiberal spirit manifested by some of the leading institutions of this country, instance the narrow and partial conditions of the “Harvard Annex” and the opposition by the trustees and part of the faculty of Columbia College. In the latter case there is just now a tidal wave of public sentiment in New York City sweeping against the opposition, which, it is to be hoped, will overcome all resistance. The leaven is working. It is a reform, and reforms go forward in this nineteenth century. Geologists tell us that six thousand years ago the age of man was ushered in. Let the future geologists record this as the age of man and woman, too.

Thurlow Weed.

Among noteworthy recent events is the death of Thurlow Weed, the veteran journalist and politician. Mr. Weed had nearly reached his eighty-fifth birthday with faculties well preserved, and for more than half a century he was a very prominent figure in our national political life. The son of a poor cartman who never prospered, he had his own way to make in the world, and from a striker in a blacksmith shop, a cabin-boy upon river boats, and a chore-boy of a printing office, he worked his way up to be the trusted adviser of senators and presidents, and the man by whom officials, high and low, were made and unmade. He was twice a member of the State Assembly of New York,—in 1824 and 1829,—but never held any other office. He refused official position for himself, but no man has been more influential in securing it for others. Mr. Weed’s work as a journalist was for the most part in connection with the Albany Evening Journal, though before assuming control of this paper he had edited a number of others, by one of which, the Anti-Masonic Enquirer, he had gained wide celebrity. During the thirty-two years of his management of the Journal he made it with his trenchant pen one of the mightiest of the auxiliaries of the Whig and Republican parties, and he was himself a political leader second in influence to none. Retiring from this paper in 1862, he afterward edited for a time the New York Commercial Advertiser, but failing health soon obliged him to drop finally the editorial pen. He continued, however, to write for the press until a short time before his death, and the occasional articles he sent to different journals always commanded an eager reading. In 1866 letters which he wrote to the Albany Evening Journal from Europe and the West Indies, when different visits were made to these countries, were collected and published in a handsome volume, without his consent.

There is much in the life-work of Mr. Weed for which he should be gratefully remembered. Though he was a strong and earnest partisan, he was a true patriot. He was a consistent friend of human liberty and human equality. In the early part of our civil war, in company with Bishop McIlvaine and Archbishop Hughes, he went to Europe charged with the important mission of promoting friendliness to the Union cause on the other side of the water, and the mission was discharged with great skill and faithfulness. Perhaps to Mr. Weed for his work in connection with this embassy the nation owes a greater debt than we know. To the close of his life he was the earnest advocate of what we believe to be a vicious principle in politics. He was not of those who demand reform in the civil service. A change in the mode by which the offices are filled in our land found no favor in his eyes. The old way was good enough for him. He believed[236] with Andrew Jackson, that “to the victors belong the spoils.” We can not greatly admire that role of party manager which he played with such consummate ability. There are higher ends certainly to which a man may give his powers than the success of party and the elevation of men to political stations. But this is to be said of Mr. Weed, he was an upright and honorable man, and in playing the game of politics he was actuated by better aims than those of many. He left for his family quite a large estate, but it was acquired through legitimate transactions of business. He had a circle of friends of whom any one might be proud, and they were by no means confined to the members of his own political party. Probably by far the most valuable collection of autograph letters in the land was in his possession. His home-life was admirable. He had a benevolent spirit, and his charitable gifts were many. And it is pleasant to have it to record of him that he lived and died a believer in evangelical religion. His interest in the Moody and Sankey meetings in New York City a few years ago is well remembered. We sum up his character: a man of strong will, of indomitable perseverance and energy, of remarkable power to control men and attach men to himself, and pure and good in private life.

EDITOR’S NOTE-BOOK.

The C. L. S. C. class of 1886, which has been enrolled since the Assembly last August, numbers more than 8,000 members. The books are still kept open to record the names of all others that will unite with this particular class.

The Trustees of the Chautauqua Assembly hold their annual meeting at the Gibson House, in Cincinnati, Ohio, the present month.

The Rev. Victor Connell, a graduate of the Ohio Wesleyan University, is pastor at Chautauqua. The Trustees of Chautauqua have just erected an elegant parsonage, with many modern conveniences, for the pastor and his family.

The Rev. A. H. Gillet, Messenger of the C. L. S. C., has been appointed Assistant Secretary of the Sunday-school Union of the M. E. Church. He is a thorough Sunday-school man, a fine speaker, and a good presiding officer at a Sunday-school assembly. Mr. Gillet will make his home in Cincinnati.

The Chinese Minister’s wife does not like to be thought a person of tender years, and claims to be twenty-five. She is petite, weighing ninety-four pounds, and her feet are not unduly small. She dresses on the street as American ladies do, having lately been seen in a wine-colored brocaded velvet polonaise over plain velvet, with a hat whose brim droops over the brow, and on whose sides hang long drooping plumes.

The Census Office has issued a special bulletin recently containing the statistics of illiteracy in the United States as returned at the tenth census. The number of persons ten years old and upward in the several States and Territories is 36,761,607. Of this number 4,923,451, or 13.4 per cent., are returned as unable to read, and 6,239,958, or 17 per cent., as unable to write. White persons in the United States ten years old and upward, 32,160,400; unable to write, 3,019,080, or 9.4 per cent. Colored persons of ten years old and upward, 4,601,207; unable to write, 3,220,878.

Melville paid the following tribute to Capt. De Long in November, during the investigation of the Jeannette expedition, at Washington, D. C.: “Q.—Did you believe, when you went for the log books and records left by De Long, that the people of the first cutter were dead or alive? A.—I was morally certain that at that time they were all dead. Common sense and my own judgment taught me that. Before I started, both Ninderman and Noros told me it would be useless to look for the first cutter’s party before spring, as beyond a possibility of doubt they were long since all dead. At one of the reported difficulties between Mr. Collins and Capt. De Long I believe Mr. Danenhower was present. Mr. Collins was treated just as any other officer, and with the same cordiality. At one time Mr. Collins took a notion not to respond to the usual good morning salutations of the Captain. When the Captain entered the wash room mornings it was his custom to say, ‘Good morning, gentlemen,’ and we all responded with ‘Good morning, Captain.’ Mr. Collins, however, used to turn his back when he saw the Captain coming in, and look away or walk away without responding. Mr. Newcomb and Mr. Collins used to talk and walk together more than they did with any of the other officers, and were on more intimate terms with each other than with the others. No distinction whatever was made in the mess on account of their being civilian officers, but all were treated the same and upon an equal footing. I did not know that it would be deemed proper for me to pass judgment upon my commanding officer, but, to my mind, he was as good a man as could be assigned to any duty at any time or in any place. He always seemed equal to any emergency, and all that he did was done with his whole soul. Had I supposed that I would be permitted to speak of my commanding officer or his conduct, I should not have allowed five minutes to pass without bearing my testimony to his worth and unfaltering devotion to duty. But words of mine are of little value beside the monument which his record has erected to his heroism and unwavering fidelity to the service and to the well-being of those intrusted to his charge.”

In compliance with numerous requests there will be a series of articles on civil law in the C. L. S. C. course of study for 1883-1884.

“Heaven knows what would become of our sociality if we never visited people we speak ill of; we should live, like Egyptian hermits, in crowded solitude.”—George Eliot: Janet’s Repentance.

An illustrated daily paper for children, to be printed on the grounds at Chautauqua, will be one of the features of the Assembly in 1883. This will be an improvement on that excellent little daily printed on the papyrograph in former years. The new paper will contain personals of little people and news from the Chautauqua world in which they live.

A statue of John Brown is to be erected by the State of Kansas in Washington.

Joseph Cook has returned to Boston, Mass., from his trip round the world. “He refused to hold a public debate with a noted free-thinker in Australia for the following tersely expressed reasons: ‘First.—Freethought, spiritualism and infidelity in general in America, England and India, and, as far as I know, in Australia, are notoriously connected with schemes for the propagation of immorality. Several of the prominent agitators in support of infidelity and free-thought have been sent to jail for distributing infamous publications through the mails. No decent man can consent to appear on the same platform with the representatives of enterprises that have a debasing effect on the public mind. Secondly.—I am not open to challenges of which the evident object is to advertise infidelity. Thirdly.—Not an unoccupied nor an unengaged hour is left open to me in Australia. Fourthly.—When infidels of any kind issue a[237] book that goes through ten editions in ten years, at a dollar a copy, I will reply to it. I have a right to offer this challenge, for several of the volumes of the ‘Boston Monday Lectures’ have gone through ten editions in five years. Fifthly.—Infidels can put their written inquiries, if they choose, into the box at my free question-box lectures.’”

It will be welcome news to the American people that the revenues of the postal department are estimated to exceed the expenditures for the coming year by over four million dollars. This is a new and forcible argument for cheaper postage. The President in his message recommends two cents for letter postage, and since it would be unwise in the government to make money out of the people through the postal service, let us all favor a reduction in rates of postage, and then thank President Garfield’s administration for making it possible by beginning in earnest the good work of overthrowing the Star Route conspirators.

We regret that Governor St. John, of Kansas, was not re-elected at the recent election. He could, however, better afford to be defeated with his record on the temperance question, for that was the cause of it, than to be Governor with a doubtful record on this reform. The temperance people of these United States who are in sympathy with Governor St. John, are more in number than the whole population of Kansas, and the approbation of the temperance army is a rich reward in the face of a defeat at the hands of the rum-power.

The Rev. Dr. Vincent preached two sermons on the first Sabbath in December before the faculty and students of Cornell University, at Ithaca, N. Y. The city press, in speaking of the sermons, ranks the Doctor among the first preachers of the country.

“The Golden Floral” is a collection of beautiful poems, “Rock of Ages,” “Why should the Spirit of Mortal be Proud,” “He giveth his Beloved Sleep,” and several others, each in a separate volume elegantly illustrated. These poems are dear to thousands of worshippers, and they are made doubly attractive in their new binding. Each book has a different cover, with appropriate flowers, on a gold ground and is put up in a neat box or handsome envelope, price $1.75 each.

Somebody sent Mrs. General James A. Beaver of Pennsylvania, a copy of The Chautauquan for November with the lecture by Bishop Simpson on “God’s Hand in History” marked, and wrote a note requesting her to read it, after her husband was defeated for Governor of Pennsylvania. She read it and was benefited. We are inclined to believe that the doctrine of that lecture would be helpful to the class of men who were elected governors at the late elections, providing they could be persuaded to adopt the Bishop’s theory. Success in political life is more dangerous to the individual than defeat. More of God’s hand, and less of man’s, in shaping the events of the history we are making, would be better for the State and nation.

The New York Tribune says: “Thurlow Weed’s life almost spans the history of this country under its present Constitution. He was born before Washington died, and when Webster, Clay, and Calhoun were making their reputations he had edited several country newspapers and fought in the battles of his country. He was older than Seward, or Lincoln, or Greeley, and when Clay, Webster, and Calhoun were dead he had not entered upon the most important part of his career. He was alive when Napoleon’s star appeared in the darkness of the French Revolution, and was already a young man when the battle of Waterloo was fought. He lived and worked with three generations of public men. Most of the men who are now beginning to attract attention might have been his grandsons. Benjamin Franklin died seven years before Mr. Weed was born. The lives of these two journalists take the world back into the reign of Louis XIV, and beyond the birth of Frederick the Great. Another such would very nearly reach the time of Shakspere.”

Longfellow’s study remains just as he left it. Not a book nor a piece of furniture has been moved. The gates to the grounds of his old home are always open to the visitor, but within the house the bereaved family are secure from intrusion, and their life goes on as it did before his death, save for the great void that never can be filled. The poet’s grave at Mount Auburn is only marked by the flower-wreaths daily placed upon it by loving hands.

It is estimated that eleven hundred people lost their lives when the shower of ashes fell on the city of Pompeii. Two-fifths of the area covered by the ancient city have been explored, and the bones of four hundred and fifty victims have been exhumed. The skeletons of only three dogs have been found, and all the cats seem to have escaped.

President Arthur, it seems, by his last message to Congress, has been giving special attention to the revenues of the government. He says there is a surplus accumulating by every tax, and gives his opinion that this is neither wise nor economical. The surplus in the treasury for the year ending June, 1882, was $145,000,000. This is a good point at which Congress may begin to reduce the taxes on some commodities.

The Society of “American Artists” (it is a big name) has adopted a resolution urging Congress to remove all the duties on foreign works of art and admit them all, superior and inferior, free. This is not only unwise, but it is un-American. Suppose such wild and inconsiderate action should be taken by Congress, it would bring pictures and statues, made by cheap labor, from Europe by the ship load, and work injustice to American sculptors and painters. We need home protection for the artists quite as much as for any class of people among us.

The Rev. Dr. J. H. Vincent writes as follows of “Webster—an Ode:” Dr. William Cleaver Wilkinson has long been an enthusiastic admirer of the Sage of Marshfield. He has written two or three elaborate essays upon Webster’s character, genius and work. This ode is a bold and brilliant attempt to celebrate the praise of the Massachusetts giant. Taking several salient incidents from Webster’s life, he follows a “challenge” and “counter-challenge,” with several short poems on the youth, education and legal ability of the great lawyer. The ninth poem is a charming pastoral, setting forth Webster as a farmer; the tenth celebrates the orations on Plymouth Rock and Bunker Hill. In the remaining poems the author exalts the statesman and the defender of the constitution; closing with a tribute to his stability, a plea to his state for a favorable verdict upon the fame of her faithful son, closing the fifteenth passage, which is a simple couplet, delicately attributing to this song a serviceable ministration in behalf of the fame of its subject. Forty quarto pages of the poem are followed by eighty-two pages of elaborate, instructive, and exceedingly valuable notes on the private morals, public virtue, genius, statesmanship, oratory, personal traits, and religious faith and character of Mr. Webster. There are passages of remarkable power in this noble poem. All admirers of its hero (and where are they not to be found), will delight in the reading.

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EDITOR’S TABLE.

Q. Why do fogs often rise, if, as Professor Reynolds positively and repeatedly asserts, cloud particles are all descending? Is not a fog composed of cloud particles, and if so, how can it rise if “cloud particles do not float but are all descending through the air?”

A. It is a mistake to say that fogs rise. A fog is a body of aqueous vapor in the atmosphere and is formed in several ways. When the air is cooler than the earth the moisture in it is partially condensed and thus rendered visible. In this way is formed a large class of fogs and also of clouds, the only difference between the two being in their height. When the condensation takes place near the surface of the earth fog is the result. Another class of fogs is formed by the moist air radiating its heat downward to a comparatively cold body of water, earth or air. The moist air coming into contact with the cold body becomes greatly reduced in temperature and after depositing a heavy dew, lies still in the valleys over the whole surface of the ground. To this body of cold air the atmosphere above radiates heat and when the temperature is reduced to the dew-point the aqueous vapor begins to condense as fog.

Q. Will you be kind enough to tell me in the Editor’s Table, whether the second volume of Timayenis’ “History of Greece” is included in any part of the course?

A. The list of books required for the C. L. S. C. course will be found on page 172 of The Chautauquan for Dec.

Q. In the November magazine you recommend Tony’s Classical Atlas. Will you please tell us where to procure it?

A. A misprint in the November number made the word Long’s read Tony’s. It should have been Long’s Classical Atlas. It is published by Sheldon & Co., New York. This answers at least twenty similar inquiries. We are sorry that the misprint occurred.

Q. What is the meaning of the terms “Platonic love,” and “Platonic friendship”?

A. Spiritual love between persons of opposite sexes. The friendship of man and woman without mixture of what is usually called love. This affection was strongly advocated by Plato, and hence its distinctive name.

Q. What is the proper pronunciation of the name of the author of the “History of Greece,” Timayenis?

A. Tim-a-en´-is.

Q. Will The Chautauquan please tell me how to pronounce Chautauqua?

A. Shaw-taw´-quaw.

Q. Which is the correct title to use in addressing a business letter to a young unmarried lady, Dear Miss, or Dear Madam?

A. Madam is a title used in reference to an elderly or married woman; Miss is applied to an unmarried lady. Therefore we would say Dear Miss in preference to Dear Madam, or we would simply address the lady by name, as Miss A. C. Smith, without further preliminaries.

Q. Of what nationality is Prof. Timayenis?

A. He is a Greek.

Q. What is the pronunciation of the words Byzantium, geyser?

A. Bĭ-zan´shĭ-um. Gī´-ser.

Q. Is there a C. L. S. C. circle in Brooklyn?

A. There are several local circles in Brooklyn. F. E. Hurst, 66 St. John’s Place, is secretary of one; F. S. Holmes, 455 Macon Street, is president of another.

Q. Will you please give a list of the Memorial Days for this year?

A. A list of the Memorial Days will be found on page 175 of The Chautauquan for December.

Q. What is the nature of Madame Tussaud’s famous gallery in London, of which we see mention in writings of travelers?

A. This exhibition consists of a very interesting collection of wax figures, representing ancient and modern famous characters. It also includes a number of memorials of Napoleon I, his traveling carriage, captured by the Prussians at Zenappe, and bought by Madame Tussaud for 2500l, and many other interesting relics. Another feature of the exhibition is the Chamber of Horrors, containing casts and portraits of executed criminals, the guillotine which decapitated Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, and other articles of the same ghastly nature.

Q. When did the national observance of Thanksgiving Day begin in this country?

A. The occasional observance of a day of thanksgiving commenced in New England in 1621, and the official appointment of such a day was confined mainly to the New England States until it became a national institution during the Revolution. After the general thanksgiving for peace, in 1784, there was no national appointment until 1789, when President Washington, by request of Congress, recommended a day of thanksgiving for the adoption of the Constitution. During the civil war President Lincoln issued proclamations for thanksgiving in 1862, 1863 and 1864, and since that time such a proclamation has been issued annually by the president as well as by the governors of the states.

Q. Does the C. L. S. C. contemplate helping persons who do not attend the Chautauqua Assembly? If so, what are the terms and conditions of membership?

A. Yes. For information in regard to membership consult Chautauquan for December, page 172, or address Miss K. F. Kimball, Plainfield, N. J.

Q. Who is the most reliable French author of the “Life of Napoleon Bonaparte”?

A. There are a great many Histories of Napoleon and many that are reliable. We would recommend “Histoire Napolĕon” by Elias Regnault, in four volumes, also “Histoire du Consulat et de l’Empire,” by Louis Adolphe Thiers, in twenty volumes.

Q. What is the correct pronunciation of Dana, Teutonic?

A. Dā´-nă. Too-ton´-ic.

Q. What Dictionary of the Bible would you recommend at a cost between $2.50 to $6.00 and by whom published? What do you think of Dr. Schaff’s?

A. We would recommend any work by Dr. Schaff, who is among the first in Biblical scholarship. We would also recommend Smith’s Bible Dictionary costing about $3.50, to be had of any book dealer.

Q. Where can the Chautauqua songs be obtained?

A. Write Rev. J. H. Vincent, D. D.

Q. At what time and by whom was the Apostles’ Creed composed, and when was it introduced into public worship?

A. It is said by many writers of the Roman Catholic Church that this creed was composed by the Apostles themselves, who agreed upon it as a rule of faith, and as a mark of distinction by which they would know friends from foes. According to an ancient tradition each Apostle contributed one sentence, and a writer by the name of Augustine pretends to tell us which article was contributed by each Apostle. It is now generally admitted that the creed in its present form is not of later date than the fourth century, but it is almost impossible to ascertain its authorship. It was first introduced into public worship in the Greek Church at Antioch, and afterward into the Roman Church in the eleventh century, and passed into the service of the Church of England at the Reformation. It is used in the baptismal confession in the Greek, Roman, English, Reformed, Lutheran, Methodist Episcopal, and Protestant Episcopal Churches, and no other than Apostles’ Creed is used in baptism by any church.

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THE TRANSIT OF VENUS.

A friend in Pennsylvania writes: “Please give us a description of the transit of Venus, in The Chautauquan for January.”

We answer with the following:

At a meeting of the New York Academy of Sciences, at No. 12 West Thirty-first street, on the evening of December 13, Professor J. K. Rees, of Columbia College, gave the result of his observations of the transit of Venus, made at the college observatory. A large audience was present and listened attentively to the lecturer’s presentation of facts.

“I will only detain the Academy a few moments,” said the Professor, “in presenting the main points in the observations made at Columbia College on December 6. Most of the figures I will leave out. The station occupied was the roof of the unfinished observatory of the college. The telescope was placed in the southwest corner of the roof. This roof is extraordinarily strong and solid, the beams being of iron, twelve inches in depth. Solid brick arches spring from beam to beam. The height of the roof from the street is about one hundred and ten feet. The walls supporting the roof are four feet thick. An unobstructed view was had of the whole transit. The position of the instrument was only a few feet from the old observatory, so that we may take the longitude and latitude of our instrument from the American ephemeris—

Latitude, +40° 45′ 23″.1.

Longitude:—From Washington, -0h. 12m. 18.40s.

Longitude:—From Greenwich, +4h. 55m. 53.69s.

“The timepieces used were a mean time chronometer, No. 1,853, made by Parkinson & Frodsham, of London, England, and a sidereal chronometer, No. 1,564, made by Negus & Co., of New York City. The instrument used in the observations was an equatorially mounted refractor by Alvan Clark & Sons. Aperture 5.09 inches; focal length of object glass, 74.3 inches. The magnifying powers used were 48 on the first contact, 165 on the second and third contacts, and 95 on the fourth contact. The telescope was moved by clockwork, supplied with a Bond spring governor. In making chronometer comparisons the sidereal chronometer was left at the college and the mean time chronometer was carried to the instruments on which signals were to be received. The sidereal chronometer has the hours graduated to XII.”

Professor Rees had prepared, but omitted to give, an elaborate system of chronometer comparisons with the Western Union time signals and the Washington time signals. The object of the comparisons was to obtain the exact error of the chronometers used at the time of the observations. The Western Union time signals sound the local mean time at the City Hall of New York city. The longitude of the City Hall from Washington is 12m. 10.47s. Mr. Hamblet, in charge of the Western Union time system, gives the errors of the Western Union time signals as 1.11s. fast on December 5, noon; 1.35s. fast December 6, noon. The professor also omitted a table of observations and the times taken down at the instant by each of four recorders.

“Correcting the observed contact times,” he continued, “the following table was obtained:

“The observation of the first contact was interfered with by the clouds. Between the first contact and the second contact the light shining through Venus’s atmosphere was a fine sight. I should say that it first appeared to my eye when the planet was a little more than half way on the sun, and disappeared about a minute before the planet reached second contact.

“I might, perhaps, introduce here,” said the professor, drawing a circle upon the blackboard, “the meaning of the terms first contact, second contact, and so on. Taking this circle to represent the sun, Venus is a disc which is about one-twenty-first part the diameter of the sun, and by first contact we simply mean the instant when the disc Venus, approaching the disc of the sun, touches it at one point externally. The second contact occurs at the time when the disc of Venus just touches the sun internally. The third contact Is the instant when the disc of Venus just touches the disc of the sun internally on one side, and the fourth contact is the instant when it touches on the other side.

“The line of light,” the Professor went on, after his explanation, “marking out the portion of Venus’ disk not on the sun, changed its appearance considerably while my attention was fixed upon it. I first saw a faint curved line of light off of the sun, and apparently marking out the part of Venus’ disk not on the sun, this curved line being entirely disconnected from the sun. A little later this arc of light was lengthened to a semicircular thread and touched the edge of the sun, marking out the complete outline of the part of Venus’ disk not on the sun. The semicircular gold thread seemed to be an exact continuation of the dark rim of the planet. Finally this line broadened at the point where it touched the sun’s rim, or edge, and the summit of the arc disappeared. The wings of light thus formed were, at their base, not in the exact continuation of the dark outline of the planet. I watched for the repetition of these appearances between third and fourth contacts, but failed to see anything. The sky between the first and second contacts was much clearer of haze than between the third and fourth.

“At second contact I saw no indication of the black drop. The tangency of Venus’ and the sun’s discs was well seen. During the passage of Venus over the sun’s face I observed her disc with magnifying powers of 48, 95, 165 and 345, but saw no indications of an atmosphere. The disc of Venus did not appear to be uniform in blackness, but to be spotted with grayish or whitish matter, reminding one of patches of snow. This was seen under the different magnifying powers used.

“When Venus neared the third contact a very peculiar phenomenon was noticed. The preceding edge of Venus was seen to be darker than the central portion. Later the edge of the planet became of a bluish black color, and this extended around to the following edge. The phenomena connected with this were very distinct. When the planet was near third contact these appearances were not seen longer. Just before third contact a faint black drop was observed for a short time. It disappeared very quickly, and third contact was finely seen.

“The fourth contact was interfered with by the haze and clouds, and was probably called too early.”

The Professor added that he desired to express his acknowledgments for aid in the matter of timing and in keeping the clockwork of the telescope in order to the fourth year civil engineers of the School of Mines. Without their assistance it would have been impossible to collect the time data which rendered the observations of value. At the conclusion of his address he was warmly applauded.

TABLE-TALK.

Every lady who presides at a table is interested to know how she can depend upon having things come upon the table as she would like them. How often are remarks like this made: “This is just my fate; when I really want a nice thing, somehow or other it turns out poor!”

A lady expects company for tea. She orders, for instance, biscuits, and they are brought to the table heavy and indigestible. How many housekeepers can testify to mortification, as well as disappointment, under such circumstances! It may not, however, have occurred to them that it is not always the “cook’s fault.” Your biscuits, cakes, pot-pies, puddings, etc., etc., can not be raised with earth or any worthless substances, and it becomes your own fault when you permit any baking powder to come into your kitchen about which you know absolutely nothing as to its purity or healthfulness.

The market is flooded with “low-priced” baking powders, gotten up to make an unjust profit by unscrupulous manufacturers and dealers, and it is worthy the attention of all housekeepers to note there is at least one brand of baking powder distinctly sold upon its merits, and which can be relied upon for its strength and purity. The Royal Baking Powder, now known almost the world over as a standard article, has stood the test of nearly a quarter of a century, and its friends among the ladies are legion.

A Favorite Paper.—For judicious editing, select and popular contributors, and sprightly and entertaining reading, the Youth’s Companion, of Boston, has no superior among the family papers. It has nearly three hundred thousand subscribers, and unquestionably merits its great success.

[240]

The Chautauquan.

THE THIRD VOLUME BEGINS WITH OCTOBER, 1882.

It is a monthly magazine, 72 pages in each number, ten numbers in the volume, beginning with October and closing with July of each year.

THE CHAUTAUQUAN

is the official organ of the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle, adopted by the Rev. J. H. Vincent, D. D., Lewis Miller, Esq., and Lyman Abbott, D. D., Bishop H. W. Warren, D. D., Prof. W. C. Wilkinson, D. D., and Rev. J. M. Gibson, D. D., Counselors of the C. L. S. C.

THE CURRENT VOLUME WILL CONTAIN
MORE THAN HALF THE REQUIRED
READINGS FOR
THE C. L. S. C.

That brilliant writer, Mrs. May Lowe Dickinson, will take the C. L. S. C. on a “TOUR ROUND THE WORLD,” in nine articles, which will begin in the November number.

Rev. Dr. J. H. Vincent will prepare Sunday Readings for the C. L. S. C. and one article for each number on C. L. S. C. work.

Popular articles on Russia, Scandinavian History and Literature, English History, Music and Literature, Geology, Hygiene, etc., etc., will be published for the C. L. S. C. in The Chautauquan only.

Prof. W. T. Harris will write regularly for us on the History and Philosophy of Education.

Eminent authors, whose names and work we withhold for the present, have been engaged to write valuable papers, to be in the Required Reading for the C. L. S. C.

“Tales from Shakspere,” by Charles Lamb, will appear in every number of the present volume, giving the reader in a racy readable form all the salient features of Shakspere’s works.

The following writers will contribute articles for the present volume:

The Rev. J. H. Vincent, D. D., Mrs. Mary S. Robinson, Edward Everett Hale, Prof. L. A. Sherman, Prof. W. T. Harris. Prof. W. G. Williams, A. M., A. M. Martin, Esq., Mrs. Ella Farnham Pratt, C. E. Bishop, Esq., Rev. E. D. McCreary, A. M., Mrs. L. H. Bugbee, Bishop H. W. Warren, Rev. H. H. Moore, Prof. W. C. Wilkinson, D. D., and others.

We shall continue the following departments:

THE CHAUTAUQUAN, one year, $1.50

CLUB RATES FOR THE CHAUTAUQUAN.

Send postoffice money order on Meadville, Pa., but not on any other postoffice. Remittances by draft should be on New York, Philadelphia, or Pittsburgh, to avoid loss.

Address,

THEODORE L. FLOOD,
EDITOR AND PROPRIETOR,
MEADVILLE,   -   -   PENN’A.

Correspondence for the Editorial Department
should be marked “Personal.”

NEW BOOKS FOR HOLIDAY TIMES.

THE BEGINNINGS OF HISTORY,

“The work is one which deserves to be studied by all students of ancient history, and in particular by ministers of the Gospel, whose office requires them to interpret the Scriptures, and who ought not to be ignorant of the latest and most interesting contributions of science to the elucidation of the sacred volume.”—The Tribune.

COREA, THE HERMIT NATION.

“The work bears witness to a vast amount of well-directed labor, and, while it is clothed with a rare charm for the general reader, whose curiosity regarding a long isolated nation will for the first time be satisfied, it is also sure of a respectful and grateful reception from the student of history, ethnology and philology.”—New York Sun.

THE HOUSE BEAUTIFUL.

“Mr. Cook writes with an easy finish, and much daintiness of touch, and his pages have a very fresh and pleasant flavor. The publishers have so manufactured the work that it might be called ‘The Book Beautiful.’ But the charm in it lies deeper than in paper surface and letter-press and graver’s lines; and wherever it goes it will educate, inspire and refine.”—The Literary World.

Woman’s Handiwork in Modern Homes.

Mrs. Harrison’s book combines with a discussion of the principles of design and decoration, practical chapters on embroidery, painting on silk and china, etc., most helpful hints as to the domestic manufacture of many objects of use and beauty in house-furnishing, and also suggestions for the arrangement and decoration of rooms in the details of screens, portieres, the mantelpiece, etc.

THE LAND OF THE ARABIAN NIGHTS.

“There are no long, dry discussions of scientific or antiquarian problems, but a lively and engaging picture of lands and people, which we in this country know little of, is presented by a man of quick, intelligent observation, with a genial but not obtrusive fund of humor, who evidently thoroughly enjoyed every hour of his journeyings.”—Chicago Times.

SWINTON’S ARMY OF THE POTOMAC.

“The reputation of Mr. Swinton’s ‘Army of the Potomac’ is so well established, that we need do no more than to say here, once for all, that it is a work well-nigh indispensable to the student of the war. * * For all that large class who have grown up since the war was over, this new edition will be invaluable. The book is, and always will be, a standard work.”—The Nation.

POEMS OF AMERICAN PATRIOTISM.

“An every way beautiful book, containing fifty-six of our best national poems. * * Taken as a whole, we doubt whether the poetic literature of England would yield a richer collection of purely patriotic poetry than this.”—The Mail and Express.

EAST OF THE JORDAN.

“Dr. Merrill stands in the front rank of American archæologists. There is in America no better authority than he on all questions connected with the ancient life of the East, and his contribution to our knowledge of the Holy Land will take its place in the professional library alongside of ‘Robinson’s Researches.’”—The Christian Union.

BOOKS AND READING.

“President Noah Porter’s ‘Books and Reading’ is by far the most practical and satisfactory treatise on the subject that has been published. It not only answers the questions ‘What books shall I read?’ and ‘How shall I read them?’ but it supplies a large and well-arranged catalogue under appropriate heads, sufficient for a large family or a small public library.”—Boston Zion’s Herald.

THE BOOK OF FORTY PUDDINGS.

“‘The Book of Forty Puddings’ tells of puddings, nothing more or less, but they are the best of puddings for epicures. Very cunningly the appetite is whetted before reading the papers, by covers tinted and designed in perfect taste.”—Boston Globe.

New Juvenile Books.

THE AMERICAN BOY’S HANDY BOOK, or, What to Do and How to Do It.

Summary of Contents.

Kite Time—War Kites—Novel Modes of Fishing—Home-Made Fishing Tackle—How to Make, Stock, and Keep a Fresh-Water Aquarium—How to Collect for a Marine Aquarium—Knots, Bends, and Hitches—Dredge, Tangle, and Trawl Fishing—Home-Made Boats—How to Rig and Sail Small Boats—How to Camp Out without a Tent—How to Rear Wild Birds—Home-Made Hunting Apparatus—Traps and Trapping—Dogs—Practical Taxidermy for Boys—Snow Houses and Statuary—Winged Skaters—Winter Fishing—In-Door Amusements—How to Make a Magic Lantern, etc.—Puppet Shows—Home-Made Masquerade and Theatrical Costumes.

THE STORY OF SIEGFRIED.

“To wise parents who strive, as all parents should do, to regulate and supervise their children’s reading, this book is most earnestly commended. Would that there were more of its type and excellence. It has our most hearty approval and recommendation in every way.”—The Churchman.

The Great English Ballads.

THE BOY’S PERCY.

Mr. Lanier’s books, which made him the companion and friend of half the boys of the country, and showed his remarkable talent for guiding them into the best parts of this ideal world, fitly close by giving the best of the ballads in their purest and strongest form, from Bishop Percy’s famous collection. With the “Boy’s Froissart,” the “Boy’s King Arthur,” the “Mabinogion,” and the “Boy’s Percy,” Mr. Lanier’s readers have the full circle of heroes.

⁂ For sale by all booksellers, or sent upon receipt of price, by

CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS, Publishers, 743 and 745 Broadway, New York.

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