Chapter I: Prithee Send Me Back My Heart (1)

By Sir John Suckling (1609–1642).

I prithee send me back my heart,
Since I cannot have thine,
For if from yours you will not part,
Why, then, shouldst thou have mine?

Yet now I think on’t, let it lie;
To find it were in vain;
For thou’st a thief in either eye
Would steal it back again.

Why should two hearts in one breast lie,
And yet not lodge together?
O Love! where is thy sympathy,
If thus our breasts thou sever?

But love is such a mystery,
I cannot find it out;
For when I think I’m best resolved,
I then am in most doubt.

Then farewell care, and farewell wo,
I will no longer pine;
For I’ll believe I have her heart,
As much as she has mine.

✷ ✷ ✷ ✷

TO LUCASTA, ON GOING TO THE WARS.

By Richard Lovelace (1618–1658).

Tell me not, sweet, I am unkinde,
That from the nunnerie
Of thy chaste breast and quiet minde,
To warre and armes I flee.

True, a new mistress now I chase—
The first foe in the field;
And with a stronger faith imbrace
A sword, a horse, a shield.

Yet this inconstancy is such
As you, too, should adore;
I could not love thee, deare, so much,
Loved I not honor more.

✷ ✷ ✷ ✷

TO LADY ANNE HAMILTON.

By William Robert Spencer (1769–1834).

Too late I stay’d—forgive the crime!
Unheeded flew the hours;
How noiseless falls the foot of Time
That only treads on flowers!

What eye with clear account remarks
The ebbing of the glass,
When all its sands are diamond sparks,
That dazzle as they pass?

Oh, who to sober measurement
Time’s happy swiftness brings,
When birds of paradise have lent
Their plumage for his wings?

✷ ✷ ✷ ✷

NOT OURS THE VOWS.

By Thomas Love Peacock (1785–1866).

Not ours the vows of such as plight
Their troth in sunny weather,
While leaves are green and skies are bright,
To walk on flowers together.

But we have loved as those who tread
The thorny path of sorrow,
With clouds above, and cause to dread
Yet deeper gloom to-morrow.

That thorny path, those stormy skies,
Have drawn our spirits nearer,
And rendered us, by sorrow’s ties,
Each to the other dearer.

Love, born in hours of joy and mirth,
With mirth and joy may perish;
That to which darker hours gave birth
Still more and more we cherish.

It looks beyond the clouds of time,
And through death’s shadowy portal,
Made by adversity sublime,
By faith and hope immortal.

✷ ✷ ✷ ✷

THE GRAVE OF LOVE.

By Thomas Love Peacock (1785–1866).

I dug, beneath the cypress shade,
What well might seem an elfin’s grave;
And every pledge in earth I laid,
That erst thy false affection gave.

I pressed them down the sod beneath;
I placed one mossy stone above;
And twined the rose’s fading wreath
Around the sepulcher of love.

Frail as thy love, the flowers were dead,
Ere yet the evening sun was set;
But years shall see the cypress spread,
Immutable as my regret.

✷ ✷ ✷ ✷

MUSIC, WHEN SOFT VOICES DIE.

By Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822).

Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory—
Odors, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.

Rose-leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heap’d for the beloved’s bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.

✷ ✷ ✷ ✷

WHEN STARS ARE IN THE QUIET SKIES.

By Bulwer Lytton (1803–1873).

When stars are in the quiet skies,
Then most I pine for thee;
Bend on me then thy tender eyes,
As stars look on the sea!
For thoughts, like waves that glide by night,
Are stillest when they shine;
Mine earthly love lies hushed in light
Beneath the heaven of thine.

There is an hour when angels keep
Familiar watch o’er men,
When coarser souls are wrapped sleep—
Sweet spirit, meet me then!
There is an hour when holy dreams
Through slumber fairest glide;
And in that mystic hour it seems
Thou shouldst be by my side.

My thoughts of thee too sacred are
For daylight’s common beam:
I can but know thee as my star,
My angel, and my dream;
When stars are in the quiet skies,
Then most I pine for thee;
Bend on me then thy tender eyes,
As stars look on the sea!

✷ ✷ ✷ ✷

TO HELEN.

By Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849).

Helen, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicæan barks of yore,
That gently, o’er a perfumed sea,
The weary, way-worn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.

On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece
And the grandeur that was Rome.

Lo! in yon brilliant window-niche
How statue-like I see thee stand!
The agate lamp within thy hand,
Ah! Psyche, from the regions which
Are Holy Land!

QUEER WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY.

For Many Centuries Native Tribes of Africa Have Had Systems of
Communication Which Have Mystified White Travelers—Effective Use of
Tom-Toms, Gourds, and Ivory Horns Keeps Villages in Touch With Each
Other.

There is nothing new under the sun, not even the wireless telegraph. To be sure, the system which has been in use for centuries among the savage tribes in the heart of Africa bears no resemblance to our latest wonder, but it is practical and effective, and its value has been proved many times.

A French explorer seems to have been the first to describe it.

By means of this system news of important events in the interior of
the Sudan reaches all the trading ports on the coast in a very short
time, although there is no electric telegraph or telephone in the
interior.

The communication is made by means of various instruments, the most
commonly employed being horns, tom-toms, and whistles. The horns are
of solid ivory, made by hollowing out elephant’s tusks. The mouthpiece
is at the side. These trumpets are of all sizes, but the favorite ones
are very long and give seven distinct notes, produced by plugging the
mouth with corks of various sizes. The ordinary tom-tom is a hollow
log of wood, with a goatskin stretched over one end.

The following instance will illustrate the way in which this native
telegraph is employed. The post commander at Stanley Falls was
informed by a native of a neighboring village that a provision train
had been attacked by robbers two days before at a point one hundred
and eighty miles farther down the Congo. A week later the party
arrived and confirmed the story in part.

They had reached the scene of the alleged attack at the time reported,
but the shots which the natives had taken as indications of a conflict
with robbers had been fired at a herd of antelopes.

More recently, when an officer of the French Congo came to grief in
the rapids, the accident was reported the next morning at a village
one hundred and eighty-six miles distant.

Among the Bengala tribe a sort of xylophone is used with four notes,
by means of which the natives hold communication over great distances
In a kind of telegraphic language.

The Rev. C. A. Rideout, an African missionary, gives in the Kansas
City _Star_ an account of this method of communication over long
distances of sparsely settled country. He was working among the
Basutos when he discovered that the villages had means of conveying
messages from one chief to another, or transmitting the intelligence
of defeat or victory. Says Mr. Rideout:

“A large gourd is hollowed out and thoroughly dried. Then kid’s skin,
as hard and thin as parchment, is stretched across the hollow of the
gourd. When beaten with a padded drumstick this gives forth a sound
which can be distinctly heard at a distance of from five to eight
miles.

“In every village there is a class of men who are utilized as scouts.
Among these guards there are always two or three trained to the use of
the gourd drum. The code is practically an African Morse alphabet, and
is beaten on the drum in the open air.

“The sound is carried across the valleys and glens to the next
village, where it is interpreted by another guard. If the message is
for a distant part, he repeats it on his drum; and so it is carried
from village to village, with very little loss of time, until it
reaches the person for whom it is intended.

“I was granted the privilege of using the gourd telegraph system to
send messages to our mission workers, and often availed myself of it.
I don’t know a single instance where it failed to deliver its word
properly.

“During the Boer War we, who were hundreds of miles from the scene of
hostilities, got all the news with surprising rapidity, and I have
known of several instances where tidings came by the gourd air-line
hours ahead of the message by field-telegraph.

“Who first invented the system nobody knows. It has been in use for
centuries. There appears to be no difficulty in sending any kind of a
message, and I have known one to travel nearly one thousand miles.”

The Blind Sailor-Explorer.

BY MARY CAROLINE CRAWFORD.

Lieutenant James Holman Felt His Way ‘Round the World, Scaled Vesuvius,
Hunted Wild Animals, Was a Russian Prisoner, a Guest of Princes, and
Wrote His Own Experiences Though Sightless.

_An original article written for_ THE SCRAP BOOK.

We of the twentieth century are rather too prone to believe that such remarkable cases of superiority to circumstance as are supplied by the lives of Helen Keller and Thomas Stringer are peculiar to our own time and country. Such, however, is not the case. Certainly no more impressive instance of accomplishment under trying circumstances can anywhere be found than in the travels and the accounts thereof credited to Lieutenant James Holman, who died in London almost fifty years ago, after a full and happy life. Not even the celebrated Baron von Humboldt traveled so far or visited so many countries as did Holman; and von Humboldt had his sight.

Holman offers an extraordinary example of what energy and perseverance may accomplish. Driven out of the naval service of his country by the complete extinction of his sight when twenty-five years of age, he found himself with his youthful passion for travel still unsatisfied, and with what might very probably be a long and dreary life before him. A naval officer who had already seen service in England and America, he now found himself forced to rearrange his life plans entirely. Almost immediately he resorted to Edinburgh University for a term of study, but even the pleasures of a cultivated mind could not reconcile him to a life of inaction. Finding the post of Knight of Windsor, which had been conferred upon him, intolerable, he obtained leave of absence, and prepared to set out on his first journey of exploration.

For more than forty years the blind lieutenant kept continually on the march. He traveled alone, for a valet, in his opinion, was a useless incumbrance. Beginning his travels with a tour of France, Italy, Saxony, Switzerland, and Holland, he next penetrated twenty-five hundred miles beyond the Ural Mountains in Siberia. After returning to Europe, he circumnavigated the globe, visited the west coast of Africa, the gold mines in the Brazils, the colony of the Cape of Good Hope, and the islands between that country and China. In 1840 he again left England—this time to explore the Holy Land, and, incidentally, every country touching the waters of the Mediterranean and adjacent seas.

Between these journeys it was Holman’s custom to expand into books the journal notes he had made _en route_. The resulting volumes (formally dedicated, by permission, “To the King’s Most Excellent Majesty”) are packed with shrewd comments upon men and manners, and with delightful descriptions of travel. Through these books (now extremely rare) we are enabled to-day to enter into the experiences of one of the most interesting personalities of which the last century can boast.

“If my undertakings—for such they may without vanity be called—be productive of no other benefit,” he says, “than that of proving to the world how much may be done by a cheerful perseverance under a heavy affliction—how great obstacles may be subdued by resolution—how the void of sight may be peopled by an active mind, and the desert fertilized by industry—how much hope exists even in the darkest page of life—and how many resources against discontent and loneliness this beautiful and varied world presents—I shall be content to think my labors have not been altogether destitute of utility.” This rather labored though earnest sentence does not, however, represent Holman at his best. His earlier books are full of spontaneity. While still a young man he derived as much pleasure from writing of his journeys as from making them.

The manner in which the blind man lets us share his sensations makes his work peculiarly interesting. After we have been wondering for a while how he gets any fun out of the long, hard journeys in the dark, he suddenly answers the question thus: “I must candidly admit that I have derived little gratification from the external objects that presented themselves, and am indebted to the resources of my own mind for the interest I felt; and in particular the contemplation of future plans, as well as the satisfactory progress I have already made with regard to my present ones which others have so often deemed impracticable.”

The truth is that Holman experienced a boy’s delight in proving to his friends that he could travel in safety and have a good time into the bargain. “I find less difficulty and inconvenience in traveling among strangers than people imagine, and prefer being left to my own resources,” he says. “Habit has given me the power of acquiring, by a kind of undefinable tact, as correct ideas of objects as the most accurate description would give.”

Of course, humorous situations were of frequent occurrence. Once at Bordeaux he heard water splashing at the side of the coach. This went on for something like an hour before he discovered that the other passengers, the better to insure their safety, had left the vehicle and crossed on a ferry-boat, leaving him to float with the carriage on a raft across the river Dordogne.

“I found that, while I supposed myself sitting in the coach office yard at Bordeaux,” he narrates, “I had actually traveled four miles by water without having entertained the least idea of such an adventure.”

In this same book Holman describes his custom of traveling with leading-strings.

“Finding myself suffering from headache, which I attributed to want of exercise,” he writes, “I made signs for the driver to stop that I might get out of the coach and walk for a time; he was quite indisposed to accommodate me until I manifested my intention of jumping out.

“He now thought well to stop his horses and proffer his assistance; however, I refused it, and succeeded in finding the back part of the coach, where I secured my hold by means of a piece of cord (which when traveling I make a rule to carry always in my pocket), and which in the present instance served me as a leading-string.

“I then followed in this way on foot for several miles, to the no small amusement of the villagers, who laughed heartily and even shouted after me.”

Upon reaching Rome, Holman went to the Vatican. He had hoped to be allowed to examine the sculpture carefully with his hands, but this he was not permitted to do, as soldiers were placed in each apartment to prevent such violation.

“Had I been freely permitted to touch the marbles, I doubt not,” he says, “that I might have been as highly gratified as those who saw, for the sense of touch conveys to my mind as clear, or at least as satisfactory, ideas of the form, and, I think I may add, the force of expression, as sight does to others. I did occasionally examine them in this way by stealth,” he adds, “when I was apprised that the soldiers’ backs were turned toward me.”

Holman was doubtless the only blind man who ever ascended Mount Vesuvius and survived to record his impressions of the feat. “My friends endeavored to dissuade me from this arduous undertaking,” he writes. “and when after fully deciding upon the measure, I inquired in what way it was customary for others to make the ascent, they replied: ‘Oh, they could _see_ their way up.’

“‘Well, then,’ I retorted, ‘I have little doubt of being able to _feel_ mine.’”

The ground proved to be too hot under his feet, and the sulfurous vapors too strong to allow the hardy Englishman to remain long on the summit, but his guide satisfied him by directing his walking-cane toward the flames, which shriveled the ferrule and charred the lower part. He retained the cane as a memorial, and mentions the fact in his writings.

The most dangerous journeys ever undertaken by Holman were those into the heart of Siberia, upon which he set out soon after his return from his initial visit to Florence. He occupied himself on the way inland studying the geography of Russia, tracing his intended itinerary with his finger upon a raised map.

At the Academy of Art, in Saint Petersburg, he was more successful than he had been at the Vatican in his endeavor to derive pleasure from the sculpture. Of his experience with the Canova statue of Napoleon he writes:

“The pedestal of this statue is so high that I could only reach the knees of the figure; but this was sufficient to satisfy me of its exquisite character. The kneepan, the heads of the bones of the leg, the muscles that form the calf, the ankles, the contractions of the toes (from the supposed weight of the body resting upon them) were all inimitable, so beautifully had the chisel written its delineations on the marble.

“My gratification on touching it was such that I could with difficulty withdraw my hand; and had the leg been clothed with a real shoe and stocking, and of a natural temperature, I might have imagined it real.”

In Moscow this undaunted sightseer walked to the Kremlin and “looked at” the wonderful bell there by mounting to its top on a ladder. The better to examine some of the mortars cast in 1694 by Peter the Great, he coolly took off his coat and crept to the bottom of one, greatly to the astonishment of the guide who accompanied him.

Holman’s own explanation of the way in which sightseeing of this sort ministered to his pleasure is of decided interest.

“The various organs of sense,” he says, “are the mere instruments by which the impressions of external objects are conveyed to the mind, which then reasons upon and draws its inferences respecting the nature of these objects. The conclusions thus arrived at are, consequently, mere ideas.... It matters not through what senses the impression from which these ideas are derived are transmitted. The reader will probably now comprehend the manner in which I arrived at what perhaps may be termed an ideal knowledge of the places I visit.

“Accompanied by an intelligent friend or guide, I examine every place of interest—touch what I can and hear of all, and then, combining the information thus gained with previously acquired knowledge of the subject and some portion of imagination, a picture is produced comprising in my mind a strong impression of reality, and answering the purpose, to me, almost as well as if I had actually seen it.”

To follow Holman as he calmly discusses his own feelings concerning the blindness which had come upon him is of decided psychological interest. Suspense was particularly difficult for him to bear.

“Any irritation of this nature renders me the most anxious of mortals,” he writes; “but let the excitement cease, no matter whether in an agreeable manner or the reverse, and my mind at once regains its tranquility so that I become comparatively comfortable.

“I then look back and smile at the previous storm, and wonder that it has exerted so powerful an influence over me. For instance, with respect to the one great affliction it has been my fate to suffer—the loss of sight—my mind was, during the period of suspense in which I was long detained as to the final result, in a state of excessive agitation and distress; but no sooner was it ascertained that the visual fire was quenched forever than it at once rose superior to misfortune and began to seek for and to find occupation and consolation in a variety of pursuits, among which the love of traveling, as the reader will perceive, has not been the least prominent.”

The humors attending his odd position were by no means lost upon him. “Recollecting that I am suffering from some deprivation,” he observes with gentle irony, “people often mistake the sense and begin to shout at me as if I were deaf; in short, this feeling is so general that almost every one who is not intimately acquainted with me elevates his voice in conversation.

“When I am desired to give my hand to examine anything by the touch, they take it as if my sense of feeling were deficient, squeezing it rudely, and pressing it forcibly on the object of examination, as if I were about to ascertain the condition of a bird or beast; whereas my sense of touch is most delicate, and all that I require is to pass the hand lightly over the surface of the body, and then the result is both pleasing and satisfactory.”

Occasionally, of course, this eager traveler made ludicrous mistakes. Once, when he was being entertained in Siberia by a family of distinction, he inquired from his friend what extraordinary animal it was that was making the singular snoring sound on the other side of him, which had for some time attracted his attention. The “animal” proved to be one of the principal counselors of the town who had a peculiar obstruction in his nasal organs which made him breathe with a wheezing noise.

This Siberian journey was the one in which Holman especially delighted. He had entered upon the arduous undertaking “with feelings heightened by the recollections of interest formerly derived during eight years’ service on the coast of North America.” Oddly enough, he expected to find a great similarity in the climate and productions of the two countries. He was especially interested, moreover, in the primitive simplicity and manners of the Russian and Tatar tribes.

Of the Russians, certainly, he learned a great deal during this journey. His estimation of their character appears to be singularly shrewd, and, for a blind man, wonderfully penetrating.

“Their natural quickness of mind and sensibility of feeling,” he says, “gives them the appearance of being a cheerful, amiable, and open-hearted people; but alas! under this exterior are concealed so much disingenuousness and artful policy as to diminish materially, on closer acquaintance, that estimation to which they would otherwise be justly entitled.”

Seventy-five years before Kipling’s “Truce of the Bear” was penned, another Englishman had perceived the close resemblance between the ursine and the human—in Russia.

The way in which the traveler overcame the material difficulties of journeying alone in a strange land is full of interest. He tells us that he kept his money in various bags, each of which contained a definite number of coins of different values. He was also provided with tea and sugar, a teapot, cups, and all that was necessary for the afternoon refreshment so dear to the English heart. Yet he did not spare himself when he wished to cover a stipulated distance.

The man’s force of character was never put to a severer test than when he was made a Russian state prisoner on suspicion of having assumed the pose of “Blind Traveler” in order that he might spy more effectively upon Russian politics.

The Czar had sent an aide-de-camp to arrest him and put him over the frontier without loss of time. During the ensuing sledge journey, which continued day and night for four thousand miles, and of which he was himself compelled to bear the expense, Holman became utterly worn out.

Then he took matters into his own hands; he decided that he needed a day’s rest, and told his courier-guards that he intended to take it. The Czar’s representatives, including the Governor of Moscow, ordered otherwise.

Holman defied them all—if he felt better next day, he would go with them; but not before. A long and angry altercation followed, but in the end he, a sightless stranger among bigoted enemies, won by sheer force of moral strength. They finally left him a free man on the border of the little republic of Cracow.

Of Holman’s seven books, the later volumes are considerably less intimate and vivid than those written in the first flush of his triumph over circumstances. Nevertheless his adventures and research among the gold mines of South Africa, his description of an entertainment given for him by a rajah of the East, his emotions as he climbed a mast for the sake of exercise, and the thrill which came to him while hunting elephants make reading of more than ordinary interest. The sailor’s keen delight in a voyage, and the Englishman’s unfailing weakness for riding, never deserted this extraordinary man. One of the best pen-pictures we have of him, indeed, is astride a horse.

“At the English consul’s,” writes Francis Parkman from Girgenti, Sicily, under the date, January, 1844, “I met a blind traveler, a Mr. Holman, who has been over Siberia, New Holland, and other remote regions, for the most part alone, and has written seven volumes of his travels. Traveling, he told me, was a passion with him. He could not sit at home.

“I walked home with him through the streets, admiring his indomitable energy. I saw him the next morning sitting on his mule, with the guide he had hired. His strong frame, his manly face, his gray beard and mustache, and his sightless eyeballs gave him quite a noble appearance.”

Lieutenant Holman died in his London chambers, July, 1857. He had never married, so that the unpublished journals and other literary material which survived him was not placed before the world as it probably would have been had a devoted son survived him. Through a relative who settled in Canada, however, the name and the fame of this remarkable man have come down to us.

It is due to the courtesy of a member of Lieutenant Holman’s family, a young artist, now in this country, that I am indebted for the intimate details here given concerning this intrepid traveler.

THE LIGHT OF THE HARVEST MOON.

Its Brightness Enables Farmers to Gather in Their Crops During the
Night—The Natural Phenomena Which Make September “The Month of
Moonlight.”

September is “the month of moonlight.” Poets and impressionists at this season of the year, have, from time immemorial, flooded the world with harvest-moon imagery. Pictures of moonlight lovers strolling along moonlit lanes, rowing on moonlit rivers, in moonlit boats, moonlight gleaners and the harvest home have been painted over and over again in word and color, but the why and wherefor of the extraordinary brilliance of the Queen of Night during the period that she is known as the “harvest moon” has been completely lost sight of by the great majority.

Those who observe the ordinary astronomical phenomena of daily occurrence are familiar with the time variations in the moon’s rising and setting. This is due to the direction of the moon’s apparent path with reference to the horizon, of whatever place it is viewed from. Its distance from the earth and its daily motion eastward in right ascension.

For the first few days in every lunar month the moon rises or sets
twenty-three or twenty-four minutes later for three or four successive
evenings, after which the retardation varies from that time to an hour
and seventeen minutes, and sometimes more.

In the latitude of New York the maximum retardation is seventy-seven
minutes and the minimum is twenty-three.

When the retardation is a minimum at the time of the full moon, the
light is very powerful, and farmers have often taken advantage of the
practically all-night brilliancy for several days, to harvest their
grain. September 21 being the autumnal equinox and the full moon
occurring nearest that date being usually in the height of harvest
time, it is called the harvest-moon.

To understand the action of the causes which produce this phenomenon
it is necessary to remember that at the time of the autumnal equinox
the sun sets exactly in the west, and the southern half of the
ecliptic, or the sun’s apparent annual path in the sky, will then be
wholly above the horizon and the northern half entirely below; the
ecliptic, therefore, making the least possible angle with the horizon.

In high northern latitudes, as in Alaska, British Columbia, Norway and
Sweden and the north of Scotland, the moon’s path at such times is
almost parallel with the horizon, and for more than a week she rises
at very nearly the same time, giving the farmers ample light and time
to garner their crops.

THE SOWER.

A POEM IN WHICH A DISTINGUISHED AMERICAN POET AND DIPLOMAT EXPRESSED HIS
FEAR OF OLD WORLD INFLUENCES.

With the single exception of John Hay, no English-speaking poet has
been so distinguished as a student of the social and political phases
of national life as was James Russell Lowell (1819–1891). It is
doubtful whether the United States ever produced a poet who was more
truly national. His earlier verses were characterized by quaint Yankee
humor, and many were virile pictures of New England life. In his later
years, as a writer, editor, and lecturer, Lowell labored zealously to
bring the literature and culture of the New World to a plane as high
as that of the Old World. As a diplomat, he did more to cement the
friendship of Great Britain and the United States than any man had
done before. His official title, while in England, was that of United
States Minister to Great Britain, but a London newspaper bestowed upon
him another—“His Excellency the Ambassador of American Literature to
the Court of Shakespeare.”

But though Lowell was cosmopolitan in many of his tastes, he was
essentially a patriotic American. The great influx of foreigners and
foreign ideals into the United States oftentimes excited his
apprehension, and it was while under the influence of these fears that
he wrote “The Sower,” which is printed herewith.

BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

I saw a Sower walking slow
Across the earth, from east to west;
His hair was white as mountain snow.
His head drooped forward on his breast.

With shriveled hands he flung his seed,
Nor ever turned to look behind;
Of sight or sound he took no heed;
It seemed he was both deaf and blind.

His dim face showed no soul beneath,
Yet in my heart I felt a stir,
As if I looked upon the sheath
That once had clasped Excalibur.

I heard, as still the seed he cast,
How, crooning to himself, he sung:
“I sow again the holy Past,
The happy days when I was young.

“Then all was wheat without a tare,
Then all was righteous, fair, and true;
And I am he whose thoughtful care
Shall plant the Old World in the New.

“The fruitful germs I scatter free,
With busy hand, while all men sleep;
In Europe now, from sea to sea,
The nations bless me as they reap.”

Then I looked back along his path,
And heard the clash of steel on steel,
Where man faced man, in deadly wrath,
While clanged the tocsin’s hurrying peal.

The sky with burning towns flared red,
Nearer the noise of fighting rolled,
And brothers’ blood, by brothers shed,
Crept, curdling, over pavements cold.

Then marked I how each germ of truth
Which through the dotard’s fingers ran
Was mated with a dragon’s tooth
Whence there sprang up an armed man.

I shouted, but he could not hear;
Made signs, but these he could not see;
And still, without a doubt or fear,
Broadcast he scattered anarchy.

Long to my straining ears the blast
Brought faintly back the words he sung:
“I sow again the holy Past,
The happy days when I was young.”

ELEVENTH HOUR PERFORMANCES.

Some Wonderful Achievements Wrought Against Time by Celebrated Men of
Genius Who Saved Critical Situations at the Last Minute—Phenomenal
Records by Artists and Composers.

The world of genius abounds with stories of marvelous achievements at the last moment, especially the musical and artistic branch of it. Strange though it may seem, some of the finest music and paintings have been executed in a rush against time.

“There goes Leader, off to paint his dally picture,” was the usual
comment of his neighbors, upon seeing the artist leave his rooms early
in the morning with a canvas on his back. Although this may, perhaps,
have been a too flattering anticipation, it is a well-known fact that
on several occasions the academician produced a large picture within a
few hours.

Marvelous as is Benjamin Williams Leader’s rapidity with his brush, he
has a formidable rival in Solomon J. Solomon, A.R.A., who painted an
admirable life-size portrait of Israel Zangwill for the Academy
Exhibition within five hours of taking up his brush.

But neither Leader nor Solomon would dispute the honors of swift
workmanship with Sir Edwin Landseer. He had promised a picture for the
Spring Exhibition of the British Institution in 1845, but on the day
before the exhibition was to be opened all the hanging committee had
received was an empty frame, which was duly hung in the position of
honor.

As the prospect of the frame receiving a picture for the opening
seemed very slight, a member of the committee went to interview the
artist. He found Landseer standing in front of a bare canvas.

“That’s the picture I promised,” said Sir Edwin, pointing to the
canvas. “I haven’t touched it yet, but I will send it to the
institution to-night.”

A few hours later the completed picture was delivered, and may be seen
to-day in the National Gallery. This wonderful work of half a dozen
hours was none other than the universally admired “Cavalier’s Pets.”

Sir Arthur Sullivan composed the brilliant epilogue of the “Golden
Legend” in less than twenty-four hours. He sat down at nine o’clock
one evening to compose the overture to “Iolanthe,” and did not rise
from his desk until the last note was written at seven o’clock on the
following morning, while the overture to the “Yeoman of the Guard”
occupied him no more than twelve hours, both to compose and score.

It is told of Gaetano Donizetti that he wrote the instrumentation of
an entire opera within thirty hours. On the very morning on which
Gioacchino Antonio Rossini’s “Gazza Ladra” was to be produced not a
single note of the overture had been written, and the manager was in
despair. He sought out the lazy composer, locked him in one of the
rooms of La Scala, and declared he should have neither food nor
freedom until the overture was completed. Rossini set to work with a
will and to such purpose that the music was written and rehearsed
before the evening performance.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was equally as indolent and procrastinating as
Rossini. At twelve o’clock on the night before the production of “Don
Giovanni” the composer was making merry with a party of convivial
friends and had forgotten that the overture was unwritten. As he was
going to bed, in the early hours of the morning, his wife reminded him
of the fact that it was the day of production and that the overture
was not touched. He asked her to make him a bowl of punch and help
keep him awake, and sat down to his work as the light of dawn began to
stream through the window. He fell asleep, completely exhausted, and
slept soundly for a short time. At five o’clock he resumed his work,
and two hours later the overture was finished.

It is said that Herr Stehmann learned the entire part of the
_Wanderer_ in “Siegfried” in six hours; and on one occasion when Herr
Kraus, who was to have taken the leading rôle in Xaver Scharwenka’s
“Mataswinka,” was suddenly taken ill, Stehmann, who had never before
seen the part, mastered it so completely between the afternoon
rehearsal and the evening performance, that in both words and music he
was absolutely perfect.

Sidelights from Stageland.[6]

BY SECOND NIGHTER.

Little Tales of Idiosyncrasies, Adventures, and Misadventures That
Playgoers Are Not Supposed to See or Hear.

_Collected and written for_ THE SCRAP BOOK.

Footnote 6:

Began March SCRAP BOOK. Single copies, 10 cents.

LASSOOED THE COMPLIMENT.

Slow Speech of a Stranger Caused Miss Morewin to Sacrifice Conventionality on the Altar of Curiosity.

There must be times when actors are put in the embarrassing position of hearing their work discussed in public places by people who have seen the performance and are not aware that any of those who have taken part in it are within ear-shot. And sometimes, when there is a wag in the party, there are real dramatic moments in such episodes. Here is a case in point that happened in New York not so very long ago.

A party of men were descending in the elevator on their way to lunch in one of New York’s tallest skyscrapers. The car stopped at a floor and a lady got on. The wag in the group of men instantly recognized her as Louise Morewin, who plays the mother-in-law in “The Heir to the Hoorah,” which he had seen a few nights before.

The car was pretty well crowded and the wag was so placed that in the mirror he could see Miss Morewin’s face without being seen himself. And the spirit of mischief entered his soul.

“Say, fellows,” he began, “you have all seen ‘The Heir to the Hoorah.’ What do you think of the mother-in-law?”

One and another expressed an opinion, more or less non-committal so far as the playing of the part was concerned. But this did not satisfy the wag. It must be remembered that the building is very tall and that it requires some minutes for the elevator to reach the ground floor, so after the other comments had been gathered in, there was still time for a snapper.

“Well,” he remarked, “I saw the play the other night, and I think the actress who plays that mother-in-law is——”

He inserted a pause for impressiveness, and Miss Morewin could stand no more. Stepping around so that she faced him she broke out with:

“Well, what _do_ you think of her?”

“I think she is immense,” finished the wag, utterly unruffled, while his friends, who had failed to recognize their fellow passenger, stood with jaws dropped at the spectacle of the strange woman butting into their conversation.

As for Miss Morewin, she smiled, flushed a little, and when the car reached the street level, she hastily mingled with the throng and was lost to sight.

THE MODEST CHORUS MAN.

Owners of Bass and Tenor Voices are Regarded As Necessary Evils by the
Producers of Musical Comedies.

We hear much of the chorus girl, but very little of the chorus man, who is no doubt considered by the manager a necessary evil, inasmuch as girls are not endowed, outside of dime museums at least, with bass and tenor voices. I know one of the four chorus men who made an oasis of deep tones in the blossoming garden of Weber & Fields’s girls, but he soon was promoted from the ranks to a principal part and is now reaping profits as a writer of comic songs.

He went into the business because he wanted to go on the stage, and found this the easiest door to it. Why do other chorus men take up the thing, I asked myself, and to find out, I proceeded to get acquainted with two young fellows in the George M. Cohan company, where chorus work is a very important feature of the proceedings.

“Why did you take up this line?” I asked outright of one fellow, a big-boned chap who was formerly a cigarmaker in Chicago.

“Because I wanted to see the world,” he replied. “That’s the reason I prefer one-night stands to long runs.”

“But you must run up against some hard ones in the way of dressing-rooms among the small towns of the country,” I reminded him. And then I told of some “Florodora” girls I had heard about who were each assigned a chair on which to make their half-dozen or more changes of costume.

“Oh, exclaimed the former cigar-man, that’s nothing. I’ve had to dress on the turn of a stairs, where the bend made an extra wide step.”

“How easy is it for a man to get into the chorus?” was my next query.

“If he has a good second bass or high tenor voice, it’s a cinch.”

I then discovered that physique counts more than it used to, not good looks, for make-up will cover freckles or sallow skin, but a fellow must be well-built, and know how to hold himself.

The other chap, also from Chicago, used to be in the electric business, but with his brother he happened to belong to a lodge of the Order of the Maccabees. They could both sing and dance, and at an entertainment of the lodge did so in public. This put the stage bee in the head of the younger, and through cheek and shameless recitations of utterly fictitious engagements he had already filled, he procured a chance to do _Pish-Tush_ in a “Mikado” company that stranded after two performances.

Prevarication, in fact, seems to be the order of the day in the theatrical business, so that I cannot for the life of me make out why one member of the profession should ever believe what the other says, knowing the rule of the road, as it were, and what he would say himself under similar circumstances.

This Earl Stanley (the grandiloquent stage name my second chorus friend chose for himself) knew nothing about making-up and learned it by deftly following the motions of the man he was assigned to dress with, who actually remarked on the newcomer’s aptness in the art.

“You two fellows,” I observed, “were lucky to get an all-summer engagement with ‘The Governor’s Son’ on the roof, after ‘George Washington, Jr.,’ closed. All the chorus men were not held over, by a long shot.”

“All the good ball players were,” replied Lisle, and then it came out that Cohan is a baseball fiend, and to play good ball, all other things being equal, assists a man in getting a job in his companies, each of which sports its nine.

Oh, as to a chorus man’s pay, it ranges from eighteen to thirty dollars a week, all costumes being furnished by the management.

RECALCITRANT BENEFACTOR.

Sarah Bernhardt Encountered Series of Failures While Trying to Reward
Man Who Befriended Her Family.

Last June Sarah Bernhardt sailed back to Paris after the most successful season she ever had in America. She took her profits with her in gold, too, and nobody should begrudge her the money, for, besides being a great artist, she is a generous soul, and is not chary of passing her good fortune on to others.

The following instance of this spirit of generosity is recorded by the San Francisco _Call_, and vouched for as authentic by one of THE SCRAP BOOK staff who has personal knowledge of the affair:

When Sarah Bernhardt was in the city some years ago she gave a
breakfast to some of her friends at the California Hotel. It was
served about noon, and there were but three persons present besides
herself.

In the midst of the repast a bell-boy knocked at the door and said
that there was a man down-stairs who refused to give his card and
insisted on coming up to see her.

“Let him come, then,” was her reply.

The bell-boy explained that he had the appearance of a tough-looking
tramp and might be crazy.

“Never mind his looks or his clothes, he may be a friend of mine,” was
the reply.

In a few minutes a man of about sixty or more entered the room. He was
very shabbily dressed, had not shaved for a week, and his shirt-front
was well garnished with tobacco-juice.

The instant Bernhardt saw him she gave an exclamation and bounded
forward. She threw herself upon his neck and covered his rough face
with kisses.

The man was Mr. Levi, a furrier, who died recently in this city. Many
of the _Call_ readers will remember his short, heavy figure as he used
to walk the streets with furs thrown over his shoulder, looking for
customers.

Bernhardt at once made a place at the table and began opening
champagne for her guest. She introduced him as an old friend from
Paris and explained that when she was a child and her family was in
straits Mr. Levi had cared for them all one winter and kept them from
absolute want.

Every few moments she would jump up, clasp him about the neck and kiss
him again and again. There was no acting about these embraces, she was
glad to see him, and she wanted no misunderstanding on that score.

Presently she asked him why he did not go back to Paris and see his
relatives. He answered, sadly, that he was not able.

“Oh, that is easily remedied,” she said, and a moment later she had
written out a check for fifteen hundred dollars and thrown it across
the table to him.

He picked it up, and when he saw the amount he broke down completely.
With the tears streaming down his cheeks he said:

“Sarah, I didn’t come here for charity, but just to see you a few
moments.”

He handed the check back across the table.

“Oh, not enough? I make it bigger.”

She wrote another check for two thousand dollars and threw it over to
him. He looked at the second check and merely said:

“Give me the other, Sarah.”

She smiled as she handed it to him, and then the old man did a
magnificently independent thing. He slowly placed the two checks
together, tore them into bits and handed the fragments back to the
madame.

“No, no, Sarah; no money. Just your gratitude; that is all I ever
wanted.”

Then she was at his side again, kissing his tears away and sobbing
herself. It was a very pathetic scene and one not easily forgotten by
those who witnessed it.

She said that she would “fix him yet” in that peculiar way of hers,
which always means that she intends to have her own will.

Some months later I was in San Francisco and met old Levi waddling
along the streets with his furs. He stopped me and said he wanted my
advice.

“I have just got a letter from Sarah,” he said, “and I don’t know what
the devil to do about it.”

He translated the letter as he read it, and it went something like
this, as near as I can recall it:

“You tore up the last check I gave you, which was very mean of you. I
was very angry at the way you treated my checks. No one else ever did
such a thing to me but you, and you make me angry every time I think
of you and your treatment of me. You humiliate me before strangers.
They must have thought that my checks were worthless, or you must have
thought so.

“I now enclose another and larger one. It is for twenty-five hundred
dollars of your American money and if that is not big enough send it
back and I will make it larger, but some check of some denomination
you must accept, and if I gave you all the money I ever earned it
would not repay you for the time years ago in Paris you saved me from
want. I shall expect you to come to Paris at once and be my guest.
Answer yes by cable and make us all happy. If you do not do this you
must never call on me again, as I shall refuse to receive you.
Affectionately,

“SARAH.”

“What shall I do?” asked the old man with tears in his eyes. “She is
bound to have her way. She always was that way as a child.”

“Better send the despatch and then cash the check and go to Paris.”

“I guess I’ll have to,” said the old man, and he started for the
telegraph office.

BETTER THEATER PROGRAMS

Innovation at Weber’s May Result in the Disappearance of Smudgy Blanket
Sheets in Other Playhouses.

When the late Clement Scott, the well-known English dramatic critic, visited this country in 1900, he wrote his impressions of American theaters for the London _Sketch_ and devoted his second paragraph to the bill of the play. His comment ran as follows:

No fees for programs? I should think not, indeed! You find a huge
stack of them under your very nose, and you can take any number you
like, from one to one hundred. The difficulty Is to find the actual
program when you have possessed yourself of one of these bulky
pamphlets, for there is only a “halfpennyworth of program” amid “an
intolerable deal of sack” in the way of advertisements and facetiæ.

But Mr. Scott failed to mention the worst feature of the American programs—the black smut left on the ladies’ gloves and the men’s knuckles from the smudgy type with which they are printed. The sixpence one must part with in order to become possessed of a London house-bill is really not begrudged in exchange for the neat card, folded at the two sides to make it convenient for the pocket and on which the most prominent features are the details respecting the play you have come to see.

In New York the program concession has been for years in the hands of a big firm which has paid the theaters large sums for the privilege of distributing bills of the play, and audiences have had to submit in patience to what this monopoly was pleased to give them. But there is hope ahead and Joe Weber deserves the credit for being the pioneer in a worthy innovation to make theatergoing the all round pleasure it ought to be.

Just before he closed the doors of his music hall for the summer, Mr. Weber amazed his patrons by providing them with a _program de luxe_, each enclosed in an oiled paper envelope, and printed in four colors on heavy coated paper. To be sure, it consists of forty-two pages, including the cover, but the bill of the play is in the exact center, making it easy to find, and the advertisements are most attractively displayed and illustrated.

The thing was got up by a firm of four hustling young men, who have already thrown into a panic the older firm, causing them to announce for this new season lithographed covers done in six colors. Whether as a whole the thing will be as attractive as the Weber program remains to be seen, but, in any case, the public are to be congratulated, for as the spirit of competition has entered the field, audiences will reap the benefit.

In London you buy your program from the young woman who shows you to your seat, for whom this practical Clement Scott had no great liking. Of this young woman Mr. Scott said:

I prefer the American “usher,” with the suave but determined manner,
to our haughty and flighty girls at home, who think it a condescension
to show you to your seat, the whereabouts of which they are usually as
ignorant of as you are yourself. In an American theater you are
marshaled to your seat with military regularity. In England you are at
the mercy of some Miss Tousle Head who, so far as her business is
concerned, is either insolently independent or sublimely ignorant.

CRITICS BAD WEATHERCOCKS.

Last Season’s Records Proved Inability of Newspaper Writers to Show How
Dramatic Winds Were Blowing.

Of what use are dramatic critics anyway? Brady’s attack on them from the stage last winter was a mere pin-prick to the humiliation they must feel as makers of public opinion in connection with “The Lion and the Mouse.” When the play was brought out in New York last fall the comments were almost universally adverse, yet the people took to the piece like ducks to water, and it looks now as if it would run the year round at the Lyceum. When it was tried in London, on the other hand, the reviews were exceedingly favorable, and yet the thing lasted barely two weeks.

Take, for example, the London _Daily Telegraph_, which summed up its report in these words: “To last night’s audience, let it be added, the piece made evidently a very direct and forcible appeal, the applause at the end of the third act, as on the final fall of the curtain, being of the most tumultuous and enthusiastic description.”