Chapter L: Hyde

_Selima_

There was a mystery about Captain Knox’s wife. Of course, everyone in Gull Harbor knew there had been a Mrs. Knox, but according to the best accounts no one had ever seen her. There were a few facts, however, upon which one could rely. Some thirty or forty years before, the captain, returning after a long voyage to the East, had announced himself a widower of recent bereavement. The existence of the captain’s spouse in Gull Harbor had begun, therefore, simultaneously with the knowledge of her decease.

A short time after the captain’s return, a neat gravestone was erected on the Knox farm, in the old burial lot, in which had already been laid to rest the bodies of the captain’s parents, two brothers, and an uncle. Upon the stone, by the captain’s order, was carved in plain lettering, “In memory of Selima, my beloved wife.”

The captain himself would often refer to her. “She was a pretty cretur, she was.” Beyond this, however, discussion of her was not tolerated in his presence.

By the time I came to know Gull Harbor, the captain’s seafaring career was over. The people of the village had long since recovered from the first excitement caused by the mystery of the captain and his wife, and conversation had drifted back into familiar channels of interest as to why Mel Hibbard’s sister had given up her flock of Plymouth Rocks, or speculations as to the color Mrs. Lovell, wife of the minister of the Adventist Church, would choose for her new front room carpet.

I had always felt a prejudice for the Maine coast and from the moment the Portland boat rounded the big rocky cove, I knew I should like Gull Harbor. There was a restful peace about the place peculiar to the seaboard of New England. The smell of low tide and drying codfish hung about the wharf. Almost immediately one felt at home.

I had not been two weeks in the town before I knew all that Gull Harbor had to tell about their distinguished captain. Didn’t I know Captain ’Thiel Knox, the man who commanded the first seven-masted schooner to sail the sea? Why, he had been to “Chiny” half a dozen times, and the Lord knows how many he has crossed the ocean. As a further mark of distinction he was the proud possessor of two long-haired cats which he had brought with him from Persia.

One day I happened to ask my landlady, Mrs. Simmons, an old resident and a noted gossip, if the captain was a widower, and then I learned of the mystery. “For it’s my opinion,” she added, after telling me the story, “that she was a Chiny woman, or mebbe a princess from Persy, though nobody’ll ever know. The captain he would never say a word; quiet’s a mouse on the subject. You oughter see him, Mr. Fitch. He’s real nice, and a great hand for company; all kinds, it don’t matter to him,” she finished in a tone which meant to include even the summer people.

A “fortnit” later (one can see how easily I slipped into the vernacular of the place), I was out sailing in a borrowed dory. It was a clear August morning; the sky, a healthy blue and cloudless; the tall spruce trees, interspersed here and there by a monumental pine, guarded the water’s edge.

By the time I had rounded the long point that lay between the harbor and the back bay beyond, a stiff breeze had sprung up. The churning blue stretched oceanward for miles, blotched by myriads of foamy white caps. The little dory rocked and twisted in the choppy waves. The sail, which was home-made, proved an easy victim of the wind, and I soon found to my dismay that I was drifting helplessly down the bay toward a stretch of shore that I had not yet visited. The boat moved rapidly. The trees along the shore were soon followed by a broad green field, which stretched up from a tiny harbor almost surrounded by a protecting arm of the sea toward which I was being driven. Gradually the water became shallower, and the wind reluctantly let me slip from its grasp. I was able to look about me. It was a very beautiful harbor.

Suddenly I was conscious of an old man in a dory, rowing towards me. He might have been Father Neptune risen from the depths of the ocean for all I knew. Without a word he pulled my dilapidated boat ashore. Safely landed, I thanked him. He was an old man with a long white beard. He had on a tarpaulin and looked like a sailor.

“Ay-es,” he said pleasantly, when he had moored the two boats to the wharf (he gave me no opportunity to assist him). “I thought you was a landlubber, the moment I set eyes on you. Ye can’t tack without a center-board,” he added with a smile, the first he had given me. I blushed feebly at my hopeless mistake.

“I thought,” I began weakly, but he didn’t wait for me to finish.

“Won’t you come into the house for a bit?” he asked kindly. “You’re wet through, ain’t ye?” And he led the way to the little low shingled structure, fronted by a long porch upon which sat a large Persian cat, the handsomest I had ever seen.

“Thar, thar, Daisy bird, you’ve had enough pettin’ for one day,” as he brushed her gently aside, adding, as he noticed my admiration, “Got another, better lookin’ of the two, in the kitching. Won’t ye come in?”

“You’re not Captain Knox, are you?” I asked.

“Right you be! Salathiel Knox, captain, retired you call it, don’t ye?” and he smiled again.

While my clothes were drying, we sat around the fire and talked, the captain still in his tarpaulin, while I languished in a richly figured rug which he had produced from a locked cupboard in the kitchen. “Bought it in Singapore twenty-four years ago,” he added by way of dismissal of my compunction at wearing so valuable a possession. The captain smoked mildly while I told him who I was, making few comments, but when I tried to lead the conversation around to his own life he proved a poor subject for questioning. As Mrs. Simmons said to me afterwards, “The captain can talk when he’s a mind to, but land sakes, when he ain’t, it’s no use.”

The captain did remark, as I was leaving, that although he lived alone he wasn’t a bachelor; his wife, he said, was dead. “She was a pretty creatur, she was,” he added, half regretfully, as he laid down his pipe.

On my way home, my path led not far from the burial lot. I found the stone without difficulty and read the inscription.

* * * * *

The following summer, soon after we arrived, I paid my second visit to the Knox farm. I found the captain sitting on his porch, smoking. He didn’t remember me at first; but suddenly he burst out with, “Wall, I swan! You’re the young man that was tryin’ to tack in a dory without a center-board. I remember you, o’ course. Pretty good stuff, eh,” he added, “to tackle such a wind when you knew next to nothin’ o’ the sea. You’d make a good one, I’ll warrant.”

After that I often went to see him. He became quite loquacious at times and recounted some of his adventures. Always I expected he would run up against the mystery, but he never did. Few women were to be found in his stories.

One day I was surprised to see the captain at my door, seated in a new motor car. He had come to take me for a drive. I looked the machine over carefully.

“How does she go?” I asked.

“She sets all right,” he replied, cheerfully, “but she’s a bit wide in the stern.”

As we drove off together, he seemed in the best of spirits, although he admitted he was a “little nervous navigatin’ the new craft.”

On the way back, the captain became confidential. His story this time was concerned chiefly with a long sickness he had had in the Far East, and his romantic experience with a Malay girl. “She was a ripper, she was,” he added by way of comment.

“What was her name?” I inquired, with suppressed excitement, but he was intent upon turning a corner and did not answer. The next moment we were at the door of my house. He waved me good-bye as he disappeared around a bend in the road.

“Another opportunity lost,” I thought, as I walked up the path.

* * * * *

“It’s the Malay girl, Selima, I’ll be bound. That’s the mystery, Mr. Fitch. Didn’t he tell you she was a great beauty, all done up in rings and jewels?”

“Yes,” I answered absently.

This conversation took place about a week after my drive with the captain, while Mrs. Simmons was removing the breakfast dishes. I was reading the paper in the next room and did not like to be interrupted.

“I never heard him tell that story,” she continued, raising her voice above the clatter of the dishes. “He has taken you into his confidence, Mr. Fitch.”

“Then I fear I have more woefully betrayed it,” I replied without looking up.

Later I took a walk to the post office. The thought of the mystery, although I would have hesitated to acknowledge it even to myself, was making me positively uncomfortable.

“Was she really the Malay girl, after all?” I pictured the captain, young and handsome, walking up to the altar of a Buddhist temple with a Malay princess, dazzling with rings and jewels, leaning on his arm, her pale skin—no, the Malays were brown. I cursed my superior knowledge. Perhaps their princesses were not so dark. But my vision had faded; I was gazing at the floor of the Gull Harbor post office.

I took the road back which led by the captain’s. There was no sign of anyone as I passed. I wandered up by the burial lot. I wondered if Malay princesses were ever named Selima. On the way home I passed the captain. He waved to me pleasantly, as he rattled by.

“I will go to see him to-night,” I said to myself. It was after nine when I reached his house. The captain was still up. He was sitting in front of the kitchen fire, a long-haired cat on either side. He seemed glad to see me. We sat and smoked. The logs crackled cheerfully. They reminded me somehow of my host. An hour flew by; conversation was gradually relaxing into silent contemplation. Suddenly I burst forth:

“Captain,” I said, desperately, “you remember the Malay woman you told me of the other day. Was her name Selima?”

For a moment I was afraid I had offended him. All of a sudden he began to laugh. Little by little his merriment increased, until his whole powerful frame was shaking. He trembled so that his glasses bobbed up and down on his nose like a cork. His chair creaked. Even his beard looked merry.

“Selima! Selima!” and he went off into another gale. Then, seeing my doubtful expression, he tried to pull himself together. “Selima! Selima! She was a pretty creetur’, she was,” and he laughed again. I was forced to join with him; his humor was catching.

“I know what’s a-worrying you,” he said. “It’s the mystery. There never was a boarder within twelve miles of this town whom they haven’t filled up with the story of my mysterious weddin’. They’re half curious themselves, though the Lord knows they’d oughter have more sense. Selima!” He laughed, the tears filling his eyes as he began again. “Selima! There never was any sech person! To think I have fooled this town for fifty years! It’s too much. I laugh about it nights.” Again catching my strained face, “Still curious?” he inquired with a twinkle.

“I’ll tell ye, but you mustn’t spoil my joke. D’ye understand? I guess I can trust ye,” he added confidentially, and settling himself in his chair he began.

“It’s not a long story,” he said, glancing at his watch. “About forty years ago, or mebbe more, when I was perhaps half as old as I am now, I lived here alone, when I warn’t on the water, which warn’t very much. It was close on to September, only a day or two or mebbe three before I was to sail from ‘Porchmouth’. She was a five-master, a beauty ef there ever was a handsome vessel.” The captain paused as if to recall her more vividly. “Gullnair was her name, brand new that year. Wall, it was a day or two before I was to sail, as I was tellin’ ye. I was out here in the pasture right over yonder by the old spring”—he pointed with a sailor’s thumb—“I had been gatherin’ berries and after a bit I lay down under a tree. I had been lobsterin’ all mornin’ and was tired. When I woke up I heard two women talkin’. They’re both dead now, but in their day they wuz the gol-durndest busybodies that ever I heard tell on. They was berryin’ and talkin’—about me, would you believe it? Speculatin’ as to why a nice lookin’ man (I hadn’t sech a bad complexion in those days,” added the captain reflectively as he rubbed his hand over his rough face)—“they was a wonderin’ why I didn’t get married. Was it because I had a hidden life? Did the girls object to my swearin’? Was I—the Lord preserve us, what didn’t they say? They came to the conclusion that I didn’t marry because no one would have me. I could have strangled them both at that. I was hot headed in those days.” All the fun had faded from the captain’s face.

“After they went away,” he continued, “I began to think it over. At first I cal’lated I had better get married right away. There were a dozen of ’em hereabouts that very minute who would have taken me with a whoop. I had always tried to steer clear of the women heretofore. Second thoughts, thinks I, why not let the matter go driftin’ for awhile, anyway? So I did. But all the time that I was at sea it bothered me. On the home’ard voyage we struck a bad storm and the Gullnair went to the bottom after a brave fight, sir, after a brave fight! Most of the crew was drownded. I was saved by a miracle. Never mind about that now! Wall, sir, after I was picked up—she was a freighter bound for New York, as luck would have it—there come to me a big idea.

“When I got home I let them know I was a widower, married while I was away. Of course they understood she had been drownded on the ship. I wore a black band on my arm for a time. Seein’ as there as warn’t no suspicions in the wind, ‘I’ll make a full job of it,’ I says to myself. ‘I’ll set up a stone in the burial lot to her memory’. And that’s what I did. Wall, they come to write the inscription; I told them the words, but when they asked me for the name, I said kind o’ flustered like, ‘Selima’. It was the first one that popped into my head. That’s all.” The captain smiled, turning his gaze into the fire.

“Then you weren’t ever in love?” I said, with the faintest inflection in my voice.

The captain blew out a great puff of smoke, looked at me over the top of his glasses, and smiled.

MYLES WHITING.

_Portfolio_

_Beauty_

I.

Beauty! thy name were counted less than dust
That warriors’ tombs with sullen grace enfold,
Save that thou strip man’s arrant love of lust
And cloak his tarnished soul with sudden gold.

II.

Beauty! thy price has been a nation’s spoil,—
A wizard’s epitaph, a child’s grim plea;
And yet a peasant bought thee with his toil,
A poet lived with thee in penury.

HERBERT W. HARTMAN, JR.

_Fear of God_

“I’ve never told anyone how I happened to become a priest because, for the first few years after ordination I didn’t like to recall the circumstances surrounding it, and afterwards, when they had lost most of their sting, the whole thing was so deeply buried in the past that I never resurrected it. But now, since I’m reaching that point where the events of my life appear to me more as interesting stories than anything else, I may as well tell it to you from that point of view.

“To begin with, I had, at twenty, a pretty definite philosophy. I thought of life and all its functions, as created by the divine hand of God, to be essentially perfect. Man was created, according to the teaching of the Church, in God’s image and likeness. The very highest good, to me, was to live in an accord as close as possible to the universal laws of nature. Man’s natural state is good, and when he violates this state he undergoes a physical reaction, called shame, over which he has no control whatsoever. I had this underlying belief, which was clarified more or less by reading Walt Whitman and Carlyle, though I added some ideas of my own which I found in neither of these. But I can’t swear that they aren’t there. I drew no such sharp lines as are generally drawn between physical and spiritual love, but visualized, or rather, believed in, an ideal love in which both are combined, and which, by this combination raise each other to far higher levels, both collectively and individually. I rejected a purely abstract affection of the spirit as weakness, since it does accept and is out of tune with nature. That was Carlyle. And there was the only point of the whole matter that I have since come to question, though I have not actually put it aside. I wonder if I could still hold to it had I married. But if I reject this, the whole thing breaks down, so I must cling to it, though it does waver. I had always been a Catholic, and as far as I could see there was no conflict between my doctrine and that of the Church. In addition, though I realized that this was a personal viewpoint and couldn’t be brought to bear too closely on the other, beauty was to me rarely seductive. My moments of desire were, for the most part, connected with the most intense ugliness.

“At this time I was in love with a girl who was exactly the ideal of it all. She too was a Catholic and had been educated in a convent for the greater part of her life. She had not the clarity of feature that generally characterizes beauty, but possessed something infinitely more subtle than this. If you’ve ever seen one of those glorious green Irish hills that look as if they’ve been drawn up fresh from the depths of the earth by the hand of God, you’ll understand what I mean. She had the same original force of beauty in the rough mold of her face, which was at the same time miraculously soft, and free from cold line. Her whole head was clothed in a sort of cloudiness, like Venus, the mother of Aeneas, appearing to her son. Her body, and mind, and voice were so harmonious an expression of good that goodness was with her almost a physical quality. She had almost never come in contact with wrong, but I know she would have been the same under any circumstances. It’s easy to understand how I could hold to my beliefs here; I loved her as much for her body as for her spirit. She had the same sweet curves and moved with the same music as a green, young tree bent in the wind.”

He was silent for a moment, and gazed into the thick purple sky, underneath which the sea beat tirelessly at the rocks which fringed the bottom of the cliff.

* * * * *

“Unfortunately, she didn’t love me, but had the same sort of affection a girl has for a very good friend of the opposite sex. However, as we were both quite young (she eighteen) I had plenty of hope that as soon as I was in a position to ask her to marry me, she would accept.

“Then, in the summer after her graduation from the convent, I learned that she was determined to return there in the fall as a nun! For two or three days after this discovery I was in a state of almost continual mental anguish, that she, a creature so beautifully alive, should keep the precious gift of herself from the world, and especially from me,—though curiously enough I looked at it from the general rather than the individual point of view. I was completely stunned.

“I had never definitely settled in my mind the question of priests and nuns remaining unmarried. This was through nothing more nor less than overlooking it, which I cannot understand, since it should have been so vital to me. But now I came out dead against it. To me it seemed that, since those who served God and were supposed to be leading the highest life possible to man were not permitted to marry, the Church put a mark of disapproval on the married state and the begetting of children. It was not the actual celibacy of the priests and nuns that concerned me most, but the disapprobation of what I considered the most spiritual act of life. I suppose I should have gone to a priest to learn the defense for it, but I became so prejudiced myself that I imagined that his point of view or any explanation he might make could be nothing else but prejudiced.”

He paused again, this time to light his pipe, which he pulled on for many long seconds before resuming the story, while I held my tongue and gazed into the vast plain of darkness.

“After a while the pain ceased, and I lapsed into a state almost of indifference, though the day she was to leave for the convent was pretty nearly always on my mind. Strangely enough I can’t for the life of me think what it was now, though I shall never forget what happened on the day itself.

“I went to her home, which was quite a large estate, to bid her good-bye. I still had the indifferent feeling, though my mind had that queer, detached sensation one gets in a fever, and felt, somehow, as if it were outside of the rest of me. Her brothers and sisters and I sat about talking constrainedly until the time came for her departure. She was to go off in the carriage to the station with no one accompanying her save the coachman. It rolled up to the door and they all crowded out to see her off. They were a rather grim lot, standing there, though no one was weeping. As for her, her face had the strangest mixture of joy and sorrow, which was exactly mirrored in her mother’s. The rest were all frankly and achingly unhappy. I was relapsing more and more and more into a dazed condition.

“When she said good-bye to me, I took her hand, quite unconsciously, and kissed it. It was trembling, which pierced my heart and made me gasp violently. I have no recollection at all of her actual departure, but when she was gone I must have been overcome by it, for I heard some one say, ‘He’s going to faint,’ and then one of her brothers took me inside and gave me a drink. I had several more, which increased my state of mental detachment, but did not affect my mental processes in the least. After a while I went outside the house and wandered about the lawn, until finally I sat down on a bench bordering a wide patch of grass on which there were no trees or shrubbery of any kind. I don’t think I noticed it, but night had practically fallen, and darkness was gradually enveloping the place. The thought of her trembling hand kept coming back to me, making the blood in my head throb violently, when suddenly, with a wrench that shook my whole body, my head cleared absolutely. I realized then, for the first time, that she was irretrievably gone, and the realization flung me into a rage. I cursed God in unutterable vileness for taking her from me, for making of life such a deceiving, rotten thing, and for setting me down in the midst of it! I am neither a savage, nor a superstitious idiot, but as I stand here, I wonder I wasn’t struck down by His almighty hand for the filth and blasphemy I put upon my tongue that night!

“Then, out on the very center of the lawn before me, appeared a column of cottony-white smoke which, by indescribable foldings, formed itself into a woman of the most unearthly and terrible beauty. She was naked, and each particle of her white skin seemed to be shouting the fact of her nakedness aloud. The steely outline of her bare flesh cut the stuff of night away, and flashed out its blinding brilliance.

“She commenced to sing. There is a certain way of striking a harp which gives it a shuddering noise, and this, magnified beyond measure, is the nearest thing to a description I can give of the beginning of her song, which poured out of her lips in a thick flame of sound. It pressed down on me with the volume of a thousand storms, when suddenly I realized that she was singing in a man’s voice! Without thought, the conviction flashed on me that this was undoubtedly the devil, and that all her beauty was false. With a shriek of awful fear I called on God to protect me! Immediately the song caught in the throat of the thing, man or beast, whatever it was, and the body commenced to distort into sheer ugliness without form. I don’t know how it finally disappeared, for I went into a raving delirium and swooned.

“The next two months I spent in a sanitarium on the verge of insanity. All I can remember of this is an occasional flash of miraculous fear, when I seemed to be vainly fleeing the avenging hand of God. As soon afterward as I was able, I joined the priesthood, and I don’t mind saying that it was through an actual, original fear of God and nothing else.”

“What about your philosophy?” I asked.

“I still have that,” he answered. “And it required very little reconciliation to keep it. The realization of the part of celibacy in it came to me about a year after I was ordained, as a feeling, or conviction. Of course the refutation of my argument is that the Church makes marriage a sacrament. I suppose most men have this explained to them before they become priests, but I never found it necessary.”

“Is the girl a nun now?” I pursued.

“No,” he said, a faint smile lurking about the corners of his mouth. “She never took the final vows, but left the convent and married. She has five very beautiful children, one of whom, the eldest, I’m marrying next week. In fact, he’s named for me.”

This time the silence was longer and seemed almost a conclusion, until I broke it with one last question.

“Do you think that was actually the devil who appeared to you, or an illusion brought on by the state of your mind?”

He answered me very quietly. “The hand of God is seen in strange places.”

ROBERT CRUISE MCMANUS.

_Ballade_

(Translated from a fifteenth century lyric of Charles d’Orleans)

Once in the weary wood of dull Distress
Where Fate condemned my leaden feet to stray
It chanced that Venus, now my comfortress,
Besought to know where I did take my way.
Then I replied, “My fortune’s gone astray,
And I long exiled ’mid this wood’s repose,
It happens I am one of whom men say,
‘A man astray, uncertain where he goes.’”

Then she, all smiles and godlike graciousness,
“Tell me, my friend, the reason, oh I pray.
Why is it you are lost in black Distress?
I may have power to set you on your way.
Long have I sought love’s pleasures to display
Unto your heart—I knew not of your woes.
Nor can I bear to see you thus to-day,
A man astray, uncertain where he goes.”

And I, “Alas! Most sovereign Princess!
You know my state: shall I repeat it? Nay!
’Twas Death—who doth all men alike oppress—
’Twas Death that stole my darling love away.
She who so guided me upon my way—
My only love, more lovely than the rose—
That while she lived no one of me might say,
‘A man astray, uncertain where he goes.’”

For I am blind—I catch no spark of day—
Nor but with tapping staff can find my way.
So tapping here and there the wanderer goes.
It is indeed a pity they must say,
“A man astray, uncertain where he goes.”

LAIRD GOLDSBOROUGH.

_Notabilia_

The most important action of the University in its relation to the student body is the Sunday chapel regulation, that eleven o’clock non-sectarian Christian service and sermon is compulsory for all Yale College undergraduates and members of the common Freshman year. In this change of hour lies a change of issue. Before, the ten-minute ten o’clock service was a bit of tolerated hypocrisy to keep undergraduates in New Haven over the weekend. This compulsory attendance at Divine Worship is an intolerable religious offence.

Religion is a matter of individual opinion; compulsion is opposed to individuality. Compulsory religion then by our own inherited conception of that word is an impossibility. There can be no religion for an intelligent person in Woolsey Hall. To those who are not Christians it is intellectual persecution.

We are amused at the news that there was some discussion as to whether there should be plants or members of the faculty on the platform during the service. Plants seem to us the better choice; being more inanimate, they are less hypocritical.

Really it is astonishing how Yale can be as much of an institution of learning as it is, and still practice such stupidity in administration.

* * * * *

We should like to bring to our readers’ attention the following terse facts about Commons. Commons has a compulsory patronage amounting to approximately 900 men. It can count on a few hundred more men who are working their way through. After its seating capacity has thus been filled once, it need not (and does not) accommodate any more for that meal; it can therefore calculate with perfect accuracy, so that no food need be wasted. It requires cash _in advance_, or bills sent home; it has therefore no credit to carry on its books. At the present writing, it will allow no one to sign out: meals taken elsewhere are wasted money for its customers. Its overhead is reduced to a minimum—far more so than that of any other eating house in college. And, added to this, it has the faculty to protect it.

Yet, what is happening? The charges for food are $9.00 per week, without rebate for cash. The service is slow whenever the hall is crowded. The food, while sometimes good, is by no means always so, and if maintained at the present standard would be intolerable as a year’s diet.

Considering the fact that, for nine hundred of its customers, it requires no table runners, thereby saving approximately $800 per week ($25,000 per year); there it is only $1.00 per week cheaper than some eating houses, and 50 cents cheaper than most; that its food is not as good as any of the others—considering these things, we suggest that an investigation be made. We are anxious to be fair in the matter and not judge too harshly a project which is as yet young. But the college seems to be of the opinion that considerable improvement must be shown by the Yale Dining Hall if it is to continue its somewhat shaky career.

* * * * *

Taking the same paternal stand as they have taken in the case of Commons, the faculty has decreed that the Liberal Club must ask “permission” before inviting speakers to address their meetings. Just what the Liberal Club will do about this, no one as yet knows. Certainly it conflicts with the very principles and ideals of that club, and represents a trend, on the part of the Yale faculty, to which the club is especially opposed.

_Book Reviews_

_Tutor’s Lane._ By WILMARTH LEWIS. (Knopf.)

Imagine Yale College without appendages, and New Haven without slums or business section, and life just as it is now and you will have the setting for Mr. Lewis’ ’17 first novel, “Tutor’s Lane”.

You are given as hero a young English instructor, a graduate from about the same class as Mr. Lewis, probably with a Chi Delta Theta charm, and a heroine not greatly sophisticated, of good family, mildly fond of “doing good” to “the people.” These two fondly follow a Quixotic scheme of uplift (which he doesn’t even like, and about which she’s a fool), and come out of it ashamed but at one in their shame. The inevitable marriage ensues. The plot is the weakness of the book. It is a thin-spun web, and disappointing.

But the non-plot characters, and the phrasing of the Syllabus, and the satire scattered through the pages are features over which no one can pass without delight. Mrs. Norris talks, the reader is amused; Mr. Lewis talks, the reader is wholly captivated. It is not the genial gay humor of Punch; it is something with a sharper touch than that, more witty, more satirical. It is only when Mr. Lewis becomes sympathetic with his character or with his reader that he fails. He is superb when he is laughing at both simultaneously.

If he ever gets hold of a plot, the result will be a fine novel. He has the power of restraint and objectivity which most moderns lack. He is refreshing in the midst of so much that is conspicuously heavy and bent with the weight of the world. His product is not marred by continual reference to the travail and labor its creation caused. He seems to have enjoyed writing the book, and not to have written it in order to save the world, or the destinies of nations. To amuse himself and his friends seems to be his only purpose in writing, which is probably why “Tutor’s Lane” will also amuse so many other people.