Chapter VI: Part 6

"Look at us two," said his lordship. "I am old, strong and honored. If I were turned from my house tomorrow, hundreds would be proud to shelter me. Poor people would go out and pass the night in the streets with their children, if I merely hinted that I wished to be alone. And I find you up, wandering homeless, and picking farthings off dead women by the wayside! I fear no man and nothing; I have seen you tremble and lose countenance at a word. I wait God's summons contentedly in my own house, or, if it please the king to call me out again, upon the field of battle. You look for the gallows; a rough, swift death, without hope or honor. Is there no difference between these two?"

"As far as to the moon" Villon acquiesced. "But if I had been born lord of Brisetout, and you had been the poor scholar Francis, would the difference have been any the less? Should not I have been warming my knees at this charcoal pan, and would not you have been groping for farthings in the snow? Should not I have been the soldier, and you the thief?"

--ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON (adapted).

[Footnote: What hints does the sketch give you of the period in which the story is laid? What characteristics of Villon are brought out? Is there any suggestion of the poet in his remarks? What is the real difference between the two men? Does Villon make out a good case? Is his description of war a fair one? Why did Villon not steal the goblets?]

A BAD FIVE MINUTES IN THE ALPS

It was time to return, and the demon who amuses himself by beguiling Alpine travellers suggested the memory of a certain short cut which involved a bit of amusing scrambling. I was speedily occupied in fighting my way downwards through a steep ravine, cloven by a vicious little torrent from a lofty glacier, when--how it happened I know not, for all forms of earth and grassy slope were obliterated at a few yards by the descending showers--I suddenly found that I had left the right track and was descending too sharply towards the stream. At the same time I saw, or thought I saw, that by crossing the face of the cliff for a few yards I should regain the ordinary route. The first step or two was easy; then came a long stride, in which I had to throw out one hand by way of grappling-iron to a jutting rock above. The rock was reeking with moisture, and as I threw my weight upon it my hand slipped, and before I had time to look round I was slithering downwards without a single point of support. Below me as I well knew, at a depth of some two hundred feet, was the torrent. One plunge through the air upon its rugged stones and I should be a heap of mangled flesh and bones. Instinctively I flung abroad arms and legs in search of strong supports; in another moment I was brought up with a jerk. My hands now rested on the narrow ledge where my feet had been a moment before, and one foot was propped by some insecure support whose nature I could not precisely determine.

Desperately choking back the surging emotions that seemed to shake my limbs I sought for some means of escape. By slowly moving my left hand I managed to grasp a stem of rhododendron which grew upon the ledge of rock, and felt tolerably firm; next I tried to feel for some support with the toe of my left boot; the rock, however, against which it rested was not only hard, but exquisitely polished by the ancient glacier which had forced its way down the gorge. A geologist would have been delighted with this admirable specimen of the planing powers of nature; I felt, I must confess, rather inclined to curse geology and glaciers. Not a projecting edge, corner, or cranny could I discover; I might as well have been hanging against a pane of glass. With my right foot, however, I succeeded in obtaining a more satisfactory lodgment; had it not been for this help I could have supported myself so long as my arms would hold out, and I have read somewhere that the strongest man cannot hold on by his arms alone for more than five minutes. I am, unluckily, very weak in the arms, and was therefore quite unable to perform the gymnastic feat of raising myself till I could place a knee upon the ledge where my hands were straining. Here, then, I was, in an apparently hopeless predicament. I might cling to the rocks like a bat in a cave till exhaustion compelled me to let go; on a very liberal allowance, that might last for some twenty minutes, or, say half an hour. There was, of course, a remote chance that some traveler or tourist might pass through the glen; but the ordinary path lay some hundred yards above my head, on the other side of the rock-pinnacle, and a hundred yards was, for all practical purposes, the same thing as a hundred miles; the ceaseless roar of the swollen torrent would drown my voice as effectually as a battery of artillery; but, for a moment or two, I considered the propriety of shouting for help. The problem was, whether I should diminish my strength more by the effort of shouting than the additional chance of attracting attention was worth.

A puff of wind had driven aside the wreaths of mist; and high above me I could see towering into the gloomy skies a pinnacle of black rock. Sharp and needle-like it sprang from its cloud-hidden base, and scarcely a flake of snow clung to its terrible precipices. Only a day or two before I had been lounging in the inn garden during a delusive sunset gleam of bright weather, and admiring its noble proportions. I had been discussing with my friends the best mode of assaulting its hitherto untrodden summit, on which we had facetiously conferred the name of Teufelshorn. Lighted up by the Alpine glow, it seemed to beckon us upward, and had fired all my mountaineering zeal. Now, though it was not a time for freaks of fancy, it looked like a grim fiend calmly frowning upon my agony. I hated it, and yet had an unpleasant sense that my hatred could do it no harm. If I could have lightened and thundered, its rocks would have come down with a crash; but it stood immovable, scornful, and eternal. There is a poetry in the great mountains, but the poetry may be stern as well as benevolent. If, to the weary Londoner, they speak of fresh air and healthful exercise and exciting adventure, they can look tyrannous and forbidding enough to the peasant on whose fields they void their rheum--as Shakespeare pleasantly puts it--or to the luckless wretch who is clinging in useless supplication at their feet. Grim and fierce, like some primeval giant, that peak looked to me, and for a time the whole doctrine preached by the modern worshippers of sublime scenery seemed inexpressibly absurd and out of place.

It was becoming tempting to throw up the cards and have done with it. Even the short sharp pang of the crash on the rocks below seemed preferable to draining the last dregs of misery. I gathered myself up, crouching as low as I dared, and then springing from the right foot, and aiding the spring with my left hand, I threw out my right at the little jutting point. The tips of my fingers just reached their aim, but only touched without anchoring themselves. As I fell back, my foot missed its former support, and my whole weight came heavily on the feeble left hand. The clutch was instantaneously torn apart, and I was falling through the air. All was over! The mountains sprang upwards with a bound. But before the fall had well begun, before the air had begun to whistle past me, my movement was arrested. With a shock of surprise I found myself lying on a broad bed of deep moss, as comfortably as in my bed at home.

--LESLIE STEPHEN (adapted).

[Footnote: What do you imagine has preceded this selection? What things are contrasted in the account? Do you think that philosophizing helped or hindered the climber? Do you know anything about the difficulties of Alpine climbing from other accounts you have read? Compare the style of this selection with "The Luck of Roaring Camp" and "A Leaf in the Storm."]

THE GOLD TRAIL

We came upon the diggings quite suddenly. The trail ran around the corner of a hill; and there they were below us! In the wide, dry stream bottom perhaps fifty men were working busily, like a lot of ants. Some were picking away at the surface of the ground, others had dug themselves down waist deep, and stooped and rose like legless bodies. Others had disappeared below ground, and showed occasionally only as shovel blades. From so far above, the scene was very lively and animated, for each was working like a beaver, and the red shirts made gay little spots of colour. On the hillside clung a few white tents and log cabins; but the main town itself, we later discovered, as well as the larger diggings, lay around the bend and upstream.

We looked all around us for some path leading down to the river, but could find none; so perforce we had to continue on along the trail. Thus we entered the camp of Hangman's Gulch for if it had been otherwise, I am sure we would have located promptly where we had seen those red-shirted men.

The camp consisted merely of a closer-knit group of tents, log shacks, and a few larger buildings constructed of a queer combination of heavy hewn timbers and canvas. We saw nobody at all, though in some of the larger buildings we heard signs of life. However, we did not wait to investigate the wonders of Hangman's Gulch, but drove our animals along the one street, looking for the trail that should lead us back to the diggings. We missed it, somehow, but struck into a beaten path that took us upstream. This we followed a few hundred yards. It proceeded along a rough, boulder-strewn river-bed, around a point of rough, jagged rocks, and out to a very wide gravelly flat through which the river had made itself a narrow channel. The flat swarmed with men, all of them busy, and very silent.

Leading our pack-horses we approached the nearest pair of these men, and stood watching them curiously. One held a coarse screen of willow which he shook continuously above a common cooking-pot, while the other slowly shovelled earth over this sieve. When the two pots, which with the shovel seemed to be all the tools these men possessed, had been half filled thus with the fine earth, the men carried them to the river. We followed. The miners carefully submerged the pots, and commenced to stir their contents with their fists. The light earth muddied the water, floated upward, and then flowed slowly over the rim of the pots and down the current. After a few minutes of this, they lifted the pots carefully, drained off the water, and started back.

"May we look?" ventured Johnny.

The taller man glanced at us, and our pack-horses, and nodded. This was the first time he had troubled to take a good look at us. The bottom of the pot was covered with fine black sand in which we caught the gleam and sparkle of something yellow.

"Is that gold?" I asked, awed.

"That's gold," the man repeated, his rather saturnine features lighting up with a grin. Then seeing our interest, he unbent a trifle. "We dry the sand, and then blow it away," he explained; and strode back to where his companion was impatiently waiting.

We stumbled on over the rocks and debris. There were probably something near a hundred men at work in the gulch. We soon observed that the pot method was considered a very crude and simple way of getting out the gold. Most of the men carried iron pans full of the earth to the waterside, where, after submerging until the lighter earth had floated off, they slopped the remainder over the side with a peculiar twisting, whirling motion, leaving at last only the black sand--and the gold! These pan miners were in the great majority. But one group of four men was doing business on a larger scale. They had constructed what looked like a very shallow baby-cradle on rockers into which they poured their earth and water. By rocking the cradle violently but steadily, they spilled the mud over the sides. Cleats had been nailed in the bottom to catch the black sand.

We wandered about here and there, looking with all our eyes. The miners were very busy and silent, but quite friendly, and allowed us to examine as much as we pleased the results of their operations. In the pots and cradles the yellow flake gold glittered plainly, contrasting with the black sand. In the pans, however, the residue spread out fan-shaped along the angle between the bottom and the side, and at the apex the gold lay heavy and beautiful all by itself. The men were generally bearded, tanned with working in this blinding sun, and plastered liberally with the red earth. We saw some queer sights, however; as when we came across a jolly pair dressed in what were the remains of ultra-fashionable garments up to and including plug hats! At one side working some distance from the stream were small groups of native Californians or Mexicans. They did not trouble to carry the earth all the way to the river; but, after screening it roughly, tossed it into the air above a canvas, thus winnowing out the heavier pay dirt. [Footnote: Pay dirt: dirt that has gold enough in it to pay for working it.] I thought this must be very disagreeable.

As we wandered about here and there among all these men so busily engaged, and with our own eyes saw pan after pan show gold, actual metallic guaranteed gold, such as rings and watches and money are made of, a growing excitement possessed us, the excitement of a small boy with a new and untried gun. We wanted to get at it ourselves. Only we did not know how.

Finally Yank approached one of the busy miners.

"Stranger," said he, "we're new to this. Maybe you can tell us where we can dig a little of this gold ourselves."

The man straightened his back, to exhibit a roving humorous blue eye, with which he examined Yank from top to toe.

"If," said he, "it wasn't for that eighteen-foot cannon you carry over your left arm, and a cold gray pair of eyes you carry in your head, I'd direct you up the sidehill yonder, and watch you sweat. As it is, you can work anywhere anybody else isn't working. Start in!"

"Can we dig next to you, then?" asked Yank, nodding at an unbroken piece of ground just upstream.

The miner clambered carefully out of his waist-deep trench, searched his pockets, produced a pipe and tobacco. After lighting this he made Yank a low bow.

"Thanks for the compliment; but I warn you, this claim of mine is not very rich. I'm thinking of trying somewhere else."

"Don't you get any gold?"

"Oh, a few ounces a day."

"That suits me for a beginning," said Yank decidedly. "Come on boys!"

The miner hopped back into his hole, only to stick his head out again for the purpose of telling us:

"Mind you keep fifteen feet away!"

With eager hands we slipped a pick and shovels from beneath the pack ropes, undid our iron bucket, and without further delay commenced feverishly to dig.

--STEWART EDWARD WHITE.

[Footnote: Where do you imagine this scene is laid? Why was the miner willing to admit the newcomers? What success do you think they had? Note the simplicity of the style and the diction. Can you tell anything about the first rush of gold seekers to California? Read the novel, "Gold," from which this selection is taken. You will find it very interesting.]

TWENTY YEARS OF ARCTIC STRUGGLE

On the 28th of February the various parties took their departure from Cape Hecla, and following in the rear, Peary hurried on with all possible speed, hopeful of reaching the Pole at last.

For some days the ice was in motion everywhere; but it gradually became quieter, and as there was very little wind the travelling was particularly good. Full of impatience as he tramped along, and grudging every moment given to rest, Peary dreaded lest he should meet with some obstacle, such as open water or impassable ice, that would put an end to the journey northwards.

Delayed by gales and open water, and driven out of his course seventy miles to the eastward, Peary was cut off from communication with his supporting parties; and finding that he could no longer depend upon them, he determined to make a dash for the Pole with the party, eight in all, and the supplies which he had with him.

Abandoning everything not absolutely essential and bending every energy to set a record pace, they travelled thirty miles in a ten hours' march. Storms of wind and snow added considerably to the difficulties of the journey, the strain of which told severely on both men and dogs.

The 20th of April brought the weary travellers into a region of open leads, [Footnote: Open leads: open ways in an ice-field.] bearing north and south. Resting here for a few hours, Peary and his companions resumed their march at midnight, pushing on with feverish haste to lessen the distance between them and the goal that was luring them on. Travelling as fast as they could till noon of the 21st, they then came to a final halt.

Disappointed at once more having to stop before the object of all his striving had been reached, Peary would have liked to make the last dash with only one or two of his men; but he dared not do this in view of the condition of the ice, and reluctantly he had to confess that once again the prize had eluded his grasp. Making observations, he found that they were in 87 deg, 6' north latitude, the most northerly point that had yet been reached by man.

Warned by the haggard faces of his comrades and the skeleton figures of the few remaining dogs, Peary saw that no time must be lost in turning back. After hoisting a flag from the summit of the highest pinnacle, and leaving a bottle containing a record of the journey, the exhausted men turned their backs on the Pole, and began the weary march homeward.

Trying as the outward march had been, the dangers of the return journey were even greater. Besides, there was no longer the excitement of possible victory to encourage the men in the face of hardships. Killing their dogs for food, and breaking up the sledges to provide fires for cooking, the tired and dispirited explorers pushed on till they found themselves stranded on an island of ice. Was this, then, to be the end of the enterprise, and were they to meet death in that cold and pitiless sea? Such a fate seemed inevitable. But just as they were preparing for the worst, two of the Eskimo scouts came hurrying back to the camp with the report that, a few miles farther on, the water was covered with a film of young ice, and that there was a possibility of their being able to cross on snow-shoes.

It was a desperate chance, but they were prepared to take it; and carefully fixing on their snow-shoes, they made the venture, the lightest and most experienced Eskimo taking the lead, with the few remaining dogs attached to the long sledge following, "and the rest of the party abreast, in widely extended skirmish line, some distance behind the sledge." They crossed in silence, the ice swaying beneath them as they skimmed along. What the result would be none could tell; but they all felt the greatness of their peril.

Peary himself confesses that this was the first and only time in all his Arctic experience that he felt doubtful as to what would happen. "When near the middle of the lead," he says, "the toe of one of my snow-shoes, as I slid forward, broke through twice in succession; then I thought to myself, 'This is the finish.' A little later there was a cry from some one in the line, but I dared not take my eyes from the steady gliding of my snow-shoes. When we stepped upon the firm ice on the southern side of the lead, sighs of relief from the two men nearest me were distinctly audible. The cry I had heard had been from one of my men, whose toe, like mine, had broken through the ice." The crossing had been made just in time, for, as the travellers looked round for a moment before turning their faces southward, they saw that the sheet of ice on which they had crossed was in two pieces. "The lead was widening again."

All were safely across; but they were not yet out of danger. Unable to find a route which they might traverse with any degree of safety, Peary and his men ascended a high mass of ice to have a better view of their surroundings, and to look for a way of escape. What they beheld from their elevated position might well have struck terror into the boldest heart. Before them extended "such a mass of shattered ice" as Peary had never seen before and hoped never to see again, "a confused mass of fragments, some only the size of paving-stones, others as large as the dome of the Capitol at Washington, but all rounded by the terrific grinding they had received."

Once again death was looking them in the face, for it seemed an utter impossibility to find a path through that frozen wilderness. But as long as they could keep a footing they determined to struggle on; and stumbling forward at every step, bruised and sore, they at last struck a better road. They made their way to Britannia Island, [Footnote: Britannia Island: one of the most northern islands of the Arctic Ocean.] and thence to Cape May and Cape Bryant.

The brave party suffered much from want of food. For days on end they were on the verge of starvation. A hare that was shot gave them the first full meal for nearly forty days. With snow falling around them, and without tent or covering of any kind, they lay down on the ground to sleep.

Waking in the morning as tired and hungry as ever, they found the tracks of musk-oxen [Footnote: Musk-oxen: the musk-ox has long shaggy hair and somewhat resembles a buffalo.] in the snow, and their hopes rose as they endeavoured to follow the trail. Sweeping the valley with their field-glass, they could see no sign of a living thing; but later on they espied several black dots at a distance, and knew that they had located the herd. Pushing on towards them, Peary and a companion lay down behind a big boulder to rest and gather strength, for they dared not risk a shot before they were sure of their aim. Resolving at last on an attack, the two men grasped their rifles, and, rushing out from behind their place of shelter, made straight for the animals, now less than two hundred yards away. An old bull that was standing guard gave the signal to charge, and in a minute the "black avalanche of thundering beasts" was bearing down on their enemies.

Fortunately for Peary his shot went true, and the great bull fell dead. The maddened rush was stopped; and before the oxen could make their retreat over the ridges six of their number lay dead upon the frozen ground; and for the next few days the party revelled in the delights of a continuous feast.

Reaching the Roosevelt [Footnote: Roosevelt: Peary's ship.] at the end of July, the expedition returned to America a few months later. After twenty years of heroic striving, Peary had again missed the prize; but the victory was postponed only for a little while.

--J. KENNEDY McLEAN.

[Footnote: How does the heroism shown in this account of Peary's struggle compare with military courage? What qualities of the true explorer does Peary show? What picture do you get of the country in which the travelers journeyed? What do you know of Peary's later expedition? Do you think the descriptions would be so purely objective if they were written by the explorer himself? Would the account seem more real or more interesting if it had been told in the first person?]

HENRY WARD BEECHER'S ACCOUNT OF HIS SPEECH IN MANCHESTER

I went to my hotel, and when the day came on which I was to make my first speech, I struck out the notes of my speech in the morning; and then came up a kind of horror--"I don't know whether I can do anything with an English audience--I have never had any experience with an English audience. My American ways, which are all well enough with Americans, may utterly fail here, and a failure in the cause of my country now and here is horrible beyond conception to me!" I think I never went through such a struggle of darkness and suffering in all my life as I did that afternoon. It was about the going down of the sun that God brought me to that state in which I said, "Thy will be done. I am willing to be annihilated; I am willing to fail if the Lord wants me to." I gave it all up into the hands of God, and rose up in a state of peace and serenity simply unspeakable, and when the coach came to take me down to Manchester Hall I felt no disturbance nor dreamed of anything but success.

We reached the hall. The crowd was already beginning to be tumultuous, and I recollect thinking to myself as I stood there looking at them, "I will control you! I came here for victory, and I will have it, by the help of God!" Well, I was introduced, and I must confess that the things that I had done and suffered in my own country, according to what the chairman who introduced me said, amazed me. The speaker was very English on the subject, and I learned that I belonged to an heroic band, and all that sort of thing, with Abolitionism [Footnote: Abolitionism: The policy of those who worked for the abolition of slavery before the Civil War.] mixed in, and so on. By the way, I think it was there that I was introduced as the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher Stowe. But as soon as I began to speak the great audience began to show its teeth, and I had not gone on fifteen minutes before an unparalleled scene of confusion and interruption occurred. No American that has not seen an English mob can form any conception of one. I have seen all sorts of camp meetings and experienced all kinds of public speaking on the stump; I have seen the most disturbed meetings in New York City, and they were all of them as twilight to midnight compared with an English hostile audience. For in England the meeting does not belong to the parties that call it, but to whoever chooses to go; and if they can take it out of your hands, it is considered fair play. This meeting had a very large multitude of men in it who came there for the purpose of destroying the meeting and carrying it the other way when it came to a vote.

I took the measure of the audience and said to myself, "About one fourth of this audience are opposed to me, and about one fourth will be rather in sympathy; and my business now is, not to appeal to that portion that is opposed to me nor to those that are already on my side, but to bring over the middle section." How to do this was a problem. The question was, who could hold out longest. There were five or six storm-centres, boiling and whirling at the same time: here some one pounding on a group with his umbrella and shouting, "Sit down there;" over yonder a row between two or three combatants; somewhere else a group all yelling together at the top of their voices. It was like talking to a storm at sea. But there were the newspaper reporters just in front, and I said to them, "Now, gentlemen, be kind enough to take down what I say. It will be in sections, but I will have it connected by and by." I threw my notes away, and entered on a discussion of the value of freedom as opposed to slavery in the manufacturing interest, arguing that freedom everywhere increases a man's necessities, and what he needs he buys, and that it was, therefore, to the interest of the manufacturing community to stand by the side of labor through the country. I never was more self-possessed and never in more perfect good temper, and I never was more determined that my hearers should feel the curb before I got through with them. The uproar would come in on this side and on that, and they would put insulting questions and make all sorts of calls to me, and I would wait until the noise had subsided, and then get in about five minutes of talk. The reporters would get that down, and then up would come another noise. Occasionally I would see things that amused me and would laugh outright, and the crowd would stop to see what I was laughing at. Then I would sail in again with a sentence or two. A good many times the crowd threw up questions which I caught at and answered back. I may as well put in here one thing that amused me hugely. There were baize doors that opened both ways into side alleys, and there was a huge, burly Englishman standing right in front of one of those doors and roaring like a bull of Bashan; [Footnote: Bull of Bashan: _Psalm_ XXII, 12-13] one of the policemen swung his elbow around and hit him in the belly and knocked him through the doorway, so that the last part of the bawl was outside in the alleyway; it struck me so ludicrously to think how the fellow must have looked when he found himself "hollering" outside that I could not refrain from laughing outright. The audience immediately stopped its uproars, wondering what I was laughing at, and that gave me another chance, and I caught it. So we kept on for about an hour and a half before they got so far calmed down that I could go on peaceably with my speech. They liked the pluck. Englishmen like a man that can stand on his feet and give and take; and so for the last hour I had pretty clear sailing. The next morning every great paper in England had the whole speech. I think it was the design of the men there to break me down on that first speech, by fair means or foul, feeling that if they could do that it would be trumpeted all over the land. I said to them then and there, "Gentlemen, you may break me down now, but I have registered a vow that I will never return home until I have been heard in every county and principal town in the Kingdom of Great Britain. I am not going to be broken down nor put down. I am going to be heard, and my country shall be vindicated." Nobody knows better than I did what it is to feel that every interest that touches the heart of a Christian man and a patriotic man and a lover of liberty is being assailed wantonly, to stand between one nation and your own, and to feel that you are in a situation in which your country rises or falls with you. And God was behind it all; I felt it and knew it; and when I got through and the vote was called off, you would have thought it was a tropical thunderstorm that swept through that hall as the ayes were thundered, while the noes were an insignificant and contemptible minority. It had all gone on our side, and such enthusiasm I never saw. I think it was there that when I started to go down into the rooms below to get an exit, a big burly Englishman in the gallery wanted to shake hands with me, and I could not reach him, and he called out, "Shake my umbrella!" and he reached it over; I shook it, and as I did so he shouted, "By Jock! Nobody shall touch that umbrella again!"

--HENRY WARD BEECHER.

[Footnote: Henry Ward Beecher was born in 1813 and died in 1887. He was a noted lecturer, reformer, author, and clergyman. He was also among the most prominent of anti-slavery orators, and delivered many addresses in England on subjects relating to the Civil War.

Why do you suppose Mr. Beecher was introduced as Henry Ward Beecher Stowe? Name some characteristics of Mr. Beecher as revealed in this selection. What qualities would you attribute to an English audience, judging from this account? Do you know anything about the custom of "heckling" in England? How much was the success of the speech due to Mr. Beecher's sense of humor? Do you imagine that Mr. Beecher was successful in his addresses to the English people? Why?]

A GREEN DONKEY DRIVER

There dwelt an old man in Monastier, [Footnote: Monastier: a little village in southern France.] of rather unsound intellect according to some, much followed by street-boys, and known to fame as Father Adam. Father Adam had a cart, and to draw the cart a diminutive donkey, not much bigger than a dog, the color of a mouse, with a kindly eye and a determined under-jaw. There was something neat and high-bred, a Quakerish elegance, about the rogue that hit my fancy on the spot.

Our first interview was in Monastier market-place. To prove her good temper, one child after another was set upon her back to ride, and one after another went head over heels into the air; until a want of confidence began to reign in youthful bosoms, and the experiment was discontinued from a dearth of subjects. I was already backed by a deputation [Footnote: Deputation: a group of persons sent to act in behalf of others.] of my friends; but as if this were not enough, all the buyers and sellers came around and helped me in the bargain; and the ass and I and Father Adam were the centre of a hubbub for near half an hour. At length she passed into my service for the consideration of sixty-five francs and a glass of brandy. The sack had already cost eighty francs and two glasses of beer; so that Modestine, as I instantly baptized her, was upon all accounts the cheaper article.

By the advice of a fallacious [Footnote: Fallacious: misleading, deceptive.] local saddler, a leather pad was made for me with rings to fasten on my bundle; and I thoughtfully completed my kit and arranged my toilette. By way of armory and utensils, I took a revolver, a little spirit lamp and pan, a lantern and some halfpenny candles, a jack-knife and a large leather flask. The main cargo consisted of two entire changes of warm clothing, besides my travelling wear of country velveteen, pilot coat, and knitted spencer, some books, and my railway-rug, which, being also in the form of a bag, made me a double castle for cold nights. The permanent larder was represented by cakes of chocolate and tins of Bologna sausage. All this, except what I carried about my person, was easily stowed into the sheepskin bag; and by good fortune I threw in my empty knapsack, rather for convenience of carriage than from any thought that I should want it on my journey. For more immediate needs, I took a leg of cold mutton, a bottle of Beaujolais, [Footnote: Beaujolais: a red wine made in southeastern France.] an empty bottle to carry milk, an egg-beater, and a considerable quantity of black bread and white for myself and donkey.

On the day of my departure I was up a little after five; by six we began to load the donkey; and ten minutes after, my hopes were in the dust. The pad would not stay on Modestine's back for half a moment. I returned it to its maker, with whom I had so contumelious [Footnote: Contumelious: rude and abusive.] a passage that the street outside was crowded from wall to wall with gossips looking on and listening. The pad changed hands with much vivacity; perhaps it would be more descriptive to say that we threw it at each other's heads; and, at any rate, we were very warm and unfriendly, and spoke with a deal of freedom.

I had a common donkey pack-saddle fitted upon Modestine; and once more loaded her with my effects.

The bell of Monastier was just striking nine as I got quit of these preliminary troubles and descended the hill through the common. As long as I was within sight of the windows, a secret shame and the fear of some laughable defeat withheld me from tampering with Modestine. She tripped along upon her four small hoofs with a sober daintiness of gait; from time to time she shook her ears or her tail; and she looked so small under the bundle that my mind misgave me. We got across the ford without difficulty--there was no doubt about the matter, she was docility itself--and once on the other bank, where the road begins to mount through pine-woods, I took in my right hand the unhallowed staff, and with a quaking spirit applied it to the donkey. Modestine brisked up her pace for perhaps three steps, and then relapsed into her former minuet. [Footnote: Minuet: a slow, stately dance.] Another application had the same effect, and so with the third. I am worthy the name of an Englishman, and it goes against my conscience to lay my hand rudely on a female. I desisted, and looked her all over from head to foot; the poor brute's knees were trembling and her breathing was distressed; it was plain that she could not go faster on a hill. God forbid, thought I, that I should brutalize this innocent creature; let her go at her own pace, and let me patiently follow.

What that pace was, there is no word mean enough to describe, it was something as much slower than a walk as a walk is slower than a run; it kept me hanging on each foot for an incredible length of time; in five minutes it exhausted the spirit and set up a fever in all the muscles of the leg. And yet I had to keep close at hand and measure my advance exactly upon hers; for if I dropped a few yards in to the rear, or went on a few yards ahead, Modestine came instantly to a halt and began to browse. The thought that this was to last from here to Alais [Footnote: Alais: a town in southeastern France not far from the Rhone River.] nearly broke my heart. Of all conceivable journeys, this promised to be the most tedious. I tried to tell myself it was a lovely day; I tried to charm my foreboding spirit with tobacco; but I had a vision ever present to me of the long long roads, up hill and down dale, and a pair of figures ever infinitesimally moving, foot by foot, a yard to the minute, and, like things enchanted in a nightmare, approaching no nearer to the goal.

In the meantime there came up behind us a tall peasant, perhaps forty years of age, of an ironical snuffy countenance, and arrayed in the green tail-coat of the country. He overtook us hand over hand, and stopped to consider our pitiful advance.

"Your donkey," says he, "is very old?"

I told him, I believed not.

Then, he supposed, we had come far.

I told him we had but newly left Monastier.

"Et vous marchez comme ca!" [Footnote: Et vous marchez comme ca! "and you are moving like that!"] cried he; and, throwing back his head, he laughed long and heartily. I watched him, half prepared to feel offended, until he had satisfied his mirth; and then, "You must have no pity on these animals," said he; and, plucking a switch out of a thicket, he began to lace Modestine about the stern works, uttering a cry. The rogue pricked up her ears and broke into a good round pace, which she kept up without flagging, and without exhibiting the least symptom of distress, as long as the peasant kept beside us. Her former panting and shaking had been, I regret to say, a piece of comedy.

My _deus ex machina_, [Footnote: Deus ex machina: "the god out of the machine"; some supernatural intervention.] before he left me, supplied some excellent, if inhumane, advice; presented me with the switch, which he declared she would feel more tenderly than my cane; and finally taught me the true cry or masonic word of donkey-drivers, "Proot!" All the time, he regarded me with a comical incredulous air, as I might have smiled over his orthography or his green tail-coat. But it was not my turn for the moment.

I hurried over my midday meal, and was early forth again. But, alas, as we climbed the interminable hill upon the other side, "Proot!" seemed to have lost its virtue. I prooted like a lion, I prooted melliflously [Footnote: Melliflously: sweetly. Find this allusion in "Midsummer Night's Dream," Act I, Scene 2.] like a sucking-dove; but Modestine would be neither softened nor intimidated. She held doggedly to her pace; nothing but a blow would move her, and that only for a second. I must follow at her heels, incessantly belaboring. A moment's pause in this ignoble toil, and she relapsed into her own private gait. I think I never heard of any one in as mean a situation. I must reach the lake of Bouchet, where I meant to camp, before sundown; and, to have even a hope of this, I must instantly maltreat this uncomplaining animal. The sound of my blows sickened me. Once, when I looked at her, she had a faint resemblance to a lady of my acquaintance who formerly loaded me with kindness; and this increased my horror of my cruelty.

It was blazing hot up the valley, windless, with vehement sun upon my shoulders; and I had to labor so consistently with my stick that the sweat ran into my eyes. Every five minutes, too, the pack, the basket, and the pilot-coat would take an ugly slew [Footnote: Slew: twist.] to one side or the other; and I had to stop Modestine, just when I had got her to a tolerable pace of about two miles an hour, to tug, push, shoulder, and re-adjust the load. And at last, in the village of Ussel, [Footnote: Ussel: a town about one hundred miles northwest of Alais.] saddle and all, the whole hypothec [Footnote: Hypothec: literally, the property of a tenant held by a landlord as security for rent. Here, of course, the property insufficiently secured on the donkey.] turned round and grovelled in the dust, below the donkey's belly. She none better pleased, incontinently drew up and seemed to smile; and a party of one man, two women, and two children came up, and, standing round me in a half-circle, encouraged her by their example.

I disposed it, Heaven knows how, so as to be mildly portable, and then proceeded to steer Modestine through the village. She tried, as was indeed her invariable habit, to enter every house and every courtyard in the whole length, and, encumbered as I was, without a hand to help myself, no words can render an idea of my difficulties. A priest, with six or seven others, was examining a church in process of repair, and his acolytes [Footnote: Acolytes: assistants of the priest during mass.] laughed loudly as they saw my plight. I remembered having laughed myself when I had seen good men struggling with adversity in the person of a jackass, and the recollection filled me with penitence. That was in my old light days, before this trouble came upon me. God knows at least that I shall never laugh again, thought I. But O, what a cruel thing is a farce to those engaged in it!

A little out of the village, Modestine, filled with the demon, set her heart upon a by-road, and positively refused to leave it. I dropped all my bundles, and, I am ashamed to say, struck the poor sinner twice across the face. It was pitiful to see her lift up her head with shut eyes, as if waiting for another blow. I came very near crying; but I did a wiser thing than that, and sat squarely down by the roadside to consider my situation. Modestine in the meanwhile, munched some black bread with a contrite hypocritical air. It was plain that I must make a sacrifice to the gods of shipwreck. I threw away the empty bottles destined to carry milk; I threw away my own white bread, and, disdaining to act by general average, kept the black bread for Modestine; lastly I threw away the cold leg of mutton and the egg whisk, although this last was dear to my heart.

Thus I found room for everything in the basket, and even stowed the boating-coat on the top. By means of an end of cord I slung it under one arm; and although the cord cut my shoulder, and the jacket hung almost to the ground, it was with a heart greatly lightened that I set forth.

--ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON (adapted).

[Footnote: Would you judge that this was the writer's first experience in camping? Why? What is added to the story by attributing human qualities to Modestine? How did she seem to be always putting him in the wrong? Do people ever work such tricks? What characteristics of the author are shown in this sketch? Is the humor of the story one of situation merely? What other selections are similar to this in the style of writing? in the humor?]

A NIGHT IN THE PINES

The trees were not old, but they grew thickly round the glade: there was no outlook, except northeastward upon distant hill-tops, or straight upward to the sky; and the encampment felt secure and private like a room. By the time I had made my arrangements and fed Modestine, the day was already beginning to decline. I buckled myself to the knees into my sack and made a hearty meal; and as soon as the sun went down, I pulled my cap over my eyes and fell asleep.

Night is a dead monotonous period under a roof; but in the open world it passes lightly, with its stars and dews and perfumes, and the hours are marked by changes in the face of Nature. What seems a kind of temporal death to people choked between walls and curtains, is only a light and living slumber to the man who sleeps afield. All night long he can hear Nature breathing deeply and freely; even as she takes her rest she turns and smiles; and there is one stirring hour unknown to those who dwell in houses, when a wakeful influence goes abroad over the sleeping hemisphere, and all the out-door world are on their feet. It is then that the cock first crows, not this time to announce the dawn, but like a cheerful watchman speeding the course of night. Cattle awake on the meadows; sheep break their fast on dewy hillsides, and change to a new lair among the ferns; and houseless men, who have lain down with the fowls, open their dim eyes and behold the beauty of the night.

The stars were clear, colored, and jewel-like, but not frosty. A faint silvery vapor stood for the Milky Way. All around me the black fir-points stood upright and stock-still. By the whiteness of the pack-saddle, I could see Modestine walking round and round at the length of her tether; I could hear her steadily munching at the sward; but there was not another sound, save the indescribable quiet talk of the runnel over the stones. I lay lazily smoking and studying the color of the sky, as we call the void of space, where it showed a reddish gray behind the pines to where it showed a glossy blue-black between the stars. As if to be more like a pedler, I wear a silver ring. This I could see faintly shining as I raised or lowered the cigarette; and at each whiff the inside of my hand was illuminated, and became for a second the highest light in the landscape.

A faint wind, more like a moving coolness than a stream of air, passed down the glade from time to time; so that even in my great chamber the air was being renewed all night long. I thought with horror of the inn at Chasserades and the congregated night caps; with horror of the nocturnal prowesses of clerks and students, of hot theatres, and passkeys and close rooms. I have not often enjoyed a more serene possession of myself, nor felt more independent of material aids. The outer world, from which we cower into our houses, seemed after all a gentle, habitable place; and night after night a man's bed, it seemed, was laid and waiting for him in the fields, where God keeps an open house.

As I lay thus, between content and longing, a faint noise stole towards me through the pines. I thought, at first, it was the crowing of cocks or the barking of dogs at some very distant farm; but steadily and gradually it took articulate shape in my ears, until I became aware that a passenger was going by upon the high-road in the valley, and singing loudly as he went. There was more of good-will than grace in his performance; but he trolled with ample lungs; and the sound of his voice took hold upon the hillside and set the air shaking in the leafy glens. I have heard people passing by night in sleeping cities, some of them sang; one, I remember, played loudly on the bagpipes. I have heard the rattle of a cart or carriage spring up suddenly after hours of stillness, and pass for some minutes, within the range of my hearing as I lay abed. There is a romance about all who are abroad in the black hours, and with something of a thrill we try to guess their business. But here the romance was double; first this glad passenger, lit internally with wine, who sent up his voice in music through the night; and then I, on the other hand, buckled into my sack, and smoking alone in the pine-woods between four and five thousand feet towards the stars.

--ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

[Footnote: What use does the author make of contrast? What things does he notice? Did you ever sleep at night out of doors? If so, was the night empty of impressions or did you hear and see things? What characteristic things has Stevenson chosen to give you in the picture of camping out at night? What things do you suppose Stevenson most enjoyed in his life out of doors?]

LIFE IN OLD NEW YORK

In those good old days of simplicity and sunshine, a passion for cleanliness was the leading principle in domestic economy, and the universal test of an able housewife.

The front door was never opened, except for marriages, funerals, New Year's Day, the festival of St. Nicholas, or some such great occasion. It was ornamented with a gorgeous brass knocker, which was curiously wrought,--sometimes in the device of a dog, and sometimes in that of a lion's head,--and daily burnished with such religious zeal that it was often worn out by the very precautions taken for its preservation.

The whole house was constantly in a state of inundation, [Footnote: Inundation: a flood.] under the discipline of mops and brooms and scrubbing brushes; and the good housewives of those days were a kind of amphibious [Footnote: Amphibious: able to live in water and on land.] animal, delighting exceedingly to be dabbling in water,--insomuch that an historian of the day gravely tells us that many of his townswomen grew to have webbed fingers, "like unto ducks."