Chapter L: E. W. 71 (2)

The monument in Potomac Park was dedicated at sunset. After that the committee on Savoir Faire, observing the wilted collar of the Unknown Citizen, thought it the truest courtesy to let him escape. We ourself managed to follow him through the crowds. He and his wife looked nervously over their shoulders now and then, but they had shaken off pursuit. At a little stationery store they bought some postcards. Then they went to the movies.

SIR KENELM DIGBY

Sir Kenelm Digby, of whose acquaintance all his contemporaries seem to have been ambitious.

--Dr. Johnson, _Life of Cowley_.

Prohibition, I dare say, is going to make fashionable the private compilation of just such delightful works as _The Closet of the Eminently Learned Sir Kenelme Digbie Opened; London, at the Star in Little Britain, 1669_. Sir Kenelm, “the friend of kings and the special friend of queens,” crony of such diverse spirits as Bacon, Ben Jonson, and Oliver Cromwell, kept this notebook of his jocund experiments in home brewing and cookery. Just as nowadays a man will jot down the formula of some friend’s shining success in the matter of domestic chianti, so did the admirable Kenelm record “Sir Thomas Gower’s Metheglin for Health,” or “My Lord Hollis’ Hydromel,” or “Sir John Colladon’s Oat-Meal Pap,” or “My Lady Diana Porter’s Scotch Collops;” and adding, of course, his own particular triumphs--e. g., “Hydromel as I Made it Weak for the Queen Mother,” “A Good Quaking Bag-Pudding,” and “To Fatten Young Chickens in a Wonderful Degree.” Sir Kenelm’s official duty at the court of Charles the First was Gentleman of the Bed-chamber; but if I had been Charles, I should have transferred him to the Pantry.

The _Closet Opened_ (which was not published until after Sir Kenelm’s death; he was born 1603, died 1665) is the kind of book delightfully apt for the sad, sagacious, and solitary, for one cannot spend an hour in it without deriving a lively sense of the opulence and soundness of life. The affectionate attention Sir Kenelm pays the raisin makes him seem almost a Volsteadian figure: in his pages that excellent and powerful fruity capsule plays, perhaps for the first time in history, a heroic and leading rôle. Consider this:

TO MAKE ALE DRINK QUICK

When small Ale hath wrought sufficiently, draw into bottles;
but first put into every bottle twelve good raisins of the
Sun split and stoned. Then stop up the bottle close and set
it in sand (gravel) or a cold dry Cellar. After a while this
will drink exceedingly quick and pleasant. Likewise take six
Wheat-corns, and bruise them, and put into a bottle of Ale; it
will make it exceeding quick and stronger.

Kenelm was not only a good eater; he was a devilish good writer. The fine lusty root of English prose was in him. If this is not true literature, we know it not:

ANOTHER CLOUTED CREAM

Milk your Cows in the evening about the ordinary hour, and fill
with it a little Kettle about three quarters full, so that
there may be happily two or three Gallons of Milk. Let this
stand thus five or six hours. About twelve a Clock at night
kindle a good fire of Charcoal, and set a large Trivet over it.
When the fire is very clear and quick, and free from all smoak,
set your Kettle of Milk over it upon the Trivet, and have in a
pot by a quart of good Cream ready to put in at the due time;
which must be, when you see the Milk begin to boil simpringly.
Then pour in the Cream in a little stream and low, upon a
place, where you see the milk simper....

To simper--a word of sheer genius! There are many such in his recipes.

We find the raisin again at work in his directions:

TO MAKE EXCELLENT MEATHE

To every quart of Honey, take four quarts of water. Put your
water in a clean Kettle over the fire, and with a stick take
the just measure, how high the water cometh, making a notch,
where the superficies toucheth the stick. As soon as the water
is warm, put in your Honey, and let it boil, skiming it always,
till it be very clean; Then put to every Gallon of water, one
pound of the best Blew-raisins of the Sun, first clean picked
from the stalks, and clean washed. Let them remain in the
boiling Liquor, till they be throughly swollen and soft; Then
take them out, and put them into a Hair-bag, and strain all
the juice and pulp and substance from them in an Apothecaries
Press; which put back into your liquor, and let it boil, till
it be consumed just to the notch you took at first, for the
measure of your water alone. Then let your Liquor run through
a Hair-strainer into an empty Woodden-fat, which must stand
endwise, with the head of the upper-end out; and there let it
remain till the next day, that the liquor be quite cold. Then
Tun it up into a good Barrel, not filled quite full, and let
the bung remain open for six weeks. Then stop it up close, and
drink not of it till after nine months.

This Meathe is singularly good for a Consumption, Stone,
Gravel, Weak-sight, and many more things. A Chief Burgomaster
of Antwerpe, used for many years to drink no other drink but
this; at Meals and all times, even for pledging of healths.
And though He were an old man he was of an extraordinary vigor
every way, and had every year a Child, had always a great
appetite and good digestion; and yet was not fat.

One of good Sir Kenelm’s most famous instructions, which has become fairly well-known, does honour not only to his delicate taste but also to his religious devotion. It is his advice on the brewing of tea--“The water is to remain upon it no longer than whiles you can say the _Miserere_ Psalm very leisurely.” This advice occurs in the recipe

TEA WITH EGGS

The Jesuite that came from China, Ann. 1664, told Mr. Waller,
That there they use sometimes in this manner. To near a pint
of the infusion, take two yolks of new laid-eggs, and beat
them very well with as much fine Sugar as is sufficient for
this quantity of Liquor; when they are very well incorporated,
pour your Tea upon the Eggs and Sugar, and stir them well
together. So drink it hot. This is when you come home from
attending business abroad, and are very hungry, and yet have
not conveniency to eat presently a competent meal. This
presently discusseth and satisfieth all rawness and indigence
of the stomack, flyeth suddainly over the whole body and into
the veins, and strengthenth exceedingly and preserves one a
good while from necessity of eating. Mr. Waller findeth all
those effects of it thus with Eggs. In these parts, He saith,
we let the hot water remain too long soaking upon the Tea,
which makes it extract into itself the earthy parts of the
herb. The water is to remain upon it no longer than whiles you
can say the _Miserere_ Psalm very leisurely. Thus you have only
the spiritual parts of the Tea, which is much more active,
penetrative, and friendly to nature.

Sometimes, it is true, one suspects Sir Kenelm of a tendency to gild the lily. In the matter of perfuming his tobacco, this was his procedure:--

Take Balm of Peru half an ounce, seven or eight Drops of Oyl of
Cinamon, Oyl of Cloves five drops, Oyl of Nutmegs, of Thyme, of
Lavender, of Fennel, of Aniseeds (all drawn by distillation) of
each a like quantity, or more or less as you like the Odour,
and would have it strongest; incorporate with these half a dram
of Ambergrease; make all these into a Paste; which keep in a
Box; when you have fill’d your Pipe of Tobacco, put upon it
about the bigness of a Pin’s Head of this Composition.

It will make the Smoak most pleasantly odoriferous, both to
the Takers, and to them that come into the Room; and ones
Breath will be sweet all the day after. It also comforts the
Head and Brains.

It is a great temptation to go on quoting these seductive formulæ. I feel sure that my tenderer readers would relish instructions for the Beautifying Water or Precious Cosmetick,--for the secret of which ladies of high degree pursued Sir Kenelm all over Europe. (He does not include in the _Closet_ any details of the Viper Wine for the Complection which was said to have caused the death of Lady Digby--a rather painful scandal at the time.) But I fear to trespass on your patience. Let me only add that the ambition of the Three Hours for Lunch Club has long been to hold a DIGBY DINNER, at which all the dishes will be prepared as nearly as possible according to Sir Kenelm’s prescriptions. The project offers various perplexities, and might even have to be consummated at sea, beyond the hundred-fathom curve. But if it ever comes to pass, the following menu, carefully chosen from Sir Kenelm’s delicacies, seems to me promising:--

Portugal Broth, As It Was Made for the Queen
Sack with Clove Gillyflowers
Sucket of Mallow Stalks
A Herring Pye
A Smoothening Quiddany of Quinces
My Lady Diana Porter’s Scotch Collops
Mead, from the Muscovian Ambassador’s Steward
The Queen Mother’s Hotchpot of Mutton
Pease of the Seedy Buds of Tulips
Boiled Rice in a Pipkin
Marmulate of Pippins
Dr. Bacon’s Julep of Conserve of Red Roses
Excellent Spinage Pasties
Pleasant Cordial Tablets, Which Strengthen Nature
Small Ale for the Stone
A Nourishing Hachy
Plague Water
Marrow Sops with Wine
My Lord of Denbigh’s Almond Marchpane
Sallet of Cold Capon Rosted
My Lady of Portland’s Minced Pyes
The Liquor of Life
A Quaking Bag-Pudding
Metheglin for the Colic

But I must not mislead you into thinking that Sir Kenelm was merely a convivial trencherman. His biography as related in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ is as diverting as a novel--more so than many. Infant prodigy, irresistible wooer, privateer, scientist, religious controversialist, astrologer, and a glorious talker, he made a profound impression on the life of his time. But, as so often happens, his name has been carried down to posterity not by the strange laborious treatise he regarded as his opus maximum, but by his chance association with one of the great books of all time. When Digby was under honorable confinement (as a “Popish recusant”) at Winchester House, Southwark, in 1642, he was busy there with chemical experiment and the MS. of his _Of Bodies and Mans Soul_ (of which more in a moment). Apparently they treated political prisoners with more indulgence in those days. One evening he received a letter from his friend the Earl of Dorset, urging him to read a book that was making a stir among the intellectuals. One may think it was perhaps a trifle niggardly of Dorset merely to have recommended the book. To a friend in jail, surely he might (and it was just before Christmas) have sent a copy as a present. But the liberality of the Earl is not to be called in question: he had made Sir Kenelm at least one startlingly gracious gift--viz. Lady Digby herself, previously Dorset’s mistress. This oddly amusing story, or gossip, may be pursued in Aubrey’s _Brief Lives_, a fascinating book (published by the Oxford Press)--a sort of Social Register of seventeenth century England.

“Late as it was” when Sir Kenelm received the letter from his benefactor and colleague, he sent out at once (mark the high spirit of the true inquirer; also the sagacity of seventeenth century booksellers, who kept open at night)--

To let you see how the little needle of my Soul is throughly
touched at the great Loadstone of yours, and followeth
suddenly and strongly, which way soever you becken it.... I
sent presently (as late as it was) to _Pauls_ Church-yard, for
this Favourite of yours, _Religio Medici_: which found me in
a condition fit to receive a Blessing; for I was newly gotten
into my Bed. This good natur’d creature I could easily perswade
to be my Bed-fellow, and to wake with me, as long as I had any
edge to entertain my self with the delights I sucked from so
noble a conversation.

Rarely have the pleasures of reading in bed had such durable result. The following day he spent in pouring out a long, spirited and powerful letter to Dorset (75 printed pages) which has become famous as _Observations upon Religio Medici_, and a few years later was included as a supplement to that book--where it still remains in most editions. In this tumbling out of his honourable meditations and excitements, Sir Kenelm took issue pretty smartly with Dr. Browne on a number of points, particularly in regard to his own special hobby of Immortality. He, just as much as the Norwich physician, loved to lose himself in an Altitudo; but in some cloudlands of airy doctrine Browne seemed to him too precise. “The dint of Wit,” Digby remarked felicitously of some theological impasse, “is not forcible enough to dissect such tough matter.”

These _Observations_ are of more than casual importance. Dorset, apparently, took steps (unknown to Digby) to have them published; and report of this coming blast roused Browne to protest courteously against “animadversions” based upon the unauthorized and imperfect version of his book--his own “true and intended Originall” being by this time in the printer’s hands. Digby had written his observations without knowing who the author of _Religio_ was. The letters that now passed between him and Browne are an exhilarating model of controversy goldenly conducted between gentlemen of the grand manner. “You shall sufficiently honour me in the vouchsafe of your refute,” writes Browne, “and I obliege the whole world in the occasion of your Pen.” To which Digby, avowing that his comments were written without thought of print and merely as a “private exercitation,” charmingly disclaims any ambition to enter public argument with so superior a scholar. “To encounter such a sinewy opposite, or make Animadversions upon so smart a piece as yours is, requireth such a solid stock and exercise in school learning. My superficial besprinkling will serve only for a private letter, or a familiar discourse with Lady auditors. With longing I expect the comming abroad of the true copy of the Book, whose false and stoln one hath already given me so much delight.” The delightful remark about lady auditors causes one to suspect that even in that day the germ of the lecture passion was moving in circles of high-spirited females.

Digby and Browne were evidently kinsprits. They were nearly of an age; Browne was a physician, and Digby--though many considered him a mountebank and charlatan--had a genuine scientific zeal for medical dabblings. His Powder of Sympathy, a nostrum for healing wounds at a distance, has been a cause of merriment among later generations; but Sir Kenelm was no fool and I am not at all sure that there wasn’t much excellent sense in his procedure. The injury itself was washed and kept under a clean bandage. The Powder of Sympathy was to be prepared from a paste of vitriol, and the instructions included necessity for mixing and exposing it in sunshine. Sir Kenelm was quite aware of the public appetite for hocus-pocus, and surely there was a touch of anticipatory Christian Science and Coué in his idea of keeping the patient’s mind off the trouble and giving him this harmless amusement in the open air. For the sympathetic powder, please note, was never to be applied to the wound itself, but only to something carrying the blood of the injured person--a stained bandage, a garment, or even the weapon with which the damage was done. The injury was left to the curative progress of Nature. This theory of treating not the wound but the weapon might well be meditated by literary critics. For instance, when some toxicated energumen publishes an atrocious book, the best course to pursue is not to attack the author but to praise Walter de la Mare or Stella Benson. This may be termed the allopathic principle in criticism; but few of us are steadfast enough to adhere to it.

Digby’s _Memoirs_--not published until 1827--exhibit him as the swashbuckler, and amorist by no means faint. They are amusing enough but give only a carnal silhouette. Perhaps he did not write the book himself: there is a vein of burlesque in the narrative that makes me suspicious. It purports to be an account of Sir Kenelm’s fidelity to his wife, the lovely Venetia; and we are told that the account was written under Antonian pressure. Importuned by ladies of much personal generosity and recklessness, Sir Kenelm austerely retires to a cave and pens this confession of uxorious loyalty. When you consider that the relations of Sir Kenelm and Lady Venetia were one of the fashionable uproars of the day, you begin to guess that the Memoir (in which all the characters are concealed by romantic pseudonyms) was an elaborate skit intended for private circulation, probably the work of some satirical friend. Exactly so, when any great scandal nowadays is riding on the front pages of the newspapers, do City Room reporters compose humorous burlesques of the printed “stories,” and these have delightful currency round the office.

So you will still find legends in print suggesting that Sir Kenelm was a blend of Casanova and Dr. Munyon. He has been attributed what historians used to call “Froude’s disease”--an insufficient curiosity as to the total of 2 and 2 when added together. But a man whose memory still makes a page and a half of the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ such lively reading, must have had more than mere animal spirits in his make-up. It is easy to find testimony to his potent social and military accomplishments. But the man himself, his earnest scientific passions, his valiant speculation on human destinies, does not emerge from the entries in encyclopædias. For that you must look into his great book _Two Treatises: The Nature of Bodies, and The Nature of Mans Soul_ (1658). By the kindness of Mr. Wilbur Macey Stone, generous and astonishingly Elizabethan explorer of old books, I have an original, tawny and most aromatic copy of this queer treasure. The title page of the Second Treatise is endorsed, with a charming use of the aspirates--

SAMUEL MELLOR’S BOOK, December 22th 1792.

_Samuel Mellor his my Name
and Cheshire is my Nation
and Burton is my Dwellings
Place and Christ is my
Salvation
this Book geven
has A Gift to Samuel Mellor_

Sir Kenelm dedicates the volume to his son, in a touching and honourable letter dated “Paris the last of August 1644.” “The calamity of this time” (he says) “hath bereft me of the ordinary means of expressing my affection to you; I have been casting about, to find some other way of doing that in such sort, as you may receive most profit by it. Therein I soon pitched upon these Considerations; that Parents owe unto their children, not only material subsistence for their Body, but much more, spiritual contributions to their better part, their Mind.” Accordingly, with perfect gravity and that sombre and Latinized eloquence which was the peculiar gift of his century, he proceeds to expound in nearly 600 dense pages his observations on what we would call nowadays physics and psychology. It would be agreeable enough, if I did not fear to weary you, to copy down some of Sir Kenelm’s delightful shrewd comments. A few of his section headings will serve to give an idea of his matter. For instance:--

_The experience of burning glasses, and of soultry gloomy
weather, prove light to be fire._

_Philosophers ought not to judge of things by the rules of
vulgar people._

_The reason why the motion of light is not discerned coming
towards us, and that there is some real tardity in it._

_The true sense of the Maxim, that Nature abhorreth from
vacuity._

_The loadstone sendeth forth its emanations spherically.
Which are of two kinds: and each kind is strongest in that
hemisphere, through whose polary parts they issue out._

_The reason why sometimes the same object appears through the
prism in two places: and in one place more lively, in the other
place more dim._

_How the vital spirits sent from the brain, do run to the
intended part of the body without mistake._

_Of the rainbow, and how by the colour of any body, we may know
the composition of the body it self._

_How things renewed in the fantasie, return with the same
circumstances that they had at first._

_Why divers men hate some certain meats, and particularly
cheese._

Here, you will agree, was a man who even when he seems naïf, examined phenomena with his own eyes and with notable sharpness. Delving into the “crooked narrow cranies & restrayned flexuous rivolets of corporeal things” was, he insisted, a “difficult & spiny affaire;” he was eager to avoid “meer Chymeras and wild paradoxes,” hoped that “by strong abstraction, and by deep retirement into the closet of judgment” he might win “a favourable doom” from his readers. There is no naïveté so dangerous as that of underestimating the power of another man’s mind. Behind some of his fanciful suggestions there is an astonishing agility of conjecture. On the subject of physiology he is delicious. Hear him (pared down to stark brevity) on the brain:--

We may take notice that it containeth, towards the middle of
its substance, four concavities, as some do count them: but in
truth, these four, are but one great concavity, in which four,
as it were, divers roomes, may be distinguished.... Now, two
rooms of this great concavity, are divided by a little body,
somewhat like a skin, (though more fryable) which of itself is
clear; but there it is somewhat dimmed, by reason that hanging
a little slack, it somewhat shriveleth together: and this,
Anatomists do call _Septum lucidum_, or speculum....

This part seemeth to me, to be that and onely that, in which
the fansie or common sense resideth ... it is seated in the
very hollow of the brain; which of necessity must be the place
and receptacle where the species and similitudes of things doe
reside, and where they are moved and tumbled up and down, when
we think of many things. And lastly, the situation we put our
head in, when we think earnestly of any thing, favoureth this
opinion: for then we hang our head forwards, as it were forcing
the specieses to settle towards our forehead, that from thence
they may rebound, and work upon this diaphanous substance.

But it is in the Second Treatise (“Declaring the Nature and Operations of Mans Soul; out of which, The Immortality of Reasonable Souls, is Convinced”) that the darling man rises to really dazzling heights. In this mystical, ecstatic and penitential essay he (in Burton’s phrase) rectifies his perturbations. He is no longer channeled in the “crooked narrow cranies of corporeal things;” he works from withinward and spirals in happy ether:--

To thee then my soul, I now address my speech. For since by
long debate, and toilsom rowing against the impetuous tides
of ignorance, and false apprehensions, which overthrow thy
banks, and hurry thee headlong down the stream, whiles thou
art imprisoned in thy clayie mansion; we have with much ado
arrived to aim at some little attome of thy vast greatness; and
with the hard and tough blows of strict and wary reasoning, we
have strucken out some few sparks of that glorious light, which
invironeth and swelleth thee: it is high time, I should retire
my self out of the turbulent and slippery field of eager strife
and litigious disputation, to make my accounts with thee; where
no outward noise may distract us, nor any way intermeddle
between us, excepting onely that eternal verity, which by thee
shineth upon my faint and gloomy eyes.... Existence is that
which comprehendeth all things: and if God be not comprehended
in it, thereby it is, that he is incomprehensible of us: and
he is not comprehended in it, because himself is it.... Which
way soever I look, I lose my sight, in seeing an infinity round
about me: Length without points: Breadth without Lines: Depth
without any surface. All content, all pleasure, all restless
rest, all an unquietness and transport of delight, all an
extasie of fruition.

So don’t let any one tell you that Sir Kenelm was only a seventeenth century epicure and bootlegger.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF AN AMIABLE VISITOR

We thought of telling you about the things that most interested a British friend of ours during the first hours of his first visit to this country.

Perhaps first of all we should give you an inkling of what kind of chap he is. He’s a Welshman, an Oxford man, served in the war as a captain in the Highland Light Infantry, was awarded the Military Cross, is now in the wholesale tobacco business, is an ardent reader, and we daren’t mention his name. He’s over here to study conditions in the world of tobacco.

We went down the bay and boarded the _Baltic_ in the Narrows. We stood with our friend on what a landsman might call the roof while the ship came up the harbour. We pointed out Liberty, as she emerged from the sunlit wintry haze. At first glimpse, coming in from sea, she has rather a forbidding mien--her gesture seems one of warning. Then, as you come nearer, she seems to be holding up a cocktail shaker. But we promised to give our friend’s impressions, not our own.

The first things he wanted to have pointed out to him were the Woolworth Tower and the Brooklyn Bridge. Brooklyn engaged his fancy more than the Jersey shore--probably on account of the Walt Whitman tradition. “I have rather a feeling for Whitman,” he said. He was quiet as we passed the long profile of downtown skyscrapers, but we saw that he was inwardly meditating. He wanted to know about all the water tanks on top of the buildings, especially on the Jersey side. “You people seem very keen about water,” he said. He was hugely pleased with the way the tugs got the _Baltic_ into her berth.

He wondered whether, before landing, we had better dispose of a little toddy he had in his pocket flask. He had heard that if any usquebaugh were found, the officials would confiscate the flask. We agreed that it would be better not to take any chances on this matter. He was greatly surprised and delighted with the rapidity and courtesy of the customs examination. We got away from the pier with no more trouble, he said, than we would have had in arriving at a railway terminal in London.

We took a taxi, bound for Penn. Station, and then decided to prolong the ride by going down Fifth Avenue to Washington Square, and up again. He remarked that the street paving near the docks was no better than it is in Liverpool. He was charmed by the chauffeur’s air of camaraderie. The latter, hearing through the open window that this was an exploring expedition, began offering most friendly suggestions as to nice long rides we might take, to Central Park, for instance. “Take him to see the skaters, he’ll enjoy that,” said the chauffeur. This friendly informality on the part of brakemen, soda jerkers, cab drivers, ticket choppers, shop girls, and all such public servants delighted him.

Madison Square appealed to him, for he is an admirer of O. Henry. “That’s where the old tramps sit on the benches, isn’t it?” he said. He was anxious to see a “surface car,” for he had read about them in _The Four Million_. The L did not seem to interest him so much. In a drug store, he was excited by the little whirling instrument that mixed our “frosted chocolate.” The lighting, spaciousness, and attractive display in the department stores tickled him. The Penn. Station gave him extraordinary pleasure. Chiefly, we thought, he was struck by a general spaciousness and lack of hurry everywhere, in the traffic, in the shops, etc. When we asked him what he wanted to see, he said, “I want to see some of you _hustling_.” We looked everywhere, but could find no one hustling. Like a candid observer, however, he noticed one thing which is not beneath the attention of any student of human manners. “Your people have rather a fine line in legs,” he said.

We pointed proudly to the Public Library (but could not bear to tell him that the City has again cut its appropriation for buying new books). He praised the large windows at the backs of the taxicabs, making it possible to see what was going on behind the car. In Madison Square he was particularly delighted by Diana, who seemed just then to be aiming her gilded arrow at the pale, low-swimming daylight moon. He asked us whether we thought he should subscribe to the _Saturday Evening Post_ and the _Literary Digest_. Both these journals, in some way or other, had come prominently to his attention at his home in Cheshire. _Harper’s_ and _The Century_, he said, he frequently reads.

He thought it was a bit unfair of the advertisers (this was in the Long Island train) to take advantage of public attention by issuing a card with the announcement NOTICE TO PASSENGERS, looking very like official information, which turned out to be a chewing gum ad. We told him about the card in the subway which says PASSENGERS CHANGE HERE and then adds “to ---- Union Suits.” This amused him, but we could see that he didn’t think it quite sporting. He was highly diverted by the little signs at the subway ticket booths--_Sing Out How Many_ and _The Voice with the Smile Wins_. He was quite startled to learn that the author of Trivia (one of his favourite books) is an American. He was pleased by the informality of the Long Island conductor, who, seeing a lady friend among the passengers, sat down with her between stations and had a social chat.

Standing at the front of a subway train as it roared through the tunnel from Brooklyn seemed to give him innocent happiness. Again he commented, in the downtown region, on the general air of order and good management in the conduct of the traffic. He could see none of the brutal scurry that he had been taught to expect. Going up the Woolworth Tower was the greatest adventure of these few hours. This, we think, he will not soon forget. He was greatly pleased, being himself a householder, with the American kitchen. He thought it very well planned. Jericho cider he praised without reserve. A revolving apparatus for airing clothes in the back garden pleased him mightily. Delightful fellow, blessings upon him!

It is visits such as his that add to the stock of true international understanding.

IN HONOREM: MARTHA WASHINGTON

An American figure of national consequence has passed away from the scene of her many glories. We refer to Martha Washington, the Independence Hall cat.

When we worked in the old Philadelphia _Ledger_ office, and paragraphs were scarce, we had an unfailing recourse. We would go over to the State House (as they call it in its home town), descend to the cool delightful old cellar underneath the hall, and call on Fred Eckersberg, the engineer. We would see Martha sleeking herself on the flagstones by the cellar steps (she was the blackest cat we ever knew, giving off an almost purple lustre in hot sunlight) or perhaps we would have to search her out among the coal bins where she was fixing a layette for the next batch of kittens. In any case, Martha having been duly admired, Fred Eckersberg would gladly talk about her and tell us what were the latest adventures of her historic life. Which was always good copy, for Fred, having been on friendly terms with Philadelphia reporters for many years, knew the kind of anecdotes that would please them. One of Fred’s unconscious triumphs was the time he told us of his perplexity about ringing in the New Year in the Independence Hall belfry. It was about Christmas time, 1919. “Last January,” he said, “I rang One-Nine-One-Nine to welcome in the New Year. But what am I going to do this time? How can I ring One-Nine-Two-Nought?” We told him we saw no way out of it but to start early in the afternoon of New Year’s Eve and ring the whole One Thousand Nine Hundred and Twenty tolls.

We could say a good deal about Martha Washington: her kittens are surely the most noble in the land, charter members of the Colonial Felines of America, all born in the Hall, directly underneath the lobby where the Bell stands. When the most famous brood of all were swaddled, four fine jetty daughters born in November, 1918, Fred christened them Victory, Freedom, Liberty, and Independence. He paid us the greatest compliment of our life by offering us Victory, but at that time we were living in a small apartment in the city and we didn’t think it would be a sufficiently dignified home for such a kitten, who deserved nothing less than a residence on the Main Line (Oh, Philadelphia!), with scrapple made on the premises.

But it is time to get down to the point of our story. Martha has left the Hall. Poor Fred, in his bereavement, has taken pen in hand. We can see him, sitting at his desk down there in the ancient cellar, with all his emblems, souvenirs, and clippings posted up above him and an oblong of gold-and-green brightness shining down through the doorway from the leafy sunshine of the Square. We can see him talking it over with his comrades “the boys”--the State House carpenter and the gardeners, as they sit at their lunch in the cellar. There is the empty saucer, dry and dusty now; in the good old days Fred always brought in a little bottle of milk every morning for Martha. And this is what Fred writes us, word for word:

PHILA Aug 3, 21.

DEAR FRIEND: I thought I would write you a few lines to let
you know that I am still at the Hall but the Black cat is
gone--without a press agent Martha just became a cat the boys
miss her as we had a bag of grass seed the mice got in and they
have to hang their lunch on a string but we have a pair of
Robbins that sing in the square they would not be long there if
Martha was strolling around. We kept one of her kittens when I
was on my vacation it was sent to the Morris Refuge with one of
the men, on a Friday the next day he got a yellow slip (good
bye). Lot of people ask me about her and a Friend of yours left
this card: _Dear friend It looks as if Martha is going to have
a family--Will you save me two kittens if they are black like
their ma!_ But she did not have a black kitten so he did not
get one.

She left them for a few days came back when they were sent
away this was what got her in wrong, but when a fight between
two Thomas cats on the lawn was pulled off Martha’s doom was
sealed. She had the same sleek black coat the same bright eyes
but she was in wrong with our Superintendant so I called up and
had a boy from the cat home call for her they said it would
cost 50 cents so I left the cents and the job of putting her in
the basket to one of the men, but her picture is still on the
wall.

We are making changes and repairs about the buildings if the
tower would interest you would be pleased to take you up when
over in Phila had a party from New York up and they said they
knew you.

The old janitor lived in the tower because he had to ring the
bell for fires funerals and most everything that went on they
tell me one son was born there he had three children, the
rafter alongside the open fireplace is burned and we found some
old shoes worn by children under the floor, and some bones we
thought ment a Crime but upon investigation turned out to be
soup bones from Sheep Legs. This is about all. Your Friend

FRED ECKERSBERG
Engineer, Independence Hall.

ACCORDING TO HOYLE

“If it be true” (remarks old John Mistletoe, in his little known _Life of Edmund Hoyle_) “that a happy life leaves behind it little material for the biographer, and only those whose careers have been marked by the pangs of ambition and the wearinesses of achievement offer maxims for the moralist, then there is little to be said of Edmund Hoyle. And yet it is odd that a man whose name has become proverbial, who lived to the age of close upon a century (1672–1769), and who standardized and codified the chief social amusement of his age into an etiquette which remained unchanged for six generations--it is odd, I say, that this great peaceful benefactor has left so slight a trace in biographical annals. For I ask you, which of Hoyle’s contemporaries conferred a more placable and sedentary boon upon the world than he?”

“Hoyle” (continues Mr. Mistletoe) “was a man of very speechless humour. It was his wont to say that he had been lured into the study and metaphysic of whist because it was a silent game. As is well known, the game was originally called _whisk_; it was Mr. Hoyle who, by his continual utterance of the imperative and hushing monosyllable _Whist!_ when gaming with those whose tongues were apt to wag irrelevantly, caused the diversion, at first only in sport, and then in genuine earnest, to be rechristened. It was a sight not to be forgotten, by contemporary account, to see the Master (as he was known) sitting down at the Three Pigeons tavern for his afternoon rubber. The mornings he spent in tutoring wealthy ladies in the rudiments of the fashionable game, this being the chief source of his income. He was very particular, moreover, as to the standing and rank of his pupils; he was much in demand, and could afford to take only such students as satisfied his fastidious taste for youth and beauty. In fact, he anticipated the doctrine announced many years later by John Keats, who remarked, ‘I intend henceforth to have nothing to do with the society of ladies unless they be handsome. You lose time to no purpose.’

“It was, I repeat, an agreeable spectacle to witness the Master driving up to the Three Pigeons about the hour of (as we would now say) luncheon, in his white hackney coach with his emblem--the Ace of Hearts--blazoned on the panel. Before the gaming began he would always take a leisurely meal; indeed, it was his habit to say that no gentleman would ever spend less than three hours at the table. One of his humours was to insist that warm weather was dangerous to his constitution, and that in summer it was desirable to eat sparingly and with deliberation. On days that had, as someone has put it, the humidity of Uriah Heep, this was an example of his menu, which I have found filed in the old papers kept in the vaults of the Three Pigeons:

_Service to Mr. Edmund Hoyle, this 28th July 1730, on acct_:

_A capon broth, with toasted bread_

_A flagon of small ale_

_Fricassee of sweetbreads, with currant jelly_

_A flask of cool Canary_

_Rosted wild ducks, with cheesecake and parsnips_

_A jugg of malmsey, from the special butt_

_A sallet of shrimpes and candyed cherries_

_A hot rabbit pye, with buttered pease and a pottle of mulled
claret_

_Rhubarbe pasty, with barley wine to ease Mr. Hoyle’s digestions_

_Plague water for the hott weather_

“Having done suitable homage to this judicious nourishment” (Mr. Mistletoe proceeds), “Mr. Hoyle would have brought to him his own yard of clay, which he would leisurely fill with the best pure Virginia leaf, gazing about him the while upon the impatient faces of his friends who were anxious to get to the cards. ‘Never indulge the carnal appetites immoderately in hot weather,’ he would say, blowing out a long blue whiff into the cool twilight of the old taproom, panelled in magnificent dark walnut. This was the last word uttered, for when the Master took his seat at the card table no man dared speak. A sacred quiet filled the place as he reached for the pasteboards and deftly cut for the deal, tossing back his lace cuffs over his lean yellowish wrists, the colour (he was something bilious) of old piano keys. The rest was silence, with only the fall of the cards and the occasional clink of a bottle when Mr. Hoyle refilled his vase of Burgundy, which he always drank while gaming. A life of abstemious control, he said, was needful for one who must keep his wits alert.”

L. E. W.

We are continually obtaining new and piercing glimpses into human life and character. We are now able to assert, without fear of rebuttal, that even men of unblemished intellect and lofty, serene understanding have always some particular point of frailty at which morals, virtue, and integrity collapse in a dark confusion of spiritual wreckage.

Reconsidering the above sentence it seems to need a little clarification. We shall have to explain what we mean, and can only do so by referring, with painful verity, to the Leading Editorial Writer.