"It doesn't matter at all," I answered. "Any horse will do for me." Then, after a little pause, I added, as though it were merely an amusing afterthought: "I suppose I shall be stiff after my ride. I haven't been on a horse in nearly two months."

"Then," said the sympathetic young lady, "you'll want an easy ride."

"I suppose it might be more sensible," I conceded.

"Better give him the black mare," put in the Efficient Sister.

"She hasn't been out lately," said the other. "You know how she acts when she hasn't been ridden enough. He might not know just how to take her. I was thinking of giving him 'Dr. Bell.'"

"Dr. Bell's too gentle," said the Efficient Sister.

"Which horse do you think you'd like?" the other asked me. "Dr. Bell has plenty of life, but he's gentle. The black mare's a little bit flighty at first, but if you can ride her she soon finds it out and settles down."

I want to ask: "What happens if she finds out that you can't ride her? What does she do then?" But I refrained.

"She's never thrown anybody but a stable boy and a man who came up here to visit—and neither one of them could ride worth a cent," said the Efficient Sister.

Meanwhile I had been thinking hard.

"What color is Dr. Bell?" I asked.

"He's a sorrel."

"Then," I said, "I believe I'd rather ride Dr. Bell. I don't like black horses. It is simply one of those peculiar aversions one gets."

They seemed to accept this statement, and so the matter was agreeably settled.

When, at ten o'clock, I came down dressed for riding, my companion was out in front of the house, making a drawing; the four young ladies were with him, all seemingly enchanted with his work, and none of them in riding habits.

"Who's going with me?" I asked as I strolled toward them.

They looked at one another inquiringly. Then the Efficient Sister said: "I'd like to go, but this is pay day and I can't leave the place."

"I have to go to town for some supplies," said the Domestic Sister.

"I want to stay and watch this," said the Sociological and Artistic Sister. (She made a gesture toward my companion, but I think she referred to his drawing.)

"I'm going away to a house party," said the Sprightly Sister who Likes to Dance. "I must pack."

"You can't get lost," said the Domestic Sister.

"Even if you should," put in the Efficient Sister, "Dr. Bell would bring you home."

During this conversation my companion did not look up from his work, neither did he speak; yet upon his back there was an expression of derisive glee which made me hope, vindictively, that he would smudge his drawing. However inscrutable his face, I have never known a man with a back so expressive.

"Here comes Dr. Bell," remarked the Sociological and Artistic Sister, as a negro groom appeared leading the sorrel steed.

"Well," I said, trying to speak debonairely as I started toward the drive, "I'll be going."

I wished to leave them where they were and go around to the other side of the house to mount. I had noticed a stone block there and meant to use it if no one but the groom were present; also I intended to tip the groom and ask him a few casual questions about the ways of Dr. Bell.

I might have managed this but for a sudden manifestation of interest on the part of my companion.

"Come on," he said to the young ladies, "let's go and see him off." It seemed to me that he emphasized the word "off" unpleasantly. However I tried to seem calm as we moved toward the drive.

Dr. Bell had a bright brown eye; there was something alert in the gaze with which he watched us moving toward him. However, to my great relief he stood quite still while two of the sisters who preceded me by a few steps, went up and patted him. Evidently he liked to be patted. I decided that I would pat him also.

I had approached him from the left and in order to mount I now found it necessary to circle around, in front of him. I was determined that if the horse would but remain stationary I should step up to him, speak to him, give him a quick pat on the neck, gather the reins in my hand, place my foot swiftly in the stirrup, take a good hop, and be on his back before any one had time to notice.

Dr. Bell, however, caused me to alter these plans; for though he had stood docile as a dog while the sisters patted him, his manner underwent a change on sight of me. I do not think this change was caused by any personal dislike for me. I believe he would have done the same had any stranger appeared before him in riding boots. The trouble was, probably, that he had expected to be ridden by one of the young ladies, and was shocked by the abrupt discovery that a total stranger was to ride him. This is merely my surmise. I do not claim deep understanding of the mental workings of any horse, for there is no logic about them or their performances. They are like crafty lunatics, reasoning, if they reason at all, in a manner too treacherous and devious for human comprehension. Their very usefulness, the service they render man, is founded on their own folly; were it not for that, man could not even catch them, let alone force them to submit, like weak-minded giants, to his will.

The fact is that, excepting barnyard fowls, the horse is the most idiotic of all animals, and, pound for pound, even the miserable hen is his intellectual superior. Indeed, if horses had brains no better than those of hens, but proportionately larger, they would not be drawing wagons, and carrying men upon their backs, but would be lecturing to women's clubs, and holding chairs in universities, and writing essays on the Development of the Short Story in America.

Horse lovers, who are among the most prejudiced of all prejudiced people, and who regard horses with an amiable but fatuous admiration such as young parents have for their babies, will try to tell you that these great creatures which they love are not mentally deficient. Ask them why the horse, with his superior strength, submits to man, and they will tell you that the horse's eye magnifies, and that, to the horse, man consequently appears to be two or three times his actual size.

Nonsense! There is but one reason for the yielding of the horse: he is an utter fool.

Everything proves him a fool. He will charge into battle, he will walk cheerfully beside a precipice, he will break his back pulling a heavy wagon, or break his leg or his neck in jumping a hurdle; yet he will go into a frenzy of fright at the sight of a running child, a roadside rock, or the shadow of a branch across the path, and not even a German chancellor could shy as he will at a scrap of paper.

As I passed in front of Dr. Bell he rolled his eyes at me horribly, and rose upon his hind legs, almost upsetting the groom as he went up and barely missing him with his fore feet as he brought them to earth again.

"What's the matter with him?" I asked, stopping.

"I guess he just feels good," said the Efficient Sister.

"Yassuh, tha 's all," said the groom cheerfully. "He's aw' right. Gentle ath a lamb."

As he made this statement, I took another step in the direction of the horse, whereat he reared again.

"Well, now!" said the groom, patting Dr. Bell upon the neck. "Feelin' pretty good 's mawnin', is you? There, there!"

Dr. Bell, however, paid little attention to his attendant, but gazed steadily at me with an evil look.

"Does he always do like that?" I asked the Domestic Sister.

"I never saw him do it before," she said.

"Maybe he doesn't admire the cut of your riding breeches," suggested my companion.

"Oh, no, suh," protested the groom. "It 's jes' his li'l way tryin' t' tell you he likes de ladies t' ride him better 'n he likes de gemmen."

"He means he doesn't want me to ride him?"

"Yassuh, da 's jes' his li'l idee 't he 's got now. He be all right once you in de saddle."

"But how am I to get in the saddle if he keeps doing that?"

"I hold 'im all right," said the groom. "You jes' get on 'im, suh. He soon find out who 's boss."

"I think he will," said my heartless companion.

"Nevvah you feah, suh," the man said to me. "Ah knowed the minute Ah saw yo' laigs 't you was a horseman. Yassuh! Ah says t' ole Gawge, Ah says, 'Dat gemman's certain'y been 'n de cava'ry, he has, wid dem fine crooked laigs o' hisn.'"

"You should have told that to Dr. Bell, instead," suggested my companion.

At this every one laughed. Even the groom laughed a wheezy, cackling negro laugh. The situation was becoming unbearable. Clearly I must try to mount. Perhaps I should not succeed, but I must try. As I was endeavoring to adjust my mind to this unpleasant fact the Efficient Sister spoke.

"That horse is going to be ridden," she said firmly, "if I have to go upstairs and dress and ride him myself."

That settled it.

"Now you hold him down," I said to the groom, and stepped forward.

As I did so Dr. Bell reared again, simultaneously drawing back sidewise and turning his flank away from me, but this time the Efficient Sister hit him with a crop she had found somewhere, and he came down hastily, and began to dance a sort of double clog with all four feet.

After several efforts I managed to get beside him. Gathering the reins in my left hand I put my foot up swiftly, found the stirrup, and with a hop, managed to board the beast.

As I did so, the groom let him go. Both stirrups were short, but it was too late to discuss that, for by the time I was adjusted to my seat we had traveled, at a run, over a considerable part of the lawn and through most of the flowerbeds. The shortness of the stirrups made me bounce, and I had a feeling that I might do better to remove my feet from them entirely, but as I had never ridden without stirrups I hesitated to try it now. Therefore I merely dug my knees desperately into the saddle flaps and awaited what should come, while endeavoring to check the animal. He, however, kept his head down, which not only made it difficult to stop him, but also gave me an unpleasant sense as of riding on the cowcatcher of a locomotive with nothing but space in front of me. Once, with a jerk, I managed to get his head up, but when I did that he reared. I do not care for rearing.

To add to my delight, one of the dogs now ran out and began to bark and circle around us, jumping up at the horse's nose and nipping at his heels. This brought on new activities, for now Dr. Bell not only reared but elevated himself suddenly behind, to kick at the dog. However, there was one good result. We stopped running and began to trot rapidly about in circles, dodging the dog, and this finally brought us back toward the house.

"My stirrups are too short!" I shouted to the groom.

"Ride oveh heah, suh," he called back.

I tried to do it, but Dr. Bell continued to move in circles. At last, however, the man managed to catch us by advancing with his hand extended, as though offering a lump of sugar, at the same time talking gently to my steed. Then, while my companion held the bit the negro adjusted the stirrup leathers. I was glad of the breathing spell. I wished that it took longer to adjust stirrups.

"You'd better go out by the drive this time," said the Efficient Sister.

"I intended to before," I told her, "but he didn't seem to understand the signals."

"You've got spurs on. Give him the spur."

As a matter of fact, I had hesitated to give him the spur. It seemed to me that he was annoyed with me anyway, and that the spur would only serve to increase his prejudice. I wanted to rule him not by brute force but by kindness. I wished that I could somehow make him know that I was a regular subscriber to the S.P.C.A., that I loved children and animals and all helpless creatures, both great and small, that I used the dumb brutes gently and only asked in return that they do the same by me. But how is one to communicate such humanitarian ideas to a big, stupid, wilful, perverse, diabolical creature like a horse?

I was determined that when we started again we should not run over the lawn if I could possibly prevent it. Therefore I had the groom head the horse down the drive, and the moment he released him, I touched Dr. Bell with the spurs. The result was magical. He started on a run but kept in the road where I wanted him to be, giving me, for the moment, a sense of having something almost like control over him. At the foot of the drive was a gate which I knew could be opened without dismounting, by pulling a rope, and as no horse, unless quite out of his mind, will deliberately run into a gate, I had reason to hope that Dr. Bell would stop when he got there. Imagine my feelings, then, when on sight of the gate he not only failed to slacken his pace, but actually dashed at it faster than ever. Within a few feet of the barrier he seemed to pause momentarily, hunching himself in a peculiar and alarming manner: then he arose, sailed through the air like a swallow, came down beyond like a load of trunks falling off from a truck, and galloped down the highway, seemingly quite indifferent to the fact that the stirrups were flapping at his sides and that I had moved from the saddle to a point near the base of his neck.

My position at the moment was one of considerable insecurity. By holding on to his mane and wriggling backward I hoped to stay on, provided he did not put down his head. If he did that, I was lost. Fortunately for me, however, Dr. Bell did not realize with what ease he could have dropped me at that moment, and by dint of cautious but eager gymnastics, I managed to regain the saddle and the stirrups, although in doing so I pricked him several times with the spurs, with the result that, though he ran faster than ever for a time, he must have presently concluded that I didn't care how fast he went; at all events, he slackened his pace to a canter, from which, shortly, I managed to draw him down to a trot and then to a walk.

I am glad to say that not until now had we met any vehicle. Even while he was running, even while I was engaged in maintaining a precarious seat upon his neck, I had found time to hope fervently that we should not encounter an automobile. I was afraid that he would jump it if we did.

Now, however, I saw a motor approaching. Dr. Bell saw it, too, and pricked up his ears. Seizing the reins firmly in one hand, I waved with the other, signalling to the motorist to stop, which he did, pulling out into the ditch. Meanwhile I talked to Dr. Bell, patting him on the neck and telling him to go on and not to be afraid, because it was all right. Dr. Bell did go on. He went up to the front of the motor, past the side of it, and on behind it, without showing the least sign of alarm. He did not mind it at all. But the man in the motor minded. Annoyed with me for having stopped him unnecessarily, he shouted something after me. But I paid no attention to him. Under the circumstances, it seemed the only thing to do. I might have gotten off; I might conceivably have beaten him; but I never could have held the horse while doing it, or have gotten on again.

Presently, when I was changing the position of the reins, which were hurting my fingers because I had gripped them so tight, I accidentally shifted the gears in some way, so to speak, sending Dr. Bell off at a pace which was neither a trot nor a canter, but which carried us along at a sort of smooth, rapid glide. At first I took this gait to be a swift trot, and attempted to post to it; then, as that did not work, I sat still in the saddle and, finding the posture comfortable, concluded that Dr. Bell must be single-footing. I had never single-footed before. Just as I was beginning to like it, however, he changed to a trot, then back to single-footing again, and so on, in a curious puzzling manner.

Except for the changes of gait, we were now going on rather well, and I had begun, for the first time, to feel a little security, when all of a sudden he swerved off and galloped with me up a driveway leading toward a white house which stood on a hill two or three hundred yards from the road. Again I tried to stop him, but when I pulled on the reins he shook his head savagely from side to side and snorted in a loud and threatening manner.

As we neared the house I saw that two ladies were sitting on the porch regarding our approach with interest. I hoped that Dr. Bell would find some way of keeping on past the house and into the fields, but he had no such intention. Instead of going by, he swung around the circle before the porch, and stopped at the steps, upon which the two ladies were sitting.

One of them was a white-haired woman of gentle mien; the other was a girl of eighteen or twenty with pretty, mischievous eyes.

Both the ladies looked up inquiringly as Dr. Bell and I stopped.

I lifted my hat. It was the only thing I could think of to do at the moment. At this they both nodded gravely. Then we sat and stared at one another.

"Well?" said the old lady, when the silence had become embarrassing.

I felt that I must say something, so I remarked: "This is a very pretty place you have here."

At this, though the statement was quite true, they looked perplexed.

"Is there any message?" asked the young woman, after another pause.

"Oh, no," I answered lightly. "I was riding by and thought I'd take the liberty of coming up and telling you—telling you that although I am a Northerner and a stranger here, I love the South, the quaint old Southern customs, the lovely old houses, the delicious waffles, the—"

"That is very gratifying," said she "I am sorry to say we are all out of waffles at present."

"Oh, I don't want any now," I replied politely.

"Well, if you don't mind my asking, what do you want?"

"I want," I said, desperately, "to see your groom for a moment, if possible."

"He's gone to town," she replied. "Is there anything I can do? I see that your stirrup leather is twisted." With that she arose, came down, removed my foot from the stirrup, in a businesslike manner, reversed the iron, and put my foot back for me.

I thanked her.

"Anything else?" she asked, her wicked eye twinkling.

"Perhaps," I ventured, "perhaps you know how to make a horse single-foot?"

"There are different ways," she said. "With Dr. Bell you might try using the curb gently, working it from side to side."

"I will," I said. "Thank you very much."

"And," said the girl, "if he ever takes a notion to bolt with you, or to go up to some house where you don't want him to go, just touch him with the curb. That will fix him. He's very soft-bitted."

"But I tried that," I protested.

She looked at my reins, then shook her head.

"No," she said, "you've got your curb rein and your snaffle rein mixed."

"I am very much indebted to you," I said, as I changed the position of the reins between my fingers.

"Not at all," said she. "I hope you'll get safely back to the Claymont. If you want to jump him, give him his head. He'll take off all right."

"Thanks," I returned. "I don't want to jump him."

Then lifting my hat and thanking her again, I wiggled the curb gently from side to side, as directed, and departed, singlefooting comfortably.

Dr. Bell and I got home very nicely. He wanted to jump the gate again, but I checked him with the curb. After pulling the rope to open the gate I must have got the reins mixed once more, for as I was nearing the house, calm in the feeling that I had mastered the animal, and intent upon cantering up to the porch in fine style, Dr. Bell swerved suddenly off to the stable, went into the door, and, before I could stop him, entered his stall.

There I dismounted in absolute privacy. It was quite easy. I had only to climb on to the partition and drop down into the next stall, which, by good fortune, was vacant.

With a single exception, this was the only riding I did in the South, and on the one other occasion of which I speak I did not ride alone, but had, surrounding me, the entire Eleventh United States Cavalry.



CHAPTER XIII

INTO THE OLD DOMINION

When two men are traveling together on an equal footing, and it becomes necessary to decide between two rooms in a hotel, how is the decision to be made? Which man is to take the big, bright corner room, and which the little room that faces on the court and is fragrant of the bakery below? Or again, which man shall occupy the lower berth in a Pullman drawing-room, and which shall try to sleep upon the shelf-like couch? Or when there is but one lower left, which shall take the upper? If an extra kit bag be required for the use of both, who shall pay for it and own it at the journey's end? Who shall pay for this meal and who for that? Or yet again, if there be but one cheap heavy overcoat in a shop, and both desire to own that coat, which one shall have the right of purchase? Who shall tip the bell boy for bringing up the bags, or the porter for taking down the trunks? Who shall take home from a dance the girl both want to take, and who shall escort the unattractive one who resides in a remote suburb?

Between two able-bodied men there is no uncomfortable complication of politeness in such matters. On a brief journey there might be, but on a long journey the thin veil of factitious courtesy is cast aside; each wants his fair share of what is best and makes no pretense to the contrary.

Upon our first long journey together, some years ago, my companion and I established a custom of settling all such questions by matching coins, and we have maintained this habit ever since. Upon the whole it has worked well. We have matched for everything except railroad fares and hotel bills, and though fortune has sometimes favored one or the other for a time, I believe that, had we kept accounts, we should find ourselves to-day practically even.

Our system of matching has some correlated customs. Now and then, for instance, when one of us is unlucky and has been "stuck" for a series of meals, the other, in partial reparation, will declare a "party." Birthdays and holidays also call for parties, and sometimes there will be a party for no particular reason other than that we feel like having one.

Two of our parties on this journey have been given in the basement cafe of the Shoreham Hotel in Washington. Both were supper parties. The first I gave in honor of my companion, for the reason that we both like the Shoreham cafe, and that a party seemed to be about due. That party brought on the other, which occurred a few nights later and was given by us jointly in honor of a very beautiful and talented young actress. And this one, we agree, was, in a way, the most amusing of all the parties we have had together.

It was early in the morning, when we were leaving the cafe after the first party, that we encountered the lady who caused the second one. I had never met her, but I was aware that my companion knew her, for he talked about her in his sleep. She was having supper with a gentleman at a table near the door, and had you seen her it would be unnecessary for me to tell you that my companion stopped to speak to her, and that I hung around until he introduced me.

After we had stood beside her, for a time, talking and gazing down into her beautiful world-wise eyes, the gentleman with whom she was supping took pity upon us, and upon the waiters, whose passageway we blocked, and invited us to sit down.

It was doubly delightful to meet her there in Washington, for besides being beautiful and celebrated, she had just come from New York and was able to give us news of mutual friends, bringing us up to date on suits for separation, alimony, and alienation of affections, on divorces and remarriages, and all the little items one loses track of when one has been away for a fortnight.

"I shall be playing in Washington all this week," she said as we were about to leave. "I hope that we may see each other again."

Whom did she mean by "we"? True, she looked at my companion as she spoke, but he was seated at one side of her and I at the other, and even with such eyes as hers, she could not have looked at both of us at once. Certainly the hope she had expressed was shared by me. I hoped that "we" might meet again, and it seemed to me desirable at the moment that she should understand (and that my companion should be reminded) that he and I were as Damon and Pythias, as Castor and Pollux, as Pylades and Orestes, and all that sort of thing. Therefore I leaped quickly at the word "we," and, before my companion had time to answer, replied:

"I hope so too."

This brought her eyes to me. She looked surprised, I thought, but what of that? Don't women like to be surprised? Don't they like men to be strong, resolute, determined, like heroes in the moving pictures? Don't they like to see a man handle matters with dash? I was determined to be dashing.

"We are off to Virginia to-morrow morning," I continued. "We are going to Fredericksburg and Charlottesville, and into the fox-hunting country. If we can get back here Saturday night let's have a party."

I spoke of the hunting country debonairely. I did not care what she thought my companion was going to the hunting country for, but I did not wish her to think that I was going only to look on. On the contrary, I desired her to suppose that I should presently be wearing a pair of beautiful, slim-legged riding boots and a pink coat, and leaping a thoroughbred mount over fences and gates. I wished her to believe me a wild, reckless, devil of a fellow, and to worry throughout the week lest I be killed in a fall from my horse, and she never see me more—poor girl!

That she felt such emotions I have since had reason to doubt. However, the idea of a party after the play on Saturday night seemed to appeal to her, and it was arranged that my companion and I should endeavor to get back to Washington after the Piedmont Hunt races, which we were to attend on Saturday afternoon, and that if we could get back we should telegraph to her.

We kept our agreement—but I shall come to that later.

* * * * *

Next morning we took train for Fredericksburg.

The city manager who runs the town is a good housekeeper; his streets are wide, pretty, and clean; and though there are many historic buildings—including the home of Washington's mother and the house in which Washington became a Mason—there are enough good new ones to give the place a progressive look.

In the days of the State's magnificence Fredericksburg was the center for all this part of northeastern Virginia, and particularly for the Rappahannock Valley; and from pre-Revolutionary times, when tobacco was legal tender and ministers got roaring drunk, down to the Civil War, there came rolling into the town the coaches of the great plantation owners of the region, who used Fredericksburg as a headquarters for drinking, gambling, and business. Among these probably the most famous was "King" Carter, who not only owned miles upon miles of land and a thousand slaves, but was the husband of five (successive) Mrs. Carters.

Falmouth, a river town a mile above Fredericksburg, where a few scattered houses stand to-day, was in early times a busy place. It is said that the first flour mill in America stood there, and that one Gordon, who made his money by shipping flour and tobacco direct from his wharf to England, and bringing back bricks as ballast for his ships, was the first American millionaire.

Besides having known intimately such historic figures as Washington, Monroe, and Robert E. Lee, and having been the scene of sanguinary fighting in the Civil War, the neighborhood of Fredericksburg boasts the birth-place of a man of whom I wish to speak briefly here, for the reason that he was a great man, that he has been partially overlooked by history, and that it is said in the South that the fame which should justly be his has been deliberately withheld by historians and politicians for the sole reason that as a naval officer he espoused the southern cause in the Civil War.

Every one who has heard of Robert Fulton, certainly every one who has heard of S.F.B. Morse or Cyrus W. Field, ought also to have heard of Matthew Fontaine Maury. But that is not the case. For myself, I must confess that, until I visited Virginia, I was ignorant of the fact that such a person had existed; nor have northern schoolboys, to whom I have spoken of Maury, so much as heard his name. Yet there is no one living in the United States, or in any civilized country, whose daily life is not affected through the scientific researches and attainments of this man.

Maury's claim to fame rests on his eminent services to navigation and meteorology. If Humboldt's work, published in 1817, was the first great contribution to meteorological science, it remained for Maury to make that science exact.

While it is perhaps an exaggeration to say that Maury alone laid the foundation for our present Weather Bureau, he certainly shares with Professors Redfield, Espy, Loomis, Joseph Henry, Dr. Increase Lapham, and others, the honor of having been one of the first to suggest the feasibility of our present systematic storm warnings.

Maury was born in 1806. When nineteen years of age he secured a midshipman's warrant, and, as there was no naval academy at Annapolis then, was immediately assigned to a man-of-war. Within six years he was master of an American war vessel. Before starting on a voyage to the Pacific he sought information on the winds and currents, and finding that it was not available, determined himself to gather it for general publication. This he did, issuing a book upon the subject.

When a broken leg, the result of a stage-coach accident, caused his retirement from active service at sea, he continued his studies, and, in recognition of his services to navigation, was given charge of the Depot of Charts and Instruments at Washington. There he found stored away the log books of American naval vessels, and from the vast number of observations they contained, began the compilation of the Wind and Currents Charts known to all mariners.

A monograph on Maury, issued by N.W. Ayer & Son, of Philadelphia, says of these charts:

"They were, at first, received with indifference and incredulity. Finally, a Captain Jackson determined to trust the new chart absolutely. As a result he made a round trip to Rio de Janeiro in the time often required for the outward passage alone. Later, four clipper ships started from New York for San Francisco, via Cape Horn. These vessels arrived at their destination in the order determined by the degree of fidelity with which they had followed the directions of Maury's charts. The arrival of these ships in San Francisco marked, likewise, the arrival of Maury's Wind and Currents Charts in the lasting favor of the mariners of the world. The average voyage to San Francisco was reduced, by use of the charts, from one hundred and eighty-three to one hundred and thirty-five days, a saving of forty-eight days.

"Soon after this, the ship San Francisco, with hundreds of United States troops on board, foundered in an Atlantic hurricane. The rumor reached port that there was need of help. Maury was called upon to indicate her probable location. He set to work to show where the wind and currents would combine to place a helpless wreck, and marked the place with a blue pencil. There the relief was sent, and there the survivors of the wreck were found. From that day to this, Maury's word has been accepted without challenge by the matter-of-fact men of the sea.

"These charts, only a few in number, are among the most wonderful and useful productions of the human mind. One of them combined the result of 1,159,353 separate observations on the force and direction of the wind, and upward of 100,000 observations on the height of the barometer, at sea. As the value of such observations was recognized, more of them were made. Through the genius and devotion of one man, Commander Maury, every ship became a floating observatory, keeping careful records of winds, currents, limits of fogs, icebergs, rain areas, temperature, soundings, etc., while every maritime nation of the world cooeperated in a work that was to redound to the benefit of commerce and navigation, the increase of knowledge, the good of all.

"In 1853, at the instance of Commander Maury, the United States called the celebrated Brussels Conference for the cooeperation of nations in matters pertaining to maritime affairs. At this conference, Maury advocated the extension of the system of meteorological observation to the land, thus forming a weather bureau helpful to agriculture. This he urged in papers and addresses to the close of his life. Our present Weather Bureau and Signal Service are largely the outcome of his perception and advocacy."

Maury's "Physical Geography of the Sea," the work by which he is best known, was published in 1855. He discovered, among other things, the causes of the Gulf Stream, and the existence of the still-water plateau of the North Atlantic which made possible the laying of the first cable. Cyrus W. Field said, with reference to Maury's work in this connection: "Maury furnished the brains, England gave the money, and I did the work."

Maury was decorated by many foreign governments but not by his own. Owing, it is said, to his having taken up the Confederate cause, national honors were withheld from him, not only during the remainder of his life, but until 1916, when one of the large buildings at the Naval Academy—the establishment of which, by the way, Maury was one of the first to advocate—was named for him, and Congress passed a bill appropriating funds for the erection of a monument to the "Pathfinder of the Sea," in Washington.

Maury died in 1873, one of the most loved and honored men in the State of Virginia.

It is recorded that, near the end, he asked his son: "Am I dragging my anchors?"

And when the latter replied in the affirmative, the father gave a brave sailor's answer:

"All's well," he said.

* * * * *

Across the river from Fredericksburg stands Chatham, the old Fitzhugh house, one of the most charming of early Virginian mansions. Chatham was built in 1728, and it is thought that the plans for it were drawn by Sir Christopher Wren at the order of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, and sent by the latter to William Fitzhugh, who had been his classmate at Eton and Oxford. Not only does the name of the house lend color to the tale, but so do its proportions, which are very beautiful, reminding one somewhat of those of Doughoregan Manor. Chatham, however, has the advantage of being (as the Hon. Charles Augustus Murray wrote of it in his quaint "Travels in North America," published in 1839) "situated on an eminence commanding a view of the town, and of the bold, sweeping course of the Rappahannoc." Murray also tells of the beautiful garden, with its great box trees and its huge slave-built terraces, stepping down to the water like a giant's stairway.

In this house my companion and I were guests, and as I won the toss for the choice of rooms, mine was the privilege of sleeping in the historic west bedchamber, the principal guest room, and of opening my eyes, in the morning, upon a lovely wall all paneled in white-painted wood.

I shall always remember the delightful experience of awakening in that room, so vast, dignified, and beautiful, and of lying there a little drowsy, and thinking of those who had been there before me. This was the room occupied by George and Martha Washington when they stopped for a few days at Chatham on their wedding journey; this was the room occupied by Madison, by Monroe, by Washington Irving, and by Robert E. Lee when he visited Chatham and courted Mary Custis, who became his wife. And, most wonderful of all to me, this was the room occupied by Lincoln when he came to Fredericksburg to review the army, while Chatham was Union headquarters, and the embattled Lee had headquarters in the old house known as Brompton, still standing on Marye's Heights back of the river and the town. It is said that Lee during the siege of Fredericksburg never trained his guns on Chatham, because of his sentiment for the place. As I lay there in the morning I wondered if Lee had been aware, at the time, that Lincoln was under the roof of Chatham, and whether Lincoln knew, when he slept in "my" room, that Washington and Lee had both been there before him.

War, I thought, not only makes strange bedfellows, but strange combinations in the histories of bedrooms.

Then the maid rapped for the second time upon my door, and though this time I got up at once, my ruminations made me scandalously late for breakfast.

After breakfast came the motor, which was to take us to the battlefields, its driver a thin dry-looking, dry-talking man, with the air of one a little tired of the story he told to tourists day in and day out, yet conscientiously resolved to go through with it. Before the huge cemetery which overlooks the site of the most violent fighting that occurred in the bloody and useless Battle of Fredericksburg, he paused briefly; then drove us to the field of Chancellorsville, to that of the Battles of the Wilderness, and finally to the region of Spottsylvania Courthouse; and at each important spot he stopped and told us what had happened there. He knew all about the Civil War, that man, and he had a way of passing out his information with a calm assumption that his hearers knew nothing about it whatever. This irritated my companion, who also knows all about the War, having once passed three days in the neighborhood of a Soldiers' Home. Consequently he kept cutting in, supplying additional details—such, for instance, as that Stonewall Jackson, who died in a house which the driver pointed out, was shot by some of his own men, who took him for a Yankee as he was returning from a reconnaissance.

Either one of these competitive historians alone, I could have stood, but the way they picked each other up, fighting the old-time battles over again, got on my nerves. Besides, it was cold, and as I have taken occasion to remark before, I do not like cold motor rides. Indeed, as I think it over, it seems to me I do not like battlefields, either. At all events, I became more and more morose as we traversed that bleak Virginia landscape, and I am afraid that before the day was over I was downright sulky.

As we drove back to Fredericksburg and to the train which was to take us to Charlottesville, my companion made remarks of a general character about people who were trivial minded, and who didn't take a proper interest in the scenes of great historical occurrences. When he had continued for some time in this vein, I remarked feebly that I loved to read about battles; but that, far from mitigating his severity, only caused him to change his theme. He said that physical laziness was a terrible thing because it not only made the body soft but by degrees softened the brain, as well. He said that when people didn't want to see battlefields, preferring to lie in bed and read about them, that was a sign of the beginning of the end.

On various occasions throughout the week he brought this subject up again, and I was glad indeed when, as the time for our party with the beautiful young actress, in Washington, drew near, he began to forget about my shortcomings and think of more agreeable things.



CHAPTER XIV

CHARLOTTESVILLE AND MONTICELLO

When Virginians speak of "the university," they do not mean Harvard, Princeton, Yale, or even Washington and Lee, but always the University of Virginia, which is at Charlottesville.

The city of Charlottesville, in its downtown parts, is no more and no less dingy and dismal than many another town of six or seven thousand inhabitants, be it North or South. It has a long main street, lined with little shops and moving-picture shows, and the theatrical posters which thrill one at first sight with hopes of evening entertainment, prove, on inspection, to have survived long after the "show" they advertise has come and gone, or else to presage the "show" that is coming for one night, week after next.

Nor is this scarcity of theatrical entertainment confined alone to small towns of the South. Not all important stars and important theatrical productions visit even the largest cities, for the South is not regarded by theatrical managers as particularly profitable territory. It would be interesting to know whether anaemia of the theater in the South, as well as the falling off generally of theatergoing in lesser American cities—usually attributed to the popularity and cheapness of the "movies"—is not due in large measure to the folly of managers themselves in sending out inferior companies. Any one who has seen a theatrical entertainment in New York and seen it later "on the road" is likely to be struck by the fact that even the larger American cities do not always get the full New York cast, while smaller cities seldom if ever get any part of it. The South suffers particularly in this respect. The little "river shows," which arrive now and then in river towns, and which are more or less characteristic of the South, have the excuse of real picturesqueness, however bad the entertainment given, for the players live and have their theater on flatboats, which tie up at the wharf. But the plain fact about the ordinary little southern "road show" is that it does not deserve to make money.

The life of a poor player touring the South must be very wretched, for generally, excepting in large cities, hotels are poor. Before we had gone far upon our way, my companion and I learned to inquire carefully in advance as to the best hotels, and when we found in any small city one which was not a fire trap, and which was clean, we were surprised, while if the service was fairly good, and the meals were not very bad, we considered it a matter for rejoicing.

We were advised to stop, in Charlottesville, at the New Gleason, and when we alighted at the dingy old brick railroad station—a station quite as unprepossessing as that at New Haven, Connecticut—we began to feel that all was not for the best. A large gray horse hitched to the hack in which we rode to the Gleason evidently felt the same, for at first he balked, and later tried to run away.

The hotel lobby was a perfect example of its kind. There were several drummers writing at the little desks, and several more sitting idly in chairs adjacent to brass cuspidors. All of them looked despondent with a despondency suggesting pie for breakfast. Behind the desk was a sleepy-looking old clerk who, as we arrived, was very busy over a financial transaction involving change of ownership in a two-cent stamp. This enterprise concluded, he assigned us rooms.

Never have I wished to win the toss for rooms as I wished it when I saw the two allotted to us, for though the larger one could not by a flight of fancy be termed cheerful, the sight of the lesser chamber filled me with thoughts of madness.

Of course I lost.

Never shall I forget that room. It was too small to accommodate my trunks with any comfort, so I left them downstairs with the porter, descending, now and then, to get such articles as I required. The furniture, what there was of it, was of yellow pine; the top of the dresser was scarred with the marks of many glasses and many bottles; the lace window curtains were long, hard and of a wiry stiffness, and the wall-paper was of a scrambled pattern all in bilious brown. During the evening I persuaded my companion to walk with me through the town, and once I got him out I kept him going on and on through shadowy streets unknown to us, until, exhausted, he insisted upon returning to our hostelry. I fancy that there are picturesque old houses on the outskirts of the town, but with that wall paper and a terrible nostalgia occupying my mind, I was in no state to judge of what was there.

On reaching the hotel my companion went to bed, but I remained until late in the office, writing letters, doing anything rather than go up to my room. When at last I did ascend I planned to read, but the arrangement of the light was bad, so presently I put it out and lay there sleepless and miserable, thinking of foolish things that I have said and done during a life rich with such items, and having chills and fever over each separate recollection. How I drifted off to sleep at last I do not know; all I remember is waking up next morning, leaping out of bed and dressing in frantic haste to get out of my room. There was but one thing in it which did not utterly offend the eye: that was the steam pipe which ascended from floor to ceiling at one corner, and which, being a simple, honest metal tube, was not objectionable.

As we passed through the office on our way to breakfast, the bus man entered, and in a loud, retarded chant proclaimed: "Train for the South!"

The impressive tones in which this announcement was delivered seemed to call for a sudden stir, a rush for bags and coats, a general exodus, but no one in the office moved, and I remember feeling sorry for the bus man as he turned and went out in the midst of a crushing anti-climax.

"I wonder," I said to my companion, "if anybody ever gets up and goes when that man calls out the trains."

"I don't believe so," he replied. "I don't think he calls trains for any such purpose. He only warns people so they will expect to hear the train, and not be frightened when it goes through."

* * * * *

Thomas Jefferson is most widely remembered, I suppose, as the author of the Declaration of Independence, the third President, the purchaser of Louisiana, and the unfortunate individual upon whom the Democratic party casts the blame for its existence, precisely as the Republican party blames itself on Washington and Lincoln—although the lamentable state into which both parties have fallen is actually the fault of living men.

It is significant, however, that of this trio of Jeffersonian items, Jefferson himself selected but one to be included in the inscription which he wrote for his tombstone—a modest obelisk on the grounds at Monticello. The inscription mentions but three of his achievements: the authorship of the Declaration, that of the Virginia statute for religious freedom, and the fact that he was "Father of the University of Virginia."

Regardless of other accomplishments, the man who built the university and the house at Monticello was great. It is more true of these buildings than of any others I have seen that they are the autobiography, in brick and stone, of their architect. To see them, to see some of the exquisitely margined manuscript in Jefferson's clean handwriting, preserved in the university library, and to read the Declaration, is to gain a grasp of certain sides of Jefferson's nature which can be achieved in no other way.

Monticello stands on a lofty hilltop, with vistas, between trees, of neighboring valleys, hills, and mountains. It is a supremely lovely house, unlike any other, and, while it is too much to say that one would recognize it as the house of the writer of the Declaration, it is not too much to say that, once one does know it, one can trace a clear affinity resulting from a common origin—an affinity much more apparent, by the way, than may be traced between the work of Michelangelo on St. Peter's at Rome, on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and in his "David."

The introductory paragraph to the Declaration ascends into the body of the document as gracefully and as certainly as the wide flights of easy steps ascend to the doors of Monticello; the long and beautifully balanced paragraph which follows, building word upon word and sentence upon sentence into a central statement, has a form as definite and graceful as that of the finely proportioned house; the numbered paragraphs which follow, setting forth separate details, are like rooms within the house, and—I have just come upon the coincidence with a pleasant start such as might be felt by the discoverer of some complex and important cipher—as there are twenty-seven of the numbered paragraphs in the Declaration, so there are twenty-seven rooms in Monticello. Last of all there are two little phrases in the Declaration (the phrases stating that we shall hold our British brethren in future as we hold the rest of mankind—"enemies in war; in peace, friends"), which I would liken to the small twin buildings, one of them Jefferson's office, the other that of the overseer, which stand on either side of the lawn at Monticello, at some distance from the house. These office buildings face, and balance upon each other, and upon the mansion, but they are so much smaller that to put them there required daring, while to make them "compose" (as painters say) with the great house, required the almost superhuman sense of symmetry which Jefferson assuredly possessed.

The present owner of Monticello is Mr. Jefferson Monroe Levy, former United States congressman from New York. Mr. Levy is a Democrat and a bachelor, according to the Congressional Directory, which states further that he inherited Monticello from an uncle, Commodore Uriah P. Levy, U.S.N., and that the latter purchased the place in 1830 "at the suggestion of President Jackson."

Dorothy Dix, writing in "Good Housekeeping," tells a tale which I have heard repeatedly of the acquisition of Monticello by Uriah Levy. Says Miss Dix:

"Monticello was sold to a stranger, and Jefferson's only daughter, Mrs. Randolph, widowed and with eleven children, was left homeless.... A subscription of three thousand dollars was raised ... to buy back the house ... and this money was intrusted to a young relative of the Jeffersons' to convey to Charlottesville. Traveling in the stagecoach with the young man was Captain Uriah P. Levy, to whom he confided his mission. The young man became intoxicated and dallied, but Captain Levy hastened on to Charlottesville, and purchased Monticello for two thousand five hundred dollars. The next day the repentant and sober young man arrived and besought Captain Levy to take the three thousand dollars ... and let Monticello go back to the Jefferson family. Captain Levy refused to part with his bargain, but at his death he willed Monticello to 'the people of the United States to be held as a memorial of Thomas Jefferson'.... The Levy heirs contested the will, and it was finally decided upon a technicality that 'the people of the United States' was too indefinite a term to make the bequest binding, and the estate passed into the hands of the Levys, and so to its present owner...."

In a biographical note upon the latter, the Congressional Directory states that the house is "kept open to the public all the year." My companion and I were admitted to the grounds, but were informed that, though the building was unoccupied, no one was permitted to enter. While we were in the vicinity of the house we were attended by one of the men employed on the place, who told us that when people were allowed to roam about at will, there had been much vandalism; ivy had been pulled from the walls, shrubbery broken, pieces of brick chipped out of the steps, and teeth knocked from the heads of the marble lions which flank them.

Of recent years there has been on foot a movement, launched, I believe, by Mrs. Martin W. Littleton, of New York, to influence the Government to purchase Monticello from its present owner. It is difficult to see precisely how Mr. Levy could be forced to part with his property, if he did not wish to. Nevertheless public sentiment on this subject has become so strong that he has agreed to let the Government have Monticello "at a price"—so, at least, I was informed in Charlottesville.



CHAPTER XV

THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA

The opening of the University of Virginia was an event of prime importance for the higher education in the whole country, and really marks a new era.

—CHARLES FORSTER SMITH.

Like Monticello, the buildings of the University of Virginia are those of an intellectual, a classicist, a purist, and, like it, they might have been austere but for the warmth of their red brick and the glow of their white-columned porticos. But they are cheerful buildings, which, individually and as a group, attain a geometrical yet soft perfection, a supreme harmony of form and color.

The principal buildings are grouped about a large campus, called the Lawn, which is dominated by the rotunda, suggesting in its outlines the Pantheon at Rome. From the rotunda, at either side, starts a white-columned arcade connecting the various houses which are distributed at graceful intervals along the margins of the rectangular lawn, above which loom the tops of even rows of beautiful old trees. Flanking the buildings of the lawn, and reached by brick walks which pass between the famous serpentine walls (walls but one brick thick which support themselves on the snake-fence principle, by progressing in a series of reverse curves), are the "ranges": solid rows of one-story student dormitories built of brick and fronted by colonnades which command other lawns and other trees.

With a single exception, restorations and additions to the university have been made with reverence and taste, and the Brooks Museum, the one architectural horror of the place, fortunately does not stand upon the lawn. Since it is said that beauty could not exist were there not ugliness for contrast, this building may have its uses; certainly, after a glance at it, one looks back with renewed delight at the structures of the central group.

Most superb of all, always there hangs at night, above the buildings and the tree-tops, a glorious full moon. At least I suppose it always hangs there, for though it seemed to us very wonderful, every one else seemed used to it.

Like Venice, the University of Virginia should first be seen by moonlight. There could not have been a finer moonlit night, I thought, than that cold, crisp one upon which my companion stood for two hours beside the rotunda, gazing at the lawn and drawing it, its frosty grass and trees decked with diamonds, its white columns standing out softly from their shadow backgrounds like phosphorescent ghosts in the luminous blue darkness. Until I was nearly frozen I stayed there with him. That drawing cost him one of the worst colds he ever had.

The university ought to have, and has, many traditions, and life there ought to be, and is, different from life in any other college. Jefferson brought from Italy the men who carved the capitals of the columns (the descendants of some of these Italian workmen live in Charlottesville to-day), and when the columns were in place he brought from Europe the professors to form the faculty, creating what was practically a small English university in the United States. Never until, a dozen years ago, Dr. E.A. Alderman became president, had there been such an office; before that time the university had a rector, and the duties of president were performed by a chairman of the faculty, elected by the faculty from among its members. This was the first university to adopt the elective system, permitting the students, as Jefferson wrote, "uncontrolled choice in the lectures they shall attend," instead of prescribing one course of reading for all. No less important, the University of Virginia was the first college to introduce (1842) the honor system, and still has the most complete honor system to be found among American colleges. This system is an outgrowth of the Jeffersonian idea of student self-government; under it each student signs, with examination papers, a pledge that he has neither given nor received assistance. That is found sufficient; students are not watched, nor need they be. With time this system has been extended, so that it now covers not only examinations, but many departments of college life, eliminating professionalism in athletics and plagiarism in literary work, and resulting in a delightful mutual confidence between the student body and the faculty.

Madison and Monroe were active members of the university's first board of visitors; the first college Y.M.C.A. was started there; and among many famous men who have attended the university may be mentioned Edgar Allan Poe, Thomas Nelson Page, and Thomas Woodrow Wilson, whose name appears thus upon the "University Magazine" for 1879-80, as one of its three editors. The ill-starred Poe attended the university for only one year, at the end of which time his adopted father, Mr. Allan, of Richmond, withdrew him because of debts he had contracted while acquiring his education in gambling and drinking champagne. Poe's former room, No. 13 West Range, is now the office of the magazine.

The clean, lovely manuscript in Jefferson's handwriting, of the first Anglo-Saxon grammar written in the United States, is to be seen in the university library; Jefferson was Vice-President of the United States when he wrote it; he put Anglo-Saxon in the first curriculum of the university, and it has been taught there ever since. In a note which is a part of the manuscript, he advocates the study of Anglo-Saxon as an introduction to modern English on the ground that though about half the words in our present language are derived from Latin and Greek, these being the scholarly words, the other half, the words we use most often, are Anglo-Saxon.

Before the war it was not uncommon for students at the university to have their negro body servants with them, and it has occasionally happened since that some young sprig of southern aristocracy has come to college thus attended.

Perhaps the most striking and characteristic feature of student life to-day, from the point of view of the stray visitor, is the formal attitude of students toward one another. There is no easy-going casualness between them, no calling back and forth, no "hello," by way of greeting. They pass each other on the walks either without speaking (men have been punished at the university by being ignored by the entire student body), or if they do greet each other the customary salutation is "How are you, sir?" or "How are you, gentlemen?" First-year men are expected to wear hats, and not to speak to upper classmen until they have been spoken to; and, though there is no hazing at the university, woe betide them if they do not heed these rules.

In the early days of the university there was an effort to exercise restraint over students, to make them account for their goings and comings, and to prevent their going to taverns or betting upon horse races. Also they were obliged to wear a uniform. The severity was so great that they appealed to Jefferson, who sided with them. He, however, died in the same year, and friction prevailed for perhaps a decade longer, with many student disorders, culminating in the shooting of a professor by a student. In 1840 the students were at last granted full freedom, and two years later the honor system was adopted.

During the university's first years young men from the far South, where dueling was especially prevalent, did not come in large numbers to the University of Virginia, but went, as a rule, to the northern colleges, but about the middle of the century, as feeling between North and South over taxation, States' Rights and slavery became more acute, these men began to flock to the college at Charlottesville. Between 1850 and 1860 the university almost doubled in size, and at about the same time there developed a good deal of dueling between students.

When the War ended many men who had gone into the Confederate army at sixteen or seventeen years of age came to Charlottesville to complete their education. The hard life of the army had made some of these into a wild lot, and there was a great deal of gambling and drinking during their time, and also after it, for several succeeding generations of students looked up to the ex-soldiers as heroes, and carried on the unfortunate traditions left by them at the university. In the nineties, however, a change came, and though there is still some drinking and gambling, it is doubtful whether such vices are now more prevalent at the University of Virginia than at many other colleges. The honor system has never been extended to cover these points.

It is related that, in Poe's time, gambling became such a serious obstacle to discipline and work that the university authorities set the town marshal after a score or so of gambling students, Poe among them, whereupon these students fled to the Ragged Mountains, near by, and remained for two weeks, during which time Poe is said to have mightily entertained them with stories and prophecies, including a forecast of the Civil War, in which, he declared, two of the youths present would fight on opposite sides.

The Poe tradition is kept vigorously alive at the university. Not long ago a member of the Raven Society, one of the rather too numerous student organizations, discovered the burial place of Poe's mother, who was an actress, and who died penniless in Richmond at the age of twenty-four and was buried with the destitute. By a happy inspiration a fund was raised among the students for the erection of a monument to her—an example of fine and chivalrous sentiment on the part of these young men, which, one feels, is somehow delicately intertwined with the traditions of the honor system.

The Poe professor of English at the university, when we were there, was Dr. C. Alphonso Smith, who has since taken the professorship of English at the United States Naval Academy. By a coincidence which has proved a happy one for those who love the stories of the late Sidney Porter (O. Henry), Dr. Smith grew up as a boy with Porter, in Greensboro, North Carolina. Because of this, and also because of Dr. Smith's own gifts as a writer and an analyst, it is peculiarly fitting that he should have undertaken the work which has occupied him for several years past, the result of which has recently been given to us in the form "The O. Henry Biography."

Dr. Smith was Roosevelt exchange professor at the University of Berlin in 1910-11, holding the chair of American History and Institutions. While occupying that professorship he met the Kaiser.

"I talked with him twice," he said, "and upon the second occasion under very delightful circumstances, for I was invited to dinner at the Palace at Potsdam, and was the only guest, the Kaiser, Kaiserin, and Princess Victoria Luise being present.

"The Kaiser is, of course, a very magnetic man. His eyes are his most remarkable feature. They are very large, brilliant, and sparkling, and he rolls them in a manner most unusual. While he is always the king and the soldier, he can be genial and charming. One might expect a man in his position to be blase, but that, most of all, is what he is not. He is like a boy in his vitality and vividness, and he has a great and persistent intellectual curiosity. It is this, I think, which used to cause him to be compared with Colonel Roosevelt. Both would like to know all things, and both have had, and have exercised more, perhaps, than any other two living men, the power to bring to themselves the central figures in all manner of world events, and thus learn at first hand, from acknowledged authorities, about the subjects that interest them—which is to say, everything.

"He frankly admired America. I don't mean that he said so for the sake of courtesy to me, but that he has—or did have, then—an immense and rather romantic interest in this country. A great many Germans used to resent this trait in him. America held in his mind the same romantic position that the idea of monarchy did in the minds of some of us. I mean that the average American went for romance to stories of monarchy, but that the Kaiser, being used to the monarchial idea, found his romance over here. (I am, of course, speaking of him as he was five or six years ago.) He wished to come to America, but was never able to do so, since German law forbids it. And, perhaps because he could not come, America was the more a sort of dream to him.

"He asked me about some of the things in Berlin which I had noticed as being different from things at home, and when I mentioned the way that history was kept alive in the very streets of Berlin, his eyes danced, and he said that was one of the things he had tried to accomplish by the erection of the numerous monuments which have been placed in Berlin during his reign. He told me of other means by which history was kept alive in Germany: among them that every officer has to know in detail the history of his regiment, and that German regiments always celebrate the anniversaries of their great days.

"He speaks English without an accent, though we might say that he spoke it with an English accent. He told me that he had learned English before he learned German, and had also caused his children to learn it first. He reads Mark Twain, or had read him, and he enjoyed him, but he said that when he met Mark Twain the latter had little or nothing to say, and that it was only with the greatest difficulty that he got him to talk at all. He subscribed, he told me, to 'Harper's Magazine,' and he was in the habit of reading short stories aloud to his family, in English. He admired the American short story, and I remember that he declared: 'The Americans know how to plunge into a short story. We Germans are too long-winded.'"

When Professor Smith talks about the Kaiser, you say to yourself: "I know that it is growing late, but I cannot bear to leave until I have heard the rest of this"; when he drifts presently to O. Henry, you say the same; and so it is always, no matter what his subject. At last, however, the grandfather's clock in the hall below his study sends up a stern message which is not to be mistaken, whereupon you arise reluctantly from your comfortable chair, spill the cigar ashes out of your lap onto the rug, dust off your clothing, and take your leave. Nor is your regret at departing lessened by the fact that you must go to your bilious-colored bedroom in the New Gleason, and that you will not see the university, or Professor C. Alphonso Smith, or Mrs. Smith again, because you are leaving upon the morrow.

So it must always be with the itinerant illustrator and writer. They are forever finding new and lovely scenes only to leave them; forever making new and charming friends only to part with them, faring forth again into the unknown.



CHAPTER XVI

FOX-HUNTING IN VIRGINIA

Better to hunt in fields for health unbought Than fee the doctor for a nauseous draught. The wise for cure on exercise depend; God never made his work for man to mend.

—DRYDEN.

It is my impression that the dining-car conductor on the Chesapeake & Ohio train by which we left Charlottesville was puzzled when I asked his name; but if he sees this and remembers the incident he will now know that I did so because I wished here to mention him as a humane citizen. His name is C.G. Mitchell, and he was so accommodating as to serve a light meal, after hours, when he did not have to, to two hungry men who needed it. If travel has taught my companion and me anything, it has taught us that not all dining-car conductors are like that. Nor, I judge, can all dining-car conductors play the violin, pleasantly, in off hours, as does Mr. Mitchell. Better one merciful dining-car conductor than twenty who wear white carnations at their left lapels, but wear no hearts below them!

The road by which we drove from the railroad into the fastnesses of Loudon County, where, near the little settlement of Upperville, the race meet of the Piedmont Hunt was to be held, suggested other times and other manners, for though we rode in a motor car, and though we passed another now and then, machines were far outnumbered by the horses which, under saddle, or hitched to buggies, surreys, and carts of all descriptions, were heading toward the meeting place.

On these roads, one felt, the motor was an outsider; this was the kingdom of the horse that we were visiting; soft dirt roads were there for him to trot and gallop on, and fences of wood or stone, free from barbed wire, were everywhere, for him to jump.

Throughout the week we had looked forward to this day, and even more, perhaps, to the party which, if we could get back to Washington that night, was to follow it; wherefore the first thing we did on reaching a place where information was obtainable was to inquire about facilities for leaving. Herein my companion had the advantage of me, for there was nothing to prevent his departing immediately after the races, whereas I must remain behind for an hour or two, to learn something of fox-hunting as practised in this region.

By motoring immediately after the races to a neighboring town—Bluemont if I remember rightly—and there taking an interurban trolley to some other place, and changing cars, and going without his dinner, my companion found that he could get to Washington by nine o'clock. My case was different. Should I be delayed more than two hours I could not get away at all that night, but must miss the much anticipated party altogether; and, though my companion seemed to view this possibility with perfect equanimity, my memories of the charming lady whom we were to meet at the stage door, after the performance, were too clear to permit of indifference in me. The trolley my companion meant to catch was, however, the last one; my only hope, therefore, was to motor a distance of perhaps a dozen miles, over roads which I was frankly told were "middling to bad," and try to catch a train at The Plains station. If I missed this train, I was lost, and must spend a solitary night in such a room as I might be able to find in a strange village. That possibility did not appeal to me. I began to wish that there was no such thing as fox-hunting, or that, there being such a thing, I had chosen to ignore it.

"Now," said my companion cheerfully, "we'll telegraph her."

At a telegraph office he seized the pencil and wrote the following message:

Will call for you to-night after performance.

To this he signed his own name.

"What about me?" I suggested, after glancing over his shoulder at the message.

"Oh, well," said he, "there's no use in going into all that in a telegram. It's sufficient to let her know that one of us is coming."

"But I proposed this party."

"Well," he gave in, with an air of pained patience, "what shall I say, then? Shall I add that you are unavoidably detained?"

"Not by a jugful!" I returned. "Add that I hope to get there too, and will make every effort to do so."

He wrote it out, sighing as he did so. Then, by careful cutting, he got it down to fourteen words. By that time the operator couldn't read it, so he wrote it out again—gloomily.

This accomplished, we matched coins to see who should pay for the message. He lost.

"All right!" he said. "I'll pay for it, but it's all foolishness to send such a long telegram."

"No," I returned, as we left the office and got into the machine, "it is not foolishness. If I can make life a little brighter for a beautiful woman, by adding a few words to a telegram, and sticking you for it, I shall do it every time."

He looked away over the fields and did not answer me. So we drove on in silence to where stands the beautiful manor house called Huntland, which is the residence of Mr. Joseph B. Thomas, M.F.H. of the Piedmont Hunt.

There is, I have been told, no important hunt in the United States in which the master of foxhounds is not the chief financial supporter, the sport being a very costly one. Of American hunts, the Middlesex, in Massachusetts, of which Mr. A. Henry Higginson is M.F.H., has the reputation of being the best appointed. The Piedmont Hunt is, however, one of the half dozen leading organizations of the kind, and it is difficult indeed to imagine a finer.

In a well-kept park near Mr. Thomas's house stand extensive English-looking buildings of brick and stucco, which, viewed from a distance, suggest a beautiful country house, and which, visited, teach one that certain favored hounds and horses in this world live much better than certain human beings. One building is given over to the kennels, the other the stables; each has a large sunlit court, and each is as beautiful and as clean as a fine house—a house full of trophies, hunting equipment, and the pleasant smell of well-cared-for saddlery. In a rolling meadow, not far distant, is the race course, all green turf, and here, soon after luncheon, gathered an extraordinary diversified crowd.

For the most part the crowd was a fashionable one: men and women of the type whose photographs appear in "Vogue" and "Vanity Fair," and whose costumes were like fashion suggestions for "sport clothes" in those publications. One party was stationed on the top of an old-time mail coach, the boot of which bore the significant initials "F.F.V."—standing, as even benighted Northerners must be aware, for "First Families of Virginia"; others were in a line of motors and heterogeneous horse-drawn vehicles, parked beside the course; and scattered through the gathering, like brushmarks on an impressionist canvas, one saw the brilliant color of pink coats. Handsome hunters were being ridden or led about by negro grooms, and others kept arriving, ridden in by farmers and breeders, while here and there one saw a woman rider, her hair tightly drawn back under a mannish derby hat, her figure slender and graceful in a severely-cut habit coat. Jumbled together in a great green meadow under a sweet autumnal sun, these things made a picture of what, I am persuaded, is the ultimate in extravagant American country life. There was something, too, about this blending of fashionables and farmers, which made me think of the theater; for there is, in truth, a distinct note of histrionism about many of the rich Americans who "go in for" elaborate ruralness, and there is a touch of it very often, also, about "horsey" people. They like to "look the part," and they dress it with no less care than they exercise, at other seasons, in dressing the parts of opera-going cosmopolites, or wealthy loungers at the beaches. In other words, these fashionables had the overtrained New York look all over them, and the local rustics set them off as effectively as the villainous young squire of the Drury Lane melodrama is set off by contrast with honest old Jasper, the miller, who wears a smock, and comes to the Great House to beg the Young Master to "make an honest woman" of poor Rose, the fairest lass in all Hampshire.

About the races themselves there was something fascinatingly nonprofessional. They bore the same relation to great races on great tracks that a very fine performance of a play by amateurs might bear to a professional performance.

First came a two-mile steeplechase, with brush hurdles. Then, after a couple of minor events, a four-mile point-to-point race for hunters ridden by gentlemen in hunt uniform. This was as stiff a race for both horses and riders as I have ever seen, and it was very picturesque to watch the pink coats careering up hill and down dale, now over a tall stone wall, now over a brook or a snake fence; and when a rider went head over heels, and lay still upon the ground where he fell, while his horse cantered along after the field, in that aimless and pathetic way that riderless horses have, one had a real sensation—which was the pleasanter for knowing, a few minutes later, that the horseman had only broken an arm.

Next was run a rollicking race for horses owned by farmers, and others, whose land is hunted over by the Piedmont and Middleburg foxhounds; and last occurred a great comedy event—a mule race, free for all, in which one of the hunting men, in uniform, made such a handsome showing against a rabble of white and colored boys, all of them yelling, all of them beating their long-eared animals with sticks, that he would have won, had he not deliberately pulled his mount and "thrown" the race.

The last event was not yet finished when my companion, who had become nervous about his interurban trolley, got into a machine to drive to Bluemont.

"Of course," he said as we parted, "we'll miss you to-night."

"Oh," I said, "I hope not. I expect to get there."

"I don't see how you can make it," said he. "You have a lot of material to gather."

"I shall work fast."

"Well," said he, trying to speak like the voice of Conscience, "I hope you won't forget your duty—that's all."

"I proposed this party to-night. It is my duty to be there."

"You didn't make any definite engagement," said he, "and, besides, your first duty is to your editors and your readers."

Having tossed me this disgusting thought, he departed in a cloud of dust, leaving me sad and alone, but not yet altogether in despair.

The last race over, I hastened to Mr. Thomas's house, which, by this time, looked like an old English hunting print come to life, for it was now crowded with pink coats. For most of the technical information contained in this chapter I am indebted to various gentlemen whom I encountered there.

In Virginia—which is the oldest fox-hunting State in the Union, the sport having been practised there for nearly two centuries—the words "hunt" or "hunting" never by any chance apply to shooting, but always refer to hunting the fox with horse and hounds. A "hunter" is not a man but a horse; a huntsman is not a member of the hunt but a hunt-servant; the "field" may be the terrain ridden over by the hunt, or it may be the group of riders following the hounds—"hunt followers," "hunting men," and "hunting women."

The following items, from "Baily's Hunting Directory," a British annual, give some idea of certain primary formalities and practicalities of hunting:

HINTS TO BEGINNERS

Buy the best horses you can afford; but remember that a workably sound horse, though blemished or a bit gone in the wind, will give you plenty of fun, if you do not knock him about.

Obey the Master's orders without argument; in the field he is supreme.

Hold up your hat if you view the fox away; do not halloa. If none of the hunt servants see your uplifted hat, go and tell the nearest of them.

Ride fast at water; if hounds clear a brook a horse has a good chance of doing so. Steady your horse and let him take his own pace at big timber.

Keep well away from hounds, and down wind of them at a check. The steam from heated horses adds a fresh difficulty to recovery of lost scent. Look out for signs that may indicate the whereabouts or passing of the fox. Huddling sheep, staring cattle, chattering magpies, circling rooks, may mean that they see, or have just seen, the fox.

Never lark over fences; it tires your horse needlessly and may cause damage and annoy the farmer.

Never take a short cut through a covert that is likely to be drawn during the day; and keep well away from a covert that hounds are drawing if you start for home before the day's sport is over, lest you head the fox.

Always await your turn at a gate or gap; do not try and push forward in a crowd.

If you follow a pilot, do not "ride in his pocket"; give him plenty of room, say fifteen lengths, at fences, or if he falls you might jump on him.

If your horse kicks, tie a knot of red ribbon in his tail. N.B.—Do not be guilty of using this "rogue's badge" for the sake of getting room in a crowd, as some men have been known to do.

If a man is down and in danger of being kicked, put your own saddle over his head.

HINTS CONCERNING THE HUNTER

It should be remembered that in the ordinary routine the horse is fed three or four times a day. On a hunting day he gets one good feed early in the morning and loses one or two feeds. Moreover, he is doing hard work for hours together, with a weight on his back. Carry a couple of forage biscuits in your pocket to give him during the day. Also get off and relieve him of your weight when you can do so.

When he is brought home, put him in his stall or box, slack the girths, take off the bridle and give him his gruel at once. Throw a rug over his loins and pull his ears for a minute or two.

An old horse needs more clothing than a young one.

Condition is a matter of seasons, not of months; a horse in hard condition can take without injury a fall that would disable a soft one for weeks.

In old times many of Virginia's country gentlemen kept their own packs, but though some followed the hounds according to the English tradition, there developed a less sportsmanlike style of hunting called "hilltopping," under which the hunting men rode to an elevated point and watched the hounds run the fox, without themselves attempting to follow across country and be in at the kill. As a result, the fox was, if caught, torn to pieces by the hounds, and the brush and head were infrequently saved.

Under the traditions of English fox-hunting—traditions the strictness of which can hardly be exaggerated—"hilltopping" is a more than doubtful sport, and, since organized fox-hunting in the United States is taken entirely from the English idea, the practice is tabooed on first-class hunting regions.

The origin of hilltopping is, however, easily understood. The old fox-hunters simply did not, as a rule, have horses adequate to negotiate the country, hunters not having been developed to any great extent in America in early times.

The perfect type of hunter is of thoroughbred stock. By the term "thoroughbred" horsemen do not mean highly bred horses of any kind, as is sometimes supposed, but only running horses. All such horses come originally of British stock, for it is in Great Britain that the breed has been developed, although it traces back, through a number of centuries, to a foundation of Arabian blood. I am informed that climatic and other conditions in a certain part of Ireland are for some reason peculiarly favorable to the development of hunters and that these conditions are duplicated in the Piedmont section of Virginia, and nowhere else in the whole world. Only the stanchest, bravest, fastest type of horse is suited for hunting in Virginia, and for this reason the more experienced riders to hounds prefer the thoroughbred, though half-bred and three-quarter-bred horses are also used to some extent, the thoroughbred often being too mettlesome, when he becomes excited, for any but the best riders. The finest qualities of a horse are brought out in hunting in the Piedmont section, for the pace here is very fast—much faster than in England, though it should be added that in the English hunting country there are more hedges than over here, and that the jumps are, upon the whole, stiffer.

The speed of the Piedmont Hunt and other hunts in Virginia is doubtless due to the use of southern hounds, these being American hounds, smaller and faster than English hounds, from which, however, they were originally bred. The desirable qualities in a pack of hounds are uniformity of type, substance, speed, and color. These points have to do not only with the style of a pack, but also with its hunting quality. Thus in the Piedmont pack they breed for a red hound with white markings, so that the pack may have an individual appearance, but in all packs a great effort is made to secure even speed, for a slow hound lags, while a fast one becomes an individual hunter. The unusual hound is therefore likely to be "drafted" from the pack.

There has been a long controversy as to whether the English or American type of hound is best suited for hunting in this country, and the matter seems still to remain one of opinion. Probably the best English pack in the United States is that of Mr. A. Henry Higginson. Some years since, Mr. Higginson and Mr. Harry Worcester Smith, of Worcester, Massachusetts, master of the Grafton pack, made a bet of $5000 a side, each backing his own hounds, the question being that of the general suitability of the American versus the English hound for American country. The trials were made in the Piedmont region of Virginia, and Mr. Smith's American hounds won the wager for him.

In the last ten or twenty years hunting in the United States has been organized under the Hunts Committee of the National Steeplechase Association. Practically all the important hunting organizations are members of this association, there being forty of these: eleven in Virginia, nine in Pennsylvania, six in New York, four in Massachusetts, three each in Maryland and New Jersey, and one each in Connecticut, Vermont, Ohio, and Michigan—the Grosse Pointe Hounds, near Detroit, being the most westerly of recognized hunts, although there is some unrecognized hunting near Chicago.

An idea of the comparative importance of hunting in the United States and in England may be gathered from the fact that in England and Wales alone there are more than 180 packs of foxhounds, 88 packs of beagles, and 16 packs of staghounds, while Ireland and Scotland have many also. The war, however, has struck hard at hunting in the British Isles. Baily's Hunting Directory for 1915-16, says:

"Hunting has given her best, for of those who have gone from the hunting field to join the colors, the masters lead, as they have led in more happy days, with a tale of over 80 per cent. of their number, the hunt secretaries following with over 50 per cent., while the hunt servants show over 30 per cent. No exact data are available to tell of the multitude from the rank and file that has followed this magnificent lead, excepting that from all the hunts there comes the same report, that practically every man fit for service has responded to the call."

It is estimated that 17,000 horses were drafted from hunting for the cavalry in England at the beginning of the war; and it is to be noticed that so soon after the outbreak as July, 1915, the "Directory" published a list of names of well-known hunting men killed in action, which occupied more than seven large pages printed in small type.

Under the heading "Incidents of the 1914-15 Season" are to be found many items of curious early war-time interest, a few of which I quote:

Lady Stalbridge announces willingness to act as field master of the South and West Wilts Hounds during her husband's absence in France.

Lieutenant Charles Romer Williams took out to the front a pack of beagles, with which the officers of the Second Cavalry Brigade hoped to hunt Belgian hares.

Capt. E.K. Bradbury, a member of the Cahir Harriers, earned the V.C. at Nery, but died from wounds.

The Grafton Hounds have seventy-six followers with the colors.

Admiral Sir David Beatty, of North Sea fame, has a hunting box at Brooksby Hall, in the Melton Mowbray country.

Five members of the Crawley and Horsham Hounds have been killed, three wounded, and two are missing.

Quorn fields down to about 30, instead of 300 last season.

Captain the Honorable R.B.F. Robertson (Twenty-first Lancers) a prisoner of war. He took over the North Tipperary Hounds in May, and, of course, did not get a chance to have any sport.

We now learn that the French authorities have discouraged fox-hunting behind the fighting lines. So did the Germans. One day British hounds took up the scent on their own initiative. The usual followers had bigger game afoot, and were in the thick of an engagement. The Germans gained ground and occupied the kennels. When the hounds returned from their chase and challenged the intruders they were shot down one by one.

Such is the lore I had acquired when the motor came for me; whereupon, taking a few sandwiches to sustain me until supper time, I set forth through the night by Ford, for the station at The Plains.

* * * * *

The publication of the larger part of the foregoing chapter on fox hunting, in "Collier's Weekly," brought me a number of letters containing hunting anecdotes.

Mr. J.R. Smith of Martinsville, Virginia, calls my attention to marked difference in character between the red fox and the gray. The red fox, he says, depends upon his legs to elude the hounds, and will sometimes lead the hunt twenty-five miles from the place where he gets up, but the gray fox depends on cunning, and is more prone to run a few miles and "tack."

Mr. Smith tells the following story illustrative of the gray fox's amazing artfulness:

"We had started a fox on three different occasions," he writes, "running him a warm chase for about four miles and losing him every time in a sheep pasture. Finally we stationed a servant in that pasture to see what became of the fox. We started him again and he took the same route to the pasture. There the mystery was solved. The fox jumped on the back of a large ram, which, in fright, ran off about half a mile. The fox then jumped off and continued his run. When the hounds came up we urged them on to the point where the fox dismounted, and soon had his brush."