"No, I don't; an' I don't want to neither." Mrs. Eliot laughed comfortably. "Mis' Endey, you don't ketch me foolin' with undertakers till I have to." She sat down and removed her black cotton gloves. "I'm gettin' to that age when I don't care much where undertakers go to so long 's they let me alone. Fixin' fer Christmas dinner, Emarine dear?"

"Yes, ma'am," said Emarine in her very gentlest tone. Her mother had never said "dear" to her, and the sound of it on this old lady's lips was sweet. "Won't you come an' take dinner with us?"

The old lady laughed merrily. "Oh, dearie me, dearie me! You don't guess my son's folks could spare me now, do you? I spend ev'ry Christmas there. They most carry me on two chips. My son's wife, Sidonie, she nearly runs her feet off waitin' on me. She can't do enough fer me. My, Mrs. Endey, you don't know what a comfort a daughter-in-law is when you get old an' feeble!"

Emarine's face turned red. She went to the table and stood with her back to the older women; but her mother's sharp eyes observed that her ears grew scarlet.

"An' I never will," said Mrs. Endey, grimly.

"You've got a son-in-law, though, who's worth a whole townful of most son-in-laws. He was such a good son, too; jest worshipped his mother; couldn't bear her out o' his sight. He humored her high an' low. That's jest the way Sidonie does with me. I'm gettin' cranky 's I get older, an' sometimes I'm reel cross an' sassy to her; but she jest laffs at me, an' then comes an' kisses me, an' I'm all right ag'in. It's a blessin' right from God to have a daughter-in-law like that."

The knife in Emarine's hand slipped, and she uttered a little cry.

"Hurt you?" demanded her mother, sternly.

Emarine was silent, and did not turn.

"Cut you, Emarine? Why don't you answer me? Aigh?"

"A little," said Emarine. She went into the pantry, and presently returned with a narrow strip of muslin which she wound around her finger.

"Well, I never see! You never will learn any gumption! Why don't you look what you're about? Now, go around Christmas with your finger all tied up!"

"Oh, that'll be all right by to-morrow," said Mrs. Eliot, cheerfully. "Won't it, Emarine? Never cry over spilt milk, Mrs. Endey; it makes a body get wrinkles too fast. O' course Orville's mother's comin' to take dinner with you, Emarine."

"Dear me!" exclaimed Emarine, in a sudden flutter. "I don't see why them cranberries don't come! I told Orville to hurry 'em up. I'd best make the floatin' island while I wait."

"I stopped at Orville's mother's as I come along, Emarine."

"How?" Emarine turned in a startled way from the table.

"I say I stopped at Orville's mother's as I come along."

"Oh!"

"She well?" asked Mrs. Endey.

"No, she ain't; shakin' like she had the Saint Vitus dance. She's failed harrable lately. She'd b'en cryin'; her eyes was all swelled up."

There was quite a silence. Then Mrs. Endey said, "What she b'en cryin' about?"

"Why, when I asked her she jest laffed kind o' pitiful, an' said: 'Oh, only my tom-foolishness, o' course.' Said she always got to thinkin' about other Christmases. But I cheered her up. I told her what a good time I always had at my son's, an' how Sidonie jest couldn't do enough fer me. An' I told her to think what a nice time she'd have here 't Emarine's to-morrow."

Mrs. Endey smiled. "What she say to that?"

"She didn't say much. I could see she was thankful, though, she had a son's to go to. She said she pitied all poor wretches that had to set out their Christmas alone. Poor old lady! she ain't got much spunk left. She's all broke down. But I cheered her up some. Sech a wishful look took holt o' her when I pictchered her dinner over here at Emarine's. I can't seem to forget it. Goodness! I must go. I'm on my way to Sidonie's, an' she'll be comin' after me if I ain't on time."

When Mrs. Eliot had gone limping down the path, Mrs. Endey said: "You got your front room red up, Emarine?"

"No; I ain't had time to red up anything."

"Well, I'll do it. Where's your duster at?"

"Behind the org'n. You can get out the wax cross again. Mis' Dillon was here with all her childern, an' I had to hide up ev'rything. I never see childern like her'n. She lets 'em handle things so!"

Mrs. Endey went into the "front room" and began to dust the organ. She was something of a diplomat, and she wished to be alone for a few minutes. "You have to manage Emarine by contrairies," she reflected. It did not occur to her that this was a family trait. "I'm offul sorry I ever egged her on to turnin' Orville's mother out o' doors, but who'd 'a' thought it 'u'd break her down so? She ain't told a soul either. I reckoned she'd talk somethin' offul about us, but she ain't told a soul. She's kep' a stiff upper lip an' told folks she al'ays expected to live alone when Orville got married. Emarine's all worked up. I believe the Lord hisself must 'a' sent gran'ma Eliot here to talk like an angel unawares. I bet she'd go an' ask Mis' Parmer over here to dinner if she wa'n't afraid I'd laff at her fer knucklin' down. I'll have to aggravate her.'

She finished dusting, and returned to the kitchen. "I wonder what gran'ma Eliot 'u'd say if she knew you'd turned Orville's mother out, Emarine?"

There was no reply. Emarine was at the table making tarts. Her back was to mother.

"I didn't mean what I said about bein' sorry I egged you on, Emarine. I'm glad you turned her out. She'd ort to be turned out."

Emarine dropped a quivering ruby of jelly into a golden ring of pastry and laid it carefully on a plate.

"Gran'ma Eliot can go talkin' about her daughter-'n-law Sidonie all she wants, Emarine. You keep a stiff upper lip."

"I can 'tend to my own affairs," said Emarine, fiercely.

"Well, don't flare up so. Here comes Orviile. Land, but he does look peakid!"

* * * * *

After supper, when her mother had gone home for the night, Emarine put on her hat and shawl.

Her husband was sitting by the fireplace, looking thoughtfully at the bed of coals.

"I'm goin' out," she said briefly. "You keep the fire up."

"Why, Emarine, it's dark. Don't choo want I sh'u'd go along?"

"No; you keep the fire up."

He looked at her anxiously, but he knew from the way she set her heels down that remonstrance would be useless.

"Don't stay long," he said, in a tone of habitual tenderness. He loved her passionately, in spite of the lasting hurt she had given him when she parted him from his mother. It was a hurt that had sunk deeper than even he realized. It lay heavy on his heart day and night. It took the blue out of the sky, and the green out of the grass, and the gold out of the sunlight; it took the exaltation and the rapture out of his tenderest moments of love.

He never reproached her, he never really blamed her; certainly he never pitied himself. But he carried a heavy heart around with him, and his few smiles were joyless things.

For the trouble he blamed only himself. He had promised Emarine solemnly before he married her, that if there were any "knuckling down" to be done, his mother should be the one to do it. He had made the promise deliberately, and he could no more have broken it than he could have changed the color of his eyes. When bitter feeling arises between two relatives by marriage, it is the one who stands between them—the one who is bound by the tenderest ties to both—who has the real suffering to bear, who is torn and tortured until life holds nothing worth the having.

Orville Palmer was the one who stood between. He had built his own cross, and he took it up and bore it without a word.

Emarine hurried through the early winter dark until she came to the small and poor house where her husband's mother lived. It was off the main-travelled street.

There was a dim light in the kitchen; the curtain had not been drawn. Emarine paused and looked in. The sash was lifted six inches, for the night was warm, and the sound of voices came to her at once. Mrs. Palmer had company.

"It's Miss Presly," said Emarine, resentfully, under her breath. "Old gossip!"

"—goin' to have a fine dinner, I hear," Miss Presly was saying. "Turkey with oyster dressin', an' cranberries, an' mince an' pun'kin pie, an' reel plum puddin' with brandy poured over 't an' set afire, an' wine dip, an' nuts an' raisins, an' wine itself to wind up on. Emarine's a fine cook. She knows how to git up a dinner that makes your mouth water to think about. You goin' to have a spread, Mis' Parmer?"

"Not much of a one," said Orville's mother. "I expected to, but I c'u'dn't git them fall patatas sold off. I'll have to keep 'em till spring to git any kind o' price. I don't care much about Christmas, though"—her chin was trembling, but she lifted it high. "It's silly for anybody but children to build so much on Christmas."

Emarine opened the door and walked in. Mrs. Palmer arose slowly, grasping the back of her chair. "Orville's dead?" she said solemnly.

Emarine laughed, but there was the tenderness of near tears in her voice. "Oh, my, no!" she said, sitting down. "I run over to ask you to come to Christmas dinner. I was too busy all day to come sooner. I'm goin' to have a great dinner, an' I've cooked ev'ry single thing of it myself! I want to show you what a fine Christmas dinner your daughter-'n-law can get up. Dinner's at two, an' I want you to come at eleven. Will you?"

Mrs. Palmer had sat down, weakly. Trembling was not the word to describe the feeling that had taken possession of her. She was shivering. She wanted to fall down on her knees and put her arms around her son's wife, and sob out all her loneliness and heartache. But life is a stage; and Miss Presly was an audience not to be ignored. So Mrs. Palmer said: "Well, I'll be reel glad to come, Emarine. It's offul kind o' yuh to think of 't. It 'u'd 'a' be'n lonesome eatin' here all by myself, I expect."

Emarine stood up. Her heart was like a thistle-down. Her eyes were shining. "All right," she said; "an' I want that you sh'u'd come just at eleven. I must run right back now. Good-night."

"Well, I declare!" said Miss Presly. "That girl gits prettier ev'ry day o' her life. Why, she just looked full o' glame to-night!"

* * * * *

Orville was not at home when his mother arrived in her rusty best dress and shawl. Mrs. Endey saw her coming. She gasped out, "Why, good grieve! Here's Mis' Parmer, Emarine!"

"Yes, I know," said Emarine, calmly. "I ast her to dinner."

She opened the door, and shook hands with her mother-in-law, giving her mother a look of defiance that almost upset that lady's gravity.

"You set right down, Mother Parmer, an' let me take your things. Orville don't know you're comin', an' I just want to see his face when he comes in. Here's a new black shawl fer your Christmas. I got mother one just like it. See what nice long fringe it's got. Oh, my! don't go to cryin'! Here comes Orville."

She stepped aside quickly. When her husband entered his eyes fell instantly on his mother, weeping childishly over the new shawl. She was in the old splint rocking-chair with the high back. "Mother!" he cried; then he gave a frightened, tortured glance at his wife. Emarine smiled at him, but it was through tears.

"Emarine ast me, Orville—she ast me to dinner o' herself! An' she give me this shawl. I'm—cryin'—fer—joy—"

"I ast her to dinner," said Emarine, "but she ain't ever goin' back again. She's goin' to stay. I expect we've both had enough of a lesson to do us."

Orville did not speak. He fell on his knees and laid his head, like a boy, in his mother's lap, and reached one strong but trembling arm up to his wife's waist, drawing her down to him.

Mrs. Endey got up and went to rattling things around on the table vigorously. "Well, I never see sech a pack o' loonatics!" she exclaimed. "Go an' burn all your Christmas dinner up, if I don't look after it! Turncoats! I expect they'll both be fallin' over theirselves to knuckle down to each other from now on! I never see!"

But there was something in her eyes, too, that made them beautiful.



THE SUN'S HEAT.

BY SIR ROBERT BALL,

Lowndean Professor of Astronomy and Geometry at Cambridge, England; formerly Royal Astronomer of Ireland.

There is a story told of a well-intentioned missionary who tried to induce a Persian fire-worshipper to abandon the creed of his ancestors. "Is it not," urged the Christian minister, "a sad and deplorable superstition for an intelligent person like you to worship an inanimate object like the sun?" "My friend," said the old Persian, "you come from England; now tell me, have you ever seen the sun?" The retort was a just one; for the fact is, that those of us whose lot requires them to live beneath the clouds and in the gloom which so frequently brood over our Northern latitudes, have but little conception of the surpassing glory of the great orb of day as it appears to those who know it in the clear Eastern skies. The Persian recognizes in the sun not only the great source of light and of warmth, but even of life itself. Indeed, the advances of modern science ever tend to bring before us with more and more significance the surpassing glory with which Milton tells us the sun is crowned. I shall endeavor to give in this article a brief sketch of what has recently been learned as to the actual warmth which the sun possesses and of the prodigality with which it pours forth its radiant treasures.

I number among my acquaintances an intelligent gardener who is fond of speculating about things in the heavens as well as about things on the earth. One day he told me that he felt certain it was quite a mistake to believe, as most of us do believe, that the sun up there is a hot, glowing body. "No," he said; "the sun cannot be a source of heat, and I will prove it. If the sun were a source of heat," said the rural philosopher, "then the closer you approached the sun the warmer you would find yourself. But this is not the case, for when you are climbing up a mountain you are approaching nearer to the sun all the time; but, as everybody knows, instead of feeling hotter and hotter as you ascend, you are becoming steadily colder and colder. In fact, when you reach a certain height, you will find yourself surrounded by perpetual ice and snow, and you may not improbably be frozen to death when you have got as near to the sun as you can. Therefore," concluded my friend, triumphantly, "it is all nonsense to tell me the sun is a scorching hot fire."



I thought the best way to explain the little delusion under which the worthy gardener labored was to refer him to what takes place in his own domain. I asked him wherein lies the advantage of putting his tender plants into his greenhouse in November. How does that preserve them through the winter? How is it that even without artificial heat the mere shelter of the glass will often protect plants from frost? I explained to him that the glass acts as a veritable trap for the sunbeams; it lets them pass in, but it will not let them escape. The temperature within the greenhouse is consequently raised, and thus the necessary warmth is maintained. The dwellers on this earth live in what is equivalent, in this respect, to a greenhouse. There is a copious atmosphere above our heads, and that atmosphere extends to us the same protection which the glass does to the plants in the greenhouse. The air lets the sunbeams through to the earth's surface, and then keeps their heat down here to make us comfortable. When you climb to the top of a high mountain you pass through a large part of the air. This is the reason why you feel warmer on the surface of the earth than you do on the top of a high mountain. If, however, it were possible to go very much closer to the sun; if, for example, the earth were to approach within half its present distance, it is certain that the heat would be so intense that all life would be immediately scorched away.

It will be remembered that when Nebuchadnezzar condemned the unhappy Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to be cast into the burning fiery furnace, he commanded in his fury that the furnace should be heated seven times hotter than it was wont to be heated. Let us think of the hottest furnace which the minions of Nebuchadnezzar could ever have kindled with all the resources of Babylon; let us think indeed of one of the most perfect of modern furnaces, in which even a substance so refractory as steel, having first attained a dazzling brilliance, can be melted so as to run like water; let us imagine the heat-dispensing power of that glittering liquid to be multiplied sevenfold; let us go beyond Nebuchadnezzar's frenzied command, and imagine the efficiency of our furnace to be ten or twelve times as great as that which he commanded—we shall then obtain a notion of a heat-giving power corresponding to that which would be found in the wonderful celestial furnace, the great sun in heaven.



Ponder also upon the stupendous size of that orb, which glows at every point of its surface with the astonishing fervor I have indicated. The earth on which we stand is no doubt a mighty globe, measuring as it does eight thousand miles in diameter; yet what are its dimensions in comparison with those of the sun? If the earth be represented by a grain of mustard seed, then on the same scale the sun should be represented by a cocoanut. Perhaps, however, a more impressive conception of the dimensions of the great orb of day may be obtained in this way. Think of the moon, the queen of the night, which circles monthly around our heavens, pursuing, as she does, a majestic track, at a distance of two hundred and forty thousand miles from the earth. Yet the sun is so vast that if it were a hollow ball, and if the earth were placed at the centre of that ball, the moon could revolve in the orbit which it now follows, and still be entirely enclosed within the sun's interior.

For every acre on the surface of our globe there are more than ten thousand acres on the surface of the great luminary. Every portion of this illimitable desert of flame is pouring forth torrents of heat. It has indeed been estimated that if the heat which is incessantly flowing through any single square foot of the sun's exterior could be collected and applied beneath the boilers of an Atlantic liner, it would suffice to produce steam enough to sustain in continuous movement those engines of twenty thousand horse-power which enable a superb ship to break the record between Ireland and America.

The solar heat is shot forth into space in every direction, with a prodigality which seems well-nigh inexhaustible. No doubt the earth does intercept a fair supply of sunbeams for conversion to our many needs; but the share of sun-heat that the dwelling-place of mankind is able to capture and employ forms only an infinitesimal fraction of what the sun actually pours forth. It would seem, indeed, very presumptuous for us to assume that the great sun has come into existence solely for the benefit of poor humanity. The heat and light daily lavished by that orb of incomparable splendor would suffice to warm and illuminate, quite as efficiently as the earth is warmed and lighted, more than two thousand million globes each as large as the earth. If it has indeed been the scheme of nature to call into existence the solar arrangements on their present scale for the solitary purpose of cherishing this immediate world of ours, then all we can say is that nature carries on its business in the most outrageously wasteful manner.

What should we think of the prudence of a man who, having been endowed with a splendid fortune of not less than twenty million dollars, spent one cent of that vast sum usefully and dissipated every other cent and every other dollar of his gigantic wealth in mere aimless extravagance? This would, however, appear to be the way in which the sun manages its affairs, if we are to suppose that all the solar heat is wasted save that minute fraction which is received by the earth. Out of every twenty million dollars' worth of heat issuing from the glorious orb of day, we on this earth barely secure the value of one single cent; and all but that insignificant trifle seems to be utterly squandered. We may say it certainly is squandered so far as humanity is concerned. No doubt there are certain other planets besides the earth, and they will receive quantities of heat to the extent of a few cents more. It must, however, be said that the stupendous volume of solar radiation passes off substantially untaxed into space, and what may actually there become of it science is unable to tell.

And now for the great question as to how the supply of heat is sustained so as to permit the orb of day to continue in its career of such unparalleled prodigality. Every child knows that the fire on the domestic hearth will go out unless the necessary supplies of wood or coal can be duly provided. The workman knows that the devouring blast furnace requires to be incessantly stoked with fresh fuel. How, then, comes it that a furnace so much more stupendous than any terrestrial furnace can continue to pour forth in perennial abundance its amazing stores of heat without being nourished by continual supplies of some kind? Professor Langley, who has done so much to extend our knowledge of the great orb of heaven, has suggested a method of illustrating the quantity of fuel which would be required, if indeed it were by successive additions of fuel that the sun's heat had to be sustained. Suppose that all the coal seams which underlie America were made to yield up their stores. Suppose that all the coal fields of England and Scotland, Australia, China, and elsewhere were compelled to contribute every combustible particle they contained. Suppose, in fact, that we extracted from this earth every ton of coal it possesses, in every island and in every continent. Suppose that this vast store of fuel, which is adequate to supply the wants of this earth for centuries, were to be accumulated in one stupendous pile. Suppose that an army of stokers, arrayed in numbers which we need not now pause to calculate, were employed to throw this coal into the great solar furnace. How long, think you, would so gigantic a mass of fuel maintain the sun's expenditure at its present rate? I am but uttering a deliberate scientific fact when I say that a conflagration which destroyed every particle of coal contained in this earth would not generate so much heat as the sun lavishes abroad to ungrateful space in the tenth part of every single second. During the few minutes that the reader has been occupied over these lines, a quantity of heat which is many thousands of times as great as, the heat which could be produced by the ignition of all the coal in every coal-pit in the globe has been dispersed and totally lost to the sun.

But we have still one further conception to introduce before we shall have fully grasped the significance of the sun's extravagance in the matter of heat. As the sun shines to-day on this earth, so it shone yesterday, so it shone a hundred years ago, a thousand years ago; so it shone in the earliest dawn of history; so it shone during those still remoter periods when great animals flourished which have now vanished forever; so it shone during that remarkable period in earth's history when the great coal forests flourished; so it shone in those remote ages many millions of years ago when life began to dawn on an earth which was still young. There is every reason to believe that throughout these illimitable periods which the imagination strives in vain to realize, the sun has dispensed its radiant treasures of light and warmth with just the same prodigality as that which now characterizes it.

We all know the consequences of wanton extravagance. We know it spells bankruptcy and ruin. The expenditure of heat by the sun is the most magnificent extravagance of which human knowledge gives us any conception. How have the consequences of such awful prodigality been hitherto averted? How is it that the sun is still able to draw on its heat reserves from second to second, from century to century, from eon to eon, ever squandering two thousand million times as much heat as that which genially warms our temperate regions, as that which draws forth the exuberant vegetation of the tropics, or which rages in the Desert of Sahara? This is indeed a great problem.

It was Helmholtz who discovered that the continual maintenance of the sun's temperature is due to the fact that the sun is neither solid nor liquid, but is to a great extent gaseous. His theory of the subject has gained universal acceptance. Those who have taken the trouble to become acquainted with it are compelled to admit that the doctrine set forth by this great philosopher embodies a profound truth.



Even the great sun cannot escape the application of a certain law which affects every terrestrial object, and whose province is wide as the universe itself. Nature has not one law for the rich and another for the poor. The sun is shedding forth heat, and therefore, affirms this law, the sun must be shrinking in size. We have learned the rate at which this contraction proceeds; for among the many triumphs which mathematicians have accomplished must be reckoned that of having put a pair of callipers on the sun so as to measure its diameter. We thus find that the width of the great luminary is ten inches smaller to-day than it was yesterday. Year in and year out the glorious orb of heaven is steadily diminishing at the same rate. For hundreds of years, aye, for hundreds of thousands of years, this incessant shrinking has gone on at about the same rate as it goes on at present. For hundreds of years, aye, for hundreds of thousands of years, the shrinking still will go on. As a sponge exudes moisture by continuous squeezing, so the sun pours forth heat by continuous shrinking. So long as the sun remains practically gaseous, so long will the great luminary continue to shrink, and thus continue its gracious beneficence. Hence it is that for incalculable ages yet to come the sun will pour forth its unspeakable benefits; and thence it is that, for a period compared with which the time of man upon this earth is but a day, summer and winter, heat and cold, seedtime and harvest, in their due succession, will never be wanting to this earth.



HALL CAINE.

STORY OF HIS LIFE AND WORK, DERIVED FROM CONVERSATIONS.

BY ROBERT HARBOROUGH SHERARD.

Extreme dignity is the leading characteristic of Thomas Henry Hall Caine as a man, just as extreme conscientiousness is his leading characteristic as a writer. He possesses in a high degree the sense of the responsibility which an author owes to the public and to himself. It is on account of these facts that the story of his uneventful life and brilliant literary career is a highly interesting one. It shows how, by firmness of principle and a high respect of the public and himself, a man of undoubted genius has been enabled to raise himself to a position in the English-speaking worlds to which few men of letters have ever attained—a position which may be compared to that of a vates amongst the Romans, of a prophet in Israel.

Hall Caine, as his double name implies, comes of the mixed Norse and Celtic race which constitutes the population of the Isle of Man. Hall, his mother's name, is Norse, and is common to this day in Iceland, from which the Norsemen came to Manxland. Caine, which means "a fighter with clubs," is Celtic. Hall Caine himself, with his ruddy beard and hair and distinctive features, has inherited rather the physical characteristics of his maternal ancestors, the Norsemen.



He comes of a stock of crofters, or small farmers, who for centuries had supported themselves by tilling the soil and fishing the sea. He is the first of all his line who ever worked his brain for a living. His grandfather, who had a farm of sixty acres in the beautiful parish of Ballaugh, which lies between Peel and Ramsey, was a wastrel, fond of the amusements and dissipations to be found in Douglas, and alienated his small property, so that, at the age of eighteen, his son, Hall Caine's father, was for a living obliged to apprentice himself to a blacksmith at Ramsey. When he had learned his trade he removed, in the hopes of finding more remunerative employment, to Liverpool. Here, however, he found it so hard to support himself as a blacksmith that he set to work to learn the trade of ship's smith—a remunerative one in those days, when Liverpool was the centre of the ship-building trade. He became a skilled worker, and at the time of his marriage was able to command a wage of thirty-six shillings a week, in addition to what he was able to earn by piece work. It was whilst engaged on a piece of work on a ship at Runcorn, in Cheshire, that on May 14, 1853, the child was born—his second son—to whom he gave the names of Thomas Henry Hall. Runcorn can thus claim to be the birthplace of the famous writer, although his birth there was a mere accident, and not more than ten days of his life were spent there.



Hall Caine has no remembrance of the first years which he spent in Liverpool, and his earliest recollections are of life in his grandmother's cottage of Ballavolley, Ballaugh, in the Isle of Man, a house set in a wooded plain surrounded by high mountains which glow, here yellow with the gorse, there purple with the heather. In the foreground is the beautiful old church of Ballaugh, in the cemetery of which many generations of Caines lie at rest; and between the old church and the village lies the curragh land, full of wild flowers and musical with the notes of every bird that uplifts its voice to heaven. Far off can be descried, across the sea, the Mull of Galloway. It is in its rare beauty a spot than which, for a poet's childhood, no fitter could be found.



CHILDHOOD IN A MANX COTTAGE.

The Ballavolley cottage was a typical Manx cottage. On one side of the porch was the parlor, which also served as a dairy, redolent of milk and bright with rare old Derby china. On the other side was the living-room, with its undulating floor of stamped earth and grateless hearthstone in the ingle, to the right and left of which were seats. Here in the ingle-nook the little boy would sit watching his aunts cooking the oaten cake on the griddle, over a fire of turf from the curragh and gorse from the hills, or the bubbling cooking-pot slung on the slowrie. One of his earliest recollections is of his old grandmother, seated on her three-legged stool, bending over the fire, tongs in hand, renewing the fuel of gorse under the griddle. The walls of this room were covered with blue crockery ware, and through the open rafters of the unplastered ceiling could be seen the flooring of the bedrooms above. These were very low dormer rooms, with the bed in the angle where the roof was lowest. One had to crawl into bed and lie just under the whitewashed "scraa" or turf roofing, which smelt deliciously with an odor that at times still haunts the cottage lad in statelier homes.



Hall Caine's impressions of his life at Ballavolley are vivid—the old preacher at the church, the drinking-bouts of "jough"-beer by the gallon amongst the villagers, the donkey rides upon the curragh. But what it best pleases him to remember are the times when, seated in the ingle-nook, he used to listen to his grandmother telling fairy stories, as she sat at her black oak spinning-wheel, bending low over the whirling yarn. "Hommybeg"—it was a pet name she had given to him—"Hommybeg," she would say, "I will tell you of the fairies." And the story that he liked best to listen to, though it so frightened him that he would run and hide his face in the folds of the blue Spanish cloak which Manx women have worn since two ships of the Great Armada were wrecked upon the island, was the story of how his grandmother, when a lass, had seen the fairies with her own eyes. That was many years before. She had been out one night to meet her sweetheart, and as she was returning in the moonlight she was overtaken by a multitude of little men, tiny little fellows in velvet coats and cocked hats and pointed shoes, who ran after her, swarmed over her, and clambered up her streaming hair.



He was a precocious lad, and knew no greater delight than to read. The first book that he remembers reading was a bulky tome on the German Reformation, about Luther and Melancthon, which he had found. He spent weeks over it, and, staggering under its weight, would carry it out into the hayfield, where, truant to the harvest, he would lie behind the stacks and read and read. One night, indeed, his interest in this book led him to break the rules of his thrifty home—where children went to bed when it was dark, so that candles should not be burned—and light the candles and read on about Luther. He was found thus by one of his aunts as, pails in hand, she returned home from milking the cows. Her anger was great. "Candles lit!" she cried. "What's to do? Candles! Wasting candles on reading, on mere reading!" He was beaten and sent to bed, bursting with indignation at such injustice, for he felt that candles were nothing compared to knowledge. He was a bookish boy, wanting in boyishness, and never played games, but spent his time in reading, not boyish books, indeed, but books in which never boy before took interest—histories, theological works, and, in preference, parliamentary speeches of the great orators, which he would afterwards rewrite from memory. At a very early age he showed a great passion for poetry and was a great reader of Shakespeare. His talent for reading passages of Shakespeare aloud was such that at the school at Liverpool, where he was educated, his schoolmaster, George Gill, used to make him read aloud before all the boys. This caused him great nervous agony, he says, and he suffered horribly. He was a favorite pupil, and, in a school where corporal punishment was inflicted with great severity, was never once beaten. He left school at the age of fifteen and was apprenticed by his father to John Murray, architect and land-surveyor. The lad had no special faculties for architecture beyond possessing a fair knowledge of drawing. When only thirteen he drew the map of England which appeared in the first edition of "Gill's Geography." At this time he had shown no bent for authorship beyond making the transcriptions from memory of the speeches he had read, and writing, for a school competition, a "Life of Joseph," which was not even read by the arbitrator, because it was much too long. It is noticeable, however, that on this "Life of Joseph" he had worked with the same conscientiousness which has distinguished his literary activity through all his career. "I read everything on the subject that I could lay my hands upon," he says, "and spent day and night in working at it." To-day, as then, when Hall Caine has a book to write, he reads every book bearing on his theme which he can obtain—"a whole library for each chapter"—and will work at his subject day and night, all-absorbed, wrapped up, concentrated.



John Murray was agent for the Lancashire estates of W.E. Gladstone, and it was in this way that Hall Caine first became known to the statesman, who from the first has been amongst his keenest admirers. One of the first occasions on which he attracted Mr. Gladstone's attention was one day when he was superintending the surveying of Seaforth, Gladstone's estate. Gladstone was surprised to see so small a lad in charge of the chainmen, and began to talk with him. He must have been impressed by the lad's conversation, for he patted his head and told him he would be a fine man yet. Mr. Gladstone has never forgotten this incident. Some time later, John Murray having failed in the meanwhile, an offer was made to Hall Caine, from the Gladstones, of the stewardship of the Seaforth estate at a salary of one hundred and twenty pound a year. "Although the thought of so much wealth," he relates, "overwhelmed me, I did not see in this offer the prospect of any career—indeed this had been pointed out to me—and I determined to continue in the architect's office." He accordingly attached himself as pupil or apprentice to Richard Owens, the architect.



FIRST WRITINGS FOR THE PUBLIC.

Hall Caine's first writings for the public were done in the Isle of Man, at the age of sixteen, when he had come over to recruit his health at the house of his uncle, the schoolmaster at Kirk Maughold. At that time the island was divided by a discussion as to the maintenance or abolition of Manx political institutions, and the boy threw himself into this discussion with characteristic ardor. His vehement articles in favor of the maintenance of the political independence, published each week in "Mona's Herald," were full of force. They attracted, however, little notice beyond that of James Teare, Caine's uncle, the great temperance reformer, who admired them justly. He encouraged the boy to write, and told his skeptical relations that if Hall Caine failed as an architect he would certainly be able to make a living with his pen.

A visit to Kirk Maughold will afford to the observer the best insight into Hall Caine's literary temperament. The spirit of the place expounds his spirit; its genius seems to have entered into him. There are seasons when this headland height lies serene and calm, wrapped in such loveliness of light on sea and land that the heart melts for very ecstasy at the beauty of all things around, the glowing hills, the flowers that are everywhere, the sea beyond, the tenderness, the color, the native poetry of it all. There are seasons, too, of strife and hurricane, of titanic forces battling in the air, when vehement and irresistible winds burst forth to make howling havoc on the bleakest heights—so they seem then—that man's foot ever trod. There are times when not one harebell nods its head in the calm air, not one seed falls from the feathered grass, in the tender serenity of a quiet world; and there are times, too, when Nature aroused puts forth her terrible strength, so that man ventures abroad at his great peril, and ropes must be stretched along the roads by which the unwary wanderer may drag his storm-tossed body home. In Hall Caine's work we also find these extremes of tenderness and its calm, of passion and its riot.

On his return to Liverpool, encouraged by what James Teare had said, Hall Caine continued to write. No longer, however, on political questions, but on the subjects with which his profession had familiarized him. Between the ages of sixteen and twenty this boy wrote learned leading articles on building, land-surveying, and architecture for "The Builder." George Godwin, the editor of this leading periodical, could not believe his eyes when he first met his contributor. Hall Caine was then nineteen. "I felt terribly ashamed of being so young," he says, in speaking of this interview.

It was about this time that he returned to the Isle of Man, tired of architecture. His uncle died, and there was no schoolmaster at Kirk Maughold school. So Hall Caine became schoolmaster, and for about six months kept a mixed school on the bleak headland. He is still remembered as a schoolmaster, and last year, when "The Manxman" was appearing in serial publication, his grown-up scholars used to gather at a farm near Kirk Maughold school and listen to the schoolmaster reading the story as each instalment came out.

The six months of his schoolmastership were a period of great activity. It was the time of the Paris Commune, and, a rabid Communist, Hall Caine read Communist and socialistic literature with avidity. He contributed violent propagandist articles to "Mona's Herald," in which three years previously he had preached the virtues of conservatism, and attracted the attention of John Ruskin by his eulogies of Ruskin's work with his recently founded Guild of St. George. His leisure was spent in his workshop, and during this period he not only carved a tombstone for his uncle's grave, but built a house—Phoenix cottage—both of which are still standing and may be seen. It was a happy time, a time of inspiration; and it may be, from the sympathy between the man and the place, that Hall Caine would have stayed on at Kirk Maughold had not a most imperative letter from Richard Owens, which said that it was deplorable that he should be throwing his life away in such occupations, recalled him to Liverpool. To Liverpool accordingly he returned, to work as a draughtsman, and fired withal with a double ambition—for one thing to win fame as a poet, for another to succeed as a dramatist. Already in 1870 he had written a long poem, which was published in 1874 anonymously by an enterprising Liverpool publisher. About this poem George Gilfillan, to whom Hall Caine sent it in 1876, wrote that there was much in it that he admired, that it had the ring of genius, but that in parts it was spoiled by affectations of language which could, however, be remedied. Of the same poem, Rossetti, to whom it was also sent, wrote that it contained passages of genius. As a dramatist, Hall Caine wrote, at this period in his career, a play called "Alton Locke." founded on Kingsley's story. It was shown to Rousby, the actor-manager, who liked "the promise that it showed" and asked Hall Caine to write a play to his order. At that time he looked upon himself as a dramatist, and indeed still hopes to achieve as such—when he shall have tired of the novel as a vehicle and shall have learned, the present object of his closest study, the technicalities of the stage—a success as great as that which has attended his novels. Many of his friends, indeed, hope for even better things from him as a dramatist; and Blackmore, for instance, hardly ever writes to him without repeating that, great as has been his success as a novelist, it will be nothing to his success when he gets possession of the stage.



CAINE'S ASSOCIATION WITH ROSSETTI.

Till the age of twenty-four he remained in Liverpool, earning his living in a builder's office, lecturing, starting societies, working as secretary of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, and writing for the papers. His lectures on Shakespeare attracted the attention of Lord Houghton, who expressed a desire to meet him. A meeting was arranged at the house of Henry Bright (the H.A.B, of Hawthorne); and the first thing that Lord Houghton, the biographer of Keats, said when Hall Caine came into the room was: "You have the head of Keats." He predicted that the young author would become a great critic. Another of Hall Caine's lectures, delivered during this period, "The Supernatural in Poetry," brought a long letter of eulogy from Matthew Arnold. His lecture on Rossetti won him the friendship of this great man, a correspondence ensued, and when Caine was twenty-five years old, Rossetti wrote and asked him to come up to London to see him. Caine went and was received most cordially.



"He met me on the threshold of his house," he relates, "with both hands outstretched, and drew me into his studio. That night he read me 'The King's Tragedy.'"

During the evening Rossetti asked him to remove to London and invited him to his house; at the same time—it may be to prepare him for their common life—he showed him, to Caine's horror, what a slave he had become to the chloral habit.

It was not until many months later that Hall Caine determined to accept Rossetti's invitation, and went to share his monastic seclusion in his gloomy London house. In the meanwhile, and in this Rossetti had helped him by correspondence, he had edited for Elliot Stock an anthology of English sonnets, which was published under the title of "Sonnets of Three Centuries." For his work in connection with this volume Hall Caine received no remuneration. Indeed, at this period in his career the earnings of the writer who can to-day command the highest prices in the market, were very small indeed. His average income was two hundred and sixty pounds (thirteen hundred dollars), and of this two hundred pounds was earned as a draughtsman. When he went to live with Rossetti he had about fifty pounds (two hundred and fifty dollars) of money saved, to which he was afterwards able to add a sum of one hundred pounds, which Rossetti insisted on his accepting as his commission on the sale of Rossetti's picture, "Dante's Dream." It may be mentioned, to dispel certain misstatements, that this was the only financial transaction which took place between the two friends. His life in Rossetti's house was the life of a monk, seeing nobody except Burne-Jones (whom, as Ruskin will have it, he resembles closely), going nowhere and doing little. "I used to get up at noon," he says, "and usually spent my afternoon in walking about in the garden. I did not see Rossetti till dinner-time, but from that hour till three or four in the morning we were inseparable." It has been stated that Caine owed much of his success in literature to Rossetti. This is only partly true. His introduction to literary society in London under Rossetti's wing was harmful rather than advantageous to him, for it prejudiced people against him; and his connection with Rossetti, which was that of a spiritual son with a spiritual father, was misrepresented. He was spoken of as Rossetti's secretary, even as Rossetti's valet. On the other hand, so young a man could not but derive benefit from the society of so refined an artist, who had no thought nor ambition outside his art. And, in a practical way, Rossetti also benefited him. When he first came to Rossetti's house he was under an engagement to deliver twenty-four lectures on "Prose Fiction" in Liverpool, and in preparation of these lectures began studying the English novelists.



"One day Rossetti suggested that, instead of reading these novels alone, I should read them aloud to him. From that day on, night after night, for months and months, I used to read to him. I read Fielding and Smollett, Richardson, Radcliffe, 'Monk' Lewis, Thackeray, and Dickens, under a running fire of comment and criticism from Rossetti. It was terrible labor, this reading for hours night after night, till dawn came and I could drag myself wearily upstairs to bed. But it was a very useful study, and this is indeed the debt which I owe to Rossetti."

Rossetti died on Easter Day, 1882, at the seashore, near Margate, in Hall Caine's arms. It shows the extent of their friendship that, the bungalow being crowded that night, Caine readily offered to sleep in the death-chamber. "It is Rossetti," he said.

HALL CAINE'S FIRST NOVEL.

Hall Caine then returned to London, and whilst continuing to contribute to various papers, and notably to the "Liverpool Mercury," to which he was attached for years, he wrote his "Recollections of Rossetti," which brought him forty pounds (two hundred dollars) and attracted some attention in literary circles, without, however, enhancing his reputation with the general public. This was followed by "Cobwebs of Criticism," the title he gave to a collection of critical essays, originally delivered as lectures. This book did nothing for him in any way. All this while he had been hankering after novel-writing, and, though Rossetti had always urged him to become a dramatist, he had also encouraged him to write novels, advising him to become the novelist of Manxland. "There is a career there," he used to say, "for nothing is known about this land." The two friends had discussed Hall Caine's plot of "The Shadow of a Crime," which Rossetti had found "immensely powerful but unsympathetic," and it was with this novel that Hall Caine began his career as a writer of fiction. He had married in the meanwhile, and with forty pounds (two hundred dollars) in the bank and an assured income of a hundred (five hundred dollars) a year from the "Liverpool Mercury," he went with his wife to live in a small house in the Isle of Wight, to write his book. "I labored over it fearfully," he says, "but not so much as I do now over my books. At that time I only wanted to write a thrilling tale. Now what I want in my novels is a spiritual intent, a problem of life." "The Shadow of a Crime" appeared first in serial form in the "Liverpool Mercury," and was published in book form by Chatto & Windus in 1885. For the book rights Hall Caine received seventy-five pounds (three hundred and seventy-five dollars), which, with the one hundred pounds (five hundred dollars) from the "Liverpool Mercury," is all that he has ever received from a book which is now in its seventeenth edition. "It had a distinguished reception," he says. "Indeed, it was received with a burst of eulogy from the press; but at the time it produced no popular success, and made no difference in my market value."

There is no man living, perhaps, who has more contempt for money than Hall Caine, revealing himself in this also a true artist; yet to exemplify to a confrere the practical value of what he calls the "literary statesmanship" which he has practised throughout his career, he will sometimes show the little book in which are entered the receipts from his various works. No more striking argument in favor of conscientiousness and literary dignity could be found than that afforded by a comparison between the first page of this account book and the last.



BEATING THE STREETS OF LONDON IN SEARCH OF WORK.

A time of need followed, during which Hall Caine beat the streets of London in search of work. He offered himself as a publisher's reader in various houses, and was roughly turned away. He suffered slights and humiliations; but these only strengthened his resolve. In this respect he reminds one of Zola, whom slights and humiliations only strengthened also; and in this connection it may be mentioned that there hangs in Hall Caine's drawing-room, in Peel, a pen-and-ink portrait which one mistakes for that of Emile Zola, till one is told that it is the picture of Hall Caine.

The reverses, which it now pleases him to remember, in no wise daunted him. There was his wife and "Sunlocks," his little son, to be provided for; and with fine determination he set to work. In the year 1886 he wrote a "Life of Coleridge" and finished his second novel, "A Son of Hagar." On the fly-leaf of his copy of the "Life of Coleridge" are written the words: "N.B—This book was begun October 8, 1886. It was not touched after that date until October 15th or 16th, and was finished down to last two chapters by November 1st. Completed December 4th to 8th—about three weeks in all. H.C." It is an excellent piece of work, but Caine regrets now that he threw away on a book of this kind all his knowledge of his subject. "I could have written the Life of Coleridge," he says.

"A Son of Hagar" produced three hundred pounds (fifteen hundred dollars), and has now achieved an immense success, but its reception at the time was a feeble one. Hall Caine ground his teeth and clenched his fist and said: "I will write one more book; I will put into it all the work that is in me, and if the world still remains indifferent and contemptuous, I will never write another." In the meanwhile he had decided to follow Rossetti's advice, to write a Manx novel; and having thought out the plot of "The Deemster," went to the Isle of Man to write it. It was written in six months, in one of the lodging-houses on the Esplanade at Douglas, in a fever of wounded pride. "I worked over it like a galley-slave; I poured all my memories into it," he says. In the meanwhile he maintained his family by journalism, being now connected with the best papers in London. "The Deemster" was sold for one hundred and fifty pounds (six hundred dollars), the serial rights having produced four hundred pounds (two thousand dollars). He would be glad to-day to purchase the copyright back for one thousand pounds. He had great faith in this book.

"Long after we are both dead," he said to his publisher, when they were discussing terms, "this book will be alive." "I was indifferent to its reception," he relates; "I said, that if the public did not take it, that would only prove its damnable folly," Its reception was immense, and "then began for me something like fame."

THE BEGINNING OF PROSPERITY.



Offers came in from all sides; the little house in Kent, where he was then living, became the pilgrimage of the publishers. Irving read the book in America, and seeing that there was here material for a splendid play, with himself in the part of the Bishop, hesitated about cabling to the author. In the meanwhile Wilson Barrett had also read the book, and had telegraphed to Kent to ask Hall Caine to come up to London to discuss its dramatization. Hall Caine started, but was forced to leave the train at Derby because a terrible fog rendered travelling impossible. He spent the next ten days in the Isaac Walton Inn, at Dovedale, near Derby, waiting for the fog to lift, and whilst so waiting wrote the first draft of the play, which he entitled "Ben-my-Chree," Barrett was enthusiastic about it, and "Ben-my-Chree" was duly produced for the first time at the Princess Theatre, on May 14, 1888, before a packed house, in which every literary celebrity in London was present. "The reception was enthusiastic; the next day I was a famous man." Notwithstanding its great success on the first night and the splendid eulogies of the press, "Ben-my-Chree" failed to draw in London, and after running for one hundred nights, at a great loss to the management, was withdrawn. It was then taken to the provinces, and was very successful, both there and in America, holding the stage for seven years. It was afterwards reproduced, with some success, in London. This play brought Hall Caine in a sum of one thousand pounds (five thousand dollars), and out of this he bought himself a house in Keswick, where he remained in residence for four years. Having now given up journalism, he devoted himself entirely to fiction and play-writing.



In 1889, he went with his wife to Iceland and spent two months there, for the purpose of studying certain scenes which he wished to introduce into "The Bondman," on which he was then working. Documentation is as much Hall Caine's care in his novels as it is Emile Zola's. "The Bondman," which had been begun in March, 1889, at Aberleigh Lodge, Bexley Heath, Kent, a house of sinister memory—for Caine narrowly escaped being murdered there one night—was finished in October, at Castlerigg Cottage, Keswick, and was published by Heinemann in 1890, with a success which is far from being exhausted even to-day. In this year Hall Caine experienced a great disappointment. He had been commissioned by Sir Henry Irving to write a play on "Mahornet," and had written three acts of it, when such an outcry was made in the press against Irving's proposal to put "Mahomet" on the stage, to the certain offence of British Mohammedans, that Sir Henry telegraphed to him to say that the plan could not be carried out. He offered to compensate Hall Caine for his labor. "I refused, however, to accept one penny," says Caine, "and after relieving my feelings by spitting on my antagonists in an angry article in 'The Speaker,' I finished the play." It was accepted by Willard for production in America, but has not yet been played. "This was a great disappointment," says Caine, "and I had little heart for much work in 1890. I did nothing in that year beyond a hasty 'Life of Christ,' which has never been printed. I had read Renan's 'Life of Christ,' and had been deeply impressed by it, and I had said that there was a splendid chance for a 'Life of Christ' as vivid and as personal from the point of belief as Renan's was from the point of unbelief." This book he wrote, but was not satisfied with it, and has refused to publish it, although only last year a firm of publishers offered him three thousand pounds (fifteen thousand dollars) for the manuscript. "No, I was not satisfied, though I had brought to bear on it faculties which I had never used in my novels. It was human, it was most dramatic, but it fell far short of what I had hoped to do, and I put it away in my cupboard. I hope to rewrite it some day."

In 1891 Hall Caine began to work on "The Scapegoat," and in the spring of that year went to Morocco to fit the scenes to his idea. He suffered there from very bad health, from severe neurosthenia. "I was a 'degenerate,' he says, "a la Nordau." No sooner had "The Scapegoat" been published, than the chief rabbi wrote to him to ask him to go to Russia, to write about the persecutions of the Jews in that country, and in 1892 he started on this mission, which he fulfilled entirely at his own expense, declining all the offers of subsidies made to him by the Jewish Committee. He carried with him for protection against the Russian authorities, a letter from Lord Salisbury to H. M.'s Minister at St. Petersburg, to be delivered only in case of need; and as an introduction to the possibly hostile Jewish Communities, a letter in Hebrew to be presented to the rabbis in the various towns. Lord's Salisbury's letter was never used, but the chief rabbi's introduction secured him everywhere a most hospitable reception.



"I went through the pale of settlement," he relates, "and saw as much of frontier life amongst the Jews as possible and found them like hunted dogs. I, however, got no further than the frontier towns, for cholera had broken out, numerous deaths took place every day, my own health was getting queer, and, to speak plainly, I was frightened. So we turned our faces back and returned home. On my return to London I delivered a lecture before the Jewish Workmen's Club in the East End, in a hall crammed to suffocation. I shall never forget the enthusiasm of the audience, the tears, the laughter, the applause, the wild embraces to which I was subjected."

This was the only use that Hall Caine ever made of all his experiences of his tour in Russia in 1892, which had lasted many months, for when he returned to Cumberland to write the story which was to be called "The Jew," he found the task impossible. "I worked very hard at it, I turned it over in every direction in my mind, but I felt I could not do it. I wanted the experience of a life; I could not enter into competition in their own field with the great Russian novelists. I found it could not be done."

THE WRITING OF "THE MANXMAN."

In the meanwhile, circumstances had obliged him to give up Castlerigg Cottage in disgust, and he accordingly removed to the Isle of Man, with the determination of fixing his residence there definitely. For the first six months he lived at Greeba Castle, a very pretty but very lonely house, about half-way between Peel and Douglas, on the Douglas road—and it was there that most of "The Manxman" was written.

"I turned my Jewish story into a Manx story, and 'The Jew' became 'The Manxman.' In my original scheme, Philip was to be a Christian, governor of his province in Russia; Pete, Cregeen, and Kate were to be Jews. I thought that the racial difference between the two rivals would afford greater dramatic contrast than the class difference, and it was only reluctantly that I altered the scheme of my story."

Hall Caine, in speaking of the genesis of "The Manxman," may be induced to show his little pocket-diary for 1893. Against each day during the whole of January and part of February are written the words: "The Jew."

"That means," he will explain, "that all those days I was working at my story in my head."

"The Manxman" was finished at the house in Marine Parade in Peel where Hall Caine is now temporarily residing—a large brick house, which was built for a boarding-house and is certainly not the house for an artist. As he has determined to make his home in the island, he is at present hesitating whether to purchase Greeba Castle, or to build himself a house on the Creg Malin headland at Peel, than which no more wondrous site for a poet's home could be found in the Queen's dominions, overlooking the bay, with the rugged pile of Peel Castle, memory haunted, beyond.

He loves the Manx and they love him. At first "society" in the island objected to his disregard of the conventions. Now he is as popular at Government House, or at the Deemster's, as he is in Black Tom's cottage. But his warmest friends are amongst the peasants and fishermen, from one end of the island to the other. "They are such good fellows," he says, "and such excellent subjects for study for my books. They are current coin for me." So he asks them to supper, and visits them in their houses, and has taught himself their language and their strange intonations as they speak.

In June and July of 1894, whilst in London, Hall Caine wrote a dramatic version of "The Manxman" and offered it to Tree, who, however, refused it, as unlikely to appeal to the sympathies of the fashionable audiences of the Haymarket Theatre. In this version Philip was the central figure. The version which has been played with much success both in America and in the provinces, was written by Wilson Barrett, with Pete as the central figure. It was originally produced in Leeds, on August 20, 1894, and has met with a good reception everywhere except in Manchester and New York. The critics in the latter city wrote that it was a disgrace to the book.

For some years past, Hall Caine has devoted himself to literary public affairs. He is Sir Walter Resant's best supporter in his noble efforts to protect authors and to advance their interests. His ability as a public speaker and a politician of letters is great, and in recognition of this he was asked—a most distinguished honor—in November of last year to open the Edinburgh Literary and Philosophical Institution for the winter session, his predecessors having been John Morley and Mr. Goschen. He is at this writing in America on behalf of the Authors' Society, in connection with the Canadian copyright difficulty. He possesses in a marked degree that sense of solidarity amongst men of letters in which most successful authors are so singularly lacking, and the great power with which his world-wide popularity has vested him is used by him rather in the general interest of the craft than to own advantage.

His life in his home in Peel, in the midst of his family—the old parents, the pretty young wife, and the two bonny lads—is noble in its simplicity, a life of high thinking, when, his success and personal popularity being what they are, he has many temptations to worldliness.

He attributes his success in part to the fact that he has always been a great reader of the Bible.

"I think," he says, "that I know my Bible as few literary men know it. There is no book in the world like it, and the finest novels ever written fall far short in interest of the stories it tells. Whatever strong situations I have in my books are not of my creation, but are taken from the Bible. 'The Deemster' is the story of the prodigal son. 'The Bondman' is the story of Esau and Jacob, though in my version sympathy attaches to Esau. 'The Scapegoat' is the story of Eli and his sons, but with Samuel as a little girl. 'The Manxman' is the story of David and Uriah. My new book also comes out of the Bible, from a perfectly startling source."

Hall Caine does not begin his books with a character or group of characters, like Dickens or Scott, nor with a plot, like Wilkie Collins, nor with a scene, like Black, but with an idea, a spiritual intent. In all his books the central motive is always the same. "It is," he says, "the idea of justice, the idea of a Divine Justice, the idea that righteousness always works itself out, that out of hatred and malice comes Love. My theory is that a novel, a piece of imaginative writing, must end with a sense of justice, must leave the impression that justice is inevitable. My theory is also—on the matters which divide novelists into realists and idealists—that the highest form of art is produced by the artist who is so far an idealist that he wants to say something and so far a realist that he copies nature as closely as he can in saying it."

His methods of work are particular to himself. It is difficult for a visitor in Hall Caine's house to find pens or ink. As a matter of fact, his writing is done with a stylograph pen, which he always carries in his pocket.

"I don't think," he says, "that I have sat down to a desk to write for years. I write in my head to begin with, and the actual writing, which is from memory, is done on any scrap of paper that may come to hand; and I always write on my knee. My work is as follows: I first get my idea, my central moral; and this usually takes me a very long time. The incidents come very quickly, for the invention of incidents is a very easy matter to me. I then labor like mad in getting knowledge. I visit the places I propose to describe. I read every book I can get bearing on my subject. It is elaborate, laborious, but very delightful. I then make voluminous notes. Then begins the agony. Each day it besets me, winter or summer, from five in the morning till breakfast time. I awake at five and lie in bed, thinking out the chapter that is to be written that day, composing it word for word. That usually takes me up till seven. From seven till eight I am engaged in mental revision of the chapter. I then get up and write it down from memory, as fast as ever the pen will flow. The rest of the morning I spend in lounging about, thinking, thinking, thinking of my book. For when I am working on a new book I think of nothing else; everything else comes to a standstill. In the afternoon I walk or ride, thinking, thinking. In the evenings, when it is dark, I walk up and down my room constructing my story. It is then that I am happiest. I do not write every day—sometimes I take a long rest, as I am doing at present—and when I do write, I never exceed fifteen hundred words a day. I do not greatly revise the manuscript for serial publication, but I labor greatly over the proofs of the book, making important changes, taking out, putting in, recasting. Thus, after 'The Scapegoat' had passed through four editions and everybody was praising the book, I felt uneasy because I felt I had not done justice to my subject; so I spent two months in rewriting it and had the book reset and brought out again. The public feeling was that the book had not been improved, but I felt that I had lifted it up fifty per cent."

"I am convinced," he continued, "that my system of writing the book in my head first is a good one. It shows me exactly what I want to say. The mental strain is, of course, immense, and that forces you to go straight to your point; for the mind is not strong enough to indulge in flirtations, in excursions at a tangent, as the pen is apt to do."

Hall Caine was accused, when he began writing, of obscurity, of a predilection for tortuous phrases. "I think that now I have almost gone too far in the other direction," he says; "the critics blame me for a neglect of style. But—you remember the story of Gough and his diamond ring—I am determined not to let any diamond ring get between me and my audience. Writing should not get between the reader and the picture. I take a great joy in sheer lucidity, and if any sentence of mine does not at the very first sight express my meaning, I rewrite it. Obscurity of style indicates that the writer is not entirely master of what he has to say."



NEIGHBOR KING.

BY COLLINS SHACKELFORD.

When my husband, Micah Pyncheon, died he left me alone with our baby girl, the farm, an' the grasshoppers. It happened in Kansas, in '76.

You don't mind my crying now, do you? 't seems as though I'd never get the tears all out of me. The time ain't so far away, nor me so old, but that those days spread out before me like a panorama, nat'ral as life. I can feel that hot summer sun, not a cloud in the sky, an' the smell of the bakin' earth movin' all the time in waves of heat until you got dizzy with the motion an' the scent. An' the grasshoppers! You can't know how they came a-flyin' by day an' by night in great brown clouds; how they crept an' crawled an' squirmed through the wheat an' the corn an' the grass, bitin' an' chewin' every green thing, leavin' nothin' but black an' dry shreds, an' the earth more desolate than if a fire had swept over it. They were everywhere out-of-doors; they came into the house—down the chimney when they couldn't get in through the door—an' I've picked their bony bodies out of my pockets many a time, an' knocked 'em off the table so as I might put down a dish. If you killed one, a thousand came to the funeral. All day an' all night you heard the click, click, click of their bodies as they walked about, jumped here an' there, or rubbed against one another. An' poor Micah's body under the blanket—they were all about it, an' I havin' to brush 'em away. Anybody would 'a' cried if they'd been in my place, such a dreary day was that—me an' baby all alone, with the village ten miles off, an' not a soul nearer than neighbor King, three miles away.

Seems to me I don't know how Micah died, it was all so sudden like. All day he'd been out in the sun a-fightin' the hoppers, an' tryin' to work when he wasn't fightin'; an' he came in with his head a hangin' forward an' not a smile on his lips as he put up his hat an' rolled down his sleeves.

"I'm downright discouraged, Miranda," he said at last, lookin' out of the window. "There's no use in standin' up agin natur an' the hoppers. They eat faster'n I can kill 'em, an' in a week the crops 'ull be about all gone. It looks as though when winter comes we won't have anythin' to eat. I b'lieve I've killed ten thousand of those creatures to-day, an' yet they came faster'n drops in a rain-storm."

Then he picked up little Hannah an' lay down on the bed with her in his arms, sayin' no more. I bustled 'round—speakin' nothing, an' as quiet as possible, knowin' how tired in mind an' body the poor man was—an' fixed up a nice supper. When the table was all set, an' the food on it, an' everything as cheerful an' encouragin' as the hoppers would let me make it, I called Micah. But he didn't answer; so I stepped across the room an' put my hand on his face, so as to wake him gently, as I was used to doin'.

Oh, dear! Oh, dear! The loved face was cold and white, an' I give one scream an' fell beside him, knowin' nothin'. Yes, Micah was dead—gone to sleep never to waken, passed from life with little Hannah snuggled in his arms.

No wonder I cry when I remember that lonesome night, holdin' the little one in my arms an' watchin' the still face on the bed, knowin' that nevermore those eyes would look into mine, nevermore those cold lips would speak to me. An' when the mornin' came, gray an' hopeless, there was no one but me an' the baby an' poor Micah's body; an' the hoppers a-creepin' an' a-crawlin' all through the house as if they were a-buyin' of it at auction, a-rustlin' their wings an' a-hustlin' their bodies until I thought theie was a cool wind instead of a hot, breathless mornin'. I covered up the dear face, an', kneelin' by his side, prayed an' cried, an' cried an' prayed. It was all I could do for my husband of three years. I don't know what else I did, what else I thought. I saw nothin', heard nothin', until somebody's hand fell upon my shoulder.

"Why, Mrs. Pyncheon!" was the cry, an' lookin' up through my tears I saw neighbor King a-standin' by me. "I was goin' up the road," he said, "an' thought I'd stop an' say good-mornin'. Where's Micah? In the field, an' you a-cryin' for lonesomeness?"

I answered nothin'; but put up my hand an' pulled back the sheet from the dear dead face.

"My God!" was all he said, an' he staggered back to a chair an' sat in it for five minutes without a word, his face in his hands.

"Madam, forgive me! I never dreamed of such a thing," he cried at last, recoverin' himself; "an' when an' how did it happen?"

I told him the story between sobs, breakin' down every few words. Thank Heaven! it wasn't a long story, or I should have gone crazy before it was told. He was silent for quite a spell, as if he was a-meditatin' over the situation, lookin' mostly at poor Micah as if drawin' ideas from the cold lips.

"Now, Mrs. Pyncheon!" he said finally, in his solemn voice an' grave, slow way of talkin',—"now, Mrs. Pyncheon, you must trust everythin' to me. You're beat out. I've no women folks in my house, as you know; but I'll ride to town an' get an old lady, a friend of mine, to come out an' help you through. I'll see, too, that poor Micah has a coffin an' a minister. Be the brave little woman, Mrs. Pyncheon, that Micah would tell you to be, if he could speak. By sun-down I'll have somebody you can talk to an' who'll cheer you up better than I can. To-morrow—to-morrow we'll bury the poor man!"

When he said this it set me to cryin'. Then it was so still that I looked up an' found myself alone. A-down the road was a line of dust, an' I heard the muffled footfalls of neighbor King's horse on his way to the village.

An' "to-morrow we'll bury him" were words that all that long, lonesome, hot day kept soundin' in my ears as if some one was callin' 'em out with the tickin' of the clock. "Bury him"—an' Micah dead only a few hours! I couldn't believe it, an' would stop an' listen for his whistle at the barn, his talk to the horses, his rattle at the pump, his footfall at the door, until, crazy with waitin,' I'd go over to the bed, pull back the sheet, an' in the still face read why I should never hear those happy sounds again—never again.

Ah, well! The sun went down at last; the long, dreary day was ended, an' in the twilight came back my good neighbor with motherly Mrs. Challen—an'—an'—it hurts me even now to tell it—the coffin for. Micah. In it those two good people softly placed him, an' all that night I watched its shape between me an' the window.



The next day, in the mornin', under the trees in the little grove across from the house, my Micah was laid to rest forever—placed so that when I looked out of the window or the door I could see the mound of earth between the fence of tree limbs woven around it, an' seem' it, know that in that spot was buried one who in my young life was more to me than earth or heaven. I never understood how I got through those two terrible days. I can't remember distinctly. It's all dream-like, as if in a thin, grayish fog. I know that Mrs. Challen held me in her arms—for I was a fragile, girlish thing—like a mother; that the minister said words I never heard; that the strange faces of a few farm people from miles away looked at me; that the grasshoppers were under foot an' in the air an' even on the coffin; but, above all else, I recall, movin' among the other people like somebody from another world, the tall, straight form and sad face of neighbor King. It was neighbor King who managed everything from the minute his hand fell upon my shoulder that mornin' until the last limb was knit into the rough fence around the lonely grave. What would have happened to me without him?

I'm only a woman—one of the weak ones, I s'pose—for I broke down entirely the night after poor Micah was buried, Mrs. Challen said I went crazy; that I'd kneel down at the side of the bed an' cry as if my heart would break; that again an' again I went to the front door an' looked up an' down the lonely, treeless road, an' then to the back door, where I would call "Micah!" "Micah!"—just as I'd been used to callin' him to his meals, an' I'd listen, with my hand to my ear, to hear him answer. Last of all, worst of all, she said, I went staggerin' across the street, an', pushin' through the rough fence, threw myself upon the grave an' begged of the Great Father to give me back the dead that had been so much to me when he was living. I don't wonder at my losing my head. Micah an' I were both so young, an' we had loved each other so much, as common folks often do, that to lose him was robbin' my life of all its brightness an' sweetness.

The mornin' after the funeral neighbor King was round bright an' early, findin' me red-eyed an' weakly.

"Well! well! Mrs. Pyncheon," he began, in what was for him a cheery voice, "what are we a-goin' to do now besides summin' up a little? Are we goin' to our relations?"

"No, Mr. King," I answered, havin' thought over the matter a little, "no, I'm goin' to stay here. I have no relation I want to bother. Here's the place for me an' Hannah. The farm is paid for, an' all I have is here an'—an' over there," turnin' my face to the spot where Micah lay. "If the grasshoppers 'ull let me, I stay."



"Quite right, madam. Very sensible. But, of course, while you can do a good deal, you can't work the farm all alone. That's impossible. I've been givin' the matter some thought, an' intend to help you out, if you'll let me. Suppose we work it on shares? You name my share, ma'am, an' I'll take care that my men look after the hard work for you. The hoppers won't leave much for this year; but what there is you shall have, an' I'll get my share for this year out of next year's crops. I'm glad that suits you. Now, you must not live here alone. One of my men has a sister in the village, a stout, healthy, willin' girl, who wants a home. She'll be glad to come here. I'll try to superintend affairs for you, if you're willin', an' make the best of everything. Oh, we'll keep you in good shape, never fear; but you mustn't mind my askin' questions, so that I can get a knowledge of affairs. Now, don't thank me. I'd rather you wouldn't. Just keep cheerful, an' as long as we've got to live, let's make the best of life."



This was very good from neighbor King—somethin' you wouldn't expect from such a sad or solemn-lookin' man, a man so quiet, so reserved, appearin' always as if he had some grief of his own, so that he could sympathize with others in misery. He must have been forty years old, for his dark brown hair was showin' gray around the temples, an' there were deep wrinkles around the corners of his mouth, an' lots of little ones around his deep, sunken brown eyes. It always seemed to me as if he'd been constructed for a minister or a lawyer, an' stopped half way as a farmer. He was no half-acre farmer, but a worker of hundreds of acres; an' my little homestead was only a potato patch alongside of his. The queerest thing about his place was that there wasn't a woman on it. All the work, cookin' an' everything was done by men. Well, girls was scarce in those days an' those parts, an' perhaps that was the reason. Maybe, again, he was afraid of women, an' didn't want 'em bossin' around his work. I didn't know an' didn't care. It was no concern of mine. I only knew he was mighty good to me in my affliction—the truest, steadiest, most unselfish friend a forlorn woman could have; an' every night I prayed for that same neighbor King, askin' the Lord to bless him for the goodness an' kindness he had shown to me.

True enough, the grasshoppers didn't leave me much that year, just enough to keep soul and body together, with economy. The pesky things eat everything from pussly to leaves. I b'lieve they'd 'a' eaten the green out of the sky if they could 'a' got at it. Why, the earth looked as if the devil had gone over it with a brush of brown paint, missin' a spot here an' there that come up green after the critters had got away. There was only one thing they didn't eat, an' that was themselves—more's the pity!

Neighbor King (his other name was Horace, I found out afterwards) watched my farm matters pretty closely the second year. He tended to my interests before his own, because, as he said, I was a widow an' must not suffer. There was hardly a day he did not ride over the little farm to see how things were goin', always stopping at the door to have a cheerful talk, or to give me, when comin' from the village, a crumb or two of news of the big world so far away; an' often he left a newspaper, that I might read myself what was a-goin' on. This man did everything, in his grave, soothin' way, to smooth down my sorrow—not to lead me to forget, for that was impossible—an' make the roadway of my life as pleasant as a country lane hedged in with sweet-smellin' flowers an' alive with birds nestlin' and twitterin' among the buds and blossoms. In this quiet, restful, peaceful way neighbor King came, in three years, to build his life into mine, until, thinkin' matters over, I realized that he was necessary to make that life pleasant. I didn't forget poor Micah—how could I? At the same time I felt that I could not go on alone the balance of my life with the hunger in my heart for some one to love an' to love me. An' he? Well, not a word out of line had been spoken; but I read the change in his eyes, his looks, his manners, in the tones of his voice. Women read where there's neither print nor writin'. I couldn't tell why he should love me, though as women go I was young—fifteen years younger than he, an' fair lookin', an' a worker. I was companionable an' in sympathy with him. Put yourself in my place an' be the lonesome, forlorn creature I was, an' see if you wouldn't love the man who put aside the dark clouds an' gave you sunshine to drown despair, an' a cheerful voice instead of silence. Neither of us spoke. It wasn't necessary. We understood. An' because of that to me the skies were brighter, an' the earth more beautiful, the days fuller of nature's music, an' there was hope an' quiet joy everywhere.



Ah, me! I didn't know it; but behind this sunny life, back of this bit of heaven that came down all around me, was a big, black cloud full of storm. I remember well the evenin' it first began to show itself. I saw neighbor King comin' down the road from the village, on his pony. He didn't stop, as was his habit, but cantered by, head down and reins loose. Then, as if he'd forgotten somethin', he wheeled the horse sharp around, trotted back, threw the bridle over a fence-post, an' came in. I saw somethin' was the matter from the absent-minded way he talked an' by his lookin' mostly at the floor.

Strange, too, he began about crops an' prices; then he had somethin' to say about the village, and from that to livin' in big cities, an' how such places changes people's natures, makin' women different creatures—more bold, more forgetful of friends, less kindly to their sex, than those of the country; an' he said it all as slowly an' softly an' solemnly as those ministers pray who don't think the Lord's deaf. He seemed to be tryin' to get at somethin' by goin' round it; an' I thought that somethin' was me.

"Neighbor King," I said finally, "you always speak so kindly of women folks that it seems odd to me that you never have a woman on your farm; an' odder still that you've never married."

"Mrs. Pyncheon," his face lightin' up like the sky just before sunrise, "you an' I are old an' tried friends, an' I know you'll respect an' keep secret what I'm going to tell you, an' what, to be plain, I came to tell you. I knew, an' I didn't wonder, that you thought it strange I'd never married. The Lord only knows how I hunger for a woman's love, a woman's talk, a woman's presence where I can see her. I would give all I am worth if I could take a good woman by the hand as my wife, an' go forth even to begin life over again. Hunger an' thirst are terrible; but they are easily borne in comparison with the hunger an' thirst for a woman's love that I have endured for years. No one can realize my lonesomeness, Mrs. Pyncheon;" an' reachin' out he caught my hands in his. "I've been your friend for years. You know it. I believe you've been mine. Will you continue such when I keep from you a truth I dare not tell, an' give you in its place a fact that you must know? I know you to be brave an' strong. You'll be so now, an' secret, too—for no one here knows what I'm goin' to tell you. Mrs. Pyncheon, I am a married man."

I couldn't help it; but the news was so sudden an' so startlin' that my hands came away from his with a wrench, an' I drew away, feelin' hurt an' shamed, if not guilty; an' I felt a flush of anger burnin' my cheeks.

"There! there! don't misjudge me, Mrs. Pyncheon. Pity me, instead. I've made no attempt to deceive you. I've been silent, because I could not talk about a matter that was sad an' sacred. Yes, I'm married; but"—an' great tears came into his eyes—"my wife has been hopelessly insane for ten years. You buried Micah an' mourned for him, knowin' he was dead; I buried my wife alive, God knows whether I've grieved for her. She is in an insane asylum. For years I could not break away an' leave her; it seemed so heartless to desert one who had been the joy an' pride of my youth. But the doctor told me that it was death for me if I stayed; that I could not last more than a year goin' on as I'd been livin'. Now you can understand why I am here, solitary an' hopeless, without a friend—unless I can call you one?"

"You never had a truer one, neighbor King," my heart speakin' out its gratitude. "When I think of what you've done for me, an' how you've thought of me, all when the world was the darkest,—why, it seems as if my life was too short in which to say all my prayers for you."

Perhaps I spoke particularly quick an' spirited, an' perhaps my eyes showed more'n I spoke; for he looked very queerly at me for a minute, his face lightin' up in a way it was unused to, an' then he said, "Thank you, Mrs. Pyncheon; I think I understand. I shall not forget this meetin'. Good-by." An', before I knew what he meant to do, he stooped an' kissed my forehead, an' was out of the house before I could speak.

I wasn't angry; I wasn't hurt. If the truth was given, I was delighted; for I, too, was hungry an' thirsty for a little love. I was woman enough to know what that kiss meant. At the same time I grieved for the poor man, chained, so to speak, to a crazy person, bearin' his unseen burden so uncomplainingly, an' doin' God-like work all the year round. But the more I thought over that kiss, the more I realized that between neighbor King an' myself had been suddenly put up a high wall, he on one side, I on the other; an' that in the future I should see him very seldom.

It happened as I thought. Days passed, an' neighbor King came not. The thumpety-thump of his pony no longer sounded along the road. Mornin's and evenin's came an' went, an' not a "howdy-do" in his pleasant voice. I wasn't surprised; I expected as much for a time. Finally, one of the hired men said he'd gone away. Then I put my lips together in a dogged way an' settled down to a lonesome life, cheered a little by the prattle of little Hannah, an' kept from rustin' by the farm work. I was lonesome, very lonesome, when the evenin' shadows crept over the ground, an' the crickets began to sing, the katydids to scold, an' the hoot owl to give his mournful cry over in the grove where Micah lay.



There was daybreak at last, though nearly a month after neighbor King had gone. One of his men brought me a letter—the first I'd had for years—an' I looked at it a long time before I opened it, wondering what strange news it had for me to know, why I should have it, an' what I should do with it now it had come. I knew the writin'. It was neighbor King's. Was it good news, or news to shrivel my heart up as with fire? I tore off an end an' pulled out the sheet. It didn't take long to read it.

CHICAGO, August 17, 187-.

MRS. PYNCHEON: I find that my wife has been dead a year.

HORACE KING.

The letter dropped from my hand. It was the heart-breaking end of a love story—the closin' up of one of those little tragedies which the world seldom hears about. Such love stories are happening all the while among poor people, an' so are too common for the way-up world; yet they are full of heartaches, an' hot, droppin' tears, an' great sobs that are like moans. An' so my neighbor King had come to the end of his tragedy; had found the idol of his young life an' love put away in her grave, an' the waitin' an' hopin' was at an end. What that good man must have suffered durin' those ten long years, nobody but himself could know. Now that he was free, possibly he would sell his farm an' go back to the city to live, an' I, to whom he had been so good an' grand, would soon be forgotten. Ah! that was a bitin' thought. It almost crazed me, now that I knew how much I loved him, to think of being left alone to grow old an' wrinkled an' withered, an' no words of comfort to cheer me up along the path walked by nobody but myself. I knew he was too great a man to plough his talents into the soil or to hide the light of his intellect in the jungles of his fields of wheat or corn. That letter made me feel, somehow, that everything was suddenly changed; that my little world was not the same as it had been ten minutes before. The tears came into my eyes, an' I'm not sure but I was sobbin' under a forlorn, lonesome feelin', when I heard a step behind me, an' before I could put away the letter or wipe my eyes, a hand was softly laid upon my shoulder. I sprang to my feet, too frightened to speak. Instantly there was an arm around my neck an' a kiss upon my cheek, an' I heard neighbor King say, with a happy laugh, "It's only me, Miranda. I find I'm here as soon as my letter."

"I thought, you might not be comin' back," I whispered, with quiverin' lips.

"Why, my darling, I've come back for you," he said, bendin' over an' kissin' me again. "Didn't you understand me when I was here last?"

"I thought I did, but wasn't sure. The kiss was a sort of mystery. But it's all plain now, an' I'm so happy;" an' like a little fool was off to cryin' again, this time for gladness, an' he a-holdin' me close in his arms.

This may not read like much of a love story, yet it was a bitter story for me, all in all, during the years from Micah's death to the golden mornin' that brought such sweet relief an' rest. The thought troubles me now an' then, but I don't believe that Micah, if he sees from the other world what I've done, blames me for the change. He knows I can't forget him, an' would not if I could.

Through months an' years of loneliness, of heartaches, of hopin' an' expectin', of draggin' along for no particular purpose, save to keep body an' soul together; with few joys, an' but little else than sighin'; an' the great world made no more for me than a little farm, a little house, an' a voiceless sky above me—what blame, then, have I, if I brightened an' happified my life an' his by makin' neighbor King my husband?



THROUGH THE DARDANELLES.

BY CY WARMAN,

Author of "A Thousand-mile Ride on the Engine of a 'Flyer.'"

Soul of Sappho, if, to-night, When my boat is drifting near Your fair island, spirit bright— If I sing, and if you hear, From your island in the sea, Soul of Sappho, speak to me.

Soul of Sappho, they have said That your hair, a heap of gold, Made a halo for your head; And your eyes, I have been told, Were like stars. Oh, from the sea, Soul of Sappho, speak to me!

Constantinople may be considered as the end of the railway system of the earth. Here, if you wish to see more of the Orient, you must take to the sea. There is, to be sure, a projected railway out of the Sultan's city into the interior, but only completed to Angora, three hundred and sixty-five miles. The intention of the projectors was to continue the road down to Bagdad, on the river Tigris, through which they could reach the Persian Gulf.



I had arranged to go to Angora, but found a ten-days' quarantine five miles out of Constantinople, and backed into town, and then made an effort to secure from the office of the titled German who stands for the railway company, some idea of the road, its prospects, probable cost, and estimated earnings, but had my letters returned without a line.

To show them that I was acting in good faith, and willing to pay for what I got, I went with Vincent, the guide (the only guide I ever had), and asked them for some printed matter or photographs, or anything that would throw a little light along the line of their plague-stricken railway; but they still refused to talk. No wonder it has taken these dreamers ten years to build three hundred and sixty miles of very cheap railroad.

It was my misfortune to fall into a little old Austrian-Lloyd steamer called the "Daphne." Before we lifted anchor in the Golden Horn I learned that her boilers had not been overhauled for ten years; and before we reached the Dardanelles I concluded that the sand had not been changed in the pillows for a quarter of a century. I have slept in the American Desert for a period of thirty nights, between the earth and the heavens, and found a better bed than was made by the ossified mattress and petrified pillows of the "Daphne." It was bad enough to breathe the foul air that came up from the camping pilgrims on the main deck; but the first day out we learned that these ugly Armenians, greasy Greeks, and buggy Bedouins would be allowed to come up on the promenade deck and mingle with those who had paid for first-class passage. Poorly clad, half-starved, poverty-stricken people, headed for the Holy Land, came and rubbed elbows with American and European women and children. Of course one sympathizes with these poor, miserable people, but one does not want their secrets.



We left the Bosporus at twilight, crossed the Sea of Marmora during the night, and the next morning were at Gallipoli, where the bird-seeds come from. The day broke beautifully, and the little sea was as calm as a summer lake. By ten o'clock we were drifting down the Dardanelles, which resembles a great river, for the land is always near on either side.

The ship's doctor, who was my guide, at every landing-place kindly pointed out the many points of interest.

"Those pyramids over there," he would say, "were erected by the Turks, to commemorate a victory. Here is where Byron swam the sea from Europe to Asia; and over there is where King Midas lived, whose touch turned piastres to napoleons, and flounders to goldfish. Here, to the left, on that hill, stood ancient Troy."

All things seemed to work together to make the day a most enjoyable one, and just at nightfall the doctor came to me and said:

"See that island over there? That was the home of Sappho."

An hour later we anchored in a little natural harbor, and five of us went ashore. Besides the ship's doctor (whose uniform was a sufficient passport for all), there were in our party a Pole and a Frenchman—both inspectors of revenue for the Turkish government, and splendid fellows—a Belgian, and the writer. We entered a cafe concert, where one man and five or six girls sat in a sort of balcony at one end of the building and played at "fiddle." The main hall was filled with small tables, at which were Greeks, Arabs, Armenians, Turks, and negroes as black as a hole in the night. Between acts the girls were expected to come down, distribute themselves about, and consume beer and other fluid at the expense of the frequenters.