War As a Deterrent to Suicide

This struck me as a phenomenon interesting enough to warrant investigation, and I began study of it by looking up the statistics of suicide in the national capital. It seemed to me that if the decrease in 1898 was due to a general economic cause, it would not be particularly noticeable in the city of Washington, for the reason that Washington is not a manufacturing or business center. If, on the other hand, the fall in the suicide rate was really due to the war as a specific cause, it would be most marked at the nation's capital, where the war attracted most attention and created most excitement. I went to the District Health Office and made an examination of the suicide records for a term of six years, beginning with 1895 and ending with 1900. I found not only that the depression in the Washington suicide curve was precisely synchronous with that of the national suicide curve, but that it was much deeper, amounting, in fact, to a sudden decrease of fifty per cent.

As suicides are tabulated in the Health Office of the District of Columbia by months, I was able to ascertain, furthermore, that the decrease began, not in the first month of the year, but in the spring months, when the war excitement became epidemic. Normally, the suicide rate should have risen, from January to June, in accordance with the seasonal law; but, instead of so doing, it fell rapidly at the very time when it should have been approaching its maximum. The colored population of the city, taken separately, was affected in the same way and to an even greater degree, the number of suicides among the blacks falling off fifty-six per cent., as compared with fifty per cent. among the whites. The number of suicides in both races remained low throughout the year 1899, and then rose suddenly in 1900, an almost precise correspondence with the suicide curve of the nation as a whole.

During our Civil War the suicidal tendency was affected in the same way, but to a much greater extent. I have not been able to find mortality statistics of the whole country for the period in question, but in New York City the average rate of suicide in the five years of the Civil War was forty-two per cent. lower than the average for the five preceding years, and forty-three per cent. lower than the average for the five subsequent years. In the State of Massachusetts, where accurate statistics were kept, the number of suicides decreased seventeen per cent. in the five-year period from 1861 to 1865, as compared with the five-year period from 1856 to 1860.

In Europe the restraining influence of war upon the suicidal impulse is equally marked. The war between Austria and Italy in 1866 decreased the suicide rate of each country about fourteen per cent. The Franco-German war of 1870-71 lowered the suicide rate of Saxony 8.0 per cent., that of Prussia 11.4 per cent., and that of France 18.7 per cent. The reduction was greatest in France, because the German invasion of that country made the war excitement there much more general and intense than it was in Saxony or Prussia.

An explanation of the decrease of suicide in time of war may be found, perhaps, in the power that any strong excitement has to change the current of thought and substitute one emotion for another. Suicide, among civilized peoples, is largely due to morbid introspection and long brooding over real or imaginary trouble; and anything that takes a man's mind away from his own unhappiness, and gives him a keen interest in things or events about him, weakens his suicidal impulse. An unhappy man might resolve to end his life, and might load a revolver with the intention of shooting himself; but if he should happen to see a couple of his neighbors fighting in his front door-yard, he would probably lay the revolver aside, for a time, and watch the combat. The cause of his unhappiness would still remain, but the current of his thought would suddenly be diverted into a new channel and his despondency would give way to the excitement of a fresh and vivid interest. War acts upon men in the same way, but with greater force.

Then, too, war restrains suicide by strengthening the bonds of social sympathy and drawing large masses of people more closely together. The unhappy man always thinks of himself as lonely, isolated, and out of harmony with his environment; but when, as a result of the victories or defeats of war, he finds himself participating in the triumph or sharing the grief of thousands of other persons, the mere consciousness of sympathetic association with his fellow-men becomes a source of comfort and consolation to him and makes his life more endurable. But war is not the only agency that exerts a restraining influence upon self-destruction. Any great calamity which causes intense public excitement, and which at the same time draws people together in friendly sympathy and cooeperation, lowers the suicide rate. The calamity may greatly intensify suffering, and may make life, for a time, almost intolerable; but it does not increase the number of persons who try to escape from life; on the contrary, it reduces it.

San Francisco Earthquake Decreased Suicides

A striking illustration of this fact was furnished by San Francisco in 1906. Before the earthquake and fire of April 18 the suicides in that city averaged twelve a week. After the earthquake, when the whole population was homeless, destitute, and exposed to hardships and privations of every kind, there were only three suicides in two months. The decrease, therefore, in the suicide rate was more than 97 per cent. This surprising result of a disheartening and depressing calamity was due partly to the excitement of life under new and extraordinary conditions, and partly to the feeling, which every man had, that he was enduring and working with a host of sympathetic comrades, and not suffering and striving alone. If life were always vividly interesting, as it was in San Francisco after the earthquake, and if all men worked and suffered together as the San Franciscans did for a few weeks, suicide would not end ten thousand American lives every year, as it does now.

The dependence of suicide upon such conditions as age, sex, occupation, and religion does not offer any problem as difficult and baffling as that involved in the relation of suicide to weather, nor any as curious and suggestive as that which connects suicide with war; but there is hardly a phase of the subject that does not present some more or less interesting question. The researches of Durkheim and Gubski show that, after the period of childhood, the tendency to suicide increases steadily with advancing age. In France, for example, if the population be segregated in groups comprising all persons ten to twenty years of age, all persons twenty to thirty years of age, all persons thirty to forty years of age, and so on, by decades, the annual number of suicides per million rises as follows: first group 56, second group 130, third 155, fourth 204, fifth 217, sixth 274, seventh 317, and the rate finally reaches its maximum in the group that comprises persons more than eighty years of age.

In the United States, the rate increases from 128 per million, in the age group comprising persons under forty-five, to 300 per million in the age group comprising persons over sixty-five. The figures vary in different countries, according to the hereditary national suicide tendencies; but the steady increase with advancing age is common to all. These statistics would seem to support the pessimistic philosophy of Schopenhauer, and to prove that the longer one lives the less one wants to live; but it must not be forgotten that the suicide rate is a measure of exceptional unhappiness, not of the general welfare.

In the suicidal tendencies of the sexes there is, as might be expected, a very great difference. In all countries and in all parts of the world, suicides among women are far less frequent than among men. The ratio varies from one to two to two to five. This difference is generally attributed to the supposed fact that women are sheltered and protected by men, as well as by their domestic environment, and that, consequently, they suffer less from the wear and tear of life; but I doubt very much the adequacy of this explanation. The life of women, in the world at large, is quite as hard as that of men, and often harder. In the higher and wealthier classes of society women may be, and doubtless are, sheltered and protected; but in the poorer classes they take their full share of the suffering, even if they do not bear the brunt of the struggle.

The hundreds of Russian women who between 1877 and 1885 were exiled to eastern Siberia for political offenses had no shelter or protection whatever, and must necessarily have suffered more than the exiled men from the hardships and privations of banishment; and yet, I am quite sure that I understate the fact when I say that the number of suicides among the men was at least five times greater than it was among the women. The exiled men themselves admitted to me that when it came to the endurance of suffering against which no fight could be made and from which there was no escape, the women were greatly their superiors. The infrequency of self-destruction among women, as compared with that among men, seems to me to be due, not to their comparative immunity from suffering, but to three other causes, namely, first, a greater power of patient, passive endurance, when there is no fight to be made; second, a mind and heart that are more influenced by feelings and beliefs that may be called religious; and, third, a peculiar capacity for self-restraint and self-preservation, based on the maternal instinct, that is, on closer and more intimate relations with, stronger love for, and greater devotion to young children.

A study of the relation that suicide bears to occupation discloses some interesting and noteworthy facts. The first is that soldiers, both in Europe and in the United States, must be put in a class by themselves, for the reason that the suicide rate of army officers and men is so much higher than that of the populations to which they belong that they can hardly be included in the same category. In Prussia, for example, the proportion of military suicides to civilian suicides is 1-1/2 to 1; in England 2-1/2 to 1; in Italy 5 to 1; in Austria 10 to 1; and in Russia nearly 11 to 1. Even in the United States, the tendency of soldiers to kill themselves is 8-1/2 times that of adult men in civil life.

This disproportionately high suicide rate in armies is not easy of explanation. In countries where military service is compulsory, and where inexperienced young men, torn suddenly from their families, are subjected to rigorous discipline in a strange and uncongenial environment, the suicidal impulse may be intensified by homesickness, loneliness, humiliation, and the monotony of camp or barrack life; but in our own country, where the army is filled by voluntary enlistment, and where the relations between officers and men are fairly sympathetic and cordial, there would seem to be fewer reasons for unhappiness and suffering than in the military service of Italy, Austria, or Russia. The American soldier is generally well taken care of and well treated; and while his life, in time of peace, is not exciting, it is easier and less monotonous than that of a factory operative, and it is hard to understand why he should be abnormally disposed to self-destruction. His suicidal tendency, however, is reduced by war, just as that of the civil population is, and for the same reasons.

Professional Classes Furnish Most Suicides

Statistics of self-destruction are not yet accurate and detailed enough to enable us to determine the relation that suicide bears to business employment; but it may be said, in a general way, that the occupations in which the suicide rate is lowest are those that involve rough manual labor out of doors and employ men of comparatively little educational culture, such as miners, quarrymen, shipwrights, fishermen, gardeners, bricklayers, and masons. Next come farmers, shopkeepers, and town artisans. And at the head of the list, with the highest suicide rate of all, are physicians, journalists, teachers, and lawyers. The tendency of these professional classes to commit suicide is from one and a half to three times as great as that of the population generally.

Clergymen, however, who also constitute an educated professional class, have a suicide rate which is only half that of the population as a whole, and this is undoubtedly due to the restraining influence of religion, which is much stronger in clergymen than in laymen. The relation of suicide to religion raises a number of curious and interesting questions, but, unfortunately, the religious factor is so involved with other factors in the complicated problem of self-destruction that it is almost impossible to isolate it so as to study it alone. For example, the suicide rate of Protestant Christians in the northern part of Ireland is twice that of Roman Catholics in the southern part; but here education comes in as a complication: the Protestants are generally better educated than the Catholics, and their higher suicide rate may be due to their education and not to the form of their religion. In Europe generally, the tendency to suicide is much greater among both Protestants and Catholics than among Jews; but here education, race, and economic condition all come in as complicating factors, so that it is impossible to credit the Jewish faith alone with the lower rate. In view, however, of the fact that the suicide rate of the Protestant cantons in Switzerland is nearly four times that of the Catholic cantons, it seems probable that Catholicism, as a form of religious belief, does restrain the suicidal impulse. The efficient cause may be the Catholic practice of confessing to priests, which probably gives much encouragement and consolation to unhappy but devout believers, and thus induces many of them to struggle on in spite of misfortune and depression.

The Salvation Army, in attempting to lessen self-destruction by opening "anti-suicide bureaus" in large cities, and by inviting persons who are contemplating suicide to visit these bureaus and talk over their troubles, is virtually introducing a system of confession which, so far as this particular evil is concerned, resembles that of the Catholic Church.

In view, however, of the conflicting nature of the evidence, and the extreme difficulty of disentangling religious factors from other important factors, I doubt the possibility of drawing any trustworthy conclusions with regard to the dependence of suicide upon religious belief. It may be said, as a matter of record, that the tendency to self-destruction is greatest among Protestant Christians, next largest among Roman Catholics and Orthodox Greeks, and lowest among Mohammedans and Jews; but the differences are not certainly due to religion.

The dependence of suicide upon nationality and race presents a number of problems of great interest, but of extraordinary difficulty and complexity. I can state a few of these problems, but I cannot solve any of them.

Among the highest suicide rates in Europe are those of Saxony and Denmark, and among the lowest those of Italy, Portugal, and Spain. You may perhaps conclude, from this, that the tendency to self-destruction is much greater among the Slavs and Scandinavians of the north than it is among the Latin peoples of the south, and that the differences are due to latitude or race; but your specious generalization is shattered when you discover that the suicide rates of Norway and Russia, both northern countries inhabited by Scandinavians and Slavs, are almost as low as those of Italy, Portugal, and Spain, all southern countries inhabited by Latins.

From an ethnological point of view, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway are nearly homogeneous Scandinavian states, and we should therefore expect their suicide rates to be nearly if not quite identical; but the rate of Denmark is twice that of Sweden and three times that of Norway.

The Slavs of Bohemia do not differ ethnologically from the Slavs of Dalmatia, but the suicide rate of the one group is 158 per million, while that of the other is only 14 per million. Saxony is not far away, geographically, from Belgium; but the suicide rate of the former is 324 per million, while that of the latter is only 128 per million.

I am unable to offer even a conjectural solution of the problems involved in the differences thus shown to exist between populations that are ethnologically identical, or that stand at nearly the same level of educational culture and economic well being.

Germany's High Suicide Rates

The extremely high suicide rate of the Germanic peoples long ago attracted the attention of European sociologists, but, so far as I know, it has never been satisfactorily explained. If it were limited to adults it might possibly be attributed to economic causes, particularly to the rapid development of manufacturing industry, which seems everywhere to increase the suicidal tendency; but self-destruction in Germany is almost as common among children as among grown people. Between 1883 and 1903 there were 1,125 suicides among the pupils of the public schools in Prussia alone, and most of them were of boys and girls under fifteen years of age. An investigation made by the ministry of public instruction showed that this prevalence of suicide among children was not due to the conditions of modern life in cities, inasmuch as the proportion of cases was fully as large in places of the smallest size as in crowded centers of population. It seemed to be due, rather, to an inherent suicidal tendency in the race.

Racial characteristics, however, do not by any means account for the extraordinary differences in suicide rates that we find among the European peoples, as shown in the following table:[21]

EUROPEAN PEOPLES GROUPED RACIALLY

NUMBER OF SUICIDES PER MILLION INHABITANTS

I. SLAVS

In Dalmatia (about 1896) 14 European Russia (1900) 31 Bulgaria (about 1900) 118

II. SCANDINAVIANS

In Norway (1901-'05) 65 Sweden (1900-'04) 142 Denmark (1901-'05) 227

III. LATINS

In Spain (1893) 21 Portugal (1906) 23 Italy (1901-'05) 64 France (1900-'04) 227

IV. GERMANS

In Austria (1902) 173 Prussia (1902-'06) 201 Saxony (1902-06) 324 Bavaria (1902-'06) 141

V. ENGLISH

In Ireland (1906) 34 Scotland (1905) 65 England and Wales (1906) 100 Australasia (1903) 121 United States (1907) 126

VI. ASIATICS

In Japan (1905) 209

It is difficult to assign definite or satisfactory reasons for the wide differences shown in the above table. Skelton has suggested that the low suicide rates of certain countries are due to emigration, "which provides an outlet for a great deal of misery and constitutes a hopeful alternative to suicide"; but this conjecture, although ingenious, is hardly supported by the facts. It might perhaps explain the low suicide rates of Italy and Ireland, but it does not account for the equally low suicide rate of the Russian peasants, who emigrate hardly at all, nor for the extremely high suicide rate of the Germans, who emigrate in large numbers. Neither does it throw any light upon the persistence of national suicide rates long after emigration. The generalization that seems to harmonize and explain the greatest number of facts is that suicide is most prevalent in countries where education goes hand in hand with highly developed manufacturing industry. In Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Russia the people have little education, manufacturing industries are feebly developed, and the suicide rate is low. In Saxony the percentage of illiteracy is very small, more than half of the population work in factories, and the suicide rate is the highest in Europe. I do not dare to assert that even this rude generalization is warranted by the facts; but, if it were sustained, it would seem to show that suicide is a by-product of the great, complicated machine that we call modern civilization.

Whatever may be the reasons for differences in national suicide rates, and whatever may be the causes that have produced them, there is little doubt, I think, that the rates themselves are true manifestations of national character, and that they are as permanent as the character of which they are an outcome. When, therefore, a people migrates from one place to another, it takes both its character and its suicide rate to the new location. This is clearly apparent in the vital statistics of immigrants who come from various parts of Europe to the United States. Such immigrants, as a rule, prosper here and become happier here, but the increased prosperity and happiness do not greatly affect the suicidal tendencies that they had when they were poor and wretched in their original homes. Even their descendants, born in America, keep substantially unchanged the suicide rates that they have inherited, with their character, from their European ancestors. The Germans who came here forty or fifty years ago brought a high suicide rate with them, and their descendants maintain it. The Irish, on the contrary, brought a low suicide rate to this country, and their children have it still. In the following table will be found the suicide rates of a few nationalities in Europe and of their descendants in the United States.[22]

SUICIDES PER MILLION OF POPULATION

NATIONALITIES IN EUROPE IN THE U. S.

Native Americans 68 Hungarians 114 118 Germans 213 193 French 228 220 English 100 104

In an address delivered before the Anthropological Society of Washington, D. C., on October 19, 1880, Mr. M. B. W. Hough said: "As long as the features of the ancestor are repeated in his descendants, so long will the traits of his character reappear. Language may change, customs be left behind, races may migrate from place to place and subsist on whatever the country they occupy affords; but their fundamental characteristics will survive, because they are comparatively uninfluenced by the mere accidents of nutrition." This statement is as true of suicide as it is of other manifestations of national character.

Odd Methods Employed by Suicides

Nothing is more surprising in the records of suicide than the extraordinary variety and novelty of the methods to which man has resorted in his efforts to escape from the sufferings and misfortunes of life. One would naturally suppose that a person who had made up his mind to commit suicide would do so in the easiest, most convenient, and least painful way; but the literature of the subject proves conclusively that hundreds of suicides, every year, take their lives in the most difficult, agonizing, and extraordinary ways; and that there is hardly a possible or conceivable method of self-destruction that has not been tried. When I clipped from a newspaper my first case of self-cremation with kerosene and a match, I regarded it as rather a remarkable and unusual method of taking life; but I soon discovered that self-cremation is comparatively common. When I learned that Mary Reinhardt, of New York, had sung "Rock of Ages" and had then killed herself by inhaling gas in a barrel stuffed with pillows, I thought it a curious and noteworthy case; but when I compared it with suicides that came to my knowledge later, it seemed quite simple and natural. I have well-authenticated cases in which men or women have committed suicide by hanging themselves, or taking poison, in the tops of high trees; by throwing themselves upon swiftly revolving circular saws; by exploding dynamite in their mouths; by thrusting red-hot pokers down their throats; by hugging red-hot stoves; by stripping themselves naked and allowing themselves to freeze to death on winter snow-drifts out of doors, or on piles of ice in refrigerator-cars; by lacerating their throats on barbed-wire fences; by drowning themselves head downward in barrels; by suffocating themselves head downward in chimneys; by diving into white-hot coke-ovens; by throwing themselves into craters of volcanoes; by shooting themselves with ingenious combinations of a rifle with a sewing-machine; by strangling themselves with their hair; by swallowing poisonous spiders; by piercing their hearts with corkscrews and darning-needles; by cutting their throats with hand-saws and sheep-shears; by hanging themselves with grape vines; by swallowing strips of under-clothing and buckles of suspenders; by forcing teams of horses to tear their heads off; by drowning themselves in vats of soft soap; by plunging into retorts of molten glass; by jumping into slaughter-house tanks of blood; by decapitation with home-made guillotines; and by self-crucifixion.

Of course, persons who resort to such methods as these are, in most cases, mentally unsound. A man who shoots, hangs, poisons, or drowns himself may be sane; but the man who crucifies himself, buries himself alive, cuts his throat on a barbed-wire fence, or climbs into the top of a tree to take poison, is evidently on the border-line of insanity, even if he be not a recognized lunatic.

The most prevalent methods of suicide in Europe are, first, hanging, second, drowning. In the United States they are, first, poisoning, second, shooting. About three fourths of all the persons who commit suicide in the United States use pistol or poison. The difference between European and American methods is probably due to the fact that on the other side of the Atlantic drugs and fire-arms are not so easily obtainable as they are here, and Europeans therefore resort to water and the rope as the best and surest means accessible. Police restrictions and regulations make it almost impossible for a Russian peasant to get either poison or a pistol; but all the police in the empire cannot prevent him from drowning himself in a pond, or hanging himself in his own barn.

A careful comparison of all the facts accessible seems to show that in Europe, at least, suicide bears a certain definite relation to education and manufactures; and that, as I have already said, it is a by-product of the great, complicated world-machine that we call modern civilization. Its specific causes, so far as they can be ascertained, are, on the educational side, the development of increased nervous and psychic sensibility, which makes men feel more acutely all wants, deprivations, misfortunes, and sufferings; and, on the manufacturing side, a monotony of employment which wearies and exhausts the body while it gives little exercise to the educated mind and leaves the latter free to brood over its unsatisfied longings and desires, as well as its many trials and disappointments. There are other causes, such as the growing disproportion between wants generally and the means of gratification generally; alcoholism; unhealthful work, especially in manufacturing districts; barrack and tenement-house life; and all the evils incident to poverty, overcrowding, and bad sanitary conditions in cities. So far as I can see, these causes, at present, are not removable. Education must continue to intensify sensibility and increase the number of men's wants, and the great economic machine must grind on, even though it crush thousands of human beings, every year, in the cogs of its innumerable wheels. A high suicide rate is part of the price that we pay for the educational and material achievements upon which we pride ourselves. We have greatly multiplied the means of human happiness, but whether, on the whole, we have increased the sum total of human happiness is perhaps an open question. In any event, the high and rapidly increasing suicide rate shows that we are pushing the weaklings to the wall.

The question of what can be done to lessen the suicide tendency and check this great waste of human power and energy brings me to the only important cause of self-destruction which seems to me removable, and that is newspaper publicity. No argument is needed to prove that man is essentially an imitative animal. In dress, in behavior, in speech, in modes of thought, and in social conventions, we are all prone to do what we see others do; and when unhappy men and women learn, from the newspapers, that scores of other unhappy people are daily escaping from their troubles through the always open door of suicide, when familiarity with the idea of self-destruction deprives the act of all its natural terror, it is not at all surprising that they yield to what seems to be the general current of their social environment. I have, in my own collection of material, a surprisingly large number of cases in which the suicidal act may be traced directly to newspaper publicity and imitation; but I must limit myself to a single striking illustration—the suicidal epidemic in Emporia, Kansas, in the summer of 1901. As a result, apparently, of the publication of the details of two or three suicides of people prominent in that little Kansas town, there broke out an epidemic of self-destruction which culminated in the sunny, flowery month of June, and which carried the annual suicide rate from about 90 per million to 1,665 per million—a rate five times greater than that of Saxony. Mr. Morse, the mayor of the city, consulted the Board of Health, and decided to stop the publication of the details of suicides in the local papers, even if it should require the employment of force. He issued a proclamation, on the 16th of June, in which he said: "I have consulted the Board of Health, and if the Emporia papers do not comply with my request, I shall have a right to stop, and I will stop summarily, the publication of these suicide details, under the law providing for the suppression of epidemics. There is clearly an epidemic in this city, and although it is mental, it is none the less deadly. Its contagion may be clearly shown to come from what is known in medicine as the psychic suggestion, found in the publication of the details of suicides. If the paper on which the local journals are printed had been kept in a place infected with small-pox, I could demand that the journals stop using that paper, or stop publication. If they spread another contagion—the contagious suggestion of suicide—I believe the liberty of the press is not to be considered before the public welfare, and that the courts would sustain me in using force to prevent the publication of newspapers containing matter clearly deleterious to the public health."

I believe that the reasoning of Mayor Morse is perfectly sound, and that the position taken by him is absolutely impregnable. The prevention of the publication of suicides in the newspapers of a State would require a special legislative act, but it would probably do more to lessen the suicidal tendency than any other single measure that could be taken. In the winter of 1902, Representative Jenkins introduced in the National House of Representatives a bill making periodicals containing details of suicides unmailable; but I think it was never reported from committee.

The Emotional Temperament as a Cause

There is one other way in which the suicide rate may possibly be lowered, or at least held in check, and that is through the cultivation of what may be called the heroic spirit. We are becoming too emotional and sentimental, and too much inclined to regard weakness with sympathy, instead of with the contempt that it generally deserves. In the language of the prize ring, the pugilist who lies down while he can yet stand and see is called a "quitter." It would be harsh and unjust to apply to all suicides this opprobrious name; but there can be little doubt, I think, that the majority of them are weaklings who give up and lie down while they still have a fighting chance.

Readers of shipping news may still remember the wreck of a German kerosene steamer on the wildest, most precipitous part of the coast of Newfoundland, in February, 1901. The steamer took fire during a heavy winter gale, and the captain ran her ashore, at the nearest point of land, with the hope of saving the lives of the crew. She struck on a submerged reef in a little cove, about an eighth of a mile from a coast which was three or four hundred feet high and as precipitous as a wall. When she was first seen by a few fishermen at daylight, her boats were gone, and all of her crew had apparently perished except three men. Two were standing on the bridge, and one was lashed aloft in the fore-rigging. About ten o'clock in the forenoon a tremendous sea carried away the bridge and the two men on it, and they were seen no more. At three o'clock in the afternoon the solitary survivor,—the man in the fore-rigging,—who was evidently suffering intensely from hunger and cold, unlashed himself, threshed his arms against his body for five minutes to restore the circulation in them, and then took off his coat, waved his hand to the fishermen on top of the cliff, climbed down the shrouds, and plunged into the sea—but not to commit suicide. He swam to the shore, made three attempts in different places to get a footing among the rocks at the base of the cliff, but was swept away every time by the surf, and finally abandoned the attempt as hopeless. At that crisis in the struggle ninety-nine men out of a hundred would have given up and allowed themselves to drown; but this man was not a "quitter." He turned his face again seaward, struck out for the half-submerged ship, and after a long and desperate struggle succeeded in reaching her and getting on board. He climbed the fore-shrouds, waved his hand to the pitying but powerless fishermen on the edge of the cliff, and lashed himself again in the rigging. At intervals, until dark, he made signals to the fishermen to show that he was yet alive. At daybreak on the following morning he could still be seen in the fore-rigging, but his head had fallen on his breast and he was motionless. He had frozen to death in the night. That man died, as a man in adverse circumstances ought to die, fighting to the last. You may call it foolish, and say that he might better have ended his sufferings by allowing himself to drown when he found that he could not make a landing at the base of the cliff; but deep down in your hearts you pay secret homage to his courage, his endurance, and his indomitable will. He was defeated at last, but, so long as he had consciousness, neither fire nor cold nor tempest could break down his manhood.

The Caucasian mountaineers have a proverb which says: "Heroism is endurance for one moment more." That proverb recognizes the fact that in this world the human spirit, with its dominating force, the will, may be and ought to be superior to all bodily sensations and all accidents of environment. We should not only feel, but we should teach, by our conversation and by our literature, that, in the struggle of life, it is essentially a noble thing and a heroic thing to die fighting. In a recent psychological story called "My Friend Will," Charles F. Lummis pays a striking tribute to the power of the human mind over the accidents of life and chance when he makes his "friend Will" say: "I am bigger than anything that can happen to me. All these things—sorrow, misfortune, and suffering—are outside my door. I'm in the house and I've got the key!"



PRAIRIE DAWN

BY WILLA SIBERT CATHER

A crimson fire that vanquishes the stars; A pungent odor from the dusty sage; A sudden stirring of the huddled herds; A breaking of the distant table-lands Through purple mists ascending, and the flare Of water ditches silver in the light; A swift, bright lance hurled low across the world; A sudden sickness for the hills of home.

—From April Twilights.



THE DOINGS OF THE DEVIL

BY HARVEY J. O'HIGGINS

ILLUSTRATIONS BY THOMAS FOGARTY

Mrs. Cregan wept, and her tears were ludicrous. She was as fat as a Falstaff. Her features were as ill-suited for the expression of grief as a circus clown's. She had not even a channel in her plump cheeks to drain the tears from the corners of her eyes; and the slow drops, large and unctuous, trickled down her round jowl and soaked into her bonnet-strings, leaving her cheeks as fresh and as ruddy in the sunlight as if they had been merely wet with perspiration. Her eyes stared, unpuckered, apparently unconscious that they wept. Her mouth was tight in an expression of resentful determination. Only her little round chin trembled—like a child's.

And yet Mrs. Cregan was as nearly heart-broken as she had ever been in her life. She was leaving her husband; what was more grievous to her, she was leaving her home; she was on the streets of New York, with her small savings in her greasy purse—clasped tightly in her two hands under her "Sunday cape," that was trimmed with fringe and tassels in a way to remind you of a lambrequin. She did not know where to go. There was no one to whom she could turn for aid, and she would not go to any one for pity. Behind her was the wreck of a breakfast table—the visible symbol of her ruined home—with a cursing Irishman, whom nobody could live with any longer, shouting, "Your house, is it? I'll show yeh whose house it is! I'll show yeh! I'll break ev'ry danged thing in the place!" Before her were the crooked byways of what had once been "Greenwich village," as quiet as a desert, and as indifferent, in the early morning radiance, with shuttered windows and closed doors.

The domestic peace of those old streets made her own homelessness the more pitiful to her. She felt as she had felt once before—years before—in her childhood, when she had set sail with her parents for America. It had been a cold day; and the mists had steamed up horridly from the water, with a desolate, wet sea-odor; and the memory of the sunlight on green fields and the warm perfume of the land had been like a longing for health and daylight to the darkness of a death-bed. The future had threatened her with the terrors of an unknown world. The past—despite its poverty and starvation—had been as dear as life. She had suffered all those pangs of dissolution that assail the home-loving Irish when they have to leave what association has made dear to them; for, with the Irish, familiarity does not breed contempt but affection.

She suffered these same miseries now. She saw her home through tears of regret, though unhappiness had driven her from it. And her lips were set in a determination never to return to Cregan, though her chin trembled with pity of herself in the determination.

Some distance behind her came a smaller woman, as shrunken, as withered, and as yellow as an old leaf. Even her shoes seemed to have dried and shriveled, curling up at the toes. And she fluttered along in the light morning breeze, holding back against it, on her heels, with an odd effect of being carried forward faster than she wished to go.

She was Mrs. Byrne, from the floor below Mrs. Cregan's flat, and she had been starting out on a secret errand of her own when she heard the quarrel overhead and stopped to hear the end of it. There was something guilty in her manner, and she was evidently struggling between her desire to reach the next street unseen by Mrs. Cregan and her desire to know what had happened in the Cregan flat. Her curiosity proved the stronger.

She let the wind blow her alongside her friend's portly despair. She said, in the hoarse whisper that was all she had left of her voice: "Is it yerself, Missus Cregan? Yuh're off to choorch early this mornin'."

Mrs. Cregan looked around, blinking to clear her eyes. "Choorch?" she said, on the plaintiveness of a high note that broke in her throat.

"Yuh're cryin', woman!". Her look of craftiness had changed at once to one of startled distress. "Come back out o' this with yuh." She caught Mrs. Cregan's arm. "It's no thing to be doin' on the street! Come back, now. Where're yuh goin'?"

Mrs. Cregan marched stolidly ahead and carried her neighbor with her. "I've quit 'm."

"Quit who?"

"Himsilf.... Dinny."

Mrs. Byrne expressed her emotion and showed her tact by silently compressing her lips.

"I've quit 'im, fer good an' all." She stroked a tear down her cheek with a thick forefinger. "I'll niver go back. Niver!"

"Come away with yuh, Mary Cregan," Mrs. Byrne cried, in her breathy huskiness. "At your age! Faith, yuh're as flighty as one o' them girls with the pink silk petticoats. He's yer husban', ain't he? D'yuh think yuh were married over the broomstick? Come an' behave yerself like a decent woman. What'd Father Dumphy say to this, think yuh?"

"He's a man. I know what he'd say. He'd tell me to go back to Cregan. I'll niver go back. Niver!"

"Yuh won't! What'll yuh do, then? Where'll yuh go to?"

"I'll niver go back. Niver! He's broke me best chiny—an' kicked the leg off the chair—an' overtoorned the table—an' ordered me out o' the little bit o' home I been all these years puttin' together. The teapot th' ol' man brought from Ireland—the very teapot—smashed to smithereens! An' the little white dishes with the gilt trimmin's I had to me weddin' day, Mrs. Byrne! There was the poor things all broke to bits!" She stopped to point at the sidewalk, as if the wreckage lay there before her. "All me little bit o' chiny. All of it. All of it, Mrs. Byrne. Ev'ry bit! Boorsted!"

Her tears choked her. She could not express the piercing irreparability of the injury. It would not have been so bad if he had beaten her; a hurt will heal. But the innocent, wee cups—and the fat old brown teapot—and the sweet little chair with its pretty legs, carved and turned so daintily! She had washed them and wiped them, and dusted and polished them, and been so careful of them and felt so proud of them, for twenty years past. And, now, there they were lying, all in bits—past mending—gone forever. And they so pretty and so harmless.

The crash as they fell on the floor had sounded in her ears like the scream of a child murdered.

She started forward again, determinedly. "I'll niver go back to 'm. He can have his house to himsilf.... What do I care for Father Dumphy? He wants nothin' but the dime I leaves at the choorch doore, an' the dime I drops on the plate! Whin me poorse's impty, he'll not bother his head about me!"

"Shame on yuh!" Mrs. Byrne wheezed, with her eye on the house she was passing. "Yuh talk no better than a Prod'stunt."

"An' if I was a Prod'stint," she cried, "I'd not have to pay money iv'ry time I wanted to hear mass. I'd not be out on the street here, not knowin' where I'm goin' to, ner how I'm to live. It's thim that knows how to take care o' their own—givin' the women worrk, an' takin' the childer off to the farrms, an' all the like o' that. You Dogans——"

Mrs. Byrne glanced about her fearfully, "Stop yer talk, now. Stop yer talk. Stop it before someone hears yuh makin' a big fool o' yerself."

"I'll not stop it. What do I care who hears me? I'm goin' off from here fer good an' all. 'Twill know me no more. 'Twill not. I'm done with it all. I'm done with it." She held out her purse. "I've got me bit o' money. I'll hire me a little room up-town. I'm done with him an' Father Dumphy an' the whole dang lot o' yuz. Slavin' an' savin' fer nothin' at all. I'll worrk fer mesilf now, an' none other. Neither Cregan ner the choorch ner no one ilse 'll get a penny's good o' me no more. I got no one in the wide worrld but mesilf to look to, an' I'll go it alone."

Mrs. Byrne was a little woman of a somewhat sinister aspect, her dull eyes very deep in their wrinkles, her nose pushed aside out of the perpendicular, her long lips stretched tightly over protruding teeth. She was as curious as an old monkey; but it was not only her curiosity that made her the busiest gossip and the most charitable "good soul" in the street; she had her share of human kindness, and if she was as crafty as a hypocrite, it was because she enjoyed handling men and women, like a politician.

Seeing that Mrs. Cregan was beyond the reach of shame or the appeal of the priest, she said: "Well, I don't blame yuh, woman. Cregan's a fool—like all the rest o' the men. An' yerself such a good manager. Well, well! Yer rooms was that purty 't 'ud make yuh wistful. Where will yuh be goin'?"

"I dunno."

"Have yuh had yer breakfast?"

Mrs. Cregan shook her head.

"Come back, then, an' have a bite with me."

"Niver! I'll niver go back."

Mrs. Byrne hitched up her shawl. "Come along then to the da-ary restr'unt. There's no one home to miss me. Ill take a bit o' holiday, this mornin', meself. I've been wantin' to taste one o' those batter cakes they make in the restr'unt windahs, this long enough."

"Yuh've ate yer breakfast."

"I have not" Mrs. Byrne replied. "I was off to the grocer to buy some sugar when yuh stopped me."

It was a lie. She had, in fact; started out, secretly, on a guilty errand which she should not acknowledge.

"It's a lonely meal I'd 've been havin'," she said, "with Byrne down at the boiler house an' the boy off on his run."

Mrs. Cregan did not reply, and they came to Sixth Avenue without more words. They paused before a dairy restaurant that advertised its "Surpassing Coffee" in white-enamel letters on its shop-front windows. Mrs. Cregan's hunger drew her in, but slowly; and Mrs. Byrne followed, coughing to conceal her embarrassment.



II

It was the first time that Mrs. Byrne had ever sat down in any public restaurant, except the eating-halls at Coney Island (where she went with "basket parties") or the ice-cream "parlors" at Fort George. And she glanced about her at tiled walls and mosaic floors with a furtiveness that was none the less critical for being so sly. "It's eatin' in a bathroom we are," she whispered. "An' will yuh look at the cup yonder. The sides of it are that thick there's scarce room fer the coffee in it! Well, well! It do beat the Dutch! They're drawin' the drink out of a boiler big enough fer wash day." The approach of a waitress silenced her. When she saw that Mrs. Cregan was not going to speak, she looked up at the girl with a bargain-counter keenness. "Have y' any pancakes fit t' eat? How much are they? Ten cents! Fer how many? Fer three pancakes? Fer three! D'yuh hear that?" she appealed to Mrs. Cregan. "Come home with me, that's a good woman. It's a sin to pay it. Three cents fer a pancake! Aw, come along out o' this. Ten cents! We c'u'd get two loaves o' bread fer the money an' live on it fer a week!"

But Mrs. Cregan was beyond the reach of practicalities, and she ordered her buckwheat cakes and coffee with an air that was mournfully distrait. Mrs. Byrne made a vain attempt to get her own cakes from the waitress for five cents, and then resigned herself to the senseless extravagance. "Yuh'll not make yer own livin' an' eat the likes o' this," she grumbled asthmatically. "Yuh'd better be savin' yer money."

Mrs. Cregan was looking at the thick china with a sort of aggrieved despondence. (It was almost the expression of a bereaved mother looking at one of her neighbor's children and thinking it a healthy, ugly brat whom nobody would have missed!) She stared at the bare walls and the bare tables of the restaurant, and found the place, by comparison with her own cozy flat, as unhome-like as the waiting-room of a railroad station—the waiting-room of a railroad station when you have said good-bye to your past and the train has not yet arrived to carry you to your future.

As her pancakes were served to her, she bent over the plate to hide a tear that trickled down her nose. It splashed on the piece of food that she raised to her mouth. She ate it—tear and all.

"An' them no bigger than the top of a tomato can!" Mrs. Byrne was muttering.

Mrs. Cregan ate, and the food helped, to stop her tears. It was the strong coffee, at last, that brought her back her voice. "If it'd b'en him, he'd 'a' gone an' got drunk," she said, wiping her cheeks with her napkin. "The men have the best of it. Us women have to take it all starin' sober."

"They're no more than children," Mrs. Byrne replied, "an' they're to be treated as such. Sure, Cregan couldn't live without yuh. He'd have no buttons to his pants in a week."

"An' him!" Mrs. Cregan cried. "Iver, since the Raypublicuns got licked, there's be'n no gettin' on with him at all. Thim Sunday papers 've toorned his head. He's all blather about his rights an' his wrongs. Th' other moornin' didn't I try to get on his bus from the wrong side o' the crossin', an' he bawls at me: 'Th' other side! Th' other side! Yuh're no better than any one ilse!' An' I had to chase through the mud after him! The little wizened runt! He's talkin' like an arnachist! An' that's why he smashed me dish. He'll have no one say 'No' to 'im.... Ah, Mrs. Byrne, niver marry a man older than yersilf."

"Thank yuh," Mrs. Byrne replied with hoarse sarcasm. "I'm not likely to, at my age." She added, consolingly: "Cregan's young fer his years. Drivin' a Fift' Avenah bus is fine, preservin', outdoor work."

"It is that!" And Mrs. Cregan's tone remarked that the fact was the more to be deplored. "He'll be crankier an' crabbeder the older he grows." She dipped to her coffee and swallowed hard.

Mrs. Byrne had screwed up her eyes to squint at an idea that could not well be looked in the face. When she spoke it was to say slyly: "God forbid! But they do go off sometimes in a puff. He looks as if he'd live fer long enough, thank Heaven. But yuh never can tell."



Mrs. Cregan blinked, held her hand for a moment, and then began hastily to fill her mouth with food. The silence that ensued was long enough to take on an appearance of guilt.

It was long enough, too, for Mrs. Byrne to "contrive a procedure."

"Yuh never can tell," she began, "unless yuh have doin's with the devil—like them gipsies that see what's comin' by lookin' in the flat o' yer hand. There's one o' them aroun' the corner, an' they say she told Minnie Doyle the name o' the man she was to marry. An' he married her, at that!" Mrs. Cregan looked blank. Mrs. Byrne leaned forward to her. "I never whispered it to a livin' soul but yerself—but it was her told Mrs. Gunn that her last was to be a boy. A good month ahead! An' when she saw it was true she had no peace o' mind till she heard the priest say the words over the poor child an' saw that the sprinkle o' holy water didn't bubble off him like yuh'd sprinkled it on a hot stove." Mrs. Cregan's vacant regard had slowly gathered a gleam of startled intelligence. "An' if I was yerself, Mrs. Cregan—not knowin' where I was to go to, ner how I was to live—I'd go an' have a talk with her before I went further, d'yuh see?"

"God forbid! 'Tis a mortal sin."

"'Tis not. When I told Father Dumphy what I'd done, he called me an ol' fool an' gave me an extry litany fer penance. What's a litany!"

"I'd be scared o' me life!"

"Yuh w'd not. Come along with me. I was goin'. I got troubles o' me own. Never mind that. There's nothin' to be scared of. Nothin' at all. No one'll see us. I been there meself, many's the time, an' no one knows it."

III

Mrs. Byrne entered the "reception rooms" of Madame Wampa, "clairvoyant, palmist, and card-reader," with the propitiatory smile of the woman who knows she is doing wrong but is prepared to argue that there is "no great harm into it." She was followed by Mrs. Cregan, as guiltily reverential as if she were an altar boy who had been persuaded to join in some mischievous trespass on the "sanctuary." Madame Wampa received them, professionally insolent in her indifference. Mrs. Byrne explained that she wanted only a "small card reading" for twenty-five cents. Madame Wampa said curtly: "Sit down!"

They sat down.

She had been a music-hall singer when her husband was a sleight-of-hand artist, "The Great Malino, the Wizard of Milan." Her voice had long since left her; she had nothing of her beauty but its yellow ruins; and her life was made up of the consideration of two great grievances: first, that her husband was always idle, and second, that her landlord overcharged her for her rooms on account of the nature of her "business."



She saw nothing in Mrs. Byrne and Mrs. Cregan but their inability to help her pay her rent. She said: "I give a full trance readin' with names, dates, and all questions answered, for a dollar, or a full card readin' for fifty cents. It's impossible to tell much for a quarter."

Mrs. Byrne shook her head.

Madame Wampa said "Very well," in a tone of haughty resignation. She turned to a booth that had been made of turkey-red chintz in one corner of the room. She lit a small red lamp and sat down before a little bamboo table. A toy angel from a Christmas tree hung above her. A stuffed alligator sat up, on its hind legs, beside her—a porcelain bell hung on a red ribbon about its neck—to grin with a cheerful uncanniness on the rigmaroles of magic.

She said: "Come!"

Mrs. Byrne entered the gipsy tent, and Mrs. Cregan was left alone in the atmosphere of a bespangled past reduced to its lowest terms of imposture. There were strings of Indian corn hanging from the ceiling, Chinese coins and rabbits' feet on the walls, a horseshoe wrapped in tinfoil over the door, and a collection of absurdly grotesque bric-a-brac on shelves and tables. There were necklaces of lucky beads for sale, and love charms in the shape of small glass hearts enclosing imitation shamrocks, and dream books and manuals of palmistry and gipsy cards for fortune-telling, and photographs of Madame Wampa in a gorgeous evening dress trimmed with feathers. Over all was a smoky odor of kerosene from an oil heater.

Mrs. Cregan looked from side to side with a vaguely worried feeling that it must take a power of dusting and wiping to keep such a clutter of things clean; and this feeling gradually rose into her consciousness above the dull stupefaction of her grief.

Madame Wampa, in the chintz tent, recited without expression: "Though you travel east or west, may your luck be the best." She dropped her voice to a toneless mutter about a "journey," and some papers that were to be signed, and a "false" dark woman who pretended to be Mrs. Byrne's friend, but would do her an injury.

Mrs. Cregan sat as if she were waiting for her turn to enter a confessional, her hands folded, her head dropped. She heard Mrs. Byrne whispering hoarsely, but she did not listen.

Madame Wampa said, at last, wearily: "Very well. Send her in."

She shuffled her cards and sighed. She was professionally acquainted with many griefs, and she took her toll of them. They meant no more to her than sickness does to a quack. She looked up at Mrs. Cregan's entrance almost absent-mindedly.

But there was, at once, something so helplessly stricken about the woman's plump despair, so infantile, so touchingly ridiculous, that Madame Wampa even smiled faintly and moved the bamboo table to let Mrs. Cregan squeeze into the chair that waited her. She sat down and held out her money in her palm. Madame Wampa took her hand. "I will tell you," she said. "I will see it in your hand."

She crossed the palm three times with the coin, and began in the monotonous voice and with the expressionless face of the fakir: "You are married. Many years. I see many years. You have not been happy. Monday is your unlucky day. Do not begin anything on Monday. You are thinkin' of takin' a journey—somethin'—some change. It will not end well. You had better remain without the change—whatever it is. There is a man—a man who has horses—who drives horses, perhaps. I see horses. He will meet with an accident—I think, a runaway—a collision, perhaps. He will be hurt. He will be—hurt. Yes. He is an old man. It will be bad. He may die. Perhaps. He is a relative—related to you. You must beware of animals. One will do you an injury. You will never be rich—but comfortable. The best of your life is comin'. You will have your wish."

She had finished, but Mrs. Cregan did not move. She had drawn back in her chair. Her mouth had loosened; her hand lay limp on the table; all her intelligence seemed to have concentrated in her eyes in an expression of guilty and horrified surprise. She said faintly: "Is't Cregan?"

Madame Wampa shrugged one shoulder in her red kimono. "The lines do not say." She blew out the lamp and rose from the table. "That is all. It is impossible to tell much for a quarter. I give a full trance readin', with names, dates, and all questions answered——"

Mrs. Cregan "blessed" herself,—with the sign of the cross,—gasped, "God forgi' me!" and blundered out into the room. Mrs. Byrne cried: "What's wrong?" Mrs. Cregan did not hear. She stampeded to the door in the ponderous fright of a panic-stricken elephant. Her one thought was to find a place where she might get on her knees.... Cregan! It was himself! It was Dinny! Killed, maybe! She had blasphemed against the Church and Father Dumphy, and she must pray. She must pray for herself and for Cregan. She would "take back" everything she had said. She would never leave him. She would be good.

Mrs. Byrne tugged at her cape. "Whist! Whist! What's come over yuh, woman? What is it?"

"It's Dinny!"

That was all that could be had out of her. Even when she reached her home again, and Mrs. Byrne followed her in, afraid of leaving the frightened woman alone lest she should "blab" the whole secret to the first person she met,—even then Mrs. Cregan could not speak until she had gathered up the broken dishes and propped the broken chair against the wall, as frantically as if she were trying to conceal the evidence of a crime. Then she sank down on a sofa and burst into tears. "The poor creature!" she wept. "The poor ol' man. Poor Dinny!"

Mrs. Byrne folded her arms. "Mary Cregan," she said, in hoarse disgust, "when yuh've done makin' a fool o' yerself, I'll trouble yuh to listen to me. Now! If y' ever breathe a word o' this to Cregan, he'll laugh himself blind! Mind yuh that! He'll not believe yuh. No one'll believe yuh. No one! An' if yuh don't want somethin' turrible to happen, yuh'll say nothin', but yuh'll behave yerself like a decent married woman an' go to church an' say yer prayers against trouble. That woman with the cards says whatever th' old Nick puts into her head to say."

Mrs. Cregan cried: "She saw it in me hand!"

Mrs. Byrne drew herself up like a prophetess. "Dip yer hand in holy water, an' yuh'll hear no more of it. Now, then. Behave yerself."

"I was wishin' it!" she wailed. "I was wishin' somethin' 'd happen to him to leave me free here in m' own home!"

"An' that," Mrs. Byrne said, "is the judgment o' heaven on yuh fer carin' more fer yer dishes than yuh did fer yer husband. Yuh're a good manager, Mrs. Cregan, but yuh've been a dang poor wife. Think of yer man first an' yer house after, an' yuh'll be a happier woman, I tell yuh."

"I will that. I will," Mrs. Cregan wept, "if he's spared to me."

"Never fear," Mrs. Byrne said drily. "He'll be spared to yuh."

* * * * *

And he has been spared to her. At first he was suspicious of her subdued manner and remorseful gentleness; and for a long time he watched her, very warily, with an eye for treachery. Then he understood that she had succumbed to his masterful handling of her, and he was masculinely proud of his conquest.



Mrs. Cregan is beginning to hope that she has warded off the predicted bad fortune by her devoutness, but she still has her fears. "Twas the doin's o' the divil," she says to Mrs. Byrne.

"He had a hand in it, no doubt," Mrs. Byrne agrees. "An' how's Cregan?" she says, "Well, I'm glad o' that.... An' the new dishes?... Good luck to them. Yuh're off early to church again."



YOUNG HENRY AND THE OLD MAN

BY JOHN M. OSKISON

The ranchman and I were discussing courage. I had that day seen young Henry Thomas mount and ride a horse which had bucked in a way to impress the imagination. I spoke of it.

"Was it the gray?" queried Brunner, and when I said it was, he scoffed. "That horse is trained to buck just the way young Henry wants him, and he hobbles the stirrups."

Brunner's scepticism was disappointing. I ventured to speak of another instance that seemed to illustrate the nerve of Henry Thomas:

"Didn't he help capture the 'Kep' Queen bunch of outlaws a few years ago? I've heard he showed nerve then."

"I reckon you have." Brunner glanced across at me, then stooped to dig a live coal out of the ashes. He held it for half a minute before packing it into the bowl of his pipe, shifting it imperceptibly in his toughened hand as he studied the backlog. When his tobacco was burning steadily, he spoke:

"I can tell you the truth about young Henry—and the old man, too." I thought his tone changed. "Twenty-four years ago I came to this Indian country. For twelve years I rode with the posses as a deputy marshal and for twelve years now I've been running cattle here on Cabin Creek. I've been all over the Territory. I know every man in the Cherokee Nation that ever handled a hot iron. And I know young Henry Thomas, too.

"It was in 1882 that Queen 'went bad,' and began to hold up trains on the 'Katy' and 'Frisco roads. All of that fall and winter we were after him and his gang, but we never got a sight of them. They were 'goers' all right, and when we came up to a two-weeks-old camp-fire they'd built, we thought we were lucky.

"For six months after the first of the year they did nothing. We heard that Queen was in California. Then, in June, 1883, while I was at Muscogee, I got a telegram from 'Cap' White asking me to report at once to him at Red Oak. Paden Tolbert and I caught the eleven o'clock train up, dropping off at Red Oak at one in the morning. 'Cap' met us, told us he had two men ready, and that the five of us would start for Pryor Creek at once.

"It was a fifteen-mile ride. We planned to pick up four men from the ranches on the way down, and get to 'Kep' Queen's camp at daylight. We had been told that there were five men in the camp, that they had been in the Pryor Creek woods for two days, and that it was their plan to hold up the flyer from the north next evening. 'Cap' White was sure of his information, and he had decided upon the men he wanted from the ranches. The two Thomases—old man Henry and young Henry—were picked out, for there was no one else in the family except a younger brother of eighteen, who has since died. 'Bud' Ryder and Jim Kelso were the other two—both good on horses and handy with a gun.

"'Cap' was proud of his posse when he finally got us together. The Thomases came out and joined us like bees a-swarming. The young fellow was all up in the air with excitement, like a boy going to a circus. He was so brash that at first we couldn't keep him from riding on ahead of the rest of us; you'd think he wanted to bring in the bunch all by himself.

"That was all right; brash, eager young fellows ain't always so brave when trouble begins, but they steady into good fighters. It's hard enough to get 'em that want to go after a man like 'Cap' Queen at all."

Brunner told me then of the fight in the woods at daybreak. It was his summary of young Henry Thomas that interested me.

One of the men whom White took from Red Oak led the posse to the camp on Pryor Creek. It was on a ledge on a hillside. The fires had been built under a jutting rock. Only a bush wren could have hidden its nest more completely—Bruce had been lucky in spying it out. He told White that there was but one unprotected approach—a long unused trail that led down from the cliff-top and ended in a briar tangle fifty feet above the ledge. That trail, it was evident, 'Kep' Queen did not know existed.

Young Thomas had ridden with Brunner, seeking him out, as the novice always seeks out the veteran, to practise his valorous speeches upon. For four hours young Thomas talked about bravery, with illustrations. From one incident to another he skipped, for the history of outlawry west of St. Louis, in the last generation, was more familiar to him than many another topic he had gathered from books. Brunner could have set him right on the facts many times, but what was the use?

After a time the youngster's monologue became a sort of soothing hum, for which the other was grateful. "I was cross and sleepy and chilly and nervous," Brunner explained, "and the boy's gabble rested me."

I gathered that the young man was more excited than he cared to confess, even to himself. He talked, as others whistle, to "keep up his courage." Yet the implication that he needed distraction or stimulation would have angered him. Youth and courage are twins, or should be, and a man of twenty-two takes it for granted. At forty, a man may confess to turning tail and yet save his self-respect. I had heard Brunner tell of "back downs" that would have shamed a young village constable, and it had never occurred to me to question his courage.

It was only in the last mile of their ride that the chatter of young Thomas really became audible to Brunner.

"I woke up," he said, "and actually listened to him. I don't remember exactly what he was saying, but this was the idea: 'All of you fellows that chase outlaws make too much fuss about it.' Well, some of us do, though the newspapers and the wind-bags that follow us around make ten times the fuss we do. He went on to say that the only way to nab a horse-thief or an express robber was to go right up to him, don't you know, like the little boy went up to the sign-post that he thought was a ghost.

"It's a good theory and generally works. I told him so, and then apologized for doing any other way. The way I thought about this business of a deputy marshal's was the way an old soldier thinks about war. I was hired to get the criminals, and not to be caught by the criminals, to shoot the bad man, if I had to, but not to be shot by the bad man if there was any way to help it. One way to help it is to run and hide. It's a good way, too, for I've tried it."

The young man roused Brunner's curiosity. It was possible that he might be of the exceptional breed that puts a fine theory to the test of action.

"I decided to watch him," the ranchman told me, "and see if he would play up to his big talk. When we left our ponies, half a mile from the camp, I pretended to argue with 'Cap' White, told him he ought to leave young Thomas with the horses and not get such a boy as that all shot up. 'Cap' caught my point and begged him to stay, but, of course, he wouldn't hear of it. 'I'll stick to Brunner,' says he.

"'All right,' says I, 'come on.'

"When we started afoot, we trailed out single file, and I noticed that old man Thomas waited for the boy and me to pass him, dropping in right behind his son. 'Cap' was in front, then Bruce, then Paden Tolbert, then Ryder and Kelso, and then I and the Thomases. The old man was at the tail of the procession.

"Old man Thomas was the kind that you never think about one way or the other. You said to yourself that he would do his share, whatever it amounted to, and you wouldn't have to bother about him. That's your notion of him, ain't it?"

It was my notion of the older Thomas. I don't think a more commonplace looking man ever lived. Brunner told me that he had not changed in fourteen years.

"'Young Henry swells around and talks big; the old man he says nothing and chaws tobacco,' That's the way people size 'em up around here." Brunner thus confirmed my own impression of the pair.

"What a man can see out of the back of his head," Brunner went on, "is a lot different from what comes in front of his eyes. He feels a lot that don't make a sound and that ain't visible. I did see, out of the corner of my eye, that young Henry Thomas was dropping behind me little by little, but I didn't see why it was he moved up again. I know why, though. The old man had ordered him up—not in words, you understand, for I could have heard a whisper in the still dawn, the way we were snaking it over the trail. From that time on, every foot of the way, the old man drove the boy. You ask me how, and I can't tell you. There wasn't a word, not a motion that I could see, but all the time it was one man driving the other as plain as could be. And it wasn't easy. I felt that young Henry was worse than balky, that he would have broke through the bushes and run off screaming if that old man had taken his eyes off of him for ten seconds.

"A quarter of a mile it was, and we went slow—twenty feet forward picking our way, then the eight of us would stop to listen. If you ever get a chance, ask young Henry how long that trail was. If he don't stop to think, he'll tell you we crawled through the bushes for five miles, but if he remembers his part as the hero of the fight, he'll say, 'Oh, we sneaked a hundred yards or so before lighting into Queen's bunch.'"

The trail from above ended in a briar tangle fifty feet up the hill from the ledge on which four of the five outlaws slept. The fifth man, posted as a sentry, was on the lower trail, somewhere out of sight of the party led by "Cap" White. When the deputies came up to the briars, therefore, they could see no one. As soon as the four sleepers came out of shelter, however, White's men could cover them with their guns.

What had to be done, obviously, was to rouse the four outlaws without revealing the presence of the deputies above. It could be done by some one in the woods below the ledge. But the outpost was down there to reckon with. They could not all be trapped merely by waiting, for they would come out, after waking, one by one; and White wanted the whole bunch.

It was decided that three men should be sent, by a round-about trail, down to the creek; that they should follow it up until they got opposite to the ledge; and that they should then rouse the sleeping men. They were also to find the sentry and capture him. The risk was that the sentry might discover the three first and spoil the chance to take him. The detail might be dangerous, though with luck it should prove easy.

Brunner was assigned to lead the three. Young Thomas and Kelso were named by White as the other two, but Brunner, who had been aware of that duel on the trail, said he preferred the old man to Jim Kelso.

They beat back for a short distance, then, separating, dropped down the steep hillside to the creek. In open order, they went forward quietly, slowly; they might come upon 'Kep' Queen's outpost at any turn. Now and then they came in sight of one another. Each time Brunner saw that the old man was edging closer to his son. Still there was no word spoken—only a grim old man's gray eyes were fixed upon a young man's shifting, over-bright eyes, and the young man moved on, cautiously.

Brunner held close to the creek bank; the old man was twenty yards away and moving farther out as he approached his son. So they advanced, abreast, until they came out upon the trail leading up to the ledge. Then Brunner saw old man Thomas run, with short, noiseless steps, to young Henry's side and point up the trail. Hidden from both and out of sight of what had attracted the old man's attention, Brunner yet knew what was happening. Farther up the trail was the sentry, half asleep in the chill dawn.

Brunner saw, as he himself came up cautiously, that the old man was whispering to young Henry. He grasped the boy's arm, half-shoving him forward and pointing with his rifle. The youngster moved a step, then turned with a look of utter panic on his face. His father's eyes glared; a sort of savage anger blazed on his face. From his grip on young Henry's arm, the old man's hand sprang to the boy's throat. There was one fierce, terrible shake, a sort of gurgling scream that expressed terror, and protest, too, but which was scarcely audible to Brunner, twenty feet away. In the tone of a man enraged to the point of madness, old man Thomas snapped out:

"Go on, you confounded whelp!"

Young Henry shook himself free, his terror replaced by a sudden, resentful anger. Fifty yards away the sentry nodded, his back against a tree and his gun across his lap. Brunner saw the man now, and stepped aside to cover him as young Henry approached. But there was no need of that. The boy was swift and noiseless; before the outlaw could wake or move, his gun was in Henry's hand, and he heard the command, "hands up!"

The sentry was quick-witted. He couldn't shoot, but he could yell. Brunner, however was ready for that. He began to bawl a reveler's song, popular with cowboys on a spree, and old man Thomas joined him. From above, it sounded as if a drunken riot had broken out, in which the outpost's warning shout became only a meaningless discord. The babel brought the four sleeping men out of their blankets. They listened a moment, then stepped out in view of the posse in the briars.

As Brunner came up, old man Thomas turned to face him. On his seamed face the sweat had almost dried, but when he shoved his hat up with his forearm, his sleeve came away from his forehead damp. The compelling glitter in the gray eyes turned to a challenging stare. Brunner met it, then glanced up the trail towards young Thomas and his captive.

"He got him all right," said Brunner.

"Yes," the old man triumphed, "my boy got him. He captured 'Kep' Queen himself."

"I reckon you've heard young Henry's story of how he got 'Kep' Queen," Brunner finished. "If you've ever talked with him when he was out of sight of the old man, I know you have. What I've told you to-night is what old man Henry could tell if he wanted to. But he never will. As I said awhile ago, 'young Henry swells around and talks big; the old man he says nothing and chaws tobacco.'"



EDITORIAL

THE TRUTH OF ORCHARD'S STORY

McClure's Magazine printed during last summer and fall the Autobiography of Harry Orchard, with its confessions of wholesale assassinations during the labor war in the mining districts of the West. There was, at that time, repeated and angry denial of the truth of his story; and, since the acquittal of W. D. Haywood, secretary and treasurer of the Western Federation of Miners, and of George A. Pettibone, whom Orchard charged with being the instigators of his crimes, their adherents have, of course, maintained that Orchard's story has been entirely disproved.

Logically, this does not follow. The acquittal of these two men means nothing more than that they were not proved guilty to the satisfaction of the juries trying them. Before a final judgment as to the truth or falsity of Orchard's statement is made, the last development in this matter must be thoroughly considered. On March 18, Orchard, persisting in his story to the last, pleaded guilty to the murder of Governor Frank Steunenberg, at Caldwell, Idaho, and was sentenced to be hanged—with the recommendation by the presiding judge that his sentence be commuted to life imprisonment by the Prison Board of the State. In pronouncing sentence upon Orchard, Judge Fremont Wood, who presided over the trials of both Haywood and Pettibone, expressed his belief in Orchard's story in a most convincing way. The parts of the Judge's statement dealing with Orchard's testimony, which follow, are of peculiar value to those desiring to arrive at a final conclusion regarding the responsibility for the campaign of murders which took place during the labor wars of the Western Federation of Miners; they are the summing up of the entire matter by a mind whose judicial fairness has been recognized by both parties in this great controversy.

"I am more than satisfied," said Judge Wood, "that the defendant now at the bar of this court awaiting final sentence has not only acted in good faith in making the disclosures that he did, but that he also testified fully and fairly to the whole truth, withholding nothing that was material and declaring nothing that had not actually taken place.

"During the two trials the testimony of the defendant covered a long series of transactions involving personal relations between himself and many others. In the first trial he was subjected to the most critical cross-examination by very able counsel for at least six days, and I do not now recall that at any point he contradicted himself in any material manner, but on the other hand disclosed his connection with many crimes that were probably not known to the attorneys for the State, at least not brought out by them on the direct examination of the witness.

"Upon the second trial the same testimony underwent a most thorough and critical examination and in no particular was there any discrepancy in a material matter between the testimony given upon the latter trial as compared with the testimony given by the same witness at the former trial. I am of the opinion that no man living could conceive the stories of crime told by the witness and maintain himself under the merciless fire of the leading cross-examining attorneys of the country unless upon the theory that he was testifying to facts and to circumstances which had an actual existence within his own experience.

"A child can testify truly and maintain itself on cross-examination. A man may be able to frame his testimony and testify falsely to a brief statement of facts involving a short and single transaction and maintain himself on cross-examination.

"But I cannot conceive of a case where even the greatest intellect can conceive a story of crime covering years of duration, with constantly shifting scenes and changing characters, and maintain that story with circumstantial detail as to times, places, persons, and particular circumstances and under as merciless a cross-examination as was ever given a witness in an American court unless the witness thus testifying was speaking truthfully and without any attempt either to misrepresent or conceal.... It is my opinion, after a careful examination of this case in all its details, that this defendant and the crimes which he committed were only the natural product and outcome of the system which he represented and the doctrines taught by its leaders, some of which were boldly proclaimed and maintained, even upon the trial of the defendant Haywood.

"This defendant had evidently become imbued with the idea inculcated by those around him that the organized miners were engaged in an industrial warfare upon one side of which his own organization was alone represented, while on the other hand they were confronted with the powers of organized capital, supported by executive authority, and which counter organization included, or at least controlled, the courts, which were the final arbiters upon all legal questions involved.

"With the promulgation of such doctrines it is not a difficult matter for some people to justify murder, arson, and other outrages, and I am satisfied that it was that condition of mind that sustained, bore up and nerved on this defendant and his associates in the commission of the various crimes with which he was connected."

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Copyright, 1908, by Ellen Terry (Mrs. Carew) Copyright, 1908, by The S. S. McClure Co. All rights reserved

[2] Mrs. Eddy also had copies of other Quimby manuscripts in her possession.

[3] See MCCLURE'S MAGAZINE, May, 1907.

[4] Many typical instances of Christian Science logic may be found in Mr. Alfred Farlow's answer to Dr. Churchman's article (Christian Science Journal, 1904). Mr. Farlow takes up Dr. Churchman's statement, "To deny that matter exists and assert that it is an illusion, is only another way of asserting its existence." Says Mr. Farlow: "According to this logic, when a defendant denies a charge brought against him in court, he is only choosing a method of asserting its truth."

Mr. Farlow seems to think that Mrs. Eddy arrived at her discovery of the non-existence of matter, not by any process of reasoning, but by personal experience. He says:

"From doubting matter and learning by experience its utter emptiness Mrs. Eddy began to search for the universal spiritual cause, and having found it through actual demonstration in spirit, she was obliged in consistence therewith to deny the material sense of existence."

Mr. Farlow seems to consider the logic of this progression inevitable.

[5] Science and Health (1898), page 375.

[6] " " " " " 392.

[7] " " " " " 46.

[8] " " " " " 379.

[9] Mrs. Eddy and her followers believe that she possesses an enlightened or spiritual understanding of the Bible and the universe, not common to the rest of mankind.

[10] This account of the Creation is taken from the first edition of "Science and Health." It remains practically the same in later editions under the chapter called "Genesis."

[11] Miscellaneous Writings (1896), page 51.

[12] "Science and Health" (1906), pages 696, 697.

[13] Christian Science Journal, September. 1898.

[14] Christian Science Journal, October, 1904.

[15] For an exposition of the theory upon which this work at Emmanuel Church is conducted, the reader is referred to a pamphlet, "The Healing Ministry of the Church," by the Reverend Samuel McComb, issued by the Emmanuel Church, Boston. For a detailed account of the method of healing practised there and its results, see an article, "New Phases in the Relation of the Church to Health," by Dr. Richard Cabot, in the Outlook, February 29, 1908. The reader who is interested in the principle and possibilities of psycho-therapeutics or "mental healing" is again referred to Paul Dubois' remarkable book, "Psychical Treatment of Nervous Disorders."

[16] The reader who is interested in Quimby's teaching and healing is referred to "The True History of Mental Science," by Julius A. Dresser, published by George H. Ellis, 272 Congress Street, Boston.

Dr. Warren F. Evans, in his book, "Mental Medicine," published three years before the first edition of "Science and Health," said: "Disease being in its root a wrong belief, change that belief and we cure the disease. By faith we are thus made whole. There is a law here which the world will sometime understand and use in the cure of the diseases that afflict mankind. The late Dr. Quimby, of Portland, one of the most successful healers of this or any age, embraced this view of the nature of disease, and by a long succession of the most remarkable cures, effected by psychopathic remedies, at the same time proved the truth of the theory and the efficiency of that mode of treatment. Had he lived in a remote age or country, the wonderful facts which occurred in his practise would now have been deemed either mythical or miraculous. He seemed to reproduce the wonders of Gospel history. But all this was only an exhibition of the force of suggestion, or the action of the law of faith, over a patient in the impressible condition."

[17] Distribution of every 1000 suicides by season:

Country Summer Spring Fall Winter Total

Denmark 312 284 227 177 1,000 Belgium 301 275 229 195 1,000 France 306 283 210 201 1,000 Saxony 307 281 217 195 1,000 Bavaria 308 282 218 192 1,000 Austria 315 281 219 185 1,000 Prussia 290 284 227 199 1,000

Durkheim, "Le Suicide," (Paris, 1897), p. 88.

[18] The figures are those of Dr. Forbes Winslow for the United States, those of Dr. M. Gubski for Russia, those of Dr. Rehfisch (in Der Selbsmord) for Europe, and those of the Government Statistical Bureau for Japan.

[19] Durkheim, "Le Suicide" (Paris, 1897), p. 93.

[20] Five or six years ago, in a paper that I read before the Literary Society of Washington, D. C., I suggested this explanation of the high suicide rate in June. At the conclusion of the reading, a young Italian student, who happened to be present as a guest, came to me and said: "If I did not know it to be impossible, I should think that your explanation of June suicides had been suggested by, if not copied from, a letter left by a dear friend of mine who killed himself in Genoa, two years ago, on a beautiful evening in June. You have expressed his thoughts almost in the words that he used."

[21] For the suicide statistics embodied in this table I am largely indebted to the cooeperation and assistance of Mr. M. L. Jacobson, of the Bureau of Statistics in Washington. In the literature of the subject there are no figures more recent than 1893 for most of the European countries. In this table they are nearly all later than 1900.

[22] The figures for Europe are from the latest reports of government statistical bureaus, and for America from the registration area covered in the twelfth census.

THE END