Chapter III (2)

“I noticed that his skirts held him up temporarily, but that could not last long. I began to cry in my turn, and call,—‘Papa! uncle!’—but the sound of my voice could not reach so far, and I felt that there must be something better to do than cry. I said to myself that one must go into the river to rescue the poor child. Yes, but in order to do that, it was necessary to wet one’s self in the cold water, which was particularly disagreeable to me, as you already know, and what was worse, they would see, afterwards, by my wet clothes that I had disobeyed, that I had not stayed in the path, but had broken my word; that was the most terrible part. In a couple of seconds all views of the situation flashed through my mind. Should I try to save the gardener’s little boy? Then I must disobey. An idea came to me which struck me as brilliant. I would take off my shoes, my stockings and my trousers, and leave them in the boat; the water evidently was not very deep, because I could see the bottom; I was quite large and by rolling my shirt up under my vest, I thought I could go. In a moment this was done. In another moment, and without stumbling, I had descended into the water, which, alas! was far from, warm. But that was not all. I had miscalculated the depth of the water and my height, and, when I had taken two or three steps towards the child, who still cried, I saw that if I went any farther I should wet my shirt and my vest. That seemed to me impossible to do. I took one step back toward the boat. The thought did not occur to me that I should have undressed completely at first, and that I might do it even now. Yes, I very nearly left the child to drown, for the sake of not wetting the clothes which I still wore (which, it is true, were new ones) and of not having to admit afterwards, that I had disobeyed.

“My hesitation did not last long. ‘Father will forgive me.’ I said to myself, when he knows all about it, ‘and giving myself up altogether to the sentiment of a duty which I felt was superior to all others, I succeeded, scarcely knowing how, in crossing the river, in reaching the little boy, who had already stopped crying, in pulling his head out of the water first, and then, with infinite pains, in seating him on the first step of a worm-eaten stair-case which mounted the sloping river-bank, towards his father’s garden.

“No one appeared; no answer came to my cries. There were still four steps to mount, to reach the garden: I finally contrived to climb them with my burden. Once there, I laid the child down among the cabbages. From violet, he had become quite pale, and much frightened, I ran towards his parents’ house.”

VI.

“Then I found the little one’s mother, whom I knew by sight.

“She was a large, healthy-looking woman, and, as I rushed into her presence, was working at her spinning-wheel, singing meanwhile. When she saw me suddenly appear, scarcely half clothed, and soaking wet, she was seized with a fit of anger, and before in my trouble I could manage to explain myself, boxed me vigorously on both ears.

“It was the first time in my life I had received such treatment. Furious at this proceeding, I threw myself on her, calling her every name I could think of, and holding her by the skirt, I cried to her that out among the cabbages there lay a little boy who might be dead.

“The good woman, astonished, began to imagine from the little I was able to tell her, that she had been too quick; she concluded to follow me. I feared I was taking her to a dead child, all was so quiet over in the cabbage garden. But I was wrong. The little fellow I had pulled out of the water was in better condition than I. We found him sitting tranquilly in his wet garments, his arm resting carelessly on a fine large cabbage. Without saying a word, he was staring straight in front of him. But at the sight of his mother he suddenly recovered his voice, and commenced bellowing even louder than he had done when he was paddling in the river. Why should he cry? I thought it stupid to cry just when help had arrived. He was, however, not so far wrong, poor, fat little fellow: he was a little man who had already experienced many things in life; he knew well what awaited him. To tell the truth, he knew that his mother’s first action, in moments of excitement, was at once quick and varied.

“Seeing him in good condition, but wet from head to foot, mother Brazon lifted him up by one arm, and pulling up his frock, administered a spanking which considerably augmented the loudness of the little boy’s shrieks. I was indignant. It appears that I was wrong. I have since heard it said that, medicinally, the maternal treatment was admirably suited to the occasion. Is that true, doctor?”

“Quite true,” answered the doctor, laughing.

“With all this going on, I was scarcely contented; on the one hand, I was beginning to shiver with cold, and on the other, for the first time in my life, I found myself with strangers far away from the remainder of my clothes, and I had a terrible fear lest Madame Brazon should profit by the occasion to administer to me (otherwise than on my ears) the same treatment she had so recently applied to her own son, and which the doctor, no doubt, would have approved. But these two exercises had been sufficient to calm the good woman.

“We had no sooner entered the house than she proved herself a loving mother to little Auguste, and very kind to me. Quick as a wink she undressed us both entirely, and bundled us both, in spite of our resistance, between the white sheets of her big bed.

“Three minutes later she made us each drink a glass of sugared wine—very hot—which put Auguste in an extremely jubilant frame of mind. I could not share it. The worst was perhaps over. All was finished on our side of the river, but that which was soon going to pass on the other side began to occupy my mind. I thought alternately of papa, of mamma, of my uncle, of my wet clothes, of the two boxes on my ears, of the boat, and of aunt Marie. All this was very complicated for a childish brain, already confused. Little Auguste, searching for a warm place, had curled up in my arms and gone to sleep. Scarcely knowing it, I followed his example, and became unconscious in the middle of my sad reflections. It seems they let us sleep nearly two hours. When I awoke and found myself in that room and in that bed, and felt the head of a chubby little boy on my shoulder, I was, at first, much astonished. I opened my eyes without daring to move. But soon my memory returned, I remembered everything, and cried, ‘Papa! papa!’

“‘Present!’ replied my father. He had been there by my bedside,—my dear father,—for one hour, and my darling mother was there also. Aunt Sister Marie had been unable to leave, or she would have been there, too.

“Madame Brazon, it appears, had at length succeeded in recognizing in the small gentleman so scantily clad, whose ears she had so lately boxed, the little boy she had often seen in the garden across the river, and to explain the enigma, she had sent a neighbor to uncle Antoine’s. It had suddenly interrupted the game of chess. My father arrived soon after, bringing with him my uncle’s doctor. The doctor, after looking at the pretty picture we made in Madame Brazon’s bed, had said, ‘Let them sleep.’

“While waiting for us to wake up, father had sent to town for dry clothes; my mother had brought them herself. When I was dressed, my father took me between his knees and said to me:

“‘Tell me everything.’

“I gave him, in fewer words than I have just used, an exact account of what had happened. My father listened to me. I saw clearly that he was not angry. At one moment, however, I saw him grow pale; it was when he realized from my explanations that to go and _undrown_ little Auguste (this was the word I used, and it has been so well remembered by all the family that I have not forgotten it), it was, I say, when he understood that I must certainly have crossed the river to reach the child.

“‘It is incomprehensible!’ said he to mamma and the doctor. ‘The middle of the river is every where at least five or six feet deep. What did he do?’

“‘Papa,’ said I, ‘I did as I saw the frogs do.’

“‘But then, my child, you _swam_.’

“‘I do not know, papa; perhaps—’

“‘Did the water go over your head?’

“‘No, papa, surely not.’

“‘You got no water in your mouth while you were going across to rescue little Auguste? You did not go altogether under water?’

“‘No, papa; no papa.’

“‘Very well, my wife,’ said my father to my mother, ‘that proves that when one has to swim, one can swim. Jacques swam, because occupied with something besides his fear of water, he thought only of the end he wished to attain. I am sure that he is now cured of his former fright, and that with a few good lessons he will become a good swimmer. And to be a good swimmer is very useful: it enables one to save one’s self as well as others. Without this baby, Madame Brazon, without his courage and _sang-froid_, your child would have been lost.’

“‘My God!’ she cried. ‘And I thanked him with two blows!’

“‘Yes, papa,—two hard ones!’

“‘Madame Brazon,’ said my father, ‘kiss my son on the two cheeks that you treated so roughly. There is nothing like a kiss to repair an injury. When one is kissed, all wounds are cured.’”

VII.

“My story,” continued the General, “should not give the idea to children, or to grown persons either, that it is always wise to make an abrupt debut in the art of swimming, but it shows that the movements by the aid of which a man swims are as natural to him as to most animals, and that if suddenly forced to do so, he has no fear of wetting himself, and can, by not losing his head, and by thinking of frogs, cross a little river in safety.

“If you have to make the effort to-night, remember this, and help one another. To leave a comrade behind is not a creditable proceeding. Many a time have I congratulated myself that I pulled little Brazon out of the water.”

“Brazon! Brazon! General?” said the doctor. “But I have known someone of that name in the army,—a lieutenant-colonel, a strong, brave fellow. Wait! It was he whose arm I cut off after our expedition against the Beni-Raten. He was forced to retire—brave fellow!—after that. I shall always remember what he said to me when the operation was over: ‘Thanks, doctor. I regret my arm, but don’t regret the occasion that made me lose it.’”

“And did he tell you,” said the General, “what that occasion was?”

“Faith! no!” responded the doctor, “he needed sleep too badly.”

“Very well, I will tell you,” continued the General, in a voice full of feeling. “I had had my horse killed under me and my leg broken. I should have been left to the mercy of the Kabyles, but he rescued me, took me on his shoulders, carried me to a place of safety, and only when this was done, discovered that during the trip a ball had shattered his elbow. Brazon lost his arm in saving my life.

“The story I have just told you made us good friends. Uncle Antoine became interested in him, my father also: we were educated together, and have had more or less the same career. Poor Brazon! When he retired, he returned to ⸺ and lives in what used to be his father’s garden, opposite uncle Antoine’s ‘Garden of Roses.’

“Since then we have joined the two properties by a bridge, under which a boat can pass. When I retire, in my turn, I shall not have to swim to go and see my dear Auguste.”

VIII.

“General,” said the young captain, “will you permit me to ask you one question? Did not your family spoil you a trifle after this incident?”

“Oh, yes!” replied the General. “I did not lack attention. Aunt Marie and my mother both kissed me. My uncle declared I was a fine little fellow, and Madame Brazon, about two weeks later, sent me the very biggest pumpkin in her garden. She had found out that I adored pumpkin soup.”

When Dr. St. George Mivart contributed to a well-known English periodical his article, “The Happiness In—Ahem!”—the title naturally attracted immediate attention and won for the paper a consideration which led to the universal discussion that immediately followed. No one wished or expected to go to the place concerning which he set forth some of the particulars, and even some of the secrets; but as everybody had friends who were in danger of such a fate, and enemies who were certain of it, there was naturally no little curiosity to learn from the writings of the early Fathers and later learned ecclesiastics whom Dr. Mivart quoted how these persons would fare there. To the general surprise, he disclosed that even in that dismal abode, with an eternal summer of a temperature the height of which no thermometer known to earthly science could measure, there was yet to be expected at times a certain degree of felicity. Christmas and Easter, it may be remembered, were days off, when holiday existed, the fires were banked and comparative coolness prevailed.

To the man or woman of acute sight, who sees everything far or near without the necessity of optical aids, and to whom all surroundings are definite and clear, and who recalls the fellow-being who must either wear glasses or grope and stumble and be uncertain of environment, it would appear nonsense to say that there is a happiness in being nearsighted. And yet in a certain form of nearsightedness there are sources of delight which even the man of perfect sight never knows. There are scientific distinctions which the oculist who examines your eyes and the optician who is anxious to sell you a pair of glasses will explain between the nearsightedness which compels you to pore over a book, holding it close to your eyes, and the other form which enables you to read the finest print without glasses, and yet debars you from recognizing your wife or mother-in-law half way across the street. There is certainly not much happiness in the former, because, although it may give the impression that you are a close student and a man of deep erudition to go about with a book or newspaper directly at the end of your nose, the appearance you present is not heroic or graceful, and the young ladies seeing you are apt to smile; and being regarded as a book-worm and pedant you can never hope to create much of a figure in society.

It is only the nearsighted man who can not distinguish things very well at a distance, and who, therefore, gets a strictly impressionist view of life, who really enjoys existence. He can do without his glasses, if necessary, or if he does not think them becoming, and yet experience almost perfect comfort. For him, indeed, the world never loses its illusions, and years, far from robbing him of this boon, only adds to the glamour of enchantment in which he lives. There are those who maintain that the really great men of history have always been short—not in funds, but in stature—and they instance Socrates, Napoleon, Edmund Kean, Victor Hugo and a multitude of others; but, in point of fact it may be still more conclusively shown that the majority of great men have been short-sighted. Much of the romantic view of existence taken by the ancients we may ascribe to the fact that many of them were near-sighted and had not the use of spectacles, which did not come into vogue until the Thirteenth Century, although the Chinese, it is said, had them for some time before that. Nothing but nearsightedness could have so stimulated the imagination of Shakespeare and idealized everything about him, although, indeed, it is true that we have no portraits or busts in which he is shown to have worn glasses. Still, there are so many references in his writings to “thickness of sight” and difficulties of vision, and there are such exquisite descriptions of color effects, that we can not doubt him to have been the victim of what the doctors would call optical infirmity, although it is quite the reverse.

The fact that many of our famous modern poets did not wear glasses is no proof that for definite seeking they did not require them. Byron, Shelley or Keates, we may be sure, never would have worn glasses in any circumstances, as such appurtenances would have been out of character. There was not in their time the great variety of the pince-nez that we have at present, rimless and almost invisible; but there was the very fashionable single eyeglass, rather larger than the monocle in use at present, and that Beau Brummel himself, and later Count D’Orsay, did not disdain. The Duke of Wellington used a single eyeglass, tied to a black ribbon, which hung about his neck, habitually, and through it saw the Battle of Waterloo, and, before the engagement was over, Blücher’s columns coming up.

But to enjoy the happiness of being nearsighted the eyeglasses and spectacles should be dispensed with and life viewed through the natural organs alone. Then it is, as already remarked, that we get the impressionist effect, which is the only one worth having. The man with what are called good eyes perceives all the details, and consequently all the coarse and ugly particulars of the life, still and in motion, about him, and all its faults and shortcomings. After all, what we want is feeling; the thousand intricacies of form we do not need or desire; give us the general effects and our spirit transfigures them. Give us figures, incidents and scenes in vague and poetic mass, and the most delightful and thrilling emotions are aroused.

These are the results obtained by the nearsighted man. To him there is very little that is ugly in life, and especially is it true that all women are beautiful. As I go through the streets I meet at every turn the most exquisite girls, of whose features, indeed, I know little in detail, but there comes to me a general effect of brilliant eyes, lovely complexions and entrancing hair. Every figure is elegant and each walks with the step of a goddess. There are some old women, but none middle-aged or faded; I know not that most distressing of mortal wrecks, the woman “well preserved.” I catch a swift glimpse of a face at a window, or one flashes from a carriage—it is always fair; in the crowded thoroughfares of the shopping districts the tall and picturesque hats, covered with flowers; the soft gowns, the ribbons of myriad colors flit by, giving me but a glimpse, and ravish me. Still more enchanting are these graceful beings at night by the electric light, or vaguely disclosed in the wan beams of the moon.

Natural scenery has a charm which the unhappy man who is not nearsighted can never know. Everything looks uncertain, dim, hazy and very often mystical; colors affect the eye with a delicious softness; there are no keen and cruel contrasts; distant woods and skies, with the multitude of intermingled hues in summer, and the browns and grays of autumn and winter, fall tenderly upon the vision. The changes of light upon the mountain side, and, still more vividly, the seashore, early in the morning or at sunset, stir the deepest sources of sentiment. The nearsighted eye is never photographic; the lines and colors are everywhere mingled and confused, and in both rest and action there is a delicious complexity and indefiniteness.

One can imagine no more interesting scene of movement than that in the evening at the height of the season on the esplanade at Atlantic City. I never witness it without thinking of two of the dreams of De Quincey, which he describes in some detail—the one of the crowd moving by in endless procession, like the figures on a frieze, on and on forever, the other of the innumerable faces of his vision revealed in the incessant convulsions of the ocean. At about half-past eight o’clock in the evening toward the end of July, when the season is at its climax, this impressive throng, in two lines, moving to the right and to the left, is most numerous. There is, so far as I am aware, nothing precisely like it anywhere else in the world—so variegated, so well-dressed, so lively and so complicated. To enjoy it perfectly there must be the vagueness of a veiled vision, and then, in addition to the passing faces, you catch the soft, dreamy effects of the costumes—whites and pinks, sometimes even the bold Mephistophelean red; the dim azures, the pale greens subsiding into yellow. In the two tides goes this strange army, slow in motion, laughing, volatile, the silvery tinkle of feminine laughter and the deeper murmur of conversation. To observe this throng has an absorbing fascination, but if at times you rest, it is to look over the railing of the esplanade at the darkness of the ocean and watch the waves rushing in, like sheeted women with outstretched and affrighted arms.

Summing up, if I were asked to define the special enjoyment derived from nearsightedness, I should say that it arises from two sources—the serenity of the scenes disclosed by the sight, the absence of harshness in sky, landscape or environment anywhere; the fusing of mean details into an agreeable mass. And even stranger and pleasanter than this is the mystical effect; the softness and dreaminess of atmosphere and distances; the indolent, abstracted and slightly melancholy tone of mind produced; the beguiling idealization of existence.

—_Walter Edgar M’Cann._

_From the miniature by Hugh Nicholson._]

We take great pleasure in presenting to our readers this month the first installment of a serial story by the famous Spanish novelist, D. Ramon Ortega y Frias. The translation is the work of Mr. L. Solyom, of Washington, whose ability as a linguist is well known and of a very high order. “Elena’s Daughters,” a romance full of the charm of movement and color, depicts, with unusual skill, the life of the Spanish people in the early part of the Seventeenth Century, when Philip IV was king, and when love was won by the sword and honor was held to be a priceless thing. The manners and customs, the superstitions and ignorance, the desperate bravery and cunning of the times are made to contribute to the absorbing interest of the story, an interest that is fully maintained to the concluding sentence of the last chapter.

D. Ramon Ortega y Frias was born in 1825. Long sickness and family misfortunes compelled him to give up studies and to devote his life to literary pursuits. He is one of the most popular Spanish novelists—in fact, he may be considered the father of the Spanish novel, being the first to replace the numerous French translations which were almost exclusively read before he wrote his original compositions. His subjects are drawn from Spanish history and give true pictures of the manners and customs of the country. He has also translated some works from the French, and has written poetry and numerous critical literary articles.

* * * * *

Through the courtesy of Mr. Hugh Nicholson, the well-known English miniaturist, we are enabled to reproduce one of his most important miniatures. It is called “An Eighteenth Century Beauty,” and was given the place of honor in the inaugural exhibition of the London Society of Miniature Painters, held in 1896. Mr. Nicholson has been engaged in painting little portraits of prominent Baltimoreans for the past two seasons, and his recent return to Baltimore from abroad proves the continuance of his well-merited popularity. His work is distinguished by exquisitely delicate coloring and technique, and never lacks the strength necessary to the successful portrayal of character.

* * * * *

A most important event in the artistic life of the South, and one whose ultimate results are likely to be of such a far-reaching nature that is impossible to even roughly estimate their valve at the present time, occurred on January 18th., 1899. On that day a group of representative and influential gentlemen met at the residence of Mr. Theodore Marburg and founded what is known as The Municipal Art Association of the City of Baltimore. Although the idea of such an organization is not a new one,—such associations already exist and are in a flourishing condition in New York, Boston and other Northern Cities,—no such society can be found elsewhere in the South. Baltimore can therefore for once be justly congratulated on having shown a spirit of real enterprise and civic pride, which, sooner or later, is sure to be followed by all her Southern sisters.

The main object of this new municipal art association is to receive and collect funds for the beautifying of the public squares and buildings of the City. It will also use its utmost endeavors—through experts and disinterested, broad-minded laymen—to have such funds judiciously expended. It is proposed to enlarge the membership, which is somewhat limited at present, as much as possible and at the same time, to form a woman’s auxiliary branch that will work in harmony with the main organization, composed exclusively of men. It is estimated that a body of at least two thousand public-spirited men and women can thus be found and eventually welded into a powerful association devoted to the very best artistic interests of the people of Baltimore. If this calculation is correct, a considerable amount of money will accumulate annually in the treasury of the society, solely from the collection of the yearly dues, which have been wisely fixed at the small sum of $5.00. In order to increase the association’s resources much more rapidly than is otherwise practicable, it has been resolved that life membership may be procured by those who are willing to pay the sum of $100.00, and that the title of “Patron” will be bestowed on all those who are liberal enough to donate the sum of $1000, or more. The money so collected from dues and voluntary contributions is to be carefully husbanded until the amount becomes sufficiently large to justify the directors in opening a worthy competition for the decoration of some public building, the erection of a statue, or the building of a monument of real and lasting artistic merit. It may not be possible to procure enough money to purchase such a work of art annually, but it will be a question of only a few years at most before the results of this much needed society will become evident to the least observant. It is with feelings of the greatest pleasure that we commend this highly laudable and intelligent movement to the people of Baltimore, and we hope they will give it their unswerving and enthusiastic support.

* * * * *

At the first meeting of the organizers of The Municipal Art Association of the City of Baltimore, it was stated that the articles and by-laws governing this new society had been taken almost bodily from those of the New York organization. It was argued that as they had been thoroughly tested and proved to be of great working value in New York, therefore they must of necessity be suited to the needs of Baltimore. In a certain measure this is true, but the reasoning is rather fallacious and misleading. The artistic conditions that prevail at the present time in the two cities are by no means the same: New York has a Metropolitan Museum, filled with the finest specimens of ancient and modern art, which is always open to the public, besides an Academy of Design, a Society of American Artists, an Architectural League and any number of galleries that are constantly instructing the people in what is being done by native and foreign contemporaneous artists—whether they be painters, sculptors, or architects. In Baltimore we have only the Walters’ Gallery,—a wonderfully fine collection of paintings, ceramics, and bronzes, to be sure, but one that is practically unchanging and that is open to the public for only a comparatively few days of the year,—and such small exhibitions of pictures as can be collected from time to time through the efforts and enterprise of Mr. David Bendann and the Charcoal Club—an organization that is far from being supported as it should be by those interested in the artistic development of the City.

General Felix Agnus forcibly voiced the feeling of a great many of the gentlemen who founded the new society when he suggested that the scope of The Municipal Art Association of the City of Baltimore be enlarged by such changes in the articles of incorporation as would eventually empower it to erect a public Museum, and to receive bequests in the shape of paintings and other works of art. We would go farther than General Agnus and suggest to the board of Directors that the New Art Association be not only empowered to collect funds to build a Museum, but a fire-proof, well-lighted gallery also, constructed especially for, and devoted solely to a yearly exhibition of works by modern artists. Until this is done Baltimore must of necessity remain more or less ignorant and provincial in all artistic matters. Galleries for such yearly exhibitions exist in every other large city of the United States, and that one has not been built here long ago is due, we are sure, not to a dearth of funds or taste, but solely to a curious lack of co-operation among those who have the power and the inclination to stimulate the rational development of a love for things of beauty.

We therefore hope that The Municipal Art Association of the City of Baltimore will not imitate too closely the objects and the by-laws of the New York Society, but will add these other two extremely necessary projects to an already praiseworthy program, and thereby render our citizens more appreciative of the artistic attractions they propose to offer them in the near future.

* * * * *

There is no spectacular display, either in the old world or in the new, to compare with the New Orleans Mardi Gras. But there has been too little care paid to the development of the floats and of the costumes of the mummers,—those which are directly under the control of the committee which is usually placed in charge.

We are always interested in art, and in the artist, and would suggest that our New Orleans friends might add greatly to the excellence of their entertainment by consulting men more of an artistic than of a business temperament in arranging their annual and unique displays.

* * * * *

The movements in the local security markets have shown a somewhat halting tendency of late. This is not unnatural, following the sustained upward movement and the broad and active buying which has marked the operations in stocks and bonds for several months. Operators and dealers are not disturbed that the market should rest for awhile, and confidence is easy where it is felt that the rising trend to values will again occur as soon as investors have been able to scan the field anew and to digest the conditions which affect the values of securities.

There has been no decline here, as this is essentially an investment and not a speculative market. Prices are not stimulated or advanced by stock jobbing operations and false rumors which so seriously affect values in speculative centres, but rest solely on the merits of the property which the security represents. There has been a slight shading of values in a few instances in issues which had been rapidly advanced by the strong public demand. This was notably the case in the shares of some of the new trust companies. The Continental Trust stock had an abnormal rise to $285 a share, representing a premium of $85 a share, as $200 a share will be paid in by the stockholders. Since the Stock Exchange permitted trading in the receipts of this company the premium has declined 25 points, as at the close of last week it was reported that the stock had been offered 110, with 100 the best bid. Citizens’ Trust shares have also fallen off from 57 to 49½, with declines less marked in the shares of the older institutions, and with many of them showing gains.

The announcement of the entrance into the local trust field of a new company with large capital and influential backing probably had some unfavorable effect on the stocks of the companies recently started. This new concern will be a strong bidder for business, and while it is expected to work in a field of development, it is not unlikely to receive some business which would have gone to the other companies.

This field of trust seems to be a favorable and a profitable one, however, for large combinations of capital.

* * * * *

We spoke in our last issue of the opportunity that was about to be given to erect a fine and lasting monument to the memory of the Confederate and Federal soldiers who lost their lives on the battle-field of Antietam. This opportunity presented itself early in January to the judges in charge of the competition for a commemorative monument, or statue, for the erection of which ample funds were voted by the Maryland Legislature. We had some misgivings as to the artistic merits of the sketch that would be chosen,—owing to the fact that such awards are usually left to the taste of artistically incompetent persons, instead of to men whose training and experience guarantee that the work shall be, if not great, of at least a fair average quality,—but we had no idea that even judges selected at random (as these evidently were) would be willing to put themselves on record as approving a design that, while not out of place for a summer-house or a soda-water fountain, is altogether so in a memorial erected to the glory of our dead heroes.

If these gentlemen paid for the monument out of their own pockets and offered it to the State as a gift, it still ought to be refused as utterly unworthy the subject, or of public acceptance, but it is nothing less than outrageous to force the taxpayers of Maryland to accept and to furnish money for such a travesty on good taste. To make matters even worse, and that, strange to say, the judges found was entirely possible, the award was given to a New England contractor, so that we are not only to have a most inappropriate monument, but an inappropriate one made in another State for which an important sum of money must be paid by the people of Maryland. We are not narrow-minded in these matters, and believe that, to fittingly honor our brave dead, we should have the best sculptor or architect that can be procured, no matter whence he comes, but it can hardly be claimed in this case that it was necessary to go outside the State.

In fact, it seems to us, it would hardly have been possible to find anything more trivial or unsuitable, even had a prize been especially offered for that purpose. That such things are accepted with so little complaint by the press and public almost justifies one in abandoning hope that we shall ever see any real improvement in our muddled way of looking at questions of this sort.

* * * * *

No military organization in the United States is better and more favorably known than the Fifth Maryland, distinctively a Southern regiment.

For over thirty years it has stood the equal of any militia regiment in the country. In latter years the only organization, in the popular mind, that challenged its supremacy was the Seventh New York, and when the famed Seventh declined to go to the Spanish war and the Fifth, in a body, volunteered for government service, to go anywhere they were ordered to go and do anything they were asked to do, there could be no further doubt that the Fifth Maryland, which has always clung to its gray uniform, emblematic of other days, was the “real thing,” as far as the militia of the country was concerned.

It seems a shame that not only the people of Baltimore and of Maryland, but the people of the South generally, should not take vigorous offence that at this time, after the regiment has served its country for over three months, and has returned to its armory in Baltimore, for what are, apparently, political reasons and reasons of personal gratification, this splendid body of men should be threatened with dissolution.

In this condition which confronts the command several things enter.

In the first place, there never was any discord, never any disagreement among the officers until a certain element appeared. This element has gone now, but other troubles have arisen. Its old commanding officer, whom all the men loved, was prevented from going to the Spanish war with his command—questionably prevented,—as subsequent events have shown. With him, “physically disqualified,” were other officers, quite as well beloved and respected by the men, and all of these gentlemen still hold their commissions from the State of Maryland.

The order retiring them was one from the Adjutant-General of the State, which order, by the way, has very recently been revoked,—and now a board has been appointed to examine these officers physically and otherwise. Before the Adjutant-General recalled his retirement order, they had asked to be returned to the offices to which their commissions lawfully entitled them.

The make-up of the board appointed to treat the cases of these officers has been questioned, not only upon the ground that it is partisan, but because some of its members are not qualified to serve upon it. Before this number of “DIXIE” goes to press the board will have met. Possibly it will have reached its decision. It is probable, if it disqualifies these men, that numbers of Southerners will consider it a case of hanging them first and trying them afterwards.

The people like the Fifth Maryland. Its officers like it. And if the “retired” officers are not allowed to go back to their command,—these officers whom their men love,—there will be no more Fifth Regiment. Its other officers will resign, its faithful enlisted men will vanish like smoke, and in the place of the Fifth of fame there will be a hybrid combination, sustained by that sort of political power that commands no respect from honest-thinking men.

There is yet time for the “powers that be” to pause. The Fifth Regiment is not a thing to be ruthlessly slaughtered. Parties come and parties go, but there are elections yet to come, and the men of Maryland and of the South will not forget those who killed their cherished Fifth Maryland.

TWO POET-NOVELISTS.

GEORGE MEREDITH.

Art and artists are continually suffering at the hands of “belletristic triflers.” Phrase-making is the passion of the day; and as a falsity or a half-truth concerning literary matters is so much easier of utterance than the awkward whole truth, that demands lengthy qualifications, we seldom find the latter gaining in the race with glittering mendacities. It is not, for instance, the saner body of Matthew Arnold’s criticism that has been generally absorbed; it is his more or less questionable catch-words and airy brevities of characterization. These seem apt to the understanding because they fit so well the tongue; their convenience gives them their fatal persuasion. The world likes a criticism in little, a nut-shell verdict, something of intellectual color that can readily be memorized for dinner-table parlance, the vague generalization that conceals the specific ignorance. Macaulay’s “rough pistolling ways and stamping emphasis,” Scott’s “bastard epic style,” and the conception of Shelley as “a beautiful and ineffectual angel beating in the void his luminous wings in vain” have thus come to be solemn verities with many who care more to talk literature than to read it. A whilom gaiety of journalism served to convince the public that Whitman’s voice was a “barbaric yawp”; and consequently his “Leaves of Grass” is seldom glimpsed save in a spirit of derision. These are some of the unhappy results of our latter-day strain after “a pregnant conciseness” of language.

George Meredith like many of his predecessors has suffered much from the thumb-nail criticism of the day. His judges are apt to insist upon his mannerisms and to insist on nothing else. The generality of readers hearing so much about the “mereditherambic style” rest under the belief that this writer is a tripod of frenzied incoherence; that he lacks, especially as a poet, both style and substance. That this is far from being the truth about Meredith’s verse anyone who has read it with attention well knows. Not only does much of it fulfil the requisites of orthodox style, but it contains, even more than his novels, the vital convictions of his mind. Indeed, it is in his verse we come nearest the real teacher, as we come nearest the man in his relation to life at large—to the general scheme of things.

A realization of George Meredith’s poetical virtues by the reader of real literature is due a writer who has proved his claim to genius in a monumental series of novels, a writer who, while not acceptable to all, has yet many admirers that regard him as one of the strongest towers of modern thought. One can, however, scarcely hope for more than a limited acceptance of his poems; that he should be popular in the ordinary meaning of the word, as some poets are taken to heart by the sons of men, is indeed scarcely conceivable. Such popularity, which is after all an equivocal tribute for the most part, Mr. Meredith has never aimed to secure. His has been a life of remoteness from profane ambitions, a life steadfast to the standard early set for himself—a standard of the highest kind.

And yet, while Mr. Meredith may not exercise the attraction of many other poets for the general reader, few will deny that in his fruits of song one tastes the flavor of an original, deep-seeing mind; that there is in the character of many of his poems what well rewards the serious attention necessary to their complete comprehension. Difficult in part they may seem in the casual reading, owing to combined entanglement of rhetoric and ideas, but few who press their inquiry past the line of a first natural discouragement of perusal can fail totally to be affected by the spell they cast over the mind. Beauty there is unquestionably lurking beneath what seems often a wilful obscuration of theme. Coming here and there upon some apparently dry metrical husk of thought, there falls, as from some frost-bitten flower-pod, a shower of fairy seeds that lodge as a vital donation within the remembrance. Groping in the midst of a Meredithian mystery, even the less sensitive ear catches a ritornello of exquisite, wholly seductive sound. For it is not so infrequently that like his “The Lark Ascending.”

“He rises and begins to round,
He drops the silver chain of sound,
Of many links without a break,
In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake—”

The lark-note is not, however, the leading characteristic of Mr. Meredith’s muse, although quite within the scope of it. It is rather the lark’s joy in nature clothed with the more artificial vocalism of man. Mr. Meredith is pantheist in large measure when he attunes his lute-strings to the demands of Mother Earth. For him the gods of Greece do not live only in the pages of Lempriere, as most modern poets would have us believe, but they still maintain, albeit in more subtle form, their old supreme habitation in lawn and sylvan hollow, or mix with the familiar miracle of grey eve and rose-red dawn. In his verse Mr. Meredith hastens to undo the harness of that worldly wisdom that binds him in his novels. He re-baptizes himself to the graces of nature pure, rejoices in all that belongs to the idealism of primitive life. The poet can pipe as rustically as a faun when he is so minded. He can pay a moving tribute to young love and the romance of vernal feeling, as proved by that beautiful lift of minstrelsy, “Love in the Valley,” with its limpid, ecstatic meter, its delicious imagery and spiritual sweetness of thought; not to speak of many other lyrics of the same sort. These lighter pleasures and profits of George Meredith, together with his more serious efforts, like “Ode to the Spirit of Earth and Autumn,” a magnificent color-poem, uniquely accenting the bacchic abandon of October and trumpeting mightily the note of triumphant manhood, and “The Nuptials of Attila,” full of a haunting rush of language, ought to afford substantial relish to the general admirers of high art.

Has George Meredith’s vigorous, almost massive harp a message for humanity? is the natural inquiry of those who reading Wordsworth or Tennyson find in their works sure faiths and consolatory teaching. And is such message so abeyant that only those of his readers who are endowed with power of subtle divination may find it? Certainly in the case of the seer the debt of clear utterance is obligatory, just as from the lyricist we look for delight and tears and mellifluence; it is a responsibility that falls from heaven with the mantle of inspiration, only a congenital inceptitude for lucidity excuses it. Too often, it must be confessed, it is only the ghostly sense of a message that trails through Mr. Meredith’s work, glimpsing and disappearing in will-o’-wisp fashion. The thirsting traveller chasing such mirages of meaning over the sands of obscurity may be pardoned if he conclude that to only the very privileged few does the Fata Morgana of his muse grant a kindly haven of specific instruction. But while this is true of passages and poems, it is not true of all his poems. There is much in his volumes of verse that state distinctly his philosophical principles. The ground-work of Mr. Meredith’s philosophy is the worth of nature as distinct from the artificial institutions of man. In nature pure exists the true temple of wisdom; it is the tribunal whereat all knowledge and sentiment must finally receive its endorsement or its condemnation. In nature we open the real book of life. It is, therefore, that in his verse we find continually a worship of the liberty of the forest, a recognition of its power to promote the vital growth of heart and head. Mr. Meredith would not have us forget that the mind and spirit are integral elements of nature. Particularly in “The Woods of Westermain,” beginning,

“Enter these enchanted woods,
You who dare—”

is this philosophy stated forcibly and at length. Naturalness in all things is the keynote of his utterance. It is from his poetry that we gain the clue to that humorous and seemingly harsh, satirical attitude towards worldliness which distinguishes his novels and has occasioned the frequent outcry that Mr. Meredith is a heartless epigrammatist. The truer criticism is that he derides the artifices, the sham decencies and mawkish sentimentality of society as the earnest champion of the natural. Thus we find Sir Willoughby Patterne in “The Egoist” demonstrating the pursuit of a spurious worldly philosophy, as we find the hero of “Richard Feverel” proving the mistake of yoking nature to an artificial system, while his women, such as Clara in “The Egoist,” Nataly in “One of Our Conquerors,” and Diana in “Diana of the Crossways,” are clear, protesting voices against masculine prejudices and feminine bondage. This is also the teaching of his remarkable poem entitled “Modern Love.” George Meredith has within the last few months added to his poetical works a work called “Odes in Contribution to the Song of French History” (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons), which while having a Pindarian sublimity of intent, a plentitude of rapt and fiery passages is too involved and vague to constitute a real master-work. Whatever be said of Meredith’s faults, a serious reading of his verse cannot but persuade one that he is a poet who is distinctly virile and worth while. Though much that he has written may have the mark of mortality, there is much also that wears the amaranthine wreath of eternal life, either for beauty of phrase or for profundity of philosophic truth.

THOMAS HARDY.

Genius proves itself as much by the tenacity of its taste for one handicraft as by anything else; it evidences itself not so much in versatility as in volume. It is rather a mark of mediocre mentality when a man must needs lay his hand to the doing of this and that. Genius, as a rule, has no such itch; generally speaking, he is content to fulfill himself in one given direction—to maintain his being in a single sphere with a passion superior to that of his fellows. Thus it is we seldom find after leaving the regions of facile talent writers whose inspiration expresses itself in prose and poetical form with equal seriousness; one is the vehicle of the divine voice, the other a mere diversion. Goethe, it is true, has given us “Wilhelm Meister,” Victor Hugo was a great poet as well as a great romancer, George Meredith, as we have endeavored to show, is a singer of peculiar force as well as a master novelist, and among the later literary figures of especial power we have Kipling, whose prose and poetry about balance the scale of worth; but the exceptions are few, and the logic of letters tends to show oneness of aim in the case of genius.

Thomas Hardy undoubtedly belongs to the ranks of great novelists; his series of romances has been laid on the firm basis of beauty and knowledge; he has hallowed a part of England peculiarly rich in unique personality and natural charm; it belongs to him and the heirship of his memory as validly as though it had been granted him by the Crown. So well has he filled the office of fictionist that there seems no need of an attempt on his part to enforce his fame by appearing as a poet. The publication of “Wessex Poems” (New York: Harper & Bros.) is indeed no positive declaration of such ambition; it is perhaps put forth hesitatingly rather in response to public demand than because of a conviction of its intrinsic merit. It represents the fruit of odd moments punctuating a long literary career. The character of the volume is what one might have anticipated, although had it been of a wholly different sort it could scarcely have created surprise. There are two Hardys—the man on whose heart weighs the melancholy facts of human existence and the happier artist in close and peaceful communion with the sweet infinite spirit of nature. It is the former Hardy that figures in the volume singularly unsoftened by any intimation of the other phase of the writer.

The character of Hardy himself as existing behind the art-self is one that inspires a peculiar interest. One would know it not simply to gratify a curiosity that, indeed, is too much indulged of late in lines of gross private revelation, but to weigh the justice of the charge of wilful pessimism so generally made against him. The gloomy brow of Hardy’s art seems far from being of that impersonal sort which makes much of the modern melancholy of literature inexcusable as a mere degenerate seeking.