 |
MODERN PROSE AND POETRY FOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS
EDITED
WITH NOTES, STUDY HELPS, AND READING LISTS
BY
MARGARET ASHMUN, M.A.
Formerly Instructor in English in the University of Wisconsin Editor of Prose Literature for Secondary Schools
BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside Press Cambridge
COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
All selections in this book are used by special permission of, and arrangement with, the owners of the copyrights.
The Riverside Press CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS U.S.A
* * * * *
Transcribers Note: There are several areas where a pronunciation guide is given with diacritical marks that cannot be reproduced in a text file. The following symbols are used:
Symbols for Diacritical Marks:
DIACRITICAL MARK SAMPLE ABOVE BELOW macron (straight line) - x x 2 dots (diaresis, umlaut) " ẍ x 1 dot • ẋ x grave accent ' x or [x] x or [x] acute accent (aigu) ' x or x x or x circumflex ^ x x caron (v-shaped symbol) x [xv] breve (u-shaped symbol) x x tilde ~ x x cedilla x x
Also words italicized will have undescores _ before and after them and bold words will have = before and after them.
Footnotes have been moved to the end of the text. Minor typos have been corrected.
* * * * *
PREFACE
It is pleasant to note, among teachers of literature in the high school, a growing (or perhaps one should say an established) conviction that the pupil's enjoyment of what he reads ought to be the chief consideration in the work. From such enjoyment, it is conceded, come the knowledge and the power that are the end of study. All profitable literature work in the secondary grades must be based upon the unforced attention and activity of the student.
An inevitable phase of this liberal attitude is a readiness to promote the study of modern authors. It is now the generally accepted view that many pieces of recent literature are more suitable for young people's reading than the old and conventionally approved classics. This is not to say that the really readable classics should be discarded, since they have their own place and their own value. Yet it is everywhere admitted that modern literature should be given its opportunity to appeal to high school students, and that at some stage in their course it should receive its due share of recognition. The mere fact that modern writers are, in point of material and style, less remote than the classic authors from the immediate interests of the students is sufficient to recommend them. Then, too, since young people are, in the nature of things, constantly brought into contact with some form of modern literature, they need to be provided with a standard of criticism and choice.
The present volume is an attempt to assemble, in a convenient manner, a number of selections from recent literature, such as high school students of average taste and ability may understand and enjoy. These selections are not all equally difficult. Some need to be read rapidly for their intrinsic interest; others deserve more analysis of form and content; still others demand careful intensive study. This diversity of method is almost a necessity in a full year's course in reading, in which rigidity and monotony ought above all things to be avoided.
Although convinced that the larger part of the reading work in the high school years should be devoted to the study of prose, the editor has here included what she believes to be a just proportion of poetry. The poems have been chosen with a view to the fact that they are varied in form and sentiment; and that they exhibit in no small degree the tendencies of modern poetic thought, with its love of nature and its humanitarian impulses.
An attempt has been made to present examples of the most usual and readable forms of prose composition—narration, the account of travel, the personal essay, and serious exposition. The authors of these selections possess without exception that distinction of style which entitles them to a high rank in literature and makes them inspiring models for the unskilled writer.
A word may be said as to the intention of the study helps and lists of readings. The object of this equipment is to conserve the energies of the teacher and direct the activities of the student. It is by no means expected that any one class will be able to make use of all the material provided; yet it is hoped that a considerable amount may prove available to every group that has access to the text.
The study questions serve to concentrate the reading of the students, in order to prevent that aimless wandering of eye and mind, which with many pupils passes for study. Doubtless something would in most instances be gained if these questions were supplemented by specific directions from the teacher.
Lists of theme subjects accompany the selections, so that the work in composition may be to a large extent correlated with that in literature.[1] The plan of utilizing the newly stimulated interests of the pupils for training in composition is not a new one; its value has been proved. Modern Prose and Poetry aims to make the most of such correlation, at the same time drawing upon the personal experience of the students, to the elimination of all that is perfunctory and formal. Typical outlines (suggestions for theme writing) are provided; these, however, cannot serve in all cases, and the teacher must help the pupils in planning their themes, or give them such training as will enable them to make outlines for themselves.
It will be noted that some suggestions are presented for the dramatization of simple passages of narration, and for original composition of dramatic fragments. In an age when the trend of popular interest is unquestionably toward the drama, such suggestions need no defense. The study of dramatic composition may be granted as much or as little attention as the teacher thinks wise. In any event, it will afford an opportunity for a discussion of the drama and will serve, in an elementary way, to train the pupil's judgment as to the difference between good and bad plays. Especially can this end be accomplished if some of the plays mentioned in the lists be read by the class or by individual students.
A few simple exercises in the writing of poetry have been inserted, in order to give the pupils encouragement and assistance in trying their skill in verse. It is not intended that this work shall be done for the excellence of its results, but rather for the development of the pupil's ingenuity and the increasing of his respect for the poet and the poetic art.
The collateral readings are appended for the use of those teachers who wish to carry on a course of outside reading in connection with the regular work of the class. These lists have been made somewhat extensive and varied, in order that they may fit the tastes and opportunities of many teachers and pupils. In some cases, the collateral work may be presented by the teacher, to elaborate a subject in which the class has become interested; or individual pupils may prepare themselves and speak to the class about what they have read; or all the pupils may read for pleasure alone, merely reporting the extent of their reading, for the teacher's approval. The outside reading should, it is needless to say, be treated as a privilege and not as a mechanical task. The possibilities of this work will be increased if the teacher familiarizes herself with the material in the collateral lists, so that she can adapt the home readings to the tastes of the class and of specific pupils. The miscellaneous lists given at the close of the book are intended to supplement the lists accompanying the selections, and to offer some assistance in the choice of books for a high school library.
M.A.
NEW YORK, February, 1914.
CONTENTS
A DAY AT LAGUERRE'S F. Hopkinson Smith
QUITE SO Thomas Bailey Aldrich (In Marjorie Daw, and Other Stories)
PAN IN WALL STREET Edmund Clarence Stedman
THE HAND OF LINCOLN Edmund Clarence Stedman
JEAN VALJEAN Augusta Stevenson (In A Dramatic Reader, Book Five)
A COMBAT ON THE SANDS Mary Johnston (From To Have and to Hold, Chapters XXI and XXII)
THE GRASSHOPPER Edith M. Thomas
MOLY Edith M. Thomas
THE PROMISED LAND Mary Antin (From Chapter IX of The Promised Land)
WARBLE FOR LILAC-TIME Walt Whitman
WHEN I HEARD THE LEARN'D ASTRONOMER Walt Whitman
VIGIL STRANGE I KEPT ON THE FIELD ONE NIGHT Walt Whitman
ODYSSEUS IN PHAEACIA Translated by George Herbert Palmer
ODYSSEUS George Cabot Lodge
A ROMANCE OF REAL LIFE William Dean Howells (In Suburban Sketches)
THE WILD RIDE Louise Imogen Guiney
CHRISTMAS IN THE WOODS Dallas Lore Sharp (In The Lay of the Land)
GLOUCESTER MOORS William Vaughn Moody
ROAD-HYMN FOR THE START William Vaughn Moody
ON A SOLDIER FALLEN IN THE PHILLIPINES William Vaughn Moody
THE COON DOG Sarah Orne Jewett (In The Queen's Twin, and Other Stories)
ON THE LIFE-MASK OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN Richard Watson Gilder
A FIRE AMONG THE GIANTS John Muir (From Our National Parks)
WAITING John Burroughs
THE PONT DU GARD Henry James (Chapter XXVI of A Little Tour in France)
THE YOUNGEST SON OF HIS FATHER'S HOUSE Anna Hempstead Branch
TENNESSEE'S PARTNER Bret Harte
THE COURSE OF AMERICAN HISTORY Woodrow Wilson (In Mere Literature)
WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING Charles Dudley Warner (From My Summer in a Garden)
THE SINGING MAN Josephine Preston Peabody
THE DANCE OF THE BON-ODORI Lafcadio Hearn (From Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan, Volume I, Chapter VI)
LETTERS:
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH TO WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS (From The Life of Thomas Bailey Aldrich by Ferris Greenslet)
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH TO E.S. MORSE (By permission of Professor Morse)
WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY TO JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY (From Some Letters of William Vaughn Moody)
BRET HARTE TO HIS WIFE (From The Life of Bret Harte by Henry C. Merwin)
LAFCADIO HEARN TO BASIL HALL CHAMBERLAIN (From Japanese Letters of Lafcadio Hearn)
CHARLES ELIOT NORTON TO WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS (From Letters of Charles Eliot Norton)
EXERCISES IN DRAMATIC COMPOSITION
MODERN BOOKS FOR HOME READING
MODERN PROSE AND POETRY FOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS
A DAY AT LAGUERRE'S
F. HOPKINSON SMITH
It is the most delightful of French inns, in the quaintest of French settlements. As you rush by in one of the innumerable trains that pass it daily, you may catch glimpses of tall trees trailing their branches in the still stream,—hardly a dozen yards wide,—of flocks of white ducks paddling together, and of queer punts drawn up on the shelving shore or tied to soggy, patched-up landing-stairs.
If the sun shines, you can see, now and then, between the trees, a figure kneeling at the water's edge, bending over a pile of clothes, washing,—her head bound with a red handkerchief.
If you are quick, the miniature river will open just before you round the curve, disclosing in the distance groups of willows, and a rickety foot-bridge perched up on poles to keep it dry. All this you see in a flash.
But you must stop at the old-fashioned station, within ten minutes of the Harlem River, cross the road, skirt an old garden bound with a fence and bursting with flowers, and so pass on through a bare field to the water's edge, before you catch sight of the cosy little houses lining the banks, with garden fences cutting into the water, the arbors covered with tangled vines, and the boats crossing back and forth.
I have a love for the out-of-the-way places of the earth when they bristle all over with the quaint and the old and the odd, and are mouldy with the picturesque. But here is an in-the-way place, all sunshine and shimmer, with never a fringe of mould upon it, and yet you lose your heart at a glance. It is as charming in its boat life as an old Holland canal; it is as delightful in its shore life as the Seine; and it is as picturesque and entrancing in its sylvan beauty as the most exquisite of English streams.
The thousands of workaday souls who pass this spot daily in their whirl out and in the great city may catch all these glimpses of shade and sunlight over the edges of their journals, and any one of them living near the city's centre, with a stout pair of legs in his knickerbockers and the breath of the morning in his heart, can reach it afoot any day before breakfast; and yet not one in a hundred knows that this ideal nook exists.
Even this small percentage would be apt to tell of the delights of Devonshire and of the charm of the upper Thames, with its tall rushes and low-thatched houses and quaint bridges, as if the picturesque ended there; forgetting that right here at home there wanders many a stream with its breast all silver that the trees courtesy to as it sings through meadows waist-high in lush grass,—as exquisite a picture as can be found this beautiful land over.
So, this being an old tramping-ground of mine, I have left the station with its noise and dust behind me this lovely morning in June, have stopped long enough to twist a bunch of sweet peas through the garden fence, and am standing on the bank waiting for some sign of life at Madame Laguerre's. I discover that there is no boat on my side of the stream. But that is of no moment. On the other side, within a biscuit's toss, so narrow is it, there are two boats; and on the landing-wharf, which is only a few planks wide, supporting a tumble-down flight of steps leading to a vine-covered terrace above, rest the oars.
I lay my traps down on the bank and begin at the top of my voice:—
"Madame Laguerre! Madame Laguerre! Send Lucette with the boat."
For a long time there is no response. A young girl drawing water a short distance below, hearing my cries, says she will come; and some children above, who know me, begin paddling over. I decline them all. Experience tells me it is better to wait for madame.
In a few minutes she pushes aside the leaves, peers through, and calls out:—
"Ah! it is that horrible painter. Go away! I have nothing for you. You are hungry again that you come?"
"Very, madame. Where is Lucette?"
"Lucette! Lucette! It is always Lucette. Lu-c-e-t-t-e!" This in a shrill key. "It is the painter. Come quick."
I have known Lucette for years, even when she was a barefooted little tangle-hair, peeping at me with her great brown eyes from beneath her ragged straw hat. She wears high-heeled slippers now, and sometimes on Sundays dainty silk stockings, and her hair is braided down her back, little French Marguerite that she is, and her hat is never ragged any more, nor her hair tangled. Her eyes, though, are still the same velvety, half-drooping eyes, always opening and shutting and never still.
As she springs into the boat and pulls towards me I note how round and trim she is, and before we have landed at Madame Laguerre's feet I have counted up Lucette's birthdays,—those that I know myself,—and find to my surprise that she must be eighteen. We have always been the best of friends, Lucette and I, ever since she looked over my shoulder years ago and watched me dot in the outlines of her boat, with her dog Mustif sitting demurely in the bow.
Madame, her mother, begins again:—
"Do you know that it is Saturday that you come again to bother? Now it will be a filet, of course, with mushrooms and tomato salad; and there are no mushrooms, and no tomatoes, and nothing. You are horrible. Then, when I get it ready, you say you will come at three. 'Yes, madame; at three,'—mimicking me,—'sure, very sure.' But it is four, five, o'clock—and then everything is burned up waiting. Ah! I know you."
This goes on always, and has for years. Presently she softens, for she is the most tender-hearted of women, and would do anything in the world to please me.
"But, then, you will be tired, and of course you must have something. I remember now there is a chicken. How will the chicken do? Oh, the chicken it is lovely, charmant. And some pease—fresh. Monsieur picked them himself this morning. And some Roquefort, with an olive. Ah! You leave it to me; but at three—no later—not one minute. Sacre! Vous etes le diable!"
As we walk under the arbor and by the great trees, towards the cottage, Lucette following with the oars, I inquire after monsieur, and find that he is in the city, and very well and very busy, and will return at sundown. He has a shop of his own in the upper part where he makes passe-partouts. Here, at his home, madame maintains a simple restaurant for tramps like me.
These delightful people are old friends of mine, Francois Laguerre and his wife and their only child Lucette. They have lived here for nearly a quarter of a century. He is a straight, silver-haired old Frenchman of sixty, who left Paris, between two suns, nearly forty years ago, with a gendarme close at his heels, a red cockade under his coat, and an intense hatred in his heart for that "little nobody," Napoleon III.
If you met him on the boulevard you would look for the decoration on his lapel, remarking to yourself, "Some retired officer on half pay." If you met him at the railway station opposite, you would say, "A French professor returning to his school." Both of these surmises are partly wrong, and both partly right. Monsieur Laguerre has had a history. One can see by the deep lines in his forehead and by the firm set of his eyes and mouth that it has been an eventful one.
His wife is a few years his junior, short and stout, and thoroughly French down to the very toes of her felt slippers. She is devoted to Francois and Lucette, the best of cooks, and, in spite of her scoldings, good-nature itself. As soon as she hears me calling, there arise before her the visions of many delightful dinners prepared for me by her own hand and ready to the minute—all spoiled by my belated sketches. So she begins to scold before I am out of the boat or in it, for that matter.
Across the fence next to Laguerre's lives a confrere, a brother exile, Monsieur Marmosette, who also has a shop in the city, where he carves fine ivories. Monsieur Marmosette has only one son. He too is named Francois, after his father's old friend. Farther down on both sides of the narrow stream front the cottages of other friends, all Frenchmen; and near the propped-up bridge an Italian who knew Garibaldi burrows in a low, slanting cabin, which is covered with vines. I remember a dish of spaghetti under those vines, and a flask of Chianti from its cellar, all cobwebs and plaited straw, that left a taste of Venice in my mouth for days.
As there is only the great bridge above, which helps the country road across the little stream, and the little foot-bridge below, and as there is no path or road,—all the houses fronting the water,—the Bronx here is really the only highway, and so everybody must needs keep a boat. This is why the stream is crowded in the warm afternoons with all sorts of water craft loaded with whole families, even to the babies, taking the air, or crossing from bank to bank in their daily pursuits.
There is a quality which one never sees in Nature until she has been rough-handled by man and has outlived the usage. It is the picturesque. In the deep recesses of the primeval forest, along the mountain-slope, and away up the tumbling brook, Nature may be majestic, beautiful, and even sublime; but she is never picturesque. This quality comes only after the axe and the saw have let the sunlight into the dense tangle and have scattered the falling timber, or the round of the water-wheel has divided the rush of the brook. It is so here. Some hundred years ago, along this quiet, silvery stream were encamped the troops of the struggling colonies, and, later, the great estates of the survivors stretched on each side for miles. The willows that now fringe these banks were saplings then; and they and the great butternuts were only spared because their arching limbs shaded the cattle knee-deep along the shelving banks.
Then came the long interval that succeeds that deadly conversion of the once sweet farming lands, redolent with clover, into that barren waste—suburban property. The conflict that had lasted since the days when the pioneer's axe first rang through the stillness of the forest was nearly over; Nature saw her chance, took courage, and began that regeneration which is exclusively her own. The weeds ran riot; tall grasses shot up into the sunlight, concealing the once well-trimmed banks; and great tangles of underbrush and alders made lusty efforts to hide the traces of man's unceasing cruelty. Lastly came this little group of poor people from the Seine and the Marne and lent a helping hand, bringing with them something of their old life at home,—their boats, rude landings, patched-up water-stairs, fences, arbors, and vine-covered cottages,—unconsciously completing the picture and adding the one thing needful—a human touch. So Nature, having outlived the wrongs of a hundred years, has here with busy fingers so woven a web of weed, moss, trailing vine, and low-branching tree that there is seen a newer and more entrancing quality in her beauty, which, for want of a better term, we call the picturesque.
But madame is calling that the big boat must be bailed out; that if I am ever coming back to dinner it is absolutely necessary that I should go away. This boat is not of extraordinary size. It is called the big boat from the fact that it has one more seat than the one in which Lucette rowed me over; and not being much in use except on Sunday, is generally half full of water. Lucette insists on doing the bailing. She has very often performed this service, and I have always considered it as included in the curious scrawl of a bill which madame gravely presents at the end of each of my days here, beginning in small printed type with "Francois Laguerre, Restaurant Francais," and ending with "Coffee 10 cents."
But this time I resist, remarking that she will hurt her hands and soil her shoes, and that it is all right as it is.
To this Francois the younger, who is leaning over the fence, agrees, telling Lucette to wait until he gets a pail.
Lucette catches his eye, colors a little, and says she will fetch it.
There is a break in the palings through which they both disappear, but I am half-way out on the stream, with my traps and umbrella on the seat in front and my coat and waistcoat tucked under the bow, before they return.
For half a mile down-stream there is barely a current. Then comes a break of a dozen yards just below the perched-up bridge, and the stream divides, one part rushing like a mill-race, and the other spreading itself softly around the roots of leaning willows, oozing through beds of water-plants, and creeping under masses of wild grapes and underbrush. Below this is a broad pasture fringed with another and larger growth of willows. Here the weeds are breast-high, and in early autumn they burst into purple asters, and white immortelles, and goldenrod, and flaming sumac.
If a painter had a lifetime to spare, and loved this sort of material,—the willows, hillsides, and winding stream,—he would grow old and weary before he could paint it all; and yet no two of his compositions need be alike. I have tied my boat under these same willows for ten years back, and I have not yet exhausted one corner of this neglected pasture.
There may be those who go a-fishing and enjoy it. The arranging and selecting of flies, the joining of rods, the prospective comfort in high water-boots, the creel with the leather strap,—every crease in it a reminder of some day without care or fret,—all this may bring the flush to the cheek and the eager kindling of the eye, and a certain sort of rest and happiness may come with it; but—they have never gone a-sketching! Hauled up on the wet bank in the long grass is your boat, with the frayed end of the painter tied around some willow that offers a helping root. Within a stone's throw, under a great branching of gnarled trees, is a nook where the curious sun, peeping at you through the interlaced leaves, will stencil Japanese shadows on your white umbrella. Then the trap is unstrapped, the stool opened, the easel put up, and you set your palette. The critical eye with which you look over your brush-case and the care with which you try each feather point upon your thumb-nail are but an index of your enjoyment.
Now you are ready. You loosen your cravat, hang your coat to some rustic peg in the creviced bark of the tree behind you, seize a bit of charcoal from your bag, sweep your eye around, and dash in a few guiding strokes. Above is a turquoise sky filled with soft white clouds; behind you the great trunks of the many-branched willows; and away off, under the hot sun, the yellow-green of the wasted pasture, dotted with patches of rock and weeds, and hemmed in by the low hills that slope to the curving stream.
It is high noon. There is a stillness in the air that impresses you, broken only by the low murmur of the brook behind and the ceaseless song of the grasshopper among the weeds in front. A tired bumblebee hums past, rolls lazily over a clover blossom at your feet, and has his midday luncheon. Under the maples near the river's bend stands a group of horses, their heads touching. In the brook below are the patient cattle, with patches of sunlight gilding and bronzing their backs and sides. Every now and then a breath of cool air starts out from some shaded retreat, plays around your forehead, and passes on. All nature rests. It is her noontime.
But you work on: an enthusiasm has taken possession of you; the paints mix too slowly; you use your thumb, smearing and blending with a bit of rag—anything for the effect. One moment you are glued to your seat, your eye riveted on your canvas, the next, you are up and backing away, taking it in as a whole, then pouncing down upon it quickly, belaboring it with your brush. Soon the trees take shape; the sky forms become definite; the meadow lies flat and loses itself in the fringe of willows.
When all of this begins to grow upon your once blank canvas, and some lucky pat matches the exact tone of blue-gray haze or shimmer of leaf, or some accidental blending of color delights you with its truth, a tingling goes down your backbone, and a rush surges through your veins that stirs you as nothing else in your whole life will ever do. The reaction comes the next day when, in the cold light of your studio, you see how far short you have come and how crude and false is your best touch compared with the glory of the landscape in your mind and heart. But the thrill that it gave you will linger forever.
But I hear a voice behind me calling out:—
"Monsieur, mamma says that dinner will be ready in half an hour. Please do not be late."
It is Lucette. She and Francois have come down in the other boat—the one with the little seat. They have moved so noiselessly that I have not even heard them. The sketch is nearly finished; and so, remembering the good madame, and the Roquefort, and the olives, and the many times I have kept her waiting, I wash my brushes at once, throw my traps into the boat, and pull back through the winding turn, Francois taking the mill-race, and in the swiftest part springing to the bank and towing Lucette, who sits in the stern, her white skirts tucked around her dainty feet.
"Sacre! He is here. C'est merveilleux! Why did you come?"
"Because you sent for me, madame, and I am hungry."
"Mon Dieu! He is hungry, and no chicken!"
It is true. The chicken was served that morning to another tramp for breakfast, and madame had forgotten all about it, and had ransacked the settlement for its mate. She was too honest a cook to chase another into the frying-pan.
But there was a filet with mushrooms, and a most surprising salad of chicory fresh from the garden, and the pease were certain, and the Roquefort and the olives beyond question. All this she tells me as I walk past the table covered with a snow-white cloth and spread under the grape-vines overlooking the stream, with the trees standing against the sky, their long shadows wrinkling down into the water.
I enter the summer kitchen built out into the garden, which also covers the old well, let down the bucket, and then, taking the clean crash towel from its hook, place the basin on the bench in the sunlight, and plunge my head into the cool water. Madame regards me curiously, her arms akimbo, re-hangs the towel, and asks:—
"Well, what about the wine? The same?"
"Yes; but I will get it myself."
The cellar is underneath the larger house. Outside is an old-fashioned, sloping double door. These doors are always open, and a cool smell of damp straw flavored with vinegar greets you from a leaky keg as you descend into its recesses. On the hard earthen floor rest eight or ten great casks. The walls are lined with bottles large and small, loaded on shelves to which little white cards are tacked giving the vintage and brand. In one corner, under the small window, you will find dozens of boxes of French delicacies—truffles, pease, mushrooms, pate de foie gras, mustard, and the like, and behind them rows of olive oil and olives. I carefully draw out a bottle from the row on the last shelf nearest the corner, mount the steps, and place it on the table. Madame examines the cork, and puts down the bottle, remarking sententiously:—
"Chateau Lamonte, '62! Monsieur has told you."
There may be ways of dining more delicious than out in the open air under the vines in the cool of the afternoon, with Lucette, in her whitest of aprons, flitting about, and madame garnishing the dishes each in turn, and there may be better bottles of honest red wine to be found up and down this world of care than "Chateau Lamonte, '62," but I have not yet discovered them.
Lucette serves the coffee in a little cup, and leaves the Roquefort and the cigarettes on the table just as the sun is sinking behind the hill skirting the railroad. While I am blowing rings through the grape leaves over my head a quick noise is heard across the stream. Lucette runs past me through the garden, picking up her oars as she goes.
"Oui, mon pere. I am coming."
It is monsieur from his day's work in the city.
"Who is here?" I hear him say as he mounts the terrace steps. "Oh, the painter—good!"
"Ah, mon ami. So you must see the willows once more. Have you not tired of them yet?" Then, seating himself, "I hope madame has taken good care of you. What, the '62? Ah, I remember I told you."
When it is quite dark he joins me under the leaves, bringing a second bottle a little better corked he thinks, and the talk drifts into his early life.
"What year was that, monsieur?" I asked.
"In 1849. I was a young fellow just grown. I had learned my trade in Rheims, and I had come down to Paris to make my bread. Two years later came the little affair of December 2. That 'nobody,' Louis, had dissolved the National Assembly and the Council of State, and had issued his address to the army. Paris was in a ferment. By the help of his soldiers and police he had silenced every voice in Paris except his own. He had suppressed all the journals, and locked up everybody who had opposed him. Victor Hugo was in exile, Louis Blanc in London, Changarnier and Cavaignac in prison. At the moment I was working in a little shop near the Porte St. Martin decorating lacquerwork. We workmen all belonged to a secret society which met nightly in a back room over a wine-shop near the Rue Royale. We had but one thought—how to upset the little devil at the Elysee. Among my comrades was a big fellow from my own city, one Cambier. He was the leader. On the ground floor of the shop was built a huge oven where the lacquer was baked. At night this was made hot with charcoal and allowed to cool off in the morning ready for the finished work of the previous day. It was Cambier's duty to attend to this oven.
"One night just after all but he and two others had left the shop a strange man was discovered in a closet where the men kept their working clothes. He was seized, brought to the light, and instantly recognized as a member of the secret police.
"At daylight the next morning I was aroused from my bed, and, looking up, saw Chapot, an inspector of police, standing over me. He had known me from a boy, and was a friend of my father's.
"'Francois, there is trouble at the shop. A police agent has been murdered. His body was found in the oven. Cambier is under arrest. I know what you have been doing, but I also know that in this you have had no hand. Here are one hundred francs. Leave Paris in an hour.'
"I put the money in my pocket, tied my clothes in a bundle, and that night was on my way to Havre, and the next week set sail for here."
"And what became of Cambier?" I asked.
"I have never heard from that day to this, so I think they must have snuffed him out."
Then he drifted into his early life here—the weary tramping of the streets day after day, the half-starving result, the language and people unknown. Suddenly, somewhere in the lower part of the city, he espied a card tacked outside of a window bearing this inscription, "Decorator wanted." A man inside was painting one of the old-fashioned iron tea-trays common in those days. Monsieur took off his hat, pointed to the card, then to himself, seized the brush, and before the man could protest had covered the bottom with morning-glories so pink and fresh that his troubles ended on the spot. The first week he earned six dollars; but then this was to be paid at the end of it. For these six days he subsisted on one meal a day. This he ate at a restaurant where at night he washed dishes and blacked the head waiter's boots. When Saturday came, and the money was counted out in his hand, he thrust it into his pocket, left the shop, and sat down on a doorstep outside to think.
"And, mon ami, what did I do first?"
"Got something to eat?"
"Never. I paid for a bath, had my hair cut and my face shaved, bought a shirt and collar, and then went back to the restaurant where I had washed dishes the night before, and the head waiter served me. After that it was easy; the next week it was ten dollars; then in a few years I had a place of my own; then came madame and Lucette—and here we are."
The twilight had faded into a velvet blue, sprinkled with stars. The lantern which madame had hung against the arbor shed a yellow light, throwing into clear relief the sharply cut features of monsieur. Up and down the silent stream drifted here and there a phantom boat, the gleam of its light following like a firefly. From some came no sound but the muffled plash of the oars. From others floated stray bits of song and laughter. Far up the stream I heard the distant whistle of the down train.
"It is mine, monsieur. Will you cross with me, and bring back the boat?"
Monsieur unhooked the lantern, and I followed through the garden and down the terrace steps.
At the water's edge was a bench holding two figures.
Monsieur turned his lantern, and the light fell upon the face of young Francois.
When the bow grated on the opposite bank I shook his hand, and said, in parting, pointing to the lovers,—
"The same old story, Monsieur?"
"Yes; and always new. You must come to the church."
NOTES
Harlem River:—Note that this river is in New York City, not in France as one might suppose from the name of the selection.
Devonshire:—A very attractive county of southwestern England.
filet:—A thick slice of meat or fish.
charmant:—The French word for charming.
Roquefort:—A kind of cheese.
Sacre! Vous etes le diable:—Curses! You are the very deuce.
passe-partouts:—Engraved ornamental borders for pictures.
gendarme:—A policeman of France.
Napoleon III:—Emperor of the French, 1852-1870. He was elected president of the Republic in 1848; he seized full power in 1851; in 1852, he was proclaimed emperor. He was a nephew of the great Napoleon.
confrere:—A close associate.
Garibaldi:—Giuseppe Garibaldi, an Italian patriot (1807-1882).
Chianti:—A kind of Italian wine.
Bronx:—A small river in the northern part of New York City.
Restaurant Francais:—French restaurant.
the painter:—A rope at the bow of a boat.
C'est merveilleux:—It's wonderful.
Mon Dieu:—Good heavens!
pate de fois gras:—A delicacy made of fat goose livers.
Chateau Lamonte, '62:—A kind of wine; the date refers to the year in which it was bottled.
Oui, mon pere:—Yes, father.
mon ami:—My friend.
the little affair of December 2:—On December 2, 1851, Louis Napoleon overawed the French legislature and assumed absolute power. Just a year later he had himself proclaimed Emperor.
Louis:—Napoleon III.
Victor Hugo:—French poet and novelist (1802-1885).
Louis Blanc:—French author and politician (1812-1882).
Changarnier:—Pronounced shan gaer nyā'; Nicholas Changarnier, a French general (1793-1877).
Cavaignac:—Pronounced ka vay nyak'; Louis Eugene Cavaignac, a French general (1803-1857). He ran for the Presidency against Louis Napoleon.
Porte St. Martin:—The beginning of the Boulevard St. Martin, in Paris.
Rue Royale:—Rue is the French word for street.
Elysee:—A palace in Paris used as a residence by Napoleon III.
one hundred francs:—About twenty dollars.
SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY
What does the title suggest to you? At what point do you change your idea as to the location of Laguerre's? Do you know of any picturesque places that are somewhat like the one described here? Could you describe one of them for the class? Why do people usually not appreciate the scenery near at hand? What do you think of the plan of "seeing America first"? What is meant here by "my traps"? Why is it better to wait for Madame? Why does Madame talk so crossly? What sort of person is she? See if you can tell accurately, from what follows in later pages, why Monsieur left Paris so hastily. How does the author give you an idea of Francois Laguerre's appearance? Why does the author stop to give us the two paragraphs beginning, "There is a quality," and "Then came a long interval"? How does he get back to his subject? Why does he not let Lucette bail the boat? Who does bail it at last? Why? Do you think that every artist enjoys his work as the writer seems to enjoy his? How does he make you feel the pleasure of it? Why is there more enjoyment in eating out of doors than in eating in the house? Why does the author sprinkle little French phrases through the piece? Is it a good plan to use foreign phrases in this way? What kind of man is Monsieur Laguerre? Review his story carefully. Why was the police agent murdered? Who killed him? Why has Monsieur Laguerre never found out what became of Cambier?
This selection deals with a number of different subjects: Why does it not seem "choppy"? How does the author manage to link the different parts together? How would you describe this piece to some one who had not read it? Mr. Smith is an artist who paints in water-colors: do you see how his painting influences his writing?
THEME SUBJECTS
Madame Laguerre Old-fashioned Garden The Ferry Sketching An Old Pasture The Stream Good Places to Sketch Learning to Paint An Old Man with a History An Incident in French History Getting Dinner under Difficulties A Scene in the Kitchen Washing at the Pump The Flight of the Suspect Crossing the Ocean penniless The Foreigner Looking for Work A Dinner out of Doors The French Family at Home The Cellar Some Pictures that I Like A Restaurant A Country Inn What my Foreign Neighbors Eat Landscapes The Artist
SUGGESTIONS FOR WRITING
The Stream:—Plan a description of some stream that you know well. Imagine yourself taking a trip up the stream in a boat. Tell something of the weather and the time of day. Speak briefly of the boat and its occupants. Describe the first picturesque spot: the trees and flowers; the buildings, if there are any; the reflections in the water; the people that you see. Go on from point to point, describing the particularly interesting places. Do not try to do too much. Vary your account by telling of the boats you meet. Perhaps there will be some brief dialogues that you can report, or some little adventures that you can relate. Close your theme by telling of your arrival at your destination, or of your turning about to go back down the stream.
An Old Man with a History:—Perhaps you can take this from real life; or perhaps you know some interesting old man whose early adventures you can imagine. Tell briefly how you happened to know the old man. Describe him. Speak of his manners, his way of speaking; his character as it appeared when you knew him. How did you learn his story? Imagine him relating it. Where was he when he told it? How did he act? Was he willing to tell the story, or did he have to be persuaded? Tell the story simply and directly, in his words, breaking it now and then by a comment or a question from the listener (or listeners). It might be well to explain occasionally how the old man seemed to feel, what expressions his face assumed, and what gestures he made. Go on thus to the end of the story. Is it necessary for you to make any remarks at the last, after the man has finished?
A Country Inn:—See the outline for a similar subject on page 229.
COLLATERAL READINGS
A Day at Laguerre's and Other Days F. Hopkinson Smith Gondola Days " " " The Under Dog " " " Caleb West, Master Diver " " " Tom Grogan " " " The Other Fellow " " " Colonel Carter of Cartersville " " " Colonel Carter's Christmas " " " The Fortunes of Oliver Horn " " " Forty Minutes Late " " " At Close Range " " " A White Umbrella in Mexico " " " A Gentleman Vagabond " " " (Note especially in this, Along the Bronx.) Fisherman's Luck Henry van Dyke A Lazy Idle Brook (in Fisherman's Luck) " " Little Rivers " " The Friendly Road David Grayson Adventures in Contentment " "
For information concerning Mr. Smith, consult:—
A History of Southern Literature, p. 375., Carl Holliday American Authors and their Homes, pp. 187-194 F.W. Halsey
Bookman, 17:16 (Portrait); 24:9, September, 1906 (Portrait); 28:9, September, 1908 (Portrait). Arena, 38:678, December, 1907. Outlook, 93:689, November 27, 1909. Bookbuyer, 25:17-20, August, 1902.
QUITE SO
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
(In Marjorie Daw, and Other Stories)
I
Of course that was not his name. Even in the State of Maine, where it is still a custom to maim a child for life by christening him Arioch or Shadrach or Ephraim, nobody would dream of calling a boy "Quite So." It was merely a nickname which we gave him in camp; but it stuck to him with such bur-like tenacity, and is so inseparable from my memory of him, that I do not think I could write definitely of John Bladburn if I were to call him anything but "Quite So."
It was one night shortly after the first battle of Bull Run. The Army of the Potomac, shattered, stunned, and forlorn, was back in its old quarters behind the earth-works. The melancholy line of ambulances bearing our wounded to Washington was not done creeping over Long Bridge; the blue smocks and the gray still lay in windrows on the field of Manassas; and the gloom that weighed down our hearts was like the fog that stretched along the bosom of the Potomac, and infolded the valley of the Shenandoah. A drizzling rain had set in at twilight, and, growing bolder with the darkness, was beating a dismal tattoo on the tent,—the tent of Mess 6, Company A, —th Regiment, N.Y. Volunteers. Our mess, consisting originally of eight men, was reduced to four. Little Billy, as one of the boys grimly remarked, had concluded to remain at Manassas; Corporal Steele we had to leave at Fairfax Court-House, shot through the hip; Hunter and Suydam we had said good-by to that afternoon. "Tell Johnny Reb," says Hunter, lifting up the leather sidepiece of the ambulance, "that I'll be back again as soon as I get a new leg." But Suydam said nothing; he only unclosed his eyes languidly and smiled farewell to us.
The four of us who were left alive and unhurt that shameful July day sat gloomily smoking our brier-wood pipes, thinking our thoughts, and listening to the rain pattering against the canvas. That, and the occasional whine of a hungry cur, foraging on the outskirts of the camp for a stray bone, alone broke the silence, save when a vicious drop of rain detached itself meditatively from the ridge-pole of the tent, and fell upon the wick of our tallow candle, making it "cuss," as Ned Strong described it. The candle was in the midst of one of its most profane fits when Blakely, knocking the ashes from his pipe and addressing no one in particular, but giving breath, unconsciously as it were, to the result of his cogitations, observed that "it was considerable of a fizzle."
"The 'on to Richmond' business?"
"Yes."
"I wonder what they'll do about it over yonder," said Curtis, pointing over his right shoulder. By "over yonder" he meant the North in general and Massachusetts especially. Curtis was a Boston boy, and his sense of locality was so strong that, during all his wanderings in Virginia, I do not believe there was a moment, day or night, when he could not have made a bee-line for Faneuil Hall.
"Do about it?" cried Strong. "They'll make about two hundred thousand blue flannel trousers and send them along, each pair with a man in it,—all the short men in the long trousers, and all the tall men in the short ones," he added, ruefully contemplating his own leg-gear, which scarcely reached to his ankles.
"That's so," said Blakely. "Just now, when I was tackling the commissary for an extra candle, I saw a crowd of new fellows drawing blankets."
"I say there, drop that!" cried Strong. "All right, sir, didn't know it was you," he added hastily, seeing it was Lieutenant Haines who had thrown back the flap of the tent, and let in a gust of wind and rain that threatened the most serious bronchial consequences to our discontented tallow dip.
"You're to bunk in here," said the lieutenant, speaking to some one outside. The some one stepped in, and Haines vanished in the darkness.
When Strong had succeeded in restoring the candle to consciousness, the light fell upon a tall, shy-looking man of about thirty-five, with long, hay-colored beard and mustache, upon which the rain-drops stood in clusters, like the night-dew on patches of cobweb in a meadow. It was an honest face, with unworldly sort of blue eyes, that looked out from under the broad visor of the infantry cap. With a deferential glance towards us, the new-comer unstrapped his knapsack, spread his blanket over it, and sat down unobtrusively.
"Rather damp night out," remarked Blakely, whose strong hand was supposed to be conversation.
"Quite so," replied the stranger, not curtly, but pleasantly, and with an air as if he had said all there was to be said about it.
"Come from the North recently?" inquired Blakely, after a pause.
"Yes."
"From any place in particular?"
"Maine."
"People considerably stirred up down there?" continued Blakely, determined not to give up.
"Quite so."
Blakely threw a puzzled look over the tent, and seeing Ned Strong on the broad grin, frowned severely. Strong instantly assumed an abstracted air, and began humming softly,
"I wish I was in Dixie."
"The State of Maine," observed Blakely, with a certain defiance of manner not at all necessary in discussing a geographical question, "is a pleasant State."
"In summer," suggested the stranger.
"In summer, I mean," returned Blakely with animation, thinking he had broken the ice. "Cold as blazes in winter, though,—isn't it?"
The new recruit merely nodded.
Blakely eyed the man homicidally for a moment, and then, smiling one of those smiles of simulated gayety which the novelists inform us are more tragic than tears, turned upon him with withering irony.
"Trust you left the old folks pretty comfortable?"
"Dead."
"The old folks dead!"
"Quite so."
Blakely made a sudden dive for his blanket, tucked it around him with painful precision, and was heard no more.
Just then the bugle sounded "lights out,"—bugle answering bugle in far-off camps. When our not elaborate night-toilets were complete, Strong threw somebody else's old boot at the candle with infallible aim, and darkness took possession of the tent. Ned, who lay on my left, presently reached over to me, and whispered, "I say, our friend 'quite so' is a garrulous old boy! He'll talk himself to death some of these odd times, if he isn't careful. How he did run on!"
The next morning, when I opened my eyes, the new member of Mess 6 was sitting on his knapsack, combing his blond beard with a horn comb. He nodded pleasantly to me, and to each of the boys as they woke up, one by one. Blakely did not appear disposed to renew the animated conversation of the previous night; but while he was gone to make a requisition for what was in pure sarcasm called coffee, Curtis ventured to ask the man his name.
"Bladburn, John," was the reply.
"That's rather an unwieldy name for everyday use," put in Strong. "If it wouldn't hurt your feelings, I'd like to call you Quite So,—for short. Don't say no, if you don't like it. Is it agreeable?"
Bladburn gave a little laugh, all to himself, seemingly, and was about to say, "Quite so," when he caught at the words, blushed like a girl, and nodded a sunny assent to Strong. From that day until the end, the sobriquet clung to him.
The disaster at Bull Run was followed, as the reader knows, by a long period of masterly inactivity, so far as the Army of the Potomac was concerned. McDowell, a good soldier but unlucky, retired to Arlington Heights, and McClellan, who had distinguished himself in Western Virginia, took command of the forces in front of Washington, and bent his energies to reorganizing the demoralized troops. It was a dreary time to the people of the North, who looked fatuously from week to week for "the fall of Richmond"; and it was a dreary time to the denizens of that vast city of tents and forts which stretched in a semicircle before the beleaguered Capitol,—so tedious and soul-wearing a time that the hardships of forced marches and the horrors of battle became desirable things to them.
Roll-call morning and evening, guard-duty, dress-parades, an occasional reconnaissance, dominoes, wrestling-matches, and such rude games as could be carried on in camp made up the sum of our lives. The arrival of the mail with letters and papers from home was the event of the day. We noticed that Bladburn neither wrote nor received any letters. When the rest of the boys were scribbling away for dear life, with drumheads and knapsacks and cracker-boxes for writing-desks, he would sit serenely smoking his pipe, but looking out on us through rings of smoke with a face expressive of the tenderest interest.
"Look here, Quite So," Strong would say, "the mail-bag closes in half an hour. Ain't you going to write?"
"I believe not to-day," Bladburn would reply, as if he had written yesterday, or would write to-morrow: but he never wrote.
He had become a great favorite with us, and with all the officers of the regiment. He talked less than any man I ever knew, but there was nothing sinister or sullen in his reticence. It was sunshine,—warmth and brightness, but no voice. Unassuming and modest to the verge of shyness, he impressed every one as a man of singular pluck and nerve.
"Do you know," said Curtis to me one day, "that that fellow Quite So is clear grit, and when we come to close quarters with our Palmetto brethren over yonder, he'll do something devilish?"
"What makes you think so?"
"Well, nothing quite explainable; the exasperating coolness of the man, as much as anything. This morning the boys were teasing Muffin Fan" [a small mulatto girl who used to bring muffins into camp three times a week,—at the peril of her life!] "and Jemmy Blunt of Company K—you know him—was rather rough on the girl, when Quite So, who had been reading under a tree, shut one finger in his book, walked over to where the boys were skylarking, and with the smile of a juvenile angel on his face lifted Jemmy out of that and set him down gently in front of his own tent. There Blunt sat speechless, staring at Quite So, who was back again under the tree, pegging away at his little Latin grammar."
That Latin grammar! He always had it about him, reading it or turning over its dog's-eared pages at odd intervals and in out-of-the-way places. Half a dozen times a day he would draw it out from the bosom of his blouse, which had taken the shape of the book just over the left breast, look at it as if to assure himself it was all right, and then put the thing back. At night the volume lay beneath his pillow. The first thing in the morning, before he was well awake, his hand would go groping instinctively under his knapsack in search of it.
A devastating curiosity seized upon us boys concerning that Latin grammar, for we had discovered the nature of the book. Strong wanted to steal it one night, but concluded not to. "In the first place," reflected Strong, "I haven't the heart to do it, and in the next place I haven't the moral courage. Quite So would placidly break every bone in my body." And I believe Strong was not far out of the way.
Sometimes I was vexed with myself for allowing this tall, simple-hearted country fellow to puzzle me so much. And yet, was he a simple-hearted country fellow? City bred he certainly was not; but his manner, in spite of his awkwardness, had an indescribable air of refinement. Now and then, too, he dropped a word or a phrase that showed his familiarity with unexpected lines of reading. "The other day," said Curtis, with the slightest elevation of eyebrow, "he had the cheek to correct my Latin for me." In short, Quite So was a daily problem to the members of Mess 6. Whenever he was absent, and Blakely and Curtis and Strong and I got together in the tent, we discussed him, evolving various theories to explain why he never wrote to anybody and why nobody ever wrote to him. Had the man committed some terrible crime, and fled to the army to hide his guilt? Blakely suggested that he must have murdered "the old folks." What did he mean by eternally conning that tattered Latin grammar? And was his name Bladburn, anyhow? Even his imperturbable amiability became suspicious. And then his frightful reticence! If he was the victim of any deep grief or crushing calamity, why didn't he seem unhappy? What business had he to be cheerful?
"It's my opinion," said Strong, "that he's a rival Wandering Jew; the original Jacobs, you know, was a dark fellow."
Blakely inferred from something Bladburn had said, or something he had not said,—which was more likely,—that he had been a schoolmaster at some period of his life.
"Schoolmaster be hanged!" was Strong's comment. "Can you fancy a schoolmaster going about conjugating baby verbs out of a dratted little spelling-book? No, Quite So has evidently been a—a—Blest if I can imagine what he's been!"
Whatever John Bladburn had been, he was a lonely man. Whenever I want a type of perfect human isolation, I shall think of him, as he was in those days, moving remote, self-contained, and alone in the midst of two hundred thousand men.
II
The Indian summer, with its infinite beauty and tenderness, came like a reproach that year to Virginia. The foliage, touched here and there with prismatic tints, drooped motionless in the golden haze. The delicate Virginia creeper was almost minded to put forth its scarlet buds again. No wonder the lovely phantom—this dusky Southern sister of the pale Northern June—lingered not long with us, but, filling the once peaceful glens and valleys with her pathos, stole away rebukefully before the savage enginery of man.
The preparations that had been going on for months in arsenals and foundries at the North were nearly completed. For weeks past the air had been filled with rumors of an advance; but the rumor of to-day refuted the rumor of yesterday, and the Grand Army did not move. Heintzelman's corps was constantly folding its tents, like the Arabs, and as silently stealing away; but somehow it was always in the same place the next morning. One day, at length, orders came down for our brigade to move.
"We're going to Richmond, boys!" shouted Strong, thrusting his head in at the tent; and we all cheered and waved our caps like mad. You see, Big Bethel and Bull Run and Ball's Bluff (the Bloody B's, as we used to call them,) hadn't taught us any better sense.
Rising abruptly from the plateau, to the left of our encampment, was a tall hill covered with a stunted growth of red-oak, persimmon, and chestnut. The night before we struck tents I climbed up to the crest to take a parting look at a spectacle which custom had not been able to rob of its enchantment. There, at my feet, and extending miles and miles away, lay the camps of the Grand Army, with its camp-fires reflected luridly against the sky. Thousands of lights were twinkling in every direction, some nestling in the valley, some like fire-flies beating their wings and palpitating among the trees, and others stretching in parallel lines and curves, like the street-lamps of a city. Somewhere, far off, a band was playing, at intervals it seemed; and now and then, nearer to, a silvery strain from a bugle shot sharply up through the night, and seemed to lose itself like a rocket among the stars,—the patient, untroubled stars. Suddenly a hand was laid upon my arm.
"I'd like to say a word to you," said Bladburn.
With a little start of surprise, I made room for him on the fallen tree where I was seated.
"I mayn't get another chance," he said. "You and the boys have been very kind to me, kinder than I deserve; but sometimes I've fancied that my not saying anything about myself had given you the idea that all was not right in my past. I want to say that I came down to Virginia with a clean record."
"We never really doubted it, Bladburn."
"If I didn't write home," he continued, "it was because I hadn't any home, neither kith nor kin. When I said the old folks were dead, I said it. Am I boring you? If I thought I was—"
"No, Bladburn. I have often wanted you to talk to me about yourself, not from idle curiosity, I trust, but because I liked you that rainy night when you came to camp, and have gone on liking you ever since. This isn't too much to say, when Heaven only knows how soon I may be past saying it or you listening to it."
"That's it," said Bladburn, hurriedly, "that's why I want to talk with you. I've a fancy that I shan't come out of our first battle."
The words gave me a queer start, for I had been trying several days to throw off a similar presentiment concerning him,—a foolish presentiment that grew out of a dream.
"In case anything of that kind turns up," he continued, "I'd like you to have my Latin grammar here,—you've seen me reading it. You might stick it away in a bookcase, for the sake of old times. It goes against me to think of it falling into rough hands or being kicked about camp and trampled under foot."
He was drumming softly with his fingers on the volume in the bosom of his blouse.
"I didn't intend to speak of this to a living soul," he went on, motioning me not to answer him; "but something took hold of me to-night and made me follow you up here. Perhaps, if I told you all, you would be the more willing to look after the little book in case it goes ill with me. When the war broke out I was teaching school down in Maine, in the same village where my father was schoolmaster before me. The old man when he died left me quite alone. I lived pretty much by myself, having no interests outside of the district school, which seemed in a manner my personal property. Eight years ago last spring a new pupil was brought to the school, a slight slip of a girl, with a sad kind of face and quiet ways. Perhaps it was because she wasn't very strong, and perhaps because she wasn't used over well by those who had charge of her, or perhaps it was because my life was lonely, that my heart warmed to the child. It all seems like a dream now, since that April morning when little Mary stood in front of my desk with her pretty eyes looking down bashfully and her soft hair falling over her face. One day I look up, and six years have gone by,—as they go by in dreams,—and among the scholars is a tall girl of sixteen, with serious, womanly eyes which I cannot trust myself to look upon. The old life has come to an end. The child has become a woman and can teach the master now. So help me Heaven, I didn't know that I loved her until that day!
"Long after the children had gone home I sat in the schoolroom with my face resting on my hands. There was her desk, the afternoon shadows falling across it. It never looked empty and cheerless before. I went and stood by the low chair, as I had stood hundreds of times. On the desk was a pile of books, ready to be taken away, and among the rest a small Latin grammar which we had studied together. What little despairs and triumphs and happy hours were associated with it! I took it up curiously, as if it were some gentle dead thing, and turned over the pages, and could hardly see them. Turning the pages, idly so, I came to a leaf on which something was written with ink, in the familiar girlish hand. It was only the words 'Dear John,' through which she had drawn two hasty pencil lines—I wish she hadn't drawn those lines!" added Bladburn, under his breath.
He was silent for a minute or two, looking off towards the camps, where the lights were fading out one by one.
"I had no right to go and love Mary. I was twice her age, an awkward, unsocial man, that would have blighted her youth. I was as wrong as wrong can be. But I never meant to tell her. I locked the grammar in my desk and the secret in my heart for a year. I couldn't bear to meet her in the village, and kept away from every place where she was likely to be. Then she came to me, and sat down at my feet penitently, just as she used to do when she was a child, and asked what she had done to anger me; and then, Heaven forgive me! I told her all, and asked her if she could say with her lips the words she had written, and she nestled in my arms all a-trembling like a bird, and said them over and over again.
"When Mary's family heard of our engagement, there was trouble. They looked higher for Mary than a middle-aged schoolmaster. No blame to them. They forbade me the house, her uncles; but we met in the village and at the neighbors' houses, and I was happy, knowing she loved me. Matters were in this state when the war came on. I had a strong call to look after the old flag, and I hung my head that day when the company raised in our village marched by the schoolhouse to the railroad station; but I couldn't tear myself away. About this time the minister's son, who had been away to college, came to the village. He met Mary here and there, and they became great friends. He was a likely fellow, near her own age, and it was natural they should like one another. Sometimes I winced at seeing him made free of the home from which I was shut out; then I would open the grammar at the leaf where 'Dear John' was written up in the corner, and my trouble was gone. Mary was sorrowful and pale these days, and I think her people were worrying her.
"It was one evening two or three days before we got the news of Bull Run. I had gone down to the burying-ground to trim the spruce hedge set round the old man's lot, and was just stepping into the enclosure, when I heard voices from the opposite side. One was Mary's, and the other I knew to be young Marston's, the minister's son. I didn't mean to listen, but what Mary was saying struck me dumb. We must never meet again, she was saying in a wild way. We must say good-by here, forever,—good-by, good-by! And I could hear her sobbing. Then, presently, she said, hurriedly, No, no; my hand, not my lips! Then it seemed he kissed her hands, and the two parted, one going towards the parsonage, and the other out by the gate near where I stood.
"I don't know how long I stood there, but the night-dews had wet me to the bone when I stole out of the graveyard and across the road to the schoolhouse. I unlocked the door, and took the Latin grammar from the desk and hid it in my bosom. There was not a sound or a light anywhere as I walked out of the village. And now," said Bladburn, rising suddenly from the tree-trunk, "if the little book ever falls in your way, won't you see that it comes to no harm, for my sake, and for the sake of the little woman who was true to me and didn't love me? Wherever she is to-night, God bless her!"
* * * * *
As we descended to camp with our arms resting on each other's shoulder, the watch-fires were burning low in the valleys and along the hillsides, and as far as the eye could reach, the silent tents lay bleaching in the moonlight.
III
We imagined that the throwing forward of our brigade was the initial movement of a general advance of the army: but that, as the reader will remember, did not take place until the following March. The Confederates had fallen back to Centreville without firing a shot, and the National troops were in possession of Lewinsville, Vienna, and Fairfax Court-House. Our new position was nearly identical with that which we had occupied on the night previous to the battle of Bull Run,—on the old turnpike road to Manassas, where the enemy was supposed to be in great force. With a field-glass we could see the Rebel pickets moving in a belt of woodland on our right, and morning and evening we heard the spiteful roll of their snare-drums.
Those pickets soon became a nuisance to us. Hardly a night passed but they fired upon our outposts, so far with no harmful result; but after a while it grew to be a serious matter. The Rebels would crawl out on all-fours from the wood into a field covered with underbrush, and lie there in the dark for hours, waiting for a shot. Then our men took to the rifle-pits,—pits ten or twelve feet long by four or five feet deep, with the loose earth banked up a few inches high on the exposed sides. All the pits bore names, more or less felicitous, by which they were known to their transient tenants. One was called "The Pepper-Box," another "Uncle Sam's Well," another "The Reb-Trap," and another, I am constrained to say, was named after a not to be mentioned tropical locality. Though this rude sort of nomenclature predominated, there was no lack of softer titles, such as "Fortress Matilda" and "Castle Mary," and one had, though unintentionally, a literary flavor to it, "Blair's Grave," which was not popularly considered as reflecting unpleasantly on Nat Blair, who had assisted in making the excavation.
Some of the regiment had discovered a field of late corn in the neighborhood, and used to boil a few ears every day, while it lasted, for the boys detailed on the night-picket. The corn-cobs were always scrupulously preserved and mounted on the parapets of the pits. Whenever a Rebel shot carried away one of these barbette guns, there was swearing in that particular trench. Strong, who was very sensitive to this kind of disaster, was complaining bitterly one morning, because he had lost three "pieces" the night before.
"There's Quite So, now," said Strong, "when a Minie-ball comes ping! and knocks one of his guns to flinders, he merely smiles, and doesn't at all see the degradation of the thing."
Poor Bladburn! As I watched him day by day going about his duties, in his shy, cheery way, with a smile for every one and not an extra word for anybody, it was hard to believe he was the same man who, that night before we broke camp by the Potomac, had poured out to me the story of his love and sorrow in words that burned in my memory.
While Strong was speaking, Blakely lifted aside the flap of the tent and looked in on us.
"Boys, Quite So was hurt last night," he said, with a white tremor to his lip.
"What!"
"Shot on picket."
"Why, he was in the pit next to mine," cried Strong.
"Badly hurt?"
"Badly hurt."
I knew he was; I need not have asked the question. He never meant to go back to New England!
* * * * *
Bladburn was lying on the stretcher in the hospital-tent. The surgeon had knelt down by him, and was carefully cutting away the bosom of his blouse. The Latin grammar, stained and torn, slipped, and fell to the floor. Bladburn gave me a quick glance. I picked up the book, and as I placed it in his hand, the icy fingers closed softly over mine. He was sinking fast. In a few minutes the surgeon finished his examination. When he rose to his feet there were tears on the weather-beaten cheeks. He was a rough outside, but a tender heart.
"My poor lad," he blurted out, "it's no use. If you've anything to say, say it now, for you've nearly done with this world."
Then Bladburn lifted his eyes slowly to the surgeon, and the old smile flitted over his face as he murmured,—
"Quite so."
NOTES
the first battle of Bull Run:—Fought July 21, 1861; known in the South as Manassas.
Long Bridge:—A bridge over which the Union soldiers crossed in fleeing to Washington after the battle of Bull Run.
Shenandoah:—A river and a valley in Virginia—the scene of many events in the Civil War.
Fairfax Court House:—Near Manassas Junction.
On to Richmond:—In 1861 the newspapers of the North were violently demanding an attack on Richmond.
Faneuil Hall:—An historic hall in Boston, in which important meetings were held before the Revolution.
McDowell:—Irving McDowell, who commanded the Union troops at Bull Run.
McClellan:—George B. McClellan, commander of the Army of the Potomac.
Wandering Jew:—A legendary person said to have been condemned to wander over the earth, undying, till the Day of Judgment. The legend is probably founded on a passage in the Bible—John 21:20-23.
folding its tents:—A quotation from The Day is Done, by Longfellow. The lines are:—
And the night shall be filled with music, And the cares, that infest the day, Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs, And as silently steal away.
Big Bethel:—The Union troops were defeated here on June 10, 1861.
Ball's Bluff:—A place on the Potomac where the Union soldiers were beaten, October 21, 1861.
Centreville:—A small town, the Union base in the first Battle of Bull Run.
Lewinsville:—A small town, north of Centreville.
Vienna:—A village in the Bull Run district.
Blair's Grave:—Robert Blair, a Scotch writer, published (1743) a poem in blank verse called "The Grave."
barbette guns:—Guns elevated to fire over the top of a turret or parapet.
minie-ball:—A conical ball plugged with iron, named after its inventor, Captain Minie, of France.
QUESTIONS FOR STUDY
Read the piece through without stopping, so that you can get the story. Then go back to the beginning and study with the help of the following questions:—
Compare the first sentence with the first sentence of Tennessee's Partner. What do you think of the method? What is the use of the first paragraph in Quite So? Why the long paragraph giving the setting? Is this a good method in writing a story? What had become of "Little Billy"? Who was "Johnny Reb"? What do you think of bringing in humorous touches when one is dealing with things so serious as war and battles? What does "Drop that!" refer to? Why does Strong change his tone? Note what details the author has selected in order to give a clear picture of "Quite So" in a few words. How does the conversation reveal the stranger's character? What is shown by the fact that "Quite So" does not write any letters? What is the purpose of the episode of "Muffin Fan"? What devices does the author use, in order to bring out the mystery and the loneliness of "Quite So"? Note how the author emphasizes the passage of time. Why does Bladburn finally tell his story? How does it reveal his character? Was Mary right in what she did? Why are some sentences in the text printed in italics? Was Bladburn right in leaving his home village without explanation? Why did he do so? What do you get from the sentence, "He never meant to go back to New England"? What is the impression made by the last sentence? Do you like the story?
THEME SUBJECTS
A Mysterious Person The New Girl at School The Schoolmaster's Romance A Sudden Departure A Camp Scene The G.A.R. on Memorial Day The Militia in our Town An Old Soldier A Story of the Civil War Some Relics of the Civil War Watching the Cadets Drill My Uncle's Experiences in the War A Sham Battle A Visit to an Old Battlefield On Picket Duty A Daughter of the Confederacy "Stonewall" Jackson Modern Ways of Preventing War The Soldiers' Home An Escape from a Military Prison The Women's Relief Corps Women in the Civil War
SUGGESTIONS FOR WRITING
An Old Soldier:—Tell how you happen to know this old soldier. Where does he live? Do you see him often? What is he doing when you see him? Describe him as vividly as you can:—his general appearance; his clothes; his way of walking. Speak particularly of his face and its expression. If possible, let us hear him talk. Perhaps you can tell some of his war stories—in his own words.
A Mysterious Person:—Imagine a mysterious person appearing in a little town where everybody knows everybody else. Tell how he (or she) arrives. How does he look? What does he do? Explain clearly why he is particularly hard to account for. What do people say about him? Try to make each person's remarks fit his individual character. How do people try to find out about the stranger? Does he notice their curiosity? Do they ask him questions? If so, give some bits of their conversations with him. You might go on and make a story of some length out of this. Show whether the stranger really has any reason for concealing his identity. Does he get into any trouble? Does an accident reveal who he is and why he is in the town? Does some one find out by spying upon him? Or does he tell all about himself, when the right time comes?
Perhaps you can put the story into the form of a series of brief conversations about the stranger or with him.
An Incident of the Civil War:—Select some historical incident, or one that you have heard from an old soldier, and tell it simply and vividly in your own words.
COLLATERAL READINGS
The Story of a Bad Boy Thomas Bailey Aldrich Marjorie Daw and Other People " " " The Stillwater Tragedy " " " Prudence Palfrey " " " From Ponkapog to Pesth " " " The Queen of Sheba " " " A Sea Turn and Other Matters " " " For Bravery on the Field of Battle (in Two Bites at a Cherry) " " " The Return of a Private (in Main-Travelled Roads) Hamlin Garland On the Eve of the Fourth Harold Frederic Marse Chan Thomas Nelson Page Meh Lady " " " The Burial of the Guns " " " Red Rock " " " The Long Roll Mary Johnston Cease Firing " " The Crisis Winston Churchill Where the Battle was Fought Mary N. Murfree The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come John Fox, Jr. Hospital Sketches Louisa M. Alcott A Blockaded Family P.A. Hague He Knew Lincoln[2] Ida Tarbell The Perfect Tribute[3] M.R.S. Andrews The Toy Shop[4] M.S. Gerry Thomas Bailey Aldrich Ferris Greenslet Park Street Papers, pp. 143-70 Bliss Perry American Writers of To-day, pp. 104-23 H.C. Vedder American Authors and their Homes, pp. 89-98 F.W. Halsey American Authors at Home, pp. 3-16 J.L. and J.B. Gilder Literary Pilgrimages in New England, pp. 89-97 E.M. Bacon Thomas Bailey Aldrich (poem) Henry van Dyke
For biographies and criticisms of Thomas B. Aldrich, see also: Outlook, 86:922, August 24, 1907; 84:735, November 24, 1906; 85:737, March 30, 1907. Bookman, 24:317, December, 1906 (Portrait); also 25:218 (Portrait). Current Literature, 42:49, January, 1907 (Portrait). Chautauquan, 65:168, January, 1912.
PAN IN WALL STREET
A.D. 1867
EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN
Just where the Treasury's marble front Looks over Wall Street's mingled nations; Where Jews and Gentiles most are wont To throng for trade and last quotations; Where, hour by hour, the rates of gold Outrival, in the ears of people, The quarter-chimes, serenely tolled From Trinity's undaunted steeple,—
Even there I heard a strange, wild strain Sound high above the modern clamor, Above the cries of greed and gain, The curbstone war, the auction's hammer; And swift, on Music's misty ways, It led, from all this strife for millions. To ancient, sweet-do-nothing days Among the kirtle-robed Sicilians.
And as it stilled the multitude, And yet more joyous rose, and shriller, I saw the minstrel where he stood At ease against a Doric pillar: One hand a droning organ played, The other held a Pan's-pipe (fashioned Like those of old) to lips that made The reeds give out that strain impassioned.
'Twas Pan himself had wandered here A-strolling through this sordid city, And piping to the civic ear The prelude of some pastoral ditty! The demigod had crossed the seas,— From haunts of shepherd, nymph, and satyr, And Syracusan times,—to these Far shores and twenty centuries later.
A ragged cap was on his head; But—hidden thus—there was no doubting That, all with crispy locks o'erspread, His gnarled horns were somewhere sprouting; His club-feet, cased in rusty shoes, Were crossed, as on some frieze you see them, And trousers, patched of divers hues, Concealed his crooked shanks beneath them.
He filled the quivering reeds with sound, And o'er his mouth their changes shifted, And with his goat's-eyes looked around Where'er the passing current drifted; And soon, as on Trinacrian hills The nymphs and herdsmen ran to hear him, Even now the tradesmen from their tills, With clerks and porters, crowded near him.
The bulls and bears together drew From Jauncey Court and New Street Alley, As erst, if pastorals be true, Came beasts from every wooded valley; And random passers stayed to list,— A boxer AEgon, rough and merry, A Broadway Daphnis, on his tryst With Nais at the Brooklyn Ferry.
A one-eyed Cyclops halted long In tattered cloak of army pattern, And Galatea joined the throng,— A blowsy apple-vending slattern; While old Silenus staggered out From some new-fangled lunch-house handy, And bade the piper, with a shout, To strike up Yankee Doodle Dandy!
A newsboy and a peanut-girl Like little Fauns began to caper; His hair was all in tangled curl, Her tawny legs were bare and taper; And still the gathering larger grew, And gave its pence and crowded nigher, While aye the shepherd-minstrel blew His pipe, and struck the gamut higher.
O heart of Nature, beating still With throbs her vernal passion taught her,— Even here, as on the vine-clad hill, Or by the Arethusan water! New forms may fold the speech, new lands Arise within these ocean-portals, But Music waves eternal wands,— Enchantress of the souls of mortals!
So thought I,—but among us trod A man in blue, with legal baton, And scoffed the vagrant demigod, And pushed him from the step I sat on. Doubting I mused upon the cry, "Great Pan is dead!"—and all the people Went on their ways:—and clear and high The quarter sounded from the steeple.
NOTES
Wall Street:—An old street in New York faced by the Stock Exchange and the offices of the wealthiest bankers and brokers.
the Treasury:—The Sub-Treasury Building.
last quotations:—The latest information on stock values given out before the Stock Exchange closes.
Trinity:—The famous old church that stands at the head of Wall Street.
curbstone war:—The clamorous quoting, auctioning, and bidding of stock out on the street curb, where the "curb brokers"—brokers who do not have seats on the Stock Exchange—do business.
sweet-do-nothing:—A translation of an Italian expression, dolce far niente.
Sicilians:—Theocritus (3rd century before Christ), the Greek pastoral poet, wrote of the happy life of the shepherds and shepherdesses in Sicily.
Doric pillar:—A heavy marble pillar, such as was used in the architecture of the Dorians in Greece.
Pan's pipe:—Pan was the Greek god of shepherds, and patron of fishing and hunting. He is represented as having the head and body of a man, with the legs, horns, and tail of a goat. It was said that he invented the shepherd's pipe or flute, which he made from reeds plucked on the bank of a stream.
pastoral ditty:—A poem about shepherds and the happy outdoor life. The word pastoral comes from the Latin pastor, shepherd.
Syracusan times:—Syracuse was an important city in Sicily. See the note on Sicilians, above.
Trinacrian hills:—Trinacria is an old name for Sicily.
bulls and bears:—A bull, on the Stock Exchange, is one who operates in expectation of a rise in stocks; a bear is a person who sells stocks in expectation of a fall in the market.
Jauncey Court:—The Jauncey family were prominent in the early New York days. This court was probably named after them.
AEgon:—Usually spelled AEgaeon; another name for Briareus, a monster with a hundred arms.
Daphnis:—In Greek myth, a shepherd who loved music.
Nais:—In Greek myth, a happy young girl, a nymph.
Cyclops:—One of a race of giants having but one eye—in the middle of the forehead. These giants helped Vulcan at his forge under Aetna.
Galatea:—A sea-nymph beloved by the Cyclops Polyphemus.
Silenus:—The foster-father and companion of Bacchus, god of wine. In pictures and sculpture Silenus is usually represented as intoxicated.
Fauns:—Fabled beings, half goat and half man.
Arethusan water:—Arethusa, in Greek myth, was a wood-nymph, who was pursued by the river Alpheus. She was changed into a fountain, and ran under the sea to Sicily, where she rose near the city of Syracuse. Shelley has a poem on Arethusa.
baton:—A rod or wand; here, of course, a policeman's club.
SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY
The author sees an organ-grinder playing his gay tunes in Wall Street, New York, among the buildings where enormous financial transactions are carried on. He (the author) imagines this wandering minstrel to be Pan himself, assuming a modern form. Read the notes carefully for what is said about Pan. Notice, in the poem, how skillfully the author brings out the contrast between the easy-going days of ancient Greece and the busy, rushing times of modern America. Of what value is the word serenely in the first stanza? What is the "curbstone war"? Do you think the old-fashioned Pan's pipe is common now? Could a man play an organ and a pipe at the same time? Why is the city spoken of as "sordid"? What is the "civic ear"? In the description of the player, how is the idea of his being Pan emphasized? How was it that the bulls and bears drew together? In plain words who were the people whom the author describes under Greek names? Show how aptly the mythological characters are fitted to modern persons. Read carefully what is said about the power of music, in the stanza beginning "O heart of Nature." Who was the man in blue? Why did he interfere? Why is the organ-grinder called a "vagrant demigod"? What was it that the author doubted? What is meant here by "Great Pan is dead"? Does the author mean more than the mere words seem to express? Do you think that people are any happier in these commercial times than they were in ancient Greece? After you have studied the poem and mastered all the references, read the poem through, thinking of its meaning and its lively measure.
Read Mrs. Browning's poem, A Musical Instrument, which is about Pan and his pipe of reeds.
COLLATERAL READINGS
Nooks and Corners of Old New York Charles Hemstreet In Old New York Thomas A. Janvier The Greatest Street in the World: Broadway Stephen Jenkins The God of Music (poem) Edith M. Thomas A Musical Instrument Elizabeth Barrett Browning Classic Myths (See Index) C.M. Gayley The Age of Fable Thomas Bulfinch A Butterfly in Wall Street (in Madrigals and Catches) Frank D. Sherman Come Pan, and Pipe (in Madrigals and Catches) " " " Pan Learns Music (poem) Henry van Dyke Peeps at Great Cities: New York Hildegarde Hawthorne Vignettes of Manhattan Brander Matthews New York Society Ralph Pulitzer In the Cities (poem) R.W. Gilder Up at a Villa—Down in the City Robert Browning The Faun in Wall Street[5] (poem) John Myers O'Hara
THE HAND OF LINCOLN
EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN
Look on this cast, and know the hand That bore a nation in its hold; From this mute witness understand What Lincoln was,—how large of mould
The man who sped the woodman's team, And deepest sunk the ploughman's share, And pushed the laden raft astream, Of fate before him unaware.
This was the hand that knew to swing The axe—since thus would Freedom train Her son—and made the forest ring, And drove the wedge, and toiled amain.
Firm hand, that loftier office took, A conscious leader's will obeyed, And, when men sought his word and look, With steadfast might the gathering swayed.
No courtier's, toying with a sword, Nor minstrel's, laid across a lute; A chief's, uplifted to the Lord When all the kings of earth were mute!
The hand of Anak, sinewed strong, The fingers that on greatness clutch; Yet, lo! the marks their lines along Of one who strove and suffered much.
For here in knotted cord and vein I trace the varying chart of years; I know the troubled heart, the strain, The weight of Atlas—and the tears.
Again I see the patient brow That palm erewhile was wont to press; And now 'tis furrowed deep, and now Made smooth with hope and tenderness.
For something of a formless grace This moulded outline plays about; A pitying flame, beyond our trace, Breathes like a spirit, in and out,—
The love that cast an aureole Round one who, longer to endure, Called mirth to ease his ceaseless dole, Yet kept his nobler purpose sure.
Lo, as I gaze, the statured man, Built up from yon large hand, appears; A type that Nature wills to plan But once in all a people's years.
What better than this voiceless cast To tell of such a one as he, Since through its living semblance passed The thought that bade a race be free!
NOTES
this cast:—A cast of Lincoln's hand was made by Leonard W. Volk, in 1860, on the Sunday following the nomination of Lincoln for the Presidency. The original, in bronze, can be seen at the National Museum in Washington. Various copies have been made in plaster. An anecdote concerning one of these is told on page 107 of William Dean Howells's Literary Friends and Acquaintances; facing page 106 of the same book there is an interesting picture. In the Critic, volume 44, page 510, there is an article by Isabel Moore, entitled Hands that have Done Things; a picture of Lincoln's hand, in plaster, is given in the course of this article. |
|
