Chapters 15
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1 Are Atheists Wicked? 11:46
Are Atheists Wicked? by George W. Foote.
One of the most effective arts of priestcraft has been the misrepresentation and slander of heretics. To give the unbeliever a bad name is to prejudice believers against all communication with him. By this means, a twofold object is achieved. First, the faithful are protected from the contagion of skepticism. Secondly, the notion is propagated that there is something essentially immoral involved in or attendant upon unorthodox opinions. And thus, the prevalent religious ideas of the age become associated with the very preservation and stability of the moral order of human society. This piece of trickery cannot, of course, be played upon the students of civilization who, as Mill remarked, are aware that many of the most valuable contributions to human improvement have been the work of men who knew and rejected the Christian faith.
It easily imposes on the multitude, and it will never be abandoned until it ceases to be profitable. Sometimes it takes the form of idle stories about the deathbeds of free thinkers, who are represented as deploring their ill-spent life and bewailing the impossibility of recalling the wicked opinions they have put into circulation. At other times it takes the form of exhibiting their failings without the slightest reference to their virtues. as the sum and substance of their character. When these methods are not sufficient, recourse is had to insinuation. Particular skeptics are spared, perhaps, but freethinkers are depicted, like the poor in Tennyson's Northern Farmer, as bad in the lump. It is broadly hinted that it is a moral defect which prevents them from embracing the popular creed.
That they reject what they do not wish to believe, that they hate the restraints of religion, and therefore reject its principles. That their unbelief, in short, is only a cloak for sensual indulgence, or an excuse for evading irksome obligations. We are so accustomed to this monstrous theory of skepticism in religious circles that it did not astonish us or give us the least surprise to read the following paragraph in the Christian Commonwealth. Free life and no compulsory virtue was the title of a placard borne by a pamphlet seller of the public highway a few days ago. What the contents of the pamphlets were, we Do not know, but the title is a suggestive sign of the times, and a rather more than usually plain statement of what a good deal of modern doubt amounts to.
Lord Tennyson was severely taken to task a few years ago for making the atheist a villain in his promise of May. But he was about right. Much of the doubt of the day is only an outcome of the desire to discredit and throw off the restraints of religion and moral law in the name of freedom wrongly used. Free love, free life, free divorce, free Sundays, in the majority of cases are but synonyms for license. Those who hold the Darwinian doctrine of descent from a kind of ape may yet see it proved by a reversion to the beast if men succeed in getting all the false and pernicious freedom they want. Now, in reply to this paragraph, we have first to observe that our contemporary takes Lord Tennyson's name in vain.
The villain of The Promise of May is certainly an agnostic. But are not the villains of many other plays Christians? Lord Tennyson does not make the rascal's wickedness the logical result of his principles. Indeed, although our contemporary seems ignorant of the fact, he disclaimed any such intention. A press announcement was circulated by his eldest son on his behalf that the rascal was meant to be a sentimentalist and a ne'er-do-well who, whatever his opinions, would have come to a bad end. When the Commonwealth therefore talks of Lord Tennyson as about right— It shows, in a rather vulgar way, the danger of incomplete information. Were we to copy its manners, we might use a swifter phrase. That atheists, in the name of freedom, throw off the restraints of moral law is a statement which we defy the commonwealth to prove, or in the slightest degree to support, and we will even go to the length of suggesting how it might undertake the task.
Turpitude of character must betray itself. Moral corruption can no more be hidden than physical corruption. Wickedness will out, like murder or smallpox. A man's wife discovers it. His children shun him instead of clinging about his knees. His neighbors and acquaintances eye him with suspicion or dislike. His evil nature pulsates through an ever-widening circle of detection. And in time his bad passions are written upon the features in the infallible lines of mouth and eyes and face. How easily, then, it should be to pick out these atheists. The most evil-looking men should belong to that persuasion. But do they? We invite our contemporary to a trial. Let it inquire the religious opinions of a dozen or two, and see if there is an atheist among them.
Again, A certain amount of evil disposition must produce a certain percentage of criminal conduct. Accordingly, the jails should contain a large proportion of atheists. But do they? Statistics prove they do not. When the present writer was imprisoned for blasphemy and was asked his religion, he answered, None, to the wide-eyed astonishment of the official who put the question. Atheists were scarce in the establishment. Catholics were there, and red tickets were on their cell doors. Protestants were there, and white tickets marked their apartments. Jews were there, and provision was made for their special observances. But the atheist was a Rara avis, the very Phoenix of Halloway jail. Let us turn to another method of investigation.
During the last ten years, four members have been expelled from the House of Commons. One of them was not expelled in the full sense of the word. He was, however, thrust by brute force from the precincts of the house. His name was Charles Bradlaugh, and he was an atheist. But what was his crime? Simply this. He differed from his fellow members as to his competence to take the parliamentary oath, and the ultimate event proved that he was right, and they were wrong. Now, what were the crimes of the three other members who were completely and absolutely expelled? Captain Verney was found guilty of procuration for seduction. Mr. Hastings was found guilty of embezzlement, and Mr. D. Cobain was pronounced guilty of evading justice while charged with unnatural offenses.
Mr. Jabez Spenser Balfour might also have been expelled if he had not accepted the Chiltern hundreds. Now, all these Real delinquents were Christians, and even ostentatious Christians. Compare them with Charles Bradlaugh, the atheist, and say which side has the greatest cause for shame and humiliation. Are atheists conspicuous in the divorce court? Is it not Christian reputations that are smirched in that inquisition? Do atheists or any species of unbelievers appear frequently before the public as promoters of bubble companies and systematic robbers of orphans and widows? Is it not generally found, in the case of great business collapses, that the responsible persons are Christians? Is it not a fact that their profession of Christianity is usually in proportion to the depth of their rascality?
Not long since the Bishop of Chester, backed up by Mr. Waugh of this Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, publicly declared that the worst ill-users of little ones were artisan secularists. He was challenged to give evidence of the assertion, but he preferred to maintain what is called a dignified silence. Mr. Waugh was challenged to produce proofs from the Society's archives, and he also declined. It is enough to affirm infamy against free thinkers. Proof is unnecessary. Or rather, it is unobtainable. Singularly, there have been several striking cases of brutal treatment of children since Mr. Roy and Bishop Jane committed themselves to this indefensible assertion. And in no instance was the culprit a secularist, though some of them, including Mrs.
Montague, were devout Christians. There are other methods of inquiry into the wickedness of atheists, but we have indicated enough to set the commonwealth at work, and we invite it to begin forthwith. And while it is getting ready, we beg to observe that theologians have always described freedom as license. Whereas it is nothing of the kind. Freedom is the golden mean between license and slavery. The breaking of arbitrary fetters forged by ignorance and intolerance does not mean a fall into loose living. The heretic in religion, while resenting outside control by his very perception of the vast and far-reaching consequences of human action, is often chained to the most timid sanctities of life.
With respect to the Darwinian theory of descent from a kind of ape, we have a word for our contemporary. The annual meeting of the British Association was held at Oxford in 1860. Darwin's Dissent of Man had recently been published, and the air was full of controversy. Bishop Wilberforce, in the course of a derisive speech, turned to Professor Huxley, and asked whether it was on the mother's or father's side that his grandfather had been an ape. Huxley replied that Man had no reason to be ashamed of having an ape for a grandfather. If there is an ancestor, he continued, whom I should feel shame in recalling, it would be a man. One who meddled with scientific questions he did not understand, only to obscure them by aimless rhetoric and indulgence in eloquent digressions and appeals to religious prejudice.
This rebuke was administered thirty-three years ago, but it is still worth remembering, and perhaps the Commonwealth may find in it something applicable to itself.
End of Are Atheists Wicked? Read by George W. Foote.
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2 Complete Life of William McKinley - Chapter_01 21:00
Complete Life of William McKinley by Marshal Everett I. The Assassination of President McKinley.
On Friday, September 6, 1901, the Blackest Friday in American History, the American people were shocked and stunned by the news that their beloved president, William McKinley, had been shot down by a cowardly assassin while attending the Pan American Exposition at Buffalo. It was like a flash of lightning from a clear sky. The people were stunned into momentary silence. The sign of grief was on the face of every loyal American, and the hearts of the people beat as one in sympathy for the stricken chief. The horror of the tragic event grew when it was learned that the assassin was an anarchist, and not an insane man, as was first supposed. Then came the full realization that the murderous bullet of the assassin was aimed not only at the foremost citizen of the Republic, but that the red thing called anarchy had raised its bloodstained hand against government, against all peaceable authority and law.
It was a blow struck at all the institutions of society that men hold dear and sacred. With that wonderful self-control that distinguishes the American people, loyal citizens restrained the rising passion in their breasts, and their suppressed rage was further held in check by the word of hope which followed that the president was yet alive. Alas! It was but a hope, destined to linger but a few days. The scene of the assassination was the Temple of Music, at the Exposition grounds. The day previous was President's Day at the Exposition, and President McKinley had delivered what many believed to be the greatest speech of his life. Praises for his wisdom and statesmanship were ringing around the world.
On the fateful day the President attended the Exposition as a visitor, and in the afternoon held a reception in the Temple of Music. The reception to the president was one to which the general public had been invited. President John G. Milburn of the exposition had introduced the president to the great crowd in the temple, and men, women, and children came forward for a personal greeting. Among those in line was Leon Cholgos, whose right hand was wrapped in a handkerchief. Folded in the handkerchief was a .30-2 caliber self-acting revolver holding five bullets. A little girl was led up by her father, and the President shook hands with her. As she passed along to the right, the President looked after her smilingly, and waved his hand in pleasant adieu.
Next in line came a boyish-featured man about twenty-six years old. preceded by a short Italian who leaned backwards against the bandaged hand of his follower. The officers who attended the president noted this man, their attention being first attracted by the Italian, whose dark shaggy brows and black mustache caused the professional protectors to regard him with suspicion. The man with the bandaged hand in an innocent face received no attention from the detectives beyond the mental observation that his right hand was apparently injured, and that he would present his left hand to the president. The Italian stood before the palm bower. He held the president's right hand so long that the officers stepped forward to break the clasp and make room for the man with the bandaged hand, who extended the left hand toward the president's right.
The fatal shots. The president smiled and presented his right hand in a position to meet the left of the approaching man. Hardly a foot of space intervened between the bodies of the two men. Before their hands met, two pistol-shots rang out, and the president turned slightly to the left and reeled. The bandage on the hand of the tall, innocent-looking young man had concealed a revolver. He had fired through the bandage without removing any portion of the handkerchief. The first bullet entered too high for the purpose of the assassin, who had fired again as soon as his finger could move the trigger. On receiving the first shot, President McKinley lifted himself on his toes with something of a gasp.
His movement caused the second shot to enter just below the navel. With the second shot, the President doubled slightly forward and then sank back. Secret Service Detective Geary caught the President in his arms, and President Milburn helped to support him. Asks if he is shot. When the President fell into the arms of Detective Geary, he coolly asked, Am I shot? Geary unbuttoned the President's vest, and seeing blood replied, I fear you are, Mr. President. It had all happened in an instant. Almost before the noise of the second shot sounded, a Negro waiter, James F. Parker, leaped upon the assassin, striking him a terrific blow and crushing him to the floor. Soldiers of the United States Artillery, detailed at the reception, sprang upon them, and he was surrounded by a squad of Exposition Police and Secret Service Detectives.
Detective Gallagher seized Shulgos's hand, tore away the handkerchief, and took the revolver. The artillerymen, seeing the revolver in Gallagher's hand, rushed at the assassin and handled him rather roughly. Meanwhile, Detective Ireland and the Negro held the assassin, endeavoring to shield him from the attacks of the infuriated artillerymen and the blows of policemen's clubs. Supported by Detective Geary and President of the Exposition, Milburn, and surrounded by Secretary George B. Cortaleau and half a dozen Exposition officials, the President was assisted to a chair. His face was white, but he made no outcry. When the second shot struck the President, he sank back with one hand holding his abdomen.
The other fumbling at his breast. His eyes were open, and he was clearly conscious of all that had transpired. He looked up into President Milburn's face, and gasped, Cortolew, the name of his private secretary. The President's secretary bent over him. Cortolew, said the President, my wife, be careful about her. Don't let her know. Moved by a paroxysm, he rithed to the left, And his eyes fell upon the prostate form of the assassin, Shulgos, lying on the floor, bloody and helpless, beneath the blows of the guard. The president raised his right hand, red with his own blood, and placed it on the shoulder of his secretary. Let no one hurt him, he gasped, and sank back in the chair, while the guards carried Shulgos out of his sight.
The ambulance from the Exposition Hospital was summoned immediately, and the President, still conscious, sank upon the stretcher. Secretary Cortellew and Mr. Milburn rode with him in the ambulance, and in nine minutes after the shooting, the President was awaiting the arrival of surgeons, who had been summoned from all sections of the city, and by special train from Niagara Falls. The President continued conscious. and conversed with Mr. Cortalew and Mr. Milburn on his way to the hospital. I am sorry, he said, to have been the cause of trouble to the exposition. Three thoughts had found expression with the president. First, that the news should be kept from his wife. Second, that the would-be assassin should not be harmed.
And third, regret that the tragedy might have hurt the exposition. The news that the president had been shot passed across the exposition grounds with almost incredible speed, and the crowd around the temple grew until it counted fifty thousand persons. This big crowd followed the ambulance respectfully to the hospital, the other eager to find the assassin and punish him. Certain it is that if officials had not used remarkable diligence in taking Shogos out of the way of the crowd, he would have been mobbed and beaten to death. Shogos had been carried into a side room at the northwest corner of the temple. There he was searched, but nothing was found upon him, except a letter related to lodging.
The officers washed the blood from his face, and asked him who he was, and why he had tried to kill the president. He made no answer at first, but finally gave the name of Niemann. He offered no explanation of the deed, except that he was an anarchist, and had done his duty. A detail of exposition guards was sent for a company of soldiers. A carriage was summoned. South of the temple a space had been roped off. The crowd tore out the iron stanchion holding the ropes, and carried the ropes to a flagpole standing nearby on the esplanade. Lynch him, cried a hundred voices, and a start was made for one of the entrances to the temple. Soldiers and police beat back the crowd. Guards and people were wrangling, shouting, and fighting.
In this confusion, Shogos, still bleeding, his clothes torn and scarcely able to walk, was led out by Captain James F. Villali, Chief of the Exposition Detectives, Commandant Robinson, and a squad of secret servicemen. Shogos was thrown into a carriage, and three detectives jumped in with him. Captain Villali jumped on the driver's seat and lashed the horses into a gallop. Six doctors were at the president's side within thirty seconds after his arrival at the hospital. Among them, the president's family physician, Dr. P. M. Rixey, Dr. Roswell Park, a surgeon of national reputation, was summoned from Niagara Falls, where he was performing an operation, and Dr. Herman Minter arrived soon after.
The surgeons consulted and hesitated about performing an operation. The president reassured them by expressing his confidence, but no decision was reached when Dr. Mann of the Exposition Hospital staff arrived. After another consultation, Dr. Mann informed the president that an operation was necessary. All right, replied the president. Go ahead. Do whatever is proper. The anesthetic administered was ether, and for two and a half hours the president was under the influence of this. The wound in the breast proved to be only a flesh wound. The bullet struck a button and was somewhat deflected. It entered the middle of the breast above the breastbone, but did not penetrate far. When the president was undressed for the operation, the bullet fell from his clothing upon the table.
The second and serious wound was a bullet hole in the abdomen, about five inches below the left nipple. and about an inch and a half to lift to the median line. The bullet which caused the wound penetrated both the interior and posterior walls of the stomach, going completely through that organ. It was also found, as a consequence of the perforation of the stomach fluid, had circulated about the abdominal cavity. Further examination disclosed that the hole made by the entrance of the bullet was small and clean-cut, while that on the other side of the stomach was large and ragged. A five-inch incision was made, and through that aperture the physicians were enabled to turn the organ about so as to suture the larger bullet hole.
After that had been sewed, the abdominal cavity was washed with a salt solution. The operation performed on President McKinley at the emergency hospital left no need for a second operation to follow it almost immediately. Dr. Mann, who performed the operation, had for his assistant Dr. Herman Minter. His second assistant was Dr. John Parmenter. His third assistant was Dr. Lee of St. Louis, who happened to be on the exposition grounds at the time of the tragedy, and placed his services at the disposal of the President. Dr. Nelson W. Wilson noted the time of the operation and took notes. Dr. Eugene Wasden of the Marine Hospital gave the anesthetic. Dr. Rixey arrived at the latter part of the operation and held the light.
Dr. Park arrived at the close of the operation. It was Dr. Mann who wielded the knife. The operation lasted almost an hour. A cut about five inches long was made. It was found necessary to turn up the stomach of the president in order to trace the course of the bullet. The bullet's opening in the front wall of the stomach was small, and it was carefully closed with sutures, after which a search was made for the hole in the back wall of the stomach. This hole, where the bullet went out of the stomach, was larger than the hole in the front wall of the stomach. In fact, it was a wound over an inch in diameter, jagged and ragged. It was sewed up in three layers. This wound was larger than the wound where the bullet entered the stomach because the bullet, in its course, forced tissues through a head of it.
In turning up the stomach, an act that was absolutely necessary, and was performed by Dr. Mann with rare skill, the danger was that some of the contents of the stomach might go into the abdominal cavity, and as a result cause perinatitis. It so happened that there was little in the president's stomach at the time of the operation. Moreover, subsequent developments tended to show that this feature of the operation was successful, and that none of the contents of the stomach entered the abdominal cavity. If any of the contents had entered the cavity, the probability is that pernititis would have sat in. The weapon used by the assassin proved to be a five-month Barrel double-action revolver of .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Given by an eye-witness, which differs in some respects from the one with which this chapter begins, is as follows. It was about four o'clock near the close of the reception in the Temple of Music, and the President, in his customary cordial manner, was reaching forward with a pleasant smile to take the hands of the good-natured crowd that was pushing forward.
A six-foot colored man, who proved to be a waiter in the plaza, named James F. Parker, had just shaken hands with the president, and was smiling all over with enjoyment. When suddenly, behind him, pressed forward the slight figure of a smooth-faced but muscular young man, whose eyes were wild and glaring, whose head was drooping, and who seemed to me to have sprung up from the floor. As I had not observed him before, the president took no special notice of him, but simply stooped over to shake his hand without looking, apparently, at the individual. Their palms hardly touched before I heard two shots in quick succession. A hush and quiet instantly followed. The president straightened up for a moment and stepped back five or six feet.
Secretary Cortellew, who had been standing at his side, burst into tears and exclaimed, Your shot! The president murmured, "'Oh, no, it cannot be,' but Secretary Cortellew and Mr. Milburn had torn open the president's vest, and the tell-tale blood flowing from the wound in the abdomen revealed the fearful truth. The president had dropped into a chair, and now turned deathly pale. Meanwhile, the other wound in the breast had been uncovered, and both Mr. Milburn and Secretary Cortellew were in tears. The president, seeing their emotion, put up his hand and gently murmured that he was all right, or some reassuring words, and appeared to faint away. The secret service men, Foster and Ireland, at once bound and seized the assassin before the smoke had cleared away, and in fact before the sound of the second shot was heard.
The negro, Parker, also turned instantly and confronted Shulgos, whose right hand was being tightly held behind him by the detectives, and whose face was thrust forward. Parker, with his clenched fist, smashed the assassin three times squarely in the face, and was apparently wild to kill the creature, while all the crowd of artillerymen, policemen, and others also sat upon the object of their wrath. The women in the vast audience were hysterical, and the men were little less than crazy. The transformation from the scene of smiles and gladness of a moment before to the wild, rushing, mighty roar of an infuriated crowd was simply awful. The police and military at once set about the task of clearing the building.
which they accomplished with amazing celerity and good judgment, considering the fact that a crowd of fifty thousand at the outside was pressing into the entrance.
A third narrative is still somewhat different. The narrator recites that the president, after he had been shot, was calm, seemed to grow taller, and had a look of half-reproach and half-indignation in his eyes as he turned and started toward a chair unassisted. Then Secretary Cortellew and Mr. Milburn went to his help. Secret Service agent S. R. Ireland and George F. Foster had grappled with the assassin, but quicker than both was a gigantic Negro, James F. Parker, a waiter in the restaurant in the plaza, who had been standing behind Shouldos, Awaiting an opportunity in joyous expectation to shake the president's hand. He stood there, six feet four inches tall, with two hundred and fifty pounds of muscular enthusiasm, grinning happily until he heard the pistol shots.
With one quick shift of his clenched fist, he knocked the pistol from the assassin's hand. With another, he spun the man around like a top, and with a third, he broke Shulgoz's nose. A fourth split the assassin's lip, and and knocked out several teeth, and when the officers tore him away from Parker, the latter, crying like a baby, exclaimed, Oh! for only ten seconds more.
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3 The Books of the Chilan Balam 27:16
The books of the Chelan Balam. The prophetic and historic records of the Mayas of Yoke by Daniel G. Brinton. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Reading by Bologna Times. The books of the Chalan Balam, the prophetic and historic records of the Mayas of Yucatan. By Daniel G. Brin.
Prefatory note. The substance of the present pamphlet was presented as an address to the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society of Philadelphia, at its meeting in January 1882, and was printed in the pen monthly, March 1882. As the subject is one quite new in the field of American Archeology and Linguistics, it is believed that a republication in the present form will be welcomed by students of these branches. The Books of Chilan Balam. Civilization in ancient America rose to its highest level among the Mayas of Yucatan. Not to speak of the architectural monuments which still remain to attest this, we have the evidence of the earliest missionaries to the fact that they alone, of all the natives of the New World, possessed a literature written in letters and characters, preserved in volumes neatly bound, The paper manufactured from the bark of a tree, and sized with a durable white varnish.
A few of these books still remain, preserved to us by accident in the great European libraries, but most of them were destroyed by the monks. Their contents were found to relate chiefly to the pagan ritual, to traditions of the heathen times, to astrological superstitions, and the like. Hence they were considered deleterious, and were burned wherever discovered. This annihilation of their sacred books affected the natives most keenly, as we are pointedly informed by Bishop Landa, himself one of the most ruthless of vandals in this respect. But already some of the more intelligent had learned the Spanish alphabet, and the missionaries had added a sufficient number of signs to it to express with tolerable accuracy the phonetics of the Maya tongue.
Relying on their memories, and no doubt aided by some manuscripts secretly preserved, many natives set to work to write out in this new alphabet the contents of their ancient records. Much was added which had been brought in by the Europeans, and much omitted which had become unintelligible or obsolete since the conquest, while, of course, the different writers, varying in skill and knowledge, produced works of very Various merit. Nevertheless, each of these books bore the same name, in whatever village it was written, or by whatever hand it always was, and to-day still is, called the Book of Chilan Balam. To distinguish them apart, the name of the village where a copy was found or written is added.
Probably in the last century almost every village had one, which was treasured with superstitious veneration. But the opposition of the Padres to this kind of literature, the decay of ancient sympathies, and especially the long war of races, which, since 1847, has desolated so much of the peninsula, have destroyed most of them. There remain, however, either portions or descriptions of not less than sixteen of these curious records. They are known from the names of the villages, respectively, as the book of Chilan Balam, of Nabila, of Chumayo, of Kaua, of Mani, of Oaxkutskab, of Ixal, of Tihusuko, of Tiksikokab, etc., there being the names of various native towns in the peninsula. When I added that not a single one of these had ever been printed, or even entirely translated into any European tongue, It will be evident to every archaeologist and linguist what a rich and unexplored line of information about this interesting people they may present.
It is my intention in this article merely to touch upon a few salient points to illustrate this, leaving a thorough discussion of their origin and contents to the future editor, who will bring them to the knowledge of the learned world. Turning first to the meaning of the name Chalan Balam. It is not difficult to find its derivation. Chalan, says Bishop Landa, the second bishop of Yucatan, whose description of the native customs is an invaluable source to us, was the name of their priests, whose duty it was to teach the sciences, to appoint holy days, to treat the sick, to offer sacrifices, and especially to utter the oracles of the gods. They were so highly honored By the people that usually they were carried on litters on the shoulders of devotees.
Strictly speaking, in Maya, Chilan means interpreter, mouthpiece, from Chich, the mouth, and in this ordinary sense frequently occurs in other writings. The word Balam, literally, Tiger, was also applied to a class of priests, and is still in use among the natives of Yucatan. As the designation of the protective spirits of fields and towns, as I have shown at length in a recent study of the world as it occurs in the native myths of Guatemala. Chilan Balaam, therefore, is not a proper name, but a title, and in ancient times designated the priest who announced the will of the gods and explained the sacred oracles. This accounts for the universality of the name and the sacredness of its associations.
The dates of the books, which have come down to us, are various. One of them, the book of Chillon Belam of Money, was undoubtedly composed not later than 1595, as is proved by internal evidence. Various passages in the works of Landa, Lizana, Sánchez Aguilar, and Cagaludo, all early historians of Yucatan, Prove that many of these native manuscripts existed in the 16th century. Several rescripts date from the 17th century, most from the latter half of the 18th. The names of the writers are generally not given, probably because the books, as we have them, are all copies of older manuscripts, with merely the occasional addition of current items of note by the copyists, as, for instance, A malignant epidemic which prevailed in the peninsula in 1673 is mentioned as a present occurrence by the copyist of the book of Chilan-Balaam of Nabula.
I come now to the contents of these curious works. What they contain may conveniently be classified under four headings. Astrological and Prophetic Matters. Ancient Chronology and History. Medical Recipes and Directions. Later history, and Christian teachings. The last mentioned consists of translations of the doctrina, Bible stories, narratives of events after the conquest, etc., which I shall dismiss as of least interest. The astrology appears partly to be reminiscences of that of their ancient heathendom, partly that borrowed from the European almanacs of the century, 1550 to 1650. These, as is well known, were crammed with predictions and divinations. A careful analysis, based on comparison with the Spanish almanacs of that time, would doubtless reveal how much was taken from them, and it would be fair to presume that the remainder was a survival of ancient native theories.
But there are not wanting actual prophecies of a much more striking character. These were attributed to the ancient priests, and to a date long preceding the advent of Christianity. Some of them have been printed in translations in the Histories of Lizana and Cagoludo, and some of the originals were published by the late Abbey Brassere de Bourbourg, in the second volume of the Reports of the Mission scientifique au Mexique et dans l'Hermique Centrale. Their authenticity has been met with considerable scepticism by Weitz, And others, particularly as they seemed to predict the arrival of the Christians from the East and the introduction of the worship of the cross. It appears to me that this incredulity is uncalled for.
It is known that at the close of each of the larger divisions of time, the so-called Khatuns, a Chillon, or inspired diviner, uttered a prediction of the character of the year or epoch which was about to begin. Like other would-be prophets, he had doubtless learned that it is wiser to predict evil than good, inasmuch as the probabilities of evil in this worried world of ours outweigh those of good. And when the evil comes, his words are remembered to his credit, while, if perchance his gloomy forecasts are not realized, no one will bear him a grudge that he has been at fault. The temper of this people was, moreover, gloomy. And it suited them to hear of threatened danger and destruction by foreign foes.
But alas, for them, the worst that the boding words of the oracle foretold was as nothing to the dire event which overtook them—the destruction of their nation, their temples, and their freedom, neath the iron heel of the Spanish conqueror. As the wide gerta says, Seltsam ist profitin liid, doc mer seltsam vos Gescheit. As to the supposed reference to the cross and its worship, it may be remarked that the native word translated cross by the missionaries simply means a piece of wood set upright, and may well have had a different and special signification in the old days. By way of a specimen of these prophecies, I quote from the book of Chelan-Balam of Chumayel. Saying at once that for the translation I have depended upon a comparison of the Spanish version of Lizana, who was blindly prejudiced, and that in French of the Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg, who knew next to nothing about Maya, with the original.
It will be easily understood, therefore, that it is rather a paraphrase than a literal rendering. The original is in short aphoristic sentences, and was no doubt chanted with a rude rhythm. What time the sun shall bright asshine? Cheerful will be the eyes of the king. For ages yet shall be inscribed. Then shall come the holy priest, the holy God. With grief I speak, what now I see. Watch well the road, ye dwellers, in Itza. The master of the earth shall come to us. Thus prophesies Nahau Petch, the seer, in the days of the fourth age, at the time of its beginning. Such are the obscure and ominous words of the ancient oracle. If the date is authentic, it would be about 1480, the fourth age in the Maya system of computing time between a period of either twenty or twenty-four years at the close of the 15th century.
It is, however, of little importance whether these are accurate copies of the ancient prophecies. They remain, at least, faithful imitations of them. Composed in the same spirit and form which the native priests were wont to employ. A number are given much longer than the above, and containing various curious references to ancient usages. Another value they have in common with all the rest of the text of these books, and it is one which will be properly appreciated by any student of languages. They are, by... Common consent of all competent authorities, the genuine productions of native minds cast in the idiomatic forms of the native tongue by those born to its use. No matter how fluent a foreigner becomes in a language not his own, he can never use it as he does one who has been familiar with it from childhood.
This general maxim is tenfold true when we apply it to a European learning in American language. The flow of thought as exhibited in these two linguistic families is in such different directions that no amount of practice can render one equally accurate in both. Hence the importance of studying a tongue as it is employed by natives, and hence the very high estimate I place on these books of Chilan Balam as linguistic material, an estimate much increased by the great rarity of independent compositions in their own tongues, by members of the native races of this continent.
I now approach what I consider the peculiar value of these records, apart from the linguistic mold in which they are cast, and that is the light they throw upon the chronological system and ancient history of the Mayas. To a limited extent, this has already been brought before the public. The late Don Pio Perez gave to Mr. Stevens, when in Yucatan, An essay on the method of computing time among the ancient Mayas, and also a brief synopsis of Maya history, apparently going back to the third or fourth century of the Christian era. Both were published by Mr. Stevens in the appendix to his Travels in Yucatan, and have appeared repeatedly since in English, Spanish, and French. They have, up to the present, constituted almost our sole sources of information, On these interesting points, don Pio Perez was rather vague as to whence he derived his knowledge.
He refers to ancient manuscripts, old authorities, and the like. But as the Abbe Brassure de Beaubourg justly complains, he rarely quotes their words, and gives no descriptions as to what they were or how he gained access to them. In fact, the whole of senor Perez's Information was derived from these books of Chilong Balam, and without wishing at all to detract from his reputation as an antiquary and Maya scholar, I am obliged to say that he has dealt with them as scholars so often do with their authorities, that is, having framed his theories, he quoted what he found in their favour, and neglected to refer to what he observed was against them. Thus it is a cardinal question in Yucatecan archaeology.
As to whether the epoch or age by which the great cycle, the Aho Katun, was reckoned, embraced twenty or twenty-four years. Contrary to all the Spanish authorities, Perez declared for twenty-four years, supporting himself by the manuscripts, it is true there are three of the books of the Chalan Balam, those of Mani, Ka'awa, and Akskutskab, which are distinctly in favour of twenty-four years. But, on the other hand, there are four or five others which are clearly for the period of twenty years, and of these, Dom Perez said nothing, although copies of more than one of them were in his library. So, of the epochs, or Catons, of Maya history, there are three or more copies in these books, which he does not seem to have compared with the one he furnished Stephens.
His labour will have to be repeated according to the methods of modern criticism, and with the additional material obtained since he wrote. Another valuable feature in these records is the hints they furnish of the hieroglyphic system of the Mayas. Almost our only authority heretofore has been the essay of Alanda. It has suffered somewhat in credit because we had no means of verifying his statements, in comparing the characters he gives. Dr. Valente has even gone so far as to attack some of his assertions as fabrications. This is an amount of scepticism which exceeds both justice and probability. The chronological portions of the books of the Chilan Balam re partly written with the ancient signs of the days, months, and epochs, and they furnish us also delineations of the wheels, which the natives used for computing time.
The former are so important to the student of Maya hieroglyphics that I have added photographic reproductions of them to this paper, giving also representations of those of Landa for comparison. It will be observed that the signs of the days are distinctly similar in the majority of cases, but that those of the months are hardly alike. The hieroglyphs of the days taken from the Codex Troiano An ancient maya book, written before the conquest, probably about fourteen hundred, are also added to illustrate the variations which occurred in the hands of different scribes. Those from the books of Chilan Balam are copied from a manuscript known to maya scholars as the Codes Perez of Undoubted Authenticity and Antiquity.
The result of the comparison I thus institute is a triumphant refutation of the doubts and slurs which have been cast on Bishop Landa's work, and vindicated for a very high degree of accuracy. The hieroglyphics for the months are quite complicated, and in the books of Chillon-Balam are rudely drawn, but for all that two or three of them are evidently identical with those in the calendar preserved by Landa. Some years ago, Professor de Rosny, expressed himself in great doubt as to the fidelity in the tracing of these hieroglyphs of the months, principally because he could not find them in the two codices at his command. As he observes, they are composite signs, and this goes to explain the discrepancy, for it may be regarded as established that the maya script permitted the use of several signs for the same sound, And the sculptor or scribe was not obliged to represent the same word always by the same figure.
In close relation to the chronology is the system of numeration and the arithmetical signs. These are discussed with considerable fullness, especially in the book of Chilan Balam of Kaoa. The numerals are represented by exactly the same figures as we find in the Maya manuscripts of the libraries of Dresden, Peths, Paris, and Madrid, that is, by points or dots up to five, and the fives by single straight lines, which may be indiscriminately drawn vertically or horizontally. The same book contains a table of multiplication in Spanish and Maya, which settles some disputed points in the use of the vigesimal system by the Mayas. A curious chapter in several of the books, especially those of Kiowa and Mani, is that on the thirteen Ahoa, Khatuns, or epochs, of the greater cycle of the Mayas.
This cycle embraced thirteen periods, which, as I have before remarked, are computed by some at twenty years each, by others at twenty-four years each. Each of these Khatuns was presided over by a chief or king. That being the meaning of the word Ahoa. The books above mentioned give both the name and the portrait. Drawn and colored by the rude hand of the native artists of each of these kings, and they suggest several interesting analogies. They are, in the first place, identical, with one exception, with those on an ancient native painting, an engraving of which is given by Father Cagaludo in his History of Yucatan, and explained by him as the representation of an occurrence which took place after the Spaniards arrived in the peninsula.
Evidently, The native in whose hands the worthy father found it, fearing that he partook of the fanaticism which had led the missionaries to the destruction of so many records of the nation, deceived him as to its purport, and gave him an explanation which imported to the scroll the character of a harmless history. The one exception is the last or thirteenth chief. Cogaludo appends to this the name of an Indian, who probably did fall a victim to his friendship to the Spaniards. This name, as a sort of guarantee for the rest of his story, the native scribe inserted in place of the genuine one. The peculiarity of the figure is that it has an arrow or dagger driven into its eye. Not only is this mentioned by Cagaludo's informant, but it is represented in the paintings in both the books of Chalan Balam as Above noted, and also by a fortunate coincidence, in one of the calendar pages of the Codex Troano.
Pl. Twenty Three, in a remarkable cartouche, which from a wholly independent course of reasoning was some time since identified by my esteemed correspondent, Professor Cyrus Thomas of Illinois, as a cartouche of one of the Aho Catons, And probably of the last of them. It gives me much pleasure to add such conclusive proof of the sagacity of his supposition.
The first column on the right is from Landa. The second is from the Codex Troiano. The remaining four are from the book of Chelan Balam of Caoa. There is other evidence to show that the engraving in Cagaludo is a relic of the purest ancient Maya symbolism. One of the most interesting which have been preserved to us, but to enter upon its explanation in this connection would be too far for my present topic.
A favourite theme with the writers of the books of Chelan-Balam was the cure of diseases. Bishop Landa explains that the Chelans, as sorcerers and doctors, And adds that one of their prominent duties was to diagnose diseases and point out their appropriate remedies. As we might expect, therefore, considerable prominence is given to the description of symptoms and suggestions for their alleviation. Bleeding and the administration of preparations of native plants are the usual prescriptions, but there are others which have probably been borrowed from some domestic medicine book of European origin. The late Don Pio Perez gave a great deal of attention to collecting these native recipes, and his manuscripts were carefully examined by Dr.
who combined all the necessary knowledge, botanical, linguistic, and medical, and who has left a large manuscript, entitled, Recetarios de Indios, which presents the subject fully. He considers... The scientific value of these remedies to be next to nothing, and the language in which they are recorded to be distinctly inferior to that of the remainder of the books of the Chilan Balam. Hence he believes that this portion of the ancient records was supplanted some time in the last century by medical notions introduced from European sources. Such, in fact, is the statement of the copyists of the books themselves, as these recipes are sometimes found in a separate volume entitled, The Book of the Jew, El libro del judio, who this alleged Jewish physician was, who left so widespread and durable a renown among the Yucatecan natives none of the archaeologists have been able to find out.
The language and style of most of these books are aphoristic, elliptical, and obscure. The Maya language has naturally undergone Considerable alterations since they were written. Therefore, even to competent readers of ordinary Maya, they are not readily understood. Fortunately, however, there are in existence excellent dictionaries of the Maya of the 16th and 17th centuries, which, were they published, would be sufficient for this purpose. A few persons in Yucatan have appreciated the desirability of collecting and preserving these works. Don Pio Perez was the first to do so, and of living Yucatanian scholars. Particular mention should be made of the Rev. Canon Don Crescenzio Carrillo e Ancona, who has written a good, and I believe the only description of them, which has yet appeared in print.
They attracted the earnest attention of that eminent naturalist and ethnologist, The late Dr. C. Hermann Berendt, and at a great expenditure of time and labor, he visited various parts of Yucatan, and with remarkable skill made facsimile copies of the most important and complete specimens which he could anywhere find. This invaluable and unique collection has come into my hands since his death, and it is this which has prompted me to make known their character, and contents to those interested in such subjects.
Read before the Numistatic and Antiquarian Society of Philadelphia at his Twenty Fourth Annual Meeting, January Fifth, 1882. End of The Books of Chilan Balam, The Prophetic and Historic Records of the Mayas of Yucatan by Daniel G. Britten.
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4 Equal Opportunity in Education 18:30
Equal Opportunity in Education by Mikhail Bakunin. The first topic for consideration today is this. Will it be feasible for the working masses to know complete emancipation, as long as the education available to those masses continues to be inferior to that bestowed upon the bourgeois? Or, in more general terms, as long as there exists any class, be it numerous or otherwise, which, by virtue of birth, is entitled to a superior education and a more complete instruction? Does not the question answer itself? Is it not self-evident that of any two persons endowed by nature with roughly equivalent intelligence, one will have the edge, the one whose mind will have been broadened by learning, and who, having better grasped the interrelationships of natural and social phenomena, what we might term the laws of nature and of society, willed the more readily and more fully Grasp the nature of his surroundings, and that this one will feel, let us say, a greater liberty, and in practical terms show a greater aptitude and capability than his fellow.
It is natural that he who knows more will dominate him who knows less. And were this disparity of education and education in learning the only one to exist between two classes, Would not all the others swiftly follow until the world of men itself, in its present circumstances, that is, until it was again divided into a mass of slaves and a tiny number of rulers, the former laboring away as they do today, to the advantage of the latter? Now we see why the bourgeois socialists demand only a little education for the people, a soupçon more than they currently receive. Whereas we socialist Democrats demand, on the people's behalf, complete and integral education, an education as full as the power of intellect to-day permits.
So that, henceforth, there may not be any class over the workers by virtue of superior education, and therefore able to dominate and exploit them. The bourgeois socialists want to see the retention of the class system, each class they contend fulfilling a specific social function, one specializing, say, in learning, and the other in manual labor. We, on the other hand, seek the final and the utter abolition of classes. We seek a unification of society and equality of social and economic provision for every individual on this earth. The bourgeois socialists, whilst retaining the historic basis of the society of today, would like to see them become less stark, less harsh, and more prettified. Whereas we should like to see their destruction, from which it follows that there can be no truce or compromise, let alone any coalition between the bourgeois socialists and us socialist democrats.
I have heard it said, and this is the argument most frequently raised against us, and an argument which the dogmatists of every shade regard as irrefutable. It is impossible that the whole of mankind should devote itself to learning, for we should all die of starvation. Consequently, while some study, others must labor so that they can produce what we need to live, not just producing for their own needs, But also for those men who devote themselves exclusively to intellectual pursuits. Aside from expanding the horizons of human knowledge, the discoveries of these intellectuals improve the condition of all human beings, without exception, when applied to industry, agriculture, and generally to political and social life.
Agreed? And do not their artistic creations enhance the lives of every one of us? No. Not at all. And the greatest reproach which we can level against science and the arts is precisely that they do not distribute their favors and do not exercise their influence, except on a tiny fragment of society, to the exclusion, and thus to the detriment, of the vast majority. Today one might say of the advances of science and of the arts, Just what has already and so properly been said of the prodigious progress of industry, trade, credit, and, in a word, of the wealth of society in the most civilized countries of the modern world. That wealth is quite exclusive, and the tendency is for it to become more so each day.
As it becomes concentrated into an ever-shrinking number of hands, shunning the lower echelons of the middle class and the petite bourgeoisie, depressing them into the proletariat, so that the growth of this wealth is the direct cause behind the growing misery of the laboring masses. Thus the outcome is that the gulf which yawns between the privileged, contented minority and millions of workers who earn their keep by the strength of their arm yawns ever wider, and that the happier the contented who exploit the people's labor become, the more unhappy the workers become. One has only to look at the fabulous opulence of the aristocratic financier, commercial, and industrial clique in England, and compare it with the miserable condition of the workers of the same country.
One has only to re-read the so naive and heart-rending letter lately penned by an intelligent and upright goldsmith of London, one Walter Duggan, who, has voluntarily taken poison along with his wife and their six children simply as a means of escape from the degradations of poverty and the torments of hunger. And one will find oneself obliged to concede that the much-vaunted civilization means, in material terms, to the people, only oppression and ruination. And the same holds true for the modern advances of science and the arts. Huge strides, indeed, it is true, but the greater the advances, the more they foster intellectual servitude, and thus, in material terms, foster misery and inferiority as the lot of the people.
For these advances merely widen the gulf which already separates the people's level of understanding from the levels of the privileged classes. From the point of view of natural capacity, the intelligence of the former is, to-day, obviously less stunted, less exercised, less sophisticated, and less corrupted by the need to defend unjust interests, and is consequently, naturally, of greater potency than the brain-power of the bourgeoisie. But then again, the brain-power of the bourgeois does have at its disposal the complete arsenal of science, filled with weapons that are indeed formidable. It is very often the case that a highly intelligent worker is obliged to hold his tongue when confronted by a learned fool who defeats him, not by dint of intellect, of which he has none, but by dint of his education.
An education denied the working man, but granted the fool, because, while the fool was able to develop his foolishness scientifically in schools, the working man's labors were clothing, housing, feeding him, and supplying his every need, his teachers and his books, everything necessary to his education. Even within the bourgeois class, as we know only too well, the degree of learning imparted to each individual is not the same. There, too, there is a scale which is determined not by the potential of the individual, but by the amount of wealth of the social stratum to which he belongs by birth. For example, the instruction made available to the children of the lower petty bourgeoisie, Whilst itself scarcely superior to that which workers manage to obtain for themselves, is next to nothing by comparison with the education that society makes readily available to the upper and middle bourgeoisie.
What, then, do we find? The petty bourgeoisie, whose only attachment to the middle class is through a ridiculous vanity on the one hand, and its dependence on the big capitalists on the other, Finds itself most often in circumstances even more miserable and even more humiliating than those which afflict the proletariat. So, when we talk of privileged classes, we never have in mind this poor petite bourgeoisie which, if it did have a little more spirit and gumption, would not delay in joining forces with us to combat the big and medium bourgeoisie who crush it today no less than they crush the proletariat. And should society's current economic trends continue in the same direction for a further ten years, which we do, however, regard as impossible, we may yet see the bulk of the medium bourgeoisie tumble first of all into the current circumstances of the petty bourgeoisie, Only to slip a little later into the proletariat, as a result, of course, of this inevitable concentration of ownership into an even smaller number of hands, the ineluctable consequences of which would be to partition society, once and for all, into a tiny, overweeningly opulent, educated, ruling minority, and a vast majority of impoverished, Ignorant, enslaved, perletarians.
There is one fact which should make an impression upon every person of conscience, upon all who have at heart a concern for human dignity and justice. That is, for the liberty of each individual amid and through a setting of equality for all. That is the fact that of all the intelligentsia, All of the great applications of science to the purpose of industry, trade, and to the life of society in general have thus far profited no one, save the privileged classes and the power of the state, that timeless champion of all political and social iniquity. Never, not once, have they brought any benefit to the masses of people, We need only list the machines, and every working man and honest advocate of the emancipation of labor would accept the justice of what we say.
By what power do the privileged classes maintain themselves today, with all their insolent smugness and iniquitous pleasures, in defiance of the all too legitimate outrage felt by the masses of the people? Is it by some power inherent in their persons? No, it is solely through the power of the state, in whose apparatus to-day their offspring hold always every key position, and even every lower and middle range position, excepting that of soldier and worker. And in this day and age, what is it that constitutes the principle underlying the power of the state? Why, it is science. Yes, science. Science of government? Science of administration and financial science, the science of fleecing the flocks of the people without their bleating too loudly, and when they start to bleat, the science of urging silence, patience and obedience upon them by means of a scientifically organized force, the science of Deceiving and dividing the masses of the people, and keeping them alays in a salutary ignorance, lest they ever become able, by helping one another in pooling their efforts, to conjure up a power capable of overturning states.
And, above all, military science, with all its tried and tested weaponry, these formidable instruments of destruction which work wonders, And lastly, the science of genius, which has conjured up steamships, railways, and telegraphy, which, by turning every government into a hundred-armed, thousand-armed, by giving it the power to be, act, and arrest everywhere at once, has brought about the most formidable political centralization the world has ever witnessed. Who, then, will deny that, without exception, all of the advances made by science have thus far brought nothing save a boosting of the wealth of the privileged classes and of the power of the state, to the detriment of the well-being and liberty of the masses of the people, of the proletariat.
But we will hear the objection. Do not the masses of the people profit by this also? Are they not much more civilized in this society of ours than they were in the societies of bygone centuries? We shall reply to that with an observation borrowed from the noted German Socialists La Salle. In measuring the progress made by the working masses in terms of their political and social emancipation, One should not compare their intellectual state in this century with what it may have been in centuries gone by. Instead, one ought to consider whether, by comparison with some given time, the gap which existed between the working masses and the privileged classes having been noted, the masses have progressed to the same extent as those privileged classes.
For if the progress made by both has been roughly equivalent, the intellectual gap which separates the masses from the privileged in today's world will be the same as it ever was. But if the proletariat has progressed further and more rapidly than the privileged, then the gap must necessarily have narrowed. But if, on the other hand, the workers' rate of progress has been slower, and consequently less than that of a representative of the ruling classes over the same period, then that gap will have grown. The gulf which separates them will have increased, and the man of privilege grown more powerful, and the workers' circumstances more abject, more slave-like than at the date one chose as the point of departure.
If the two of us set off from two different points at the same time, and you have a lead of one hundred paces over me, and you move at a rate of sixty paces per minute, and I at only thirty paces per minute, then after one hour the distance which separates us will not be just over one hundred paces, but just over one thousand nine hundred paces. That example... gives us a roughly accurate notion of the respective advances made by the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Thus far, the bourgeoisie has raced along the track of civilization at a quicker rate than the proletariat, not because they are intellectually more powerful than the latter. Indeed, one might properly argue the contrary case. But because the political and economic organization of society has been such that, hitherto, the bourgeoisie alone have enjoyed access to learning, and science has existed only for them, and the proletariat has found itself doomed to a forced ignorance, so that if the proletariat has nevertheless made progress, and there is no denying it has, then that progress was made not thanks to society, but rather in spite of it.
To sum up, in society as presently constituted, the advances of science have been at the root of the relative ignorance of the proletariat, just as the progress of industry and commerce have been at the root of its relative impoverishment. Thus, intellectual progress and material progress have contributed in equal measure towards the exacerbation of the slavery of the proletariat. Meaning what? Meaning that we have a duty to reject and resist that bourgeois science, just as we have a duty to reject and resist bourgeois wealth. And reject and resist them in this sense, that in destroying the social order which turns it into the preserve of one or of several classes, We must lay claim to it as the common inheritance of all the world.
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5 The Sinking of the 'Titanic' 29:34
The Sinking of the Titanic, from The Times, 28th of April, 1912. This recording read by Andy Minter.
Mr. Bruce Ismay of the White Star Line gave out the following prepared statement on the pier. In the presence and under the shadow of this catastrophe of the sea, which overwhelmed my feelings too deeply for expression in words, I can only say that the White Star officers and employees will do everything humanly possible to alleviate the sufferings and sorrow of relations and friends of those who perished. The Titanic was the last word in shipbuilding. Every regulation prescribed by the British Board of Trade had been strictly complied with. The master, officers, and crew were the most experienced and skilful in the British service. I am informed that a committee of the United States Senate has been appointed to investigate the circumstances of the accident.
I heartily welcome a most complete and exhaustive inquiry, and any aid which I and my associates and our builders and navigators can render is at the service of the public and the government, both in the United States and in Great Britain. Under these circumstances I must defer making any further statement at this hour. Mr. Ismay said informally, before giving out his statement, that he left the ship in the last boat, one of the collapsible boats on the starboard side. "'I do not know the speed at which the Titanic was going,' said Mr. Ismay, in reply to a question. She hit the iceberg at a glancing blow. Mr. Ismay went to his rooms at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. Asked to tell the circumstances in which he left the Titanic, Mr.
Ismay said that a boat was lowered in which most of the passengers were women, and that when the officers in charge called for more women and there was no response, he took a place in the boat. He declared that apparently there were no other passengers in that part of the vessel. Asked how long he had remained in the ship after the collision, he said, when pressed for an answer, that he thought he remained about an hour, or an hour and a quarter, or perhaps longer. Soon after the collision he visited the bridge, where he found Captain Smith had already arrived. He further stated that he believed that the ice had struck the vessel between the bow and the bridge. He described the method of loading and lowering the boats, But his testimony in regard to what happened after he left the ship is hardly more valuable than that of other level-headed survivors, and I have therefore used it to strengthen the following narratives, in the compilation of which no facts have been used, unless supported by at least two witnesses.
The Ascertained Facts All accounts agree that the night, though moonless, was starry, that the atmosphere was unusually clear, and the sea absolutely calm when the disaster occurred. Nearly all accounts agree that the Titanic was going at a great pace, though on this important point a final judgment may well be reserved, pending official details. There is substantial agreement, too, that Captain Smith was not on duty at the time of the accident, his place being taken by the first officer. The majority of the survivors note with surprise the slightness of the shock. A fact which corroborates, apparently, the well-substantiated report that the Titanic did not strike an iceberg head-on. As to the nature of the iceberg, there is serious divergence of opinion.
Several survivors talk of the deck being littered with splinters of ice, which would point to a big berg. This theory is supported by accounts according to which some passengers saw a berg as the vessel passed it after the impact. If it was really a big berg, it would appear that the Titanic must have been struck by a submerged ledge. In competent quarters in New York, an alternative theory is propounded, that the ice was what is called a blue berg growler, a mass, that is to say, of nearly submerged ice of a semi-transparent nature. This, it is felt, might, in conjunction with the smoothness of the water and the height above water of the lookout in the crow's nest, and of the officers on the bridge, Account for the fact that the obstruction apparently was not detected until the vessel was within a quarter of a mile of it, though it is said that with the smooth sea and the atmospheric conditions which existed, it would have been possible for a Big Berg to have been practically invisible at a short distance.
The fact that the Titanic had certainly part of the starboard side below the water-line and possibly part of the bottom ripped out would fit, of course, either theory. It must be remembered, however, that all this is only speculation, and will remain so, pending an authoritative statement of some kind or other. Belief in the Ship The shock caused practically no alarm among the passengers, though one of the surviving stokers is reported to have said that water immediately poured into the fire-room. It was not till the engine stopped a moment later that any disquiet was felt. Even then there was absolutely no panic, At any rate, among the first-class passengers. The belief in the unsinkability of the Titanic was firmly rooted, and an idea was apparently current, that an iceberg had been merely grazed.
The only alarming feature was the roar of the exhausts, as the boilers were emptied of steam. The fires, too, were apparently drawn, the stokers responding to orders with the utmost bravery. The order, All Passengers on Deck, with Life Belts on, came about half an hour after the collision. Sailors almost simultaneously began to prepare the boats. Even then, signs of real alarm were conspicuously absent. If, as alleged in some quarters, the first boats to leave the ship carried more than their normal complement of the crew, this was probably due to the fact that passengers could not be brought to leave the ship. It is said that some people even went back to bed. The electric light, meanwhile, was acting perfectly, and continued to do so until the end.
When the boats on deck B were prepared, the order was given, All men stand back, all women go down to B deck. The men stood back on the deck, at any rate without any sign of panic. Ten minutes later, when it was seen that no women were left, at least on one side of deck B, a few men jumped from the starboard deck A to the boats below. Mr. Ismay, it will be remembered, alluded to some such situation in his testimony, and in this other accounts agree substantially. Nowhere is there anything but praise for the splendid discipline of the officers and crew, nor can any words express the admiration which is commanded by practically all the multitudinous accounts dealing with the conduct of the passengers, both men and women.
When Magnificent Courage and Saint-Froix were the rule, it is almost invidious to mention names, but some examples of what I mean will be given later. The Sinking of the Vessel The accounts of the sinking of the vessel differ. One trustworthy witness tells me that he heard no explosion, and from his position in a boat two miles away he could not see anything to lead him to believe that the vessel broke in two. It seemed to him that she sank vertically by her bows after a period of sickening suspense, during which those who were left on board had to cling prone to the decks. Mr. Ismay and various other level-headed people also deny that they heard any explosion, but nevertheless the story is widely current that the boilers blew up and the ship divided.
Survivor's Stories Mr. Beazley's Graphic Account The Scene When the Vessel Went Down New York, April Eighteenth, Eleven Forty Five P.M. The following account of the disaster is given by Mr. Beasley, who till lately was a master at Dulwich College. The voyage from Queenstown was quiet and successful. We had met with very fine weather. The sea was calm, and the wind was westerly to south-westerly the whole way. The temperature was very cold, particularly on the last day. In fact, after dinner on Sunday evening, it was almost too cold to be on the deck at all. I had been in my berth about ten minutes, when at about a quarter-past ten I felt a slight jar. Then, soon afterwards, there was a second shock, but it was not sufficiently large to cause any alarm.
The engines, however, stopped immediately afterwards. At first I thought that the ship had lost a propeller. I went up on deck in my dressing-gown, and I found only a few people there who had come up in the same way to inquire why we had stopped, but there was no sort of anxiety in the mind of anyone. We saw through the smoking-room window that a game of cards was going on, and I went in to ask if they knew anything. They had noticed the jar a little more, and, looking through the window, had seen a huge iceberg go by close to the side of the boat. They thought that we had just grazed it with a glancing blow, and they had been to see if any damage had been done. None of us, of course, had any conception that she had been pierced below by part of a submerged iceberg.
The game of cards was resumed, and without any thought of disaster I retired to my cabin to read until we started again. I never saw any of the players or the onlookers again. A little later, hearing people going upstairs, I went out again, and found that everybody wanted to know why the engines had stopped. No doubt many of them had been awakened from their sleep by the sudden stopping of the vibration to which they had become accustomed during those four days we had been on board. Going up on the deck again, I saw that there was an unmistakable list downwards from the stern to the bows, but knowing nothing of what happened, I concluded that some of the front compartments had filled and had weighed her down.
Again I went down to my cabin, where I put on some warmer clothing. As I dressed, I heard the order shouted, "'All the passengers on deck, with life-belts on.' We all walked up slowly, with the life-belts tied on over our clothing. But even then we presumed that this was merely a wise precaution the captain was taking, and that we should return in a short time to go to bed. There was a total absence of any panic or expression of alarm. I suppose this must be accounted for by the exceeding calmness of the night, and the absence of any signs of an accident. The ship was absolutely still, and except for the gentle tilt downwards, which I do not think one person in ten would have noticed at the time, There were no visible signs of the approaching disaster.
She lay, just as if waiting for the order to go on again, when some trifling matter had been adjusted. But in a few moments we saw the covers being lifted from the boats, and the crews allotted to them standing by and uncoiling the ropes which were to lower them. We then began to realise that it was a more serious matter than we had at first supposed. My first thought was to go down to get more clothing and some money, but seeing people pouring up the stairs, I decided that it was better to cause no confusion to people coming up by attempting to get to my cabin.
Preparations for Leaving Presently we heard the order, All men stand back away from the boats. All ladies retire to the next deck below, which was the smoking-room, or B-deck. The men all stood away and waited in absolute silence. Some leaning against the end railings of the deck, others pacing slowly up and down. The boats were then swung out and lowered from A deck. When they were level with B deck, where all the women were collected, the women got in quietly, with the exception of some who refused to leave their husbands. In some cases they were torn from their husbands and pushed into the boats, but in many instances they were allowed to remain, since there was no one to insist that they should go.
Looking over the side, one saw the boats from aft already in the water slipping quietly away into the darkness. Presently the boats near me were lowered with much creaking as the new ropes slipped through the pulleys and blocks down the ninety feet which separated them from the water. An officer in uniform came up as one boat went down and shouted out, "'When you're afloat, row round to the companion-ladder and stand by with other boats for orders.' "'Aye, aye, sir,' came up the reply. But I do not think any boat was able to obey the order, for when they were afloat and had their oars at work, the condition of the rapidly settling liner was much more apparent. In common prudence, the sailors saw that they could do nothing but row away from the sinking ship, and so save, at any rate, some lives.
They, no doubt, anticipated that the suction from such an enormous vessel would be more than usually dangerous to the crowded boat, which was mostly filled with women.
No trace of disorder. All this time there was no trace of any disorder. There was no panic or rush to the boats, and there were no scenes of women sobbing hysterically such as one generally pictures happening at such times. Everyone seemed to realise so slowly that there was imminent danger, But when it was realised that we might all be presently in the sea, with nothing but our life-belts to support us until we were picked up by passing steamers, it was extraordinary how calm everyone was, how completely self-controlled we were, as one by one the boats, filled with women and children, were lowered and rowed away into the night. Presently word went round among us that men were to be put in boats on the starboard side.
I was on the port side. Most of the men walked across the deck to see if this was true. I remained where I was, and shortly afterwards I heard the call, "'Any more ladies?' Looking over the side of the ship, I saw boat number 13 swinging level with B-deck. It was half full of women. Again the call was repeated. "'Any more ladies?' I saw none coming. Then one of the crew looked up and said, "'Any ladies on your deck, sir?' "'No,' I replied. "'Then you'd better jump,' said he. I dropped, and fell into the bottom of the boat, as they cried, "'Lower away!' As the boat began to descend, two ladies were pushed hurriedly through the crowd on bee-deck, and a baby, ten months old, was passed down after them.
Then down we bent, the crew shouting out directions to those lowering us, "'Level, aft, stern, both together,' until we were some ten feet from the water. Here occurred the only anxious moment we had during the whole of our experience, from the time of our leaving the deck to our reaching the Carpathia. A lifeboat in danger. Immediately below our boat was the exhaust of the condensers, and a huge stream of water was pouring all the time from the ship's side just above the water-line. It was plain that we ought to be smart away from it if we were to escape swamping when we touched the water. We had no officers on board, and no petty officer or member of the crew to take charge, so one of the stokers shouted, "'Some one find the pin which releases the boat from the ropes, and pull it up!' No one knew where it was.
We felt as well as we could on the floor and along the sides, but found nothing. It was difficult to move among so many people. We had sixty or seventy on board. Down we went, and presently we floated with our ropes still holding us, and the stream of water from the exhaust washing us away from the side of the vessel, while the swell of the sea urged us back against the side again. The resultant of all these forces was that we were carried parallel to the ship's side, and directly under boat number 14, which had filled rapidly with men and was coming down on us, in a way that threatened to submerge our boat. Stop lowering 14! our crew shouted. And the crew of number 14, now only 20 feet above, cried out the same.
The distance to the top, however, was some 70 feet, and the creaking of the pulleys must have deadened all sound to those above, for down she came, 15 feet, 10 feet, 5 feet, and a stoker and I reached up and touched the bottom of the swinging boat above our heads. The next drop would have brought her on our heads. Just before she dropped, another stoker sprang to the ropes with his knife open in his hand. One, I heard him say, and then two, as the knife cut through the pulley rope. The next moment the exhaust stream carried us clear, while boat number 14 dropped into the water, taking the space we had occupied the moment before. Our gunwales were almost touching. We drifted away easily, and when our oars were got out, we headed directly away from the ship.
The crew seemed to me to be mostly cooks. They sat in their white jackets, two to an oar, with a stoker at the tiller. There was a certain amount of shouting from one end of the boat to the other, and the discussion as to which way we should go was finally decided by our electing as captain the stoker who was steering, and by all agreeing to obey his orders. He set to work at once to get in touch with the other boats, calling upon them, and getting as close to them as seemed wise. so that when search-boats came in the morning to look for us, there would be more chance that that all would be rescued.
The Sinking of the Vessel It was now one o'clock in the morning. The starlit night was beautiful, but as there was no moon it was not very light. The sea was as calm as a pond. There was just a gentle heave as the boat dipped up and down in the swell. It was an ideal night, except for the bitter cold. In the distance, the Titanic looked enormous. Her length and her great bulk were outlined in black against the starry sky. Every porthole and saloon was blazing with light. It was impossible to think that anything could be wrong with such a leviathan, were it not for that ominous tilt downwards in the boughs, where the water was by now up to the lowest row of portholes. At about two o'clock we observed her settling very rapidly, with the boughs and the bridge completely under water.
She slowly tilted straight on end with the stern vertically upwards, and as she did so, the lights in the cabins and the saloons, which had not flickered for a moment since we left, died out, flashed once more, and then went out altogether. At the same time, the machinery roared down through the vessel with a groaning rattle that could have been heard for miles. It was the weirdest sound, surely, that could have been heard in the middle of the ocean. It was not yet quite the end. To our amazement, she remained in that upright position for a time which I estimate as five minutes. It was certainly for some minutes that we watched at least a hundred and fifty feet of the Titanic towering up above the level of the sea, looming black against the sky.
Then, with a quiet, slanting dive, she disappeared beneath the waters. Our eyes had looked for the last time on the gigantic vessel in which we set out from Southampton. Then there fell on our ears the most appalling noise that a human being ever heard, the cries of hundreds of our fellow-beings struggling in the icy water, crying for help with a cry that we knew could not be answered. We longed to return to pick up some of those who were swimming, but this would have meant the swamping of our boat and the loss of all of us. Reuter. Mr. Lawrence Beasley went to Dulwich College as a science master in 1904, after having had two years' experience in teaching at Worksworth Grammar School. He was educated first at Derby School, where he took a scholarship, and afterwards at Quays College, Cambridge, of which he was a scholar and prizeman.
He took a first class in the natural science tripos in 1903. An Officer's Adventures Sucked down with the Titanic. Colonel Gracie of the United States Army jumped from the topmost deck of the Titanic when she sank, and was sucked down with her. On reaching the surface again, he swam until he found a cork raft, and then helped to rescue others. He gives the exact time of the sinking of the Titanic as 2.22 a.m., which was the hour at which his watch was stopped by his leap into the sea. He said, After sinking with the ship, it appeared to me as if I was propelled by some great force through the water. This might have been occasioned by explosions under the water, and I remembered fearful stories of people being boiled to death.
The second officer has told me that he has had a similar experience. I thought of those at home as if my spirit might go to them to say good-bye for ever. Again and again I prayed for deliverance, although I felt sure that the end had come. I had the greatest difficulty in holding my breath until I came to the surface. I knew that once I inhaled, the water would suffocate me. When I got under water, I struck out with all my strength for the surface. I got to the air again after a time which seemed to me to be unending. There was nothing in sight, save the ocean, dotted with ice and strewn with large masses of wreckage. Dying men and women all about me were groaning and crying piteously. No more room on the raft.
The second officer and Mr. J. B. Thayer, Jr., who were swimming near me, told me that just before my head appeared above the water, one of the Titanic's funnels separated and fell apart near me, scattering the bodies in the water. I saw wreckage everywhere, and all that came within reach I clung to. At last, by moving from one piece of wreckage to another, I reached a raft. Soon the raft became so full that it seemed as if she would sink if more came on board her. The crew, for self-preservation, had therefore to refuse to permit any others to climb on board. This was the most pathetic and horrible scene of all. The piteous cries of those around us ring in my ears, and I shall remember them to my dying day.
"'Hold on to what you have, old boy,' we shouted to each man who tried to get on board. "'One more of you would sink us all.' Many of those whom we refused answered as they went to their death, "'Good luck. God bless you!' All the time we were buoyed up and sustained by the hope of rescue. We saw lights in all directions. Particularly frequent were some green lights, which, as we learnt later, were rockets fired in the air by one of the Titanic's boats. So we passed the night, with the waves washing over and burying the raft deep in water. We prayed through all the weary nights, and there was never a moment when our prayers did not rise above the waves. Men who seemed long ago to have forgotten how to address their Creator recalled the prayers of their childhood, and murmured them over and over again.
Together we said the Lord's Prayer again and again. Reuter.
On board the Carpathia. How the passengers were received. A passenger on board the Carpathia made the following statement. I was awakened at twelve-thirty in the morning by a commotion on the decks, which seemed unusual. There was no excitement, however, as the ship was still moving. I paid but little attention to the disturbance, and went to sleep again. About three o'clock I was again awakened, and I noticed that the Carpathia had stopped. I went up on to the deck, and found that our vessel had changed her course. The life-boats had been sighted, and began to arrive one by one. There were sixteen of them in all. The transfer of the passengers was soon being carried out. It was a pitiable sight.
Ropes were tied round the waists of the adults to help them in climbing up the rope-ladders. The little children and babies were hoisted on to our deck in bags. Some of the boats were crowded, but a few were not half full. This I could not understand. Some of the people were in evening dress, while others were in their night-clothes or wrapped in blankets. They were all hurried into the saloon at once for hot breakfast, of which they were in great need, as they had been in open boats for four or five hours in the most biting air I have ever experienced. There were husbands without their wives, wives without their husbands, parents without their children, and children without their parents, but there was no demonstration, and not a sob was heard.
They spoke scarcely a word, and seemed to be stunned by the shock of their experiences. One of the women, and three of the others taken from the life-boats, died soon after reaching our deck, and their bodies were lowered into the sea at five o'clock in the afternoon. The rescued had no clothing other than that which they were wearing, and a relief committee was formed, our passengers contributing enough to meet their immediate needs. The survivors were so close to the sinking steamer that they feared that the life-boats would be sucked down into the vortex. On our way back to New York, we steamed along the edge of the ice-field, which stretched as far as the eye could see. To the north there was no blue water to be seen at all.
At one time I counted thirteen icebergs. One of the Carpathia's stewards, in an account of how the first boatload of passengers was rescued, said, Just as it was about half-day, we came upon a boat with eighteen men in it, but no women. It was not more than a third filled. All the men were able to climb up a Jacob's Ladder, which we threw over the port side. Between eight-fifteen and eight-thirty, we got the last two boats, crowded to the gunnel almost all the occupants, of which were women. After we had got the last load on board, the Californian came alongside. The captains arranged that we should make straight for New York, while the Californian looked round for more boats. We circled round and round, and saw all kinds of wreckage.
While we were pulling in the boatloads, the women were quiet enough. But when it seemed sure that we should not find any more persons alive, then Bedlam came. I hoped never to go through it again. The way those women took on for the folk they had lost was awful. We could not do anything to quiet them until they cried themselves out. The refusal of the operators on board the Carpathia to answer questions concerning the disaster is now explained. It was due to the physical exhaustion of both the men. They sent a large number of personal messages from survivors to friends ashore, and received replies from the latter. This work was deemed to be more important than the answering of questions from the shore.
The Rescue by the Carpathia John Cool of Nebraska said, It was almost four o'clock in the morning, dawn was just breaking, when the Carpathia's passengers were awakened by the excitement occasioned by coming upon a fleet of life-saving boats. At that hour the whole sea was one mass of whitened ice. The work of getting the passengers over the side of the Carpathia was attended with the most heart-rending scenes. The babies were crying. Many of the women were hysterical, while the men were stolid and speechless. Some of the women were barefooted and without any headgear. The impression of those saved was that the Titanic had run across the projecting shelf of the iceberg, which was probably buried in the water, and that the entire bottom of the Titanic had been torn off.
Shortly afterwards she doubled up in the middle and went down. Most of the passengers did not believe that the boat was going to sink. According to their stories, it was fully half an hour before a lifeboat was launched from the vessel. In fact, some of the passengers keenly questioned the wisdom of Captain Smith's orders that they should leave the big ship.
Dr. J. F. Kemp, the Carpathia's physician, says that their wireless operator happened, by chance, to have delayed turning in on Sunday night for ten minutes. Thus it was that he was at his post, and got the Titanic's call for help. Had he gone to rest, as usual, there would have been no survivors. Dr. Kemp describes the iceberg which sank the Titanic as being four hundred feet long and ninety feet high. The Carpathia cruised twice through the ice-field in the vicinity of the spot, and picked up the bodies of three men and a baby. These bodies were committed to the deep on Monday evening. Among the congregation at the funeral service were thirty widows, Twenty of whom were under twenty-three years of age, most of them being brides of only a few weeks or months.
End of The Sinking of the Titanic
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6 The Gale 21:57
The Gale. Read by Bill Moseley, Krellsburg, Texas.
We were now off Point Conception, the Cape Horn of California, where, the sailors say, it begins to blow the first of January, and blows until the last of December. Toward the latter part of the afternoon, however, the regular northwest wind, as usual, set in, which brought in our studding-sails, and gave us the chance of beating round the point. which we were now just abreast of, and which stretched off into the Pacific, high, rocky and barren, forming the central point of the coast for hundreds of miles north and south. A capful of wind will be a bagful here, and before night our royals were furled, and the ship was laboring hard under her top-gallant sails. At eight bells our watch went below, Leaving her with as much sail as she could stagger under, water flying over the forecastle at every plunge.
It was evidently blowing harder, but then there was not a cloud in the sky, and the sun had gone down bright. We had been below but a short time before we had the usual premonitions of coming gale. Seas washing over the whole forward part of the vessel. and her bows beating against them with a force and sound like the driving of piles. The watch, too, seemed very busy trampling about decks and singing out at the ropes. A sailor can tell by the sound what sail is coming in, and in a short time we heard the top-gallant sails come in, one after another, and then the flying jib. This seemed to ease her a good deal, and we were fast going off to the land of Nod when, bang, bang, bang, on the scuttle, and, all hands, reef, topsails, ahoy, started us out of our berths, and, it not being very cold weather, we had nothing extra to put on, and were soon on deck.
I shall never forget the fineness of the sight. It was a clear, and rather a chilly night. The stars were twinkling with an intense brightness, and as far as the eye could reach, there was not a cloud to be seen. The horizon met the sea in a defined line. A painter could not have painted so clear a sky. There was not a speck upon it. Yet it was blowing great guns from the northwest.
When you can see a cloud to windward, you feel that there is a place for the wind to come from. But here it seemed to come from nowhere. No person could have told from the heavens, by their eyesight alone, that it was not a still summer's night. One reef after another we took in the topsails, and before we could get them hoisted up we heard a sound like a short, quick rattling of thunder, and the jib was blown to atoms out of the bolt rope.
We got the topsails set and the fragments of the jib stowed away, and the foretopmast staysail set in its place, and the great mainsail gaped open, and the sail ripped from head to foot.
"'Lay up on that main yard, and furl the sail before it blows to tatters,' shouted the captain. In a moment we were up, gathering the remains of it upon the yard. We got it wrapped around the yard, and passed gaskets over it as snugly as possible, and were just on deck again, when, with another loud rent which was heard throughout the ship, the fore-topsail, which had been double-reefed, Split in two of the wart ships, just below the reef band from earring to earring.
Here again it was, down yard, haul out reef tackles, and lay out upon the yard for reefing. By hauling the reef tackles chock-a-block, we took the strain from the other earring, and passing the close-reefed earring, and knotting the points carefully, we succeeded in setting the sail close-reefed. We had but just got the rigging coiled up, and were waiting to hear, go below the watch, when the main royal worked loose from the gaskets, and blew directly out to leeward, flapping and shaking the mast like a wand. Here was a job for somebody. The royal must come in, or be cut adrift, or the mast would be snapped short off. All the light hands and the starboard watch were sent up one after another.
But they could do nothing with it. At length, John, the tall Frenchman, the head of the starboard watch, and a better sailor never stepped upon a deck, sprang aloft, and by the help of his long arms and legs, succeeded, after a hard struggle, the sail blowing over the yard-armed and lured, and the skysail adrift directly over his head, in smothering it and frapping it with long pieces of scintillage.
He came very near being blown or shaken from the yard several times, but he was a true sailor, every finger of fish-hook.
Having made the sail snug, he prepared to send the yard down, which was a long and difficult job, for frequently he was obliged to stop and hold on with all his might for several minutes, the ship pitching so as to make it impossible to do anything else at that height. The yard at length came down so, and after it the fore and midsend royal yards were sent down.
All hands were then sent aloft, and for an hour or two we were hard at work, making the booms well fast, unreeving the studding-sail and royal and skysail gear, getting rolling ropes on the yard, Setting up the weather breast backstage, and making other preparations for a storm.
It was a fine night for a gale, just cool and bracing enough for quick work without being cold, and as bright as day. It was sport to have a gale in such weather as this. Yet it blew like a hurricane. The wind seemed to come with a spite, an edge to it. which threatened to scrape us off the yards. The force of the wind was greater than I had ever felt it before. The darkness, cold and wet, are the worst parts of a storm, to a sailor.
Having got on deck again, we looked round to see what time of night it was, and whose watch. In a few minutes, the man at the wheel struck four bells. We found that the other watch was out, and our own half out.
Accordingly, the starboard watch went below, and left the ship to us for a couple of hours, yet with orders to stand by for a call. Hardly had they got below before away went the fore-topmast staysail, blown to ribbons. This was a small sail, which we could manage in the watch. so that we were not obliged to call up the other watch. We laid out upon the bowsprit, where we were under water half the time, and took in the fragments of the sail, and as she must have some headsail on her, prepared to bend another staysail. We got the new one out into the nettings, seized on the tack, sheets, and halyards, and the hanks, manned the halyards, Cut adrift the frapping lines, and hoisted away, but before it was halfway up the stay, it was blown all to pieces.
When we belayed the halyards, there was nothing left but the bolt rope. Now large eyes began to show themselves in the foresail, and knowing that it must soon go, the mate ordered us upon the yard to furlough.
Being unwilling to call up the watch who had been on deck all night, he roused out the carpenter, sail-maker, cook, and steward, and with their help we manned the foreyard and, after nearly half an hour's struggle, mastered the sail, and got it well furled round the yard. The force of the wind had never been greater than at this moment. In going up the rigging, It seemed absolutely to pin us down to the shrouds, and on the yard there was no such thing as turning a face to windward. Yet here was no driving sleet, and darkness, and wet and cold as off Cape Horn, and instead of stiff oilcloth suits, sou'-wester caps, and thick boots, we had on hats, round jackets, Trousers, light shoes, and everything light and easy.
These things make a great difference to a sailor.
When we got on deck, the man at the wheel struck eight bells. Four o'clock in the morning, and all Starbolins Ahoy brought the other watch up, but there was no going below for us. The gale was now at its height, blowing like scissors and Thumb screws. The captain was on deck, the ship, which was light rolling and pitching as though she would shake the long sticks out of her, and the sails were gaping open and splitting in every direction. The mizzen-topsail, which was a comparatively new sail and close-reefed, split from head to foot in the bunt. The fore-topsail went, in one rent, from clue to earring, and was blowing to tatters when one of the chain bobstays parted. The spritzale yard sprung in the slings, the martingale had slewed away off to Lourdes, and owing to the long dry weather, the lee-rigging hung in large bights at every lurch.
One of the main top-gallant shrouds had parted, and to crown all the galley had got adrift. Had gone over to Lourdes, and the anchor on the lee-bow had worked loose, and was thumping the side. Here was work enough for all hands for half a day. Our gang laid out on the mizzen-topsail yard, and after more than half an hour's hard work, furled the sail, though it bellied out over our heads, and again, by a slat of the wind, blew in under the yard with a fearful jerk, and almost threw us off from the foot ropes. Double gaskets were passed round the yards, rolling tackles and other gear, bows taut, and everything made as secure as it could be.
Coming down, we found the rest of the crew just coming down the fore-rigging, having furled the tattered topsail, or rather swathed it round the yard, which looked like a broken limb bandaged. There was no sail now on the ship, but the spanker and the close-reeved main-topsail, which still held good. But this was too much after-sail, and order was given to furl the spanker. The brails were hauled up, all the light hands and the starboard watch sent out on the gaff to pass the gaspets, but they could do nothing with it.
The second mate swore at them for a parcel of saggers, and sent up a couple of the best men, but they could do no better, and the gaff was lowered down. All hands were now employed in setting up the lee-rigging, fishing the spritzail yard, lashing the galley, and getting tackles upon the martingale to bows it to Windwood.
Being in the larboard watch, my duty was forward. to assist in setting up the martingale. Three of us were out on the martingale guys and back ropes for more than half an hour, carrying out, hooking and unhooking the tackles, several times buried in the seas, until the mate ordered us in from fear of our being washed off. The anchors were then to be taken up on the rail, which kept all hands on the forecastle for an hour. Though every now and then the seas broke over it, washing the rigging off to Bluart, filling the lee scupper's breast high, and washing chalk aft to the taffrail. Having got everything secure again, we were promising ourselves some breakfast, for it was now nearly nine o'clock in the forenoon when the main-topsail showed evident signs of giving way.
Some sail must be kept on the ship, and the captain ordered the fore and main spencer gaffs to be lowered down, and the two spencers, which were storm-sails, brand new, small, and made of the strongest canvas, to be got up and bent, leaving the main-topsail to blow away with a blessing on it, if it would only last until we could set the spencers. These we bent on very carefully, with strong rabans and sizings, and, making tackles fast to the clues, bows them down to the waterways.
By this time the main-topsail was among the things that have been. We went along to stow away the remnant of the last sail of all those which were on the ship twenty-four hours before. The Spensers were now the only whole sails on the ship. And being strong and small, and near the deck, presenting but little surface to the wind above the rail, promised to hold out well. Hove-to under these, and eased by having no sail above the tops, the ship rose and fell, and drifted off to leeward like a line of battleship. It was now eleven o'clock, and the watch was sent below to get breakfast. And at eight bells, noon, As everything was snug, although the gale had not in the least abated, the watch was set, and the other watch and idlers sent below.
For three days and three nights the gale continued with unabated fury and with singular regularity. There were no lulls, and very little variation in its fierceness. Our ship, being light, Rolled so as almost to send the four-yard arm under water, and drifted off bodily to Louie. All this time there was not a cloud to be seen in the sky, day or night. No, not so large as a man's hand. Every morning the sun rose cloudless from the sea, and set again at night in the sea, in a flood of light. The stars, too, came out of the blue one after another, night after night, unobscured, and twinkled as clear as on a still, frosty night at home, until the day came upon them.
All this time the sea was rolling in immense surges, white with foam, as far as the eye could reach, on every side, for We were now leagues and leagues from shore. The between-decks being empty, several of us slept there in hammocks, which are the best things in the world to sleep in during a storm, it not being true of them, as it is of another kind of bed. When the wind blows, the cradle will rock, for it is the ship that rocks, while they hang vertically from the beam. During these seventy-two hours we had nothing to do but to turn in and out, four hours on deck and four below, eat, sleep, and keep watch. The watches were only varied by taking the helm in turn, and now and then by one of the sails, which were furrowed, blowing out of the gaskets and getting adrift, which sent us up on the yards, and by getting tackles on different parts of the river, which were slack.
Once the wheel-rope parted, which might have been fatal to us. Had not the chief mate sprung instantly with a relieving tackle to windward, and kept the tiller up till a new rope could be rowed? On the morning of the twentieth, at daybreak, the gale had evidently done its worst, and had somewhat abated, so much so that all hands were called to bend new sails, Although it was still blowing as hard as two common gales.
One at a time, and with great difficulty and labor, the old sails were unbent and sent down by the bunt-lines, and three new top-sails, made for the homeward passage around Cape Horn, which had never been bent, were got up from the sail-room, and, under the care of the sail-maker, were fitted for bending, and sent up by the halyards into the tops, and with stops and frapping lines were bent to the yards, close-reefed, sheeted home, and hoisted. These were bent one at a time, and with the greatest care and difficulty.
Two spare courses were then got up, and bent on the same manor and furl, and a storm-jib, with the bonnet off, bent and furled to the boom. It was twelve o'clock before we got through, and five hours of more exhausting labor I never experienced, and no one of that ship's crew, I will venture to say, will ever desire again to unbend and bend five large sails in the teeth of a tremendous nor'wester. Towards night, a few clouds appeared on the horizon. And as the gale moderated, the usual appearance of driving clouds relieved the face of the sky. The fifth day after the commencement of the storm, we shook a reef out of each top-sail, and set the reefed foresail, jib, and spanker. But it was not until after eight days of reefed top-sails that we had a whole sail on the ship.
And then it was quite soon enough. For the captain was anxious to make up for leeway, the gale having blown us half the distance to the Sandwich Islands.
Inch by inch, as fast as the gale would permit, we made sail on the ship, for the wind still continued ahead, and we had many days sailing to get back to the longitude we were in when the storm took us. For eight days more, we beat to windward under a stiff, top-gallant breeze, when the wind shifted and became variable. A light Southeaster, to which we could carry a reef-topmast studding-sail, did wonders for our dead reckoning. Friday, December Fourth, after a passage of twenty days, we arrived at the mouth of the Bay of San Francisco.
End of The Gale by Richard Henry Dana, Jr. Reported by Bill Moseley, Krellsburg, Texas.
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7 How The Memory May Be Improved 20:13
How the Memory May Be Improved from Mind, Matter and Motion with Directions for Good Health in Old Age by Adam Miller. This is a LibriVox. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.
Without memory, our lives would be a dreary waste. The past would be a blank. The present, a fretful and perplexing hour. Without a recollection of the past, we would find very little encouragement in looking into the future. With the storehouse of our memories well filled with past events, many pleasant scenes of our past lives are brought in review before us. Even our sufferings and disappointments, when recollected in connection with the relief that may have come to us, and our deliverance from the apparent accidents and dangers to which we found ourselves exposed, all have a tendency to encourage us for the future. A recollection that the same or similar help may come to us in the future that sustained us in the past will enable us to move forward in the struggles of life, and trust in the same powers and forces for protection that sustained us in the past.
All persons are endowed with this faculty, but some in a much higher degree than others. While there are natural endowments, and some have much better memories than others, it is undeniably true that by neglecting to exercise and cultivate this faculty, it becomes enfeebled. While, on the other hand, by a proper course of training and a systematic exercise, The memory may be strengthened beyond the highest conceptions of those who have not made suitable and systematic efforts in this direction. The reason why many persons in advanced years complain of a feeble memory is an inattention to the common concerns of life, and a want of effort to treasure up the ordinary occurrences. The idea of many that because they have lived a certain number of years and arrived at an age where the mental faculties generally become enfeebled has caused many to feel prematurely old, and a general loss of bodily and mental vigor follows a determination that it must be so, because it is the natural order of things.
Many live and finally go down to their graves without being aware of the wonderful undeveloped powers they possessed, which, If they had been properly cultivated, would have contributed much to the support of the physical organism. There is such an intimate connection between the body and the mind that the lack of a proper treatment of the one will unfavorably affect the other. We have gymnastics for physical culture, and find from experience and observation that much is gained by a proper exercise in muscular development. The memory is more susceptible to improvement by proper exercise and training than the body. It is that which possesses the body, and is destined to survive its final dissolution and decay.
The dweller in the house is of more importance than the house. So, the mind of man, of which memory is a part, is of more importance than the body in which it dwells. We talk of a mind well stored with knowledge, but we must not forget that memory is the storekeeper, and not only holds the key to the storehouse, But arranges all the shelves and drawers and the different compartments for storing away the treasure accumulated by mental efforts. The mind selects and brings in the treasures, sometimes secures them by hardest toil and perilous efforts. The memory takes the treasures and stores them away on different and appropriate shelves or in different drawers. and so marks them and the place where they are deposited, that they can be looked at any time when they are wanted.
What advantage would we have in the accumulation of wealth in silver and gold and diamonds and other precious things that make men rich, if we brought them home and handed them over to our steward or servant for safekeeping, and he put them where they never could be found?
Suppose a man had millions on millions of treasures hidden in this way that he nor no one else could ever find. What advantage would they be to him? None. He might say, I have lost them because I have not provided a proper place to store them away. I had no systematic arrangement in my treasure-house, and now they are forever beyond my reach. In this way, From a want of a properly arranged house, to store away the treasures of the mind, thousands of precious gems have been lost. We may deeply regret the loss, but this will not return to us the lost treasures. The only safe and proper way is to guard against these losses in the future. Why have safes with various compartments been invented, with bars and bolts and locks, but to protect our goods from the hands of the thief and the robber, and also with a view to have them at our command at a moment's notice for our use?
The thief of time is watching us every hour to snatch away the accumulations for our mental toil. Much has been taken from us and laid in the grave of oblivion, but there are still vast outlying fields where we can gather more, and there are means provided to keep our gathered treasures securely. But someone advanced in years may say, I am too old to commence building a storehouse to treasure up my mental wares. You need not build a new house. The old one is good enough if you will only go to work and make some repairs. And when you begin this repairing process, you will be surprised to find how easy the task will be. The sweeping out of a few dark corners of the old building will soon throw light over other parts.
The opening of a few windows will let in the light and make everything cheerful about the old homestead, Where the higher nature has long dwelt in gloom and sadness because the house was so much out of repair. How sad it is to think that thousands of persons, when they arrive at the age of forty-five or fifty years, think that their time of improvement is past. And under this impression, they neglect mental culture, and with this neglect, the body soon becomes like a house uncared for. We build the house we live in, that is, our inner and higher nature to such an extent controls organic matter so as to build up and nourish those parts most suited for mental activity, where no other abnormal or disturbing agencies interfere.
This is especially true in reference to the growth and development of the brain, which is the seat of mental power. Proper training not only improves the mind, but enlarges the dwelling-place where the mind resides, acts, and operates. The bright, expressive, and speaking eye, the elevated forehead, the intelligent features, all indicate an intelligent working power or force superintending the material organization. This working force in the intellectual realm is under the control of the human will.
If we determine that the mind shall lie dormant, and the memory shall become feeble and inactive from a want of proper exercise, the inevitable results will follow. On the other hand, if we determine that the memory shall be retentive, and that the shelves in our memory storehouse shall keep our deposited treasures, We have only to keep these shelves and drawers in good order, and have our deposits so marked and labelled as to find them at any time we may wish to use them.
If we cannot immediately find the key to unlock our repository, and find the gems of thought, and all the beautiful and useful things of the past, we must tie a string to the treasure, and keep the string in view, and when we get bewildered and confused, We can follow up the string, or wind it up into a ball till it leads up to our repository, and to the very drawer or shelf where our treasures may be found. If we have many shelves in Memory Storehouse, and a great variety of different things stowed away, and these of different qualities, and require many strings by which to trace our way to our hidden treasures, We can very easily attach a mark or place a label on the end of each string, each separate mark directing us to the object we wish to find.
There are many plain and simple things that the mind may be placed on and that the memory can retain that may be well compared to a single thread, and by association of one thing with another, either from a striking similarity or dissimilarity, The thread may be followed by winding it into a ball or unwinding it from a ball. As an illustration of following up the thread, we will commence with a white, woollen thread. The wool leads up to the sheep. The sheep is an emblem of innocence. Here we come into a large field. Innocence, playfulness, pastures, flocks, woollen garments. Cold weather, blankets, carpets, and ornamented parlors. Or, if we wish to run in another direction, the thread will lead us to mutton, to a good dinner, to the dinner party, to the names of those present, to their conversation, and many other things we may wish to bring in review before us.
A silk thread will lead us to the silkworm, the mulberry tree, The manufacturing establishment, the silk dress, the beautiful lady that we saw wearing it, her sparkling eye, her wit, her diamonds, her language, home, fortunes or misfortunes, all from the end of a small silk thread.
A cotton thread will lead us to the cotton fields, the spinning and weaving, the factory girls employed in the mills, The great variety of cotton goods, the sales of ships, a trip across the ocean, the commerce of different and distant countries, the ties that bind nations in one common brotherhood. A linen thread will conduct us back to the field where flax grows, to the spinning and weaving of linen, to Irish linen, To the thousands of toilers who produce the beautiful fabric, to the weaver of the linen, to the rags of worn-out garments, to the paper mill that manufactures the rags to paper, to the beautiful white letter paper on which our correspondence to loved ones may be written.
A hemp string leads to the fields. The rope walks, where it is manufactured into cords and ropes, to the rigging of a ship, hauling and directing the sails, carrying the commerce of the world to their destined ports.
A red or scarlet thread will lead us to something fiery or intense, ardent, high-tempered, wars and bloodshed, Or such things as will incite or inflame the passions.
A blue thread will lead one's mind up to the pale blue sky, in which the clouds are floating, and behind which the stars and planets appear to us to be pursuing their nightly march. We think of distance and magnitude, of time measured off by their revolutions. And in bewildering amazement, we are led to the infinite power that controls and directs all things from an infinite purpose. A white thread is the emblem of innocence and purity. It leads us to the Lily of the Valley, flourishing nearby the Rose of Sharon. This will bring to the mind a train of beautiful and lovely things. How delightful, in the stillness of the night, to take hold of the beautiful white thread, and begin to wind it up into a ball, or follow it back along the path we have traveled, until we get back to the days of youth and childhood, and have the innocent amusements of our younger years pass in review before us.
The tear of sorrow may start from the eye at the recollection of friends long since gone from us. But even this opening of the fountains of affection may bring relief in the hour of affliction. A black thread may lead us into the dark, but darkness is not always dismal. It is necessary for us as well as light. Long winter evenings bring us many comforts that we could not have under the rays of the burning sun. It is true we might travel along the line of a dark thread into dismal and gloomy regions, but we should always prefer to go along the line of the pleasant and the beautiful, to feed the memory on that which will give us higher views of our lives and destinies.
The questions may arise in the minds of some, what will be the advantage of all this? What can I do without an active memory to follow up these different threads? We can easily see where the advantage of such a mental exercise is found. It is an effort to build up and strengthen the memory, or prepare the different shelves in this storehouse for repositories of our mental wares. Instead of leaving the mind a vacant blank, and tossing restless upon our beds in the stillness of the night, we may start the wheels of memory running backward over the past, and stop at the different way-stations with such delight and pleasure that we will soon be lulled to sleep, perchance to dream some pleasant dreams, and awake with better opinions of life than when our minds were blank, and the shelves of our memory storehouses in a dilapidated condition.
Now we would advise anyone in lonely hours to take hold of the end of a string, one of those we have referred to, the white, for instance, and start back in a contemplative mood, and stop to linger a while around every point of innocence, beauty, and purity. Then let it stretch out into the future. Follow it up and on until it reaches within the very gates of the celestial city. Or, if you do not wish to go quite so far just now, then take another thread and follow it along the line of which it is emblematical. Do not hasten too fast from one point to another. When you find some event in your past life, Linger around it as long as pleasant memories continue to come up, in groups or single, and then pass on to other points.
And in this way, the scenes of the past will come up in succession as old associates that had appeared lost to you and entirely faded from your memory. To those who have never made an effort to recollect the scenes of the past by such associations, It will be surprising to find the mind pictures like beautiful panoramas pass in review before them. The memory is like the blacksmith's arm, which has grown strong from using it. There is no faculty of the human mind so susceptible of improvement as the memory, and none so much neglected. Some persons are naturally endowed with good memories, while others are deficient and must depend on culture for improvement. Before letters were invented for the purpose of recording the events of life and our historic narratives, the memory must have been much stronger than it is now.
The transactions and constantly recurring events of life had to be carried in the memory instead of recorded in books. Many of the historical narratives now found in books of history, both sacred and profane, must have been preserved in the storehouse of memory for ages before they were permanently recorded in books now found in our libraries. There are many marvelous instances on record of extraordinary memories among the ancients. It would be out of place here to enter into a detailed account of the different prodigies of memory. Speeches were committed from once having been heard. Lectures, poems, and the most difficult problems the human mind can grapple with have been retained in the memory from having only once heard them repeated.
But these are rare instances, and not a common inheritance of mankind. The amount of memory we have is a natural endowment, or a working capital, On which we can improve to a marvelous extent. With every advancement we make, we increase our stock in trade, and add to our wealth, which no thief can steal, and no wreck of earthly fortune can destroy.
End of How the Memory May Be Improved by Adam Miller.
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8 Burnham on Baden-Powell 5:11
Burnham interview about Baden-Powell. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, visit LibriVox.org.
Burnham interview about Baden-Powell by Frederick Russell Burnham. Published in The Manchester Guardian. Page 10. May 19th, 19. This interview came by way of Reuters Telegrams, and took place on the day of the arrival of the British relief force at Mafeking, the day the Boer abandoned the siege and the British force took possession of the town.
Lehmfontein Tuesday. I have had a long conversation with F. R. Burnham. The famous American scout, now employed with Lord Robert's army, who gave me his impressions of Colonel Baden-Powell, formed from personal contact on active service. Of the gallant defender of Mafeking, he said, Returning with others from the Matabella War, aboard ship, we happened one day to discuss coming men. Naturally, Baden-Powell's name was mentioned. I said that he was the ideal of what the British officers should be. He fought with his brains as well as with his hands. Whereby good work was accomplished and waste of men saved. Yet, in a fight to the finish, he was not slack, but as stubborn and bulldog a combatant as the best of those who discarded strategy.
Whilst, as my chief, I naturally stuck up for him. Nevertheless, apart from that, I have the highest regard for him, to be the true type of soldier of the future, one of those who should and must command armies, if victories are to be won. As a soldier, his tact, readiness, and resources are remarkable. These things do not come by accident, but are the result of careful garnering and the accumulation of minute details used to advantage. Where people imagined him reckless, Baden-Powell really was cautious, venturing rarely in a critical position to use measures except such as had been essayed before under similar circumstances. He left little to chance. Endeavoring by personal inspection and supervision to cover the whole ground over which operations were to be conducted.
I know he was criticized for wearing rubber shoes, and crawling about rocks of nights instead of leaving such tasks to others. We nicknamed him Old Rubber Shoes, but he was right, despite all their poking fun at him, for he gathered in a night and has possibly forgotten more than his critics could learn in a lifetime. That is the knowledge that doubtless he has gained by painstaking personal experience that has enabled him to defend mavicking so long against such heavy odds.
Baden-Powell is a wonderfully able scout and a quick sketcher. On one occasion, in the Matapos, He was in a very trying situation, surrounded by twenty-five so-called friendlies who were waiting to kill him. Apparently unconcerned, he worked away his hardest, and made an accurate drawing of the whole position. The closest shaves was at a Spruett, six miles from Bulawayo. A Kaffir scout had concealed himself in a tree beneath which several officers rested. And the nigger fired down at Baden-Powell, the bullet just grazing his skull. Of course, the Kaffir was killed. Baden-Powell profited by the occurrence, remarking that it would be just as well to look up as down when scouting thereafter. The Boers say that Baden-Powell is by far the slimmest officer that the British have, and they greatly dread him, and with good reason.
All the bits of odd knowledge that he has so studiously gathered for the last twenty years are stored away in his active brain. The result of that great unostentatious labour he has diligently been utilising for the saving of the community at Mafeking. I don't know another man who could have done his work there if the same conditions had been imposed on him.
End of Burnham interview about Baden-Powell.
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9 Mosquitoes 7:41
Mosquitoes. With a view to self-protection, I have been reading Dr. Howard's book, Mosquitoes. I am persecuted by Mosquitoes. There are several species in my neighborhood, but only one of them is a serious torment, a tiny, needly thing, all silver-speckled and silver-streaked. The puncture of it is sharp as an electric burn, and the mere hum of it has a lancinating quality of tone which foretells the quality of the pain about to come, much in the same way that a particular smell suggests a particular taste. I find that this mosquito much resembles the creature which Dr. Howard calls Stegomaea fasciata, or Culex fasciatus, and that its habits are the same as those of the Stegomaea. For example, it is diurnal rather than nocturnal, and becomes most troublesome in the afternoon, and I have discovered that it comes from the Buddha's cemetery, a very old cemetery, in the rear of my garden.
Dr. Howard's book declares that, in order to rid a neighborhood of mosquitoes, it is only necessary to pour a little petroleum or kerosene oil into the stagnant water where they breed. Once a week the oil should be used, at the rate of one ounce for every fifteen square feet of water surface, and a proportionate quantity for any less surface. But please to consider the conditions in my neighborhood. I have said that my tormentors come from the Budis cemetery. Before nearly every tomb in that old cemetery there is a water receptacle, or cistern, called Mizutami. In the majority of cases this Mizutami is simply an oblong cavity chiselled in the broad pedestal supporting the monument. But before tombs of a costly kind, having no pedestal tank, a larger separate tank is placed.
Cut out of a single block of stone, and decorated with a family crest, or with symbolic carvings. In front of a tomb of the humblest class, having no mizutami, water is placed in cups or other vessels, for the dead must have water. Flowers also must be offered to them, and before every tomb you will find a pair of bamboo cups or other flower vessels. And these, of course, contain water. There is a well in the cemetery to supply water for the graves. Whenever the tombs are visited by relatives and friends of the dead, fresh water is poured into the tanks and cups. But as an old cemetery of this kind contains thousands of misutami and tens of thousands of flower vessels, the water in all of these cannot be renewed every day.
It becomes stagnant and populous. The deeper tanks seldom get dry. The rainfall at Tokyo being heavy enough to keep them partly filled during nine months out of the twelve. Well, it is in these tanks and flower vessels that mine enemies are born. They rise by millions from the water of the dead, and according to Buddha's doctrine, some of them may be reincarnations of those very dead condemned by the error of former lives to the condition of chiki-ketsu-gaki, or blood-drinking Anyhow, the malevolence of the Culex fasciatus would justify the suspicion that some wicked human soul had been compressed into that wailing speck of a body. Now, to return to the subject of kerosene oil, you can exterminate the mosquitoes of any locality by covering with a film of kerosene all stagnant water surfaces therein.
The larvae die on rising to breathe. And the adult females perish when they approach the water to launch their rafts of eggs. And I read, in Dr. Howard's book, that the actual cost of freeing from mosquitoes one American town of 50,000 inhabitants does not exceed three hundred dollars. I wonder what would be said if the city government of Tokyo, which is aggressively scientific and progressive, were suddenly to command that all Water surfaces in the Buddhist cemeteries should be covered at regular intervals with a film of kerosene oil. How could the religion which prohibits the taking of any life, even of invisible life, yield to such a mandate? Would filial piety even dream of consenting to obey such an order?
And then to think of the cost, in labor and time, of putting kerosene oil Every seven days, into the millions of misutami and the tens of millions of bamboo flower-cups in the Tokyo graveyards. Impossible! To free the city from mosquitoes it would be necessary to demolish the ancient graveyards, and that would signify the ruin of the Buddhist temples attached to them, and that would mean the disparition of so many charming gardens. With their lotus ponds, and sanskrit-lettered monuments, and humpy bridges, and holy groves, and weirdly smiling Buddhas. So the extermination of the Culex fasciaris would involve the destruction of the poetry of the ancestral cult, surely too great a price to pay.
Besides, I should like, when my time comes, to be laid away in some Buddhas graveyard of the ancient kind, so that my ghostly company should be ancient, Caring nothing for the fashions, and the changes and the disintegrations of the mehi. That old cemetery behind my garden would be a suitable place. Everything there is beautiful, with a beauty of exceeding and startling queerness. Each tree and stone has been shaped by some old, old ideal, which no longer exists in any living brain. Even the shadows are not of this time and sun, but of a world forgotten. That never knew steam, or electricity, or magnetism, or kerosene oil. Also, in the boom of the big bell, there is a quaintness of tone which wakens feelings so strangely far away from all the nineteenth-century part of me, that the faint blind stirrings of them make me afraid, deliciously afraid.
Never do I hear that billowing peal, but I become aware of a striving and a fluttering in the abyssal Part of my ghost, a sensation as of memories struggling to reach the light beyond the obscurations of a million million deaths and births. I hope to remain within hearing of that bell, and considering the possibility of being doomed to the state of a jikiketsu gaki, I want to have my chance of being reborn in some bamboo flower-cup or misutami whence I might issue softly Singing my thin and pungent song to bite some people that I know.
End of Mosquitoes by Lefcadio Hearn.
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10 On the Unequal Sensibility of the Foramen Centrale to Light of different Colours 2:37
On the Unequal Sensibility of the Foramen Central to Light of Different Colors.
From the Report of the British Association, 1856. When observing the spectrum formed by looking at a long vertical slit through a simple prism, I noticed an elongated dark spot running up and down in the blue, and following the motion of the eye as it moved up and down the spectrum, but refusing to pass out of the blue into the other colors. It was plain that the spot belonged both to the eye and to the blue part of the spectrum. The result to which I have come is, that the appearance is due to the yellow spot on the retina, commonly called the foramen central of Sömering. The most convenient method of observing the spot is by presenting to the eye, in not too rapid succession, blue and yellow glasses, or, still better, allowing blue and yellow papers to revolve slowly before the eye.
In this way, the spot is seen in the blue. It fades rapidly, but is renewed every time the yellow comes in to relieve the effect of the blue. By using a nickel's prism along with this apparatus, the brushes of Heidinger are well seen in connection with the spot, and the fact of the brushes being the spot analyzed by polarized light becomes evident. If we look steadily at an object behind a series of bright bars which move in front of it, we shall see a curious bending of the bars as they come up to the place of the yellow spot. The part which comes over the spot seems to start in advance of the rest of the bar, and this would seem to indicate a greater rapidity of sensation at the yellow spot than in the surrounding retina.
But I find the experiment difficult, and I hope for better results from more accurate observers.
End of On the Unequal Sensibility of the Foramen Central to Light of Different Colors by James Clerk Maxwell.
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11 The Poems in "Alice in Wonderland" 14:22
The Poems in Alice in Wonderland. An essay by Florence Milner. Published in The Bookman, Volume 18, September 1903. The Poems in Alice in Wonderland. Fifty years ago, the child world was made glad by the appearance of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. It is a universal story, and so belongs to all time. It has never gone out of fashion, and never will, as long as children love wonder stories, and grown-ups have young hearts.
But those who read the book when it was first published found in it a delight which the child of to-day misses. Fifty years ago certain poems appeared in every reader, and were read over and over again, until the child was stupid indeed who did not unconsciously learn them by heart. Today there is a new fashion in literature. Children are whirled from one supplementary reader to another, conning graceful rhymes and pretty stories, all illustrated with artistic pictures, but the old things have passed away. All the poems in Alice in Wonderland are parodies upon these once familiar rhymes. Scattered lines of the poems cling to the minds of older people. They remember being once familiar with them.
They recognize the meter, and can sometimes repeat two or three opening lines, but the complete poem eludes them, and the author they probably never did know.
The children of to-day do not know the verses at all, and as a parody ceases to be a parody without the original poem as a background, the trouble of gathering these originals seems worthwhile. After Alice had fallen down the rabbit hole, and had passed through her first transformation, when she shot up like a telescope, until she was only ten inches high, and then grew bigger and bigger until her head struck the roof of the hall, she became confused as to her identity. To make sure of it, she tried to repeat a little poem, which everybody in those days knew by heart, and to such children it was very funny when it came all wrong, and she says, How doth the little crocodile improve his shining tail?
When she thought she was repeating that highly moral poem by Isaac Watts. Against Idleness and Mischief. How doth the little busy bee improve each shining hour, and gather honey all the day from every opening flower? How skilfully she builds her cell, how neat she spreads the wax, And labours hard to store it well with the sweet food she makes. In works of labour or of skill I would be busy too, for Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do. In books or work or healthful play let my first years be past, that I may give for every day some good account at last.
Again, in her conversation with the caterpillar, Alice told him that being so many different sizes in a day was very confusing, as he would find when he changed into a chrysalis, and then into a butterfly. She confessed that she could not remember things, and told her experience with, "'How doth the little busy be?' The caterpillar, wishing to test the matter, ordered her to say, "'You are old, Father William.' How well she succeeded will appear from comparing what she said with what she thought she was going to say.
The Old Man's Comforts and How He Gained Them You are old, Father William, the young man cried. The few locks that are left you are gray. You are hale, Father William, a hearty old man. Now tell me the reason, I pray. "'In the days of my youth,' Father William replied, "'I remembered that youth would fly fast, and abused not my health and my vigour at first, that I never might need them at last.' "'You are old, Father William,' the young man cried, "'and pleasures with youth pass away. And yet you lament not the days that are gone. Now tell me the reason, I pray.' "'In the days of my youth,' Father William replied, "'I remembered that youth could not last. I thought of the future whatever I did, that I never might grieve for the past.' "'You are old, Father William,' the young man cried, "'and life must be hastening away.
You are cheerful, and love to converse upon death. Now tell me the reason I pray.' "'I am cheerful, young man,' father William replied. "'Let the cause thy attention engage. "'In the days of my youth I remembered my God, "'and he hath not forgotten my age.'" Robert Southey.
The Duchess's Song to the Pig-Baby. Speak roughly to your little boy, and beat him when he sneezes. is an absurdity in itself, but a much greater one when contrasted with its serious parallel. There is evidently some uncertainty as to the author of this poem, for it occasionally appears as anonymous, but is generally credited as below.
Speak gently.
Speak gently. It is better far to rule by love than fear. Speak gently. Let no harsh word mar the good we may do here. Speak gently to the little child, Its love be sure to gain, Teach it in accents soft and mild, It may not long remain. Speak gently to the young, For they will have enough to bear, Pass through this life as best they may, Tis full of anxious care. Speak gently to the aged one, Grieve not the careworn heart, Whose sands of life are nearly run, Let such in peace depart. Speak gently, kindly, to the poor. Let no harsh tone be heard. They have enough they must endure without an unkind word.
Speak gently to the erring. No, they must have toiled in vain. Perchance unkindness made them so. Oh, win them back again. Speak gently. Love doth whisper low the vows that true hearts bind, and gently friendship's accents flow. Affection's voice is kind. Speak gently. "'Tis a little thing, dropped in the heart's deep well, The good, the joy, that it may bring, Eternity shall tell."
G. W. Langford. Twinkle, twinkle, little bat, which the hatter said that he sang at the concert given by the Queen of Hearts, is the most familiarly suggestive of them all. Jane and Anne Taylor were two English sisters who wrote together, publishing their poems under such titles as, Original Poems for Infant Minds and, Hymns for Infant Minds. Jane was supposed to have written most of them, and this one carries her signature.
The Star Twinkle, twinkle, little star, How I wonder what you are, Up above the world so high, Like a diamond in the sky. When the blazing sun is gone, when he nothing shines upon, then you show your little light. Twinkle, twinkle, all the night. Then the traveler in the dark thanks you for your tiny spark. He could not see which way to go, if you did not twinkle so. In the dark blue sky you keep, and often through my curtains peep, for you never shut your eye till the sun is in the sky.
As your bright and tiny spark lights the traveler in the dark, though I know not what you are, Twinkle, twinkle, little star. Jane Taylor.
Mary Howitt wrote, The Spider and the Fly, the first stanza of which originally read, Will you walk into my parlor, said the spider to the fly, Tis the prettiest little parlor that you ever did spy. The way into my parlour is up a winding stair, and I've got many curious things to show you when you are there. Oh, no, no, said the little fly, to ask me is in vain, for who goes up your winding stair can ne'er come down again.
This poem has suffered various modifications, and several versions appear in print, but the quoted stanza is doubtless from the original one. The beat of the metre is very perfectly kept in the mock-turtles. Will you walk a little faster?
Tis the voice of the lobster, which Alice repeats at the gruff order of the griffin, returns to Isaac Watts. Probably no poem in the book is further removed from modern thought and modern literary ideals than this one.
The Sluggard. Tis the voice of the sluggard, I heard him complain. You have waked me too soon, I must slumber again. As the door on its hinges, so he on his bed, turns his sides and his shoulders and his heavy head. A little more sleep and a little more slumber. Thus he wastes half his days and his hours without number, and when he gets up he sits folding his hands, or walks about sauntering or trifling he stands. I passed by his garden and saw the wild-briar, the thorn and the thistle grow broader and higher. The clothes that hung on him are turning to rags, and his money still wastes till he starves or he begs.
I made him a visit, still hoping to find that he took better care for improving his mind. He told me his dreams, talked of eating and drinking, but he scarce reads his Bible, and never loves thinking. Said I then to my heart, Here's a lesson for me, This man's but a picture of what I might be, But thanks to my friends, For their care in my breeding, Who taught me betimes to love working and reading.
Beautiful Soup is a very funny parody upon a popular song of the time, and runs as follows.
Star of the evening. Beautiful star, in heaven so bright, Softly falls thy silvery light, As thou movest from earth afar, Star of the evening, beautiful star. Chorus. Beautiful star, beautiful star, Star of the evening, beautiful star.
In fancy's eye, thou seem'st to say, Follow me, come from earth away, Upward thy spirit's pinions try, To realms of love beyond the sky. Shine on, O star of love divine, And may our soul's affection twine around thee As thou movest far, Star of the twilight, beautiful star. James M. Sale.
The most delightful part of the parody is the division of the words in the refrain in imitation of the approved method of singing the song, with its holds and its sentimental stress upon the last word. Beautiful soup, beautiful soup, soup of the evening, beautiful, beautiful soup.
The poem upon which the last parody is based is not as well known as most of the others, the first two lines being the only ones often quoted.
Alice Gray. She's all my fancy painted her. She's lovely, she's divine, but her heart it is another's, she never can be mine. Yet loved I as man never loved, a love without decay. Oh, my heart, my heart is breaking for the love of Alice Gray.
Her dark-brown hair is braided, o'er a brow of spotless white. Her soft blue eye now languishes, now flashes with delight. Her hair is braided not for me, the eye is turned away, yet my heart, my heart is breaking for the love of Alice Gray. I've sunk beneath the summer sun and trembled in the blast, but my pilgrimage is nearly done, the weary conflict's past, and when the green sod wraps my grave, may pity haply say, Oh, his heart, his heart is broken for the love of Alice Gray.
William Mee.
Carol's first writing followed the wording in the original first stanza, and began, She's all my fancy painted him, I make no idle boast, If he or you had lost a limb, which would have suffered most? But for some unknown reason he dropped the first stanza, beginning with the second, thus obliterating all evident resemblance between parody and original.
The parody is not the highest form of wit, and not the most skilful form of verse, but Lewis Carroll has done these eight so well that doubtless some of them will live after the originals are forgotten. Even now, in order to search them out, it has been necessary to beat the dust from many a forgotten volume in a library's unmolested corners, but the nonsense rhymes they suggested are jingling upon the tongues of children the wide world over, and mingling with their happy laughter.
The Poems in Alice in Wonderland by Florence Milner. Read by Kara Schallenberg. W. W. W. kray.org, March 2010. I'm Dr. Brown, in San Diego, California.
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12 Remarks on the Antiquity of Pugilism 45:27
Boxiana, or Sketches of Ancient and Modern Pugilism.
For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. That the English nation has distinguished itself among the moderns, As bestowing applause and substantial reward on every brave and noble exertion, I am proud to allow. And I will also concede that the present age surpasses those of former times, and the last hundred years as the great milling era of the world. But as a true admirer of the nations of antiquity, I should feel that I did not do justice to their character, Did I not remark that the Greeks and Romans were equally assiduous in cultivating the powers of the human system, and no less famous for their admiration of feats of valour in the arena of the amphitheatre? To ascertain who was the first boxer is a question of more than ordinary difficulty in deciding with accuracy.
Shakspeare makes the gravedigger in Hamlet Tell us Adam was the first that bore arms, but that is not sufficiently to the purpose. Pollux, the twin brother of Castor, is the first, it appears, who made such proficiency in the science as to hand down his name to future ages. This was he whom Jupiter, in the form of a swan, is said to have begotten on the body of the fair Leda, the mother of the beauteous Helen. Such was the admiration in which he was held, that future ages ascribed to him immortality, as for the same reason they had done to Hercules, and assigned to him a seat on Olympus in the assembly of the gods. He is the father, and in pagan times he was deemed the god of all the boxers. Hacarte Pollux et Vagus Hercules, Inixus Arces, Ategit Igneus.
Horace, Pollux and wandering Hercules, by sparring, gained in heaven a place. Eryx, the Sicilian, a son of Venus, had used the Cestus with such success that he vanquished every opponent. At length, having challenged Hercules, He was killed by the latter in a desperate combat. Nor could Amadeus find an equal till Pollux, in a trial of skill with him, obtained the superiority over his prowess. But the best account of a battle with the ancient Cestus is given in Virgil, where, although the rounds are not described with the peculiar minut of a prize contest at Moulesley Hurst, the arena of modern exploits, yet enough is mentioned to give an adequate idea of the gluttony and bottom of Dares and Entellus, the latter of whom, in particular, after a tremendous flooring, when his friends and the spectators thought Entellus was decidedly finished, he, by a determined rally, gave his opponent so severe a milling that he was eventually declared the winner.
While Darius, on the contrary, was carried from the scene of action with scarcely any life in him, and totally incapable of making use of his legs. There appears no regular data to determine the fact whether in the exercise of the Circus of Rome the pugilists ever fought with naked hands and arms, but as this nation, it seems, borrowed most of her arts from Greece, It is probable that the boxers never engaged without the kairothecae, or gloves, stuffed with lead. More especially, as the ancients were remarkably fond of show in their public exhibitions of vigour and strength. Originally, little doubt can exist, when every man stood on the alert to provoke or resist an insult. He fought without system, and with naked fist.
But soon rules were laid down, and these natural means of attack or defense submitted to peculiar regulations, the collection of which became a discipline, a science, and an art. A discipline, because it was taught for the benefits of the respective individuals, a science, on account of the necessary trainings before the acquisition of expertness, and an art, with respect to the different studies it presupposed. Consequently, in order to give a better opportunity to the boxers to show their skill by protracting the temporal length or duration of their exertions, strong armor for the head and hand was invented. This circumstance gave rise to two sorts of boxing. The first, when the champions had no other arms than their natural strength and agility, The other when they made use of the Amphotides and Cestus.
The Amphotides, as the word implies, were a sort of guard to secure the temporal bones and arteries, and encompassing the ears in their thongs and ligaments, which used to buckle either under the chin or behind the head. They were not unlike caps made of hides of bulls, studded with knobs of iron, or strongly quilted in order to blunt the impetus of the blows. But this mode of fighting seems rather to belong to the second age of the pugilistic era. The cestis was an offensive weapon, the headpiece a defensive dress. Several sorts of cestis, or gauntlets, were known to the ancients, and were composed in general of strong interwoven leather straps, which, embracing the fist and part of the carpus, or wrist, and winding up round the forearm, were fixed at the elbow.
They appear to have often been armed with knobs of brass, blunt points of iron, plummets of lead, etc. The following lines from Dryden's Virgil, beautifully describe the Cestis used by Erix. He, Antellus, threw two ponderous gauntlets down in open view. Gauntlets which Erex wont in fight to wield, and sheath his hands within the listed field. With fear and wonder seized, the crowd beholds the gloves of death, with seven distinguished folds, of tough bull's hides. The space within is spread with iron, or with loads of heavy lead. Garrys himself was daunted at the sight, Renounced his challenge, and refused to fight. Astonished at their weight, the hero stands, And poised the ponderous engines in his hands.
The performers in the athletic art, it appears, were divided into three classes, the boxers, wrestlers, and runners. If we attend to the manner in which a man attacks his antagonist, we shall find that boxing comes in the first place, closing or wrestling in the second, and running, if fear makes its unwelcome appearance, in the third. Thus Homer considers it, and generally follows this order in his descriptions of Jimnic games. Plutarch asserts that the pugilat was the most ancient of these games, and took generally the lead in all public spectacles, as the most manly and scientific of the gymnac arts. It also appears that pugilism, or pugilat, is derived from the Latin pugilatus, the art of fighting with the fist, pugnus.
These words were evidently borrowed from the Greek Pyx. Adverb pugno vel pugnis, pygma hin, pugnus pugnare. It is not unworthy of observation that this thema seems originally to have signified anything in the shape of a round box, and consequently the human fist, which, when clenched, takes that form. As we may easily see by its derivative, pyxis, a box, Hence our expression of boxing, box being often used for a blow of the fist. A proof of this etymine, in the compound words pugnose, pugdog, employed to indicate a knobby fist-like shape in the most prominent part of the face, and the tree used for making boxes, claims the same origin for its name. Pyxos, Buxus, Box. The Greeks, it seems, were the first people who cultivated the Pugilate as a science, confined it to strict rules, and selected experienced masters and professors who, by public lessons, delivered gratis, in palestri and gymnasia, erected for the purpose, instructed the youth in the theory and practice of the art.
The kings and princes of this nation did not disdain to lay aside their dignity for a few hours, and, exchanging willingly the sceptre for the Cestus, seemed to be more proud of the vigour of their fists and muscular length of their limbs than of the strength of their armies and the extent of their dominions. In Greece, the science of boxing, like all the other liberal arts, was cultivated with much ardour. Once in three years, the whole nation, consisting of so many various states, assembled at the Isthmus of Corinth to celebrate the Games in honor of Neptune. To this place resorted all that was enterprising in youth, great in manhood, or glorious in old age. The generous admiration of an applauding nation placed the crown upon the head of the successful pugilist, and at his return home He was received in triumph as the supporter of his country's fame.
The pen of the poet sought renown in handing down to posterity, in musical numbers, the feats of heroic enterprise. Even the genius of Pindar found the way to reputation by celebrating the horses victorious in the chariot race. The first of these poets appeared in the train of heroism, and sought immortality under the shade of the name of men whose hardihood had conducted them to glory. The inferior lot of the poet is described by the first of all the Latin lyric writers. Cuem tu melpomene semel nascentem placido lumine videris Ilum non labor, isthmus, ciarabit, pugilem. Lib. Four. Ode. Three. Which may be thus rendered, he, at whose birth the muses did preside, shall ne'er in victory's car as champion ride.
The poets, however, may take comfort in the reflection that, next to the performing of great deeds ourselves, The most honorable part is to celebrate them in others. It is a glorious thing, says Cicero, to do well to the Republic, and also to speak well is not contemptible. In returning to the period of English history, when scientific boxing became a prominent national feature, it appears that nearly a century has elapsed since Figg first publicly exhibited himself as a pugilist by promulgating the art of self-defense. It was about the year 1720. The science of boxing might then be considered in its very dawn. The superior knowledge that he possessed of the sword and stick drew crowds after him when he professed to teach pugilism.
Fig was a native of Thames, in Oxfordshire, dwelt in Mary-le-bon, and taught numbers of gentlemen scientifically at his amphitheatre in Oxford Road, when his fame was so great that we find him praised in the Tattler, Guardian, and Craftsman by the several writers in those miscellanies. With the sword he was unrivalled. He was not so scientific as a pugilist, and contrasted with more modern times, he would rank with the old ruffian, Simmons. Sutton, the pipe-maker of Gravesend, was his rival, and dared the mighty Fig to the combat. Twice they fought with alternate advantage, but at the third trial a considerable time elapsed before victory decided for either party. In fine, neither Ned Sutton, Tim Buck, nor Bob Stokes could resist his skill and valour.
He had never been defeated but once, and then by Sutton in one of their previous combats, though it was generally allowed to have been owing to his illness at the time. Figg died in 1734. He had often exhibited before George II with great applause. Bill Flanders, a noted scholar of Figg's, Fought at the amphitheatre in 1723 with Chris Clarkson, denominated the old soldier. It was highly spoken of at that period. It was looked upon as a very great proof of self-denial in an amateur if he failed a meeting on those occasions. From Figg's theatre he will miss a night, though cocks and bulls and Irish women fight. But it is due to Broughton to observe that owing to his exertions he gave a refinement to the practice of boxing it did not possess before his period of teaching the art of self-defence, which not only rendered it familiar, but interesting to all ranks of the British nation.
The Cestis, so much deprecated by the enlightened part of mankind as forming a part of the gladiatorial system of the Romans, from its death-like qualities in the combat, which rendered their public displays so repulsive to the feelings of humanity, was, by the above gymnastic hero, completely avoided in his exhibitions, by the introduction of the harmless mufflers, as may be seen from the following advertisement in the Daily Advertiser of February 1, 1747. N. B. Mr. Broughton proposes, with proper assistance, to open an academy at his house in the Haymarket, for the instruction of those who are willing to be initiated in the mystery of boxing, where the whole theory and practice of that truly British art, with all the various stops, blows, cross-buttocks, and etc., incident to combatants, will be fully taught and explained.
and that persons of quality and distinction may not be debarred from entering into a course of those lectures. They will be given with the utmost tenderness and regard to the delicacy of the frame and constitution of the pupil, for which reason mufflers are provided that will effectually secure them from the inconveniency of black eyes, broken jaws, and bloody noses. The above invitation had the desired effect, and Broughton's school was crowded with scholars of the first rank and character in the nation. Originally Broughton was a waterman, but he afterwards became one of the yeomen of the Guard. He accompanied to the continent the Duke of Cumberland, his patron and great admirer of pugilism.
And upon being shown the fine regiment of grenadiers at Berlin, belonging to Frederick the Great, so distinguished for their martial appearance, rigid discipline, and great valour, was asked by the Duke what he thought of any of them for a set-to, when Broughton, with a smile, instantly replied, "'Why, your Royal Highness, I should have no objection to fight the whole regiment. Only be kind enough to allow me a breakfast between each battle. This pugilistic veteran lived to the good old age of eighty-five years, and died on January 18, 1719, at Walcott Place, Lambeth, and was interred in the churchyard of that parish. It does not appear that either Tom Johnson or Big Ben, those warlike champions of the fist, were ever anxious to obtain an eminence as sparrers, but their exploits in the ring have given to those boxers characters so distinguished for manhood, that while the annals of pugilism are preserved from the ravages of time, the names of Johnson and Brain will never sink into oblivion.
As a teacher of the science, it was Mendoza that immediately trod in the steps of Broughton. He made the art of self-defence, when quite a boy, his peculiar study. His success as a professor was unrivalled, and there was scarcely a town of note in the kingdom, in which Mendoza did not exhibit his finished talents as a pugilist with admiration. It seems he derived his primitive knowledge of boxing from the tuition of his elegant rival, Humphreys, but he so rapidly improved upon the system of his master as to remain several years without a rival. No man united the theory of sparring with the practice of boxing to greater advantage than Dan Mendoza, and though upwards of fifty years of age he exhibits at the present day with attention and respect.
The next in succession, among the highest circles of the patrons of the art of self-defense, stands Mr. Jackson. It is upwards of twenty years since he appeared in the ring with Mendoza. As a teacher of the science, in every point of view, Mr. Jackson is entitled to preeminence, and no man more deservedly. Independent of the conciliatory prepossessing manners of a gentleman, and the advantages of fortune and superior company, his fine athletic frame, added to his indefatigable study and extensive practice, he has been enabled to acquire those requisites toward perfection that few, if any, pugilists in other situations of life could be expected to attain. His guard is altogether so firm and compact, his arms so powerful and irresistible, and his mode of instruction so explanatory and decisive, that it appears it is almost impossible to plant a blow upon any part of his person with anything like severity of effect.
At his elegant rooms, Thirteen Bond Street, Mr. Jackson's lessons on the pugilistic art were long honored by the numerous attendants of nobility and gentry, among whom the names of many of the first characters in the nation might be seen in the subscription list. The rooms, during the season, are open three times a week, where everything respecting the prize ring and connected with pugilism are determined under the immediate auspices of Mr. Jackson. It is only at the above rooms that Mr. J. exhibits. He is pronounced by the scientific amateurs to have no superior in his knowledge and display of the art, scarcely an equal in setting to, and few, if any, dispose to dispute this superiority with him.
It may not, in this place, be improper to remark that among the numerous species of amusements prepared to attract the attention of the royal heroes and their generals who visited the Prince Regent in England in 1814 in honor of the Peace of Europe, it should seem none interested those great warriors more than the art of self-defense portrayed in an exhibition of sparring. Lord Louther invited the Emperor of Russia, Generals Platoff and Blucher, to an elegant dejeuner, when the national sport of boxing, as a peculiar trait of the brave natives of England, was introduced for their approbation at his Lordship's House in Pall Mall on Wednesday, June 15, 1814. Those distinguished visitors were so much gratified with this generous mode of settling quarrels and the scientific mode of attack and defense exhibited, that they earnestly requested of Lord Lowther that another trial of skill might take place on the Friday following, when, in addition to the above visitors, the King of Prussia, the Prince Royal of Prussia, Princes Frederick and William of Prussia, The Prince of Mecklenburg, General D'Orque, etc., etc., honored the meeting with their presence.
Some elegant specimens of the pugilistic art were displayed between Messrs. Jackson, Belcher, Cribb, Richman, Painter, Oliver, etc. The set-tos in general were excellent, but the sparring of Jackson was particularly admired. The elegance of his positions, the celerity of his attack, the fortitude of his manner, and the superior mode he developed of guarding his frame from the attacks of his adversaries created a lively interest among the royal warriors. His symmetry of figure and fine muscular powers also did not pass unnoticed. The champion of England, Cribb, occasioned a general's stare among the spectators, and the veteran Blucher eyed him with more than common attention. The royal guests expressed their satisfaction at the treat they had experienced, and upon taking their departure complimented his lordship as the patron of so manly and characteristic a trait of his country.
Since the popular fighting days of Mendoza, No pugilist, it is certain, has appeared in the prize-ring in possession of science to realize an equality of milling fame with the above-distinguished Israelite as Tom Belcher. The debut of the latter, with Jack War, in 1804, exhibited such superior knowledge of boxing as to astonish the most competent amateur present of his decisive talents. And from that period, down to the present moment, He stands confessedly as the first public exhibitor of sparring on the list of scientific pugilists. It appears, since the Fives Court in St. Martin Street, Lesterfields, has held its rank as a national and manly place of amusement among the numerous public exhibitions of the present enlightened era in the first metropolis in the world, scientific pugilism, has made rapid strides towards perfection, and the art of boxing has not only been more extended, but its requisites, in consequence, become better known.
The Fives Court holds out two particular advantages, namely Those pugilists who, from their good conduct, are entitled to the patronage of the amateurs, are permitted to take their benefits. And those persons, whether from want of inclination or inconvenience, who do not witness the combats of the ring, may, at the above place, see the science illustrated in every point of view with the gloves, by the various boxers, with all the minut of a regular match, and without offending the most fastidious advocates of humanity. Besides, it not only affords new candidates an opportunity of exhibiting their pretensions, but it also operates as a mode of public practice, and keeps the abilities of the professors continually before the eyes of their patrons.
Improvement may be discovered, and condition is not overlooked. From such frequent opportunities as above stated, the wary better is enabled to form a tolerably correct judgment respecting new matches, and he does not attend a prize battle with a mind totally uninformed upon the subject. Viewed as an object of national amusement, it operates in another sort of way. that if the merits of the milling stage cannot boast so often of the advantages of criticism as the boards of more classic theatres, nor the qualities of the performers become so generally the theme of discussion as the extraordinary flights of genius elicited by a kemble or a keene, yet nevertheless the elegant attitudes and scientific traits of a belcher, the manliness of a crib, The unceasing activity of a carter, and the getting-away system of a Richmond, are in their peculiar circles perhaps as much the objects of attraction, and their various acquirements, decanted upon with equally as much warmth and attention by the amateurs of this Old English sport, towards promoting the true spirit of the country, as to raise its importance from subjects of a more refined source.
The Fives Court is well attended during the season, and the exhibitors rather numerous, but the principal heroes who take the lead in point of excellence are Belcher, Eales, Richmond, Cribb, Carter, Randall, Head, etc. The admission by tickets is three shillings each person. It will hold upwards of one thousand spectators, and upon several patriotic occasions, such as in aid of the suffering Portuguese from the burning of their towns by the French, for the British prisoners in France, and for the widows and orphans of the brave fellows who fell at the Battle of Waterloo, some hundreds of pounds have been collected towards their relief. The audience generally are of the most respectable description, and many persons of the first rank are often witnessed among them.
Respecting the utility of the above exhibitions, it has been observed by a distinguished and experienced boxer that to advance rules in a magisterial manner and lay them down as infallible would be truly absurd. Since the principles of almost every science have been found liable to change, it were presumptuous to pronounce ours free from the same imperfections. Sparring is absolutely necessary to form a complete pugilist. It is, certainly, a mock encounter, but at the same time a representation, and in most cases an exact one, of real fighting. It is the only proper introduction to boxing, and a just mode of realizing whatever principles the scholar may have imbibed, or trying the success of any new plan he may have invented.
By this method, he can also judge of the propriety of his master's lessons, and exercise his reasoning faculties, an advantage of which he is often deprived in battle. Some are of the opinion that sparring is of no great use, and that it takes from the natural powers of manhood, while it only teaches finesse that cannot prove hurtful to a courageous adversary. This, however, is merely reviving an opinion maintained by the pupils of the old school, in which strength generally prevailed over skill. It is not evident that preparation is necessary for every exercise, but more particularly for that in which hostilities take place, and what is sparring but a preparation, and of the nearest affinity to boxing.
The advocates for this opinion might, with equal propriety, assert that shooting at a mark was of no service in forming an expert gunner. It should be generally understood that the practice of sparring is recommended as if in real action. No maneuvers, no attitudes ought to be adopted unless experimentally, but what would be introduced in actual fight. For instance, let anyone suppose a sparring-room the scene of battle, and exert himself upon that principle, He will easily habituate himself to the exercise of all his powers, and act by the same rules in the hour of danger. There may be a great difference between sparring and fighting. One may be very courageous in play, whose heart would be intimidated in real action.
But this want of valour is by no means an argument against the doctrine that is laid down here, since cowardice is not produced by sparring. For he must have been in the same degree dastardly if he had never seen it, and perhaps more so. What is mentioned here only goes to prove that where two persons possess equal courage, strength, and activity, the man who makes sparring his practice must be superior to him who does not, as one who considers a thing before its performance must— Unless chance interfere, have an advantage over him who thinks consideration unnecessary. Strength, science, courage, activity, the power of bearing blows, a quick eye, and good wind are the constituents of a complete boxer.
In describing the above requisites, to form a complete boxer, it is not insinuated that no person can be a good pugilist without them all. One man possesses more requisites than many others, and will be therefore superior. But he who unites all that is necessary in himself will be victorious until his equal appears, whom a single requisite, possessed on either side in greater degree, will give the advantage. Activity, or milling on the retreat, is, at the present, period, a greater requisite toward victory than it was formerly considered. Some have censured shifting as an unmanly custom, but without reason. If, indeed, mere brutal force were to decide a combat, it might be deemed improper, but where the mind has considerable share in the decision, as the case at present, Getting away cannot be thought unmanly.
The same censure might be passed on fencing, or an accidental rencontre in the field of battle, but would it not be absurd to say to a man, whose only care is the preservation of his life, You must not avoid your enemy's sword by changing your ground. You must not make use of that activity of which you are capable, because it is unmanly. Richmond has, in all his battles, practically decided the advantages of milling on the retreat towards victory. The power of bearing blows, or what is generally called bottom, quickness of eye and wind, are requisites of great importance, and may be all improved by constant practice. There are men who seemed peculiarly formed for bottom. The severest blows make little impression on the ribs of some, and the heads of others.
The old school furnishes a surprising instance of bottom. The noted buck-horse, it is said, made a practice of standing without a guard, and permitting himself to be knocked down by the hardest hitter for a trifling sum of money. The modern school also furnishes numerous instances of bottom. Exhibited by Cribb, Painter, Oliver, the unfortunate Curtis, etc. The advantage of a good eye is evident. It is necessary to discern the approach of a stroke, as well as to perceive the vulnerable parts of an opponent. A resolute look is useful in awing an opponent, and often disconcerts the boldest. The eye should never be closed in the time of action. Wind, though naturally good, may be improved by the exercise of sparring.
The pupil's first object of knowledge should be to acquire a proper mode of striking. A decisive blow may be made by a person unacquainted with the other parts of pugilism, and though a man may be well versed in the guards, he hazards much in parrying his adversary if he himself is ignorant of the principles of striking. Because he knows not the common direction of the arms against which he is to defend himself. Thus, whether we consider striking in an offensive or defensive view, either to assault an adversary or receive his attack, it is the most elementary part of boxing, and should be the first studied. The large knuckles of the hand should be only used. They are rarely disabled, but the knuckles in the middle of the fingers frequently give way.
Straight blows are preferable to all others. They are stronger because they come directly from the centre of the power, and quicker because they describe less space in the attainment of the object. It therefore follows that it is more difficult to parry them than any others. Round hitting is now universally exploded. It is condemned by the same reasons which recommend straight blows, For it is directly contrary to them. In the zenith of Mendoza, it was the custom to extol chopping as the best mode of hitting. It is a blow struck on the face with the back of the hand. Mendoza claims the honor of its invention, but unjustly. He certainly revived and considerably improved it. It was practiced long before our time.
Broughton occasionally used it. And Slack, it also appears, struck the chopper in giving the return in many of its battles. The advocates for chopping at the present period are very few, if any. Experience proves that it can be of no great service, since, of all the pitched battles which have been lately fought, it has not contributed to gain one. In the contest between Tyne and Crabbe, Chopping suffered a shameful disgrace. Crabbe was thought next to Mendoza, the most successful in the use of it, yet he never hit Tyne. Indeed, reason convinces us that it can be of no great utility. It partakes of the nature of a round blow, for it is given downwards or sideways, and must therefore deviate from the centre.
It also exposes the arm to danger. Every chopper should take its force from the play of the arm, between the elbow and wrist. But if, in the eagerness of action, the elbow should be thrown too forward, the small of the arm may be broken. Some pugilists are not for entirely laying it aside, and think it may be happily used in giving the return, considering, if a boxer engages with a person ignorant of the science, it will certainly prove successful. But when two skilful boxers meet, no reliance is to be placed upon it, and such is the opinion of the most experienced professors of the present day. A knowledge of the parts of the body most dangerous to be struck is necessary to every boxer, but first it should be observed that any blow planted on the waistband or below it is unfair and causes the loss of the battle.
Whatever rules are laid down in sparring should be followed in fighting. They are both considered in the same view, and what is mentioned concerning the one is applicable to the other. Every student should endeavor to unite grace with power, and this may be easily accomplished, since nature delights in the graceful. To point out any attitude as the best in all cases would be ridiculous. A physician might as well prescribe one medicine for all constitutions. Every one should adopt his mode of defence to his own powers, of which, after some practice, he must be the best judge. This only is necessary to remark. When a person, after mature deliberation and some experience, has adopted a particular guard, he should not easily relinquish it.
His only plan should be its improvement. For if he continually seek for new positions, he cannot act by rule, and must often leave the decision of a combat to fortune. The triumph of Humphreys over Mendoza at Odeham is a strong proof of the propriety of this advice. Though the latter changed his manner of fighting as often as Proteus did Shapes, yet he was as often vanquished. A systematic conduct will prevail over irregularity, which chance can only render victorious. Perhaps it may be necessary to notice, lest it should be adopted by others who might think it proper, merely from seeing it often used. The arms are crossed to form the guard. Two disadvantages result to any person who practices this.
In the first instance, One of his adversary's hands, placed upon the upper arm, will force them both down and expose the superior part of the body. Secondly, a blow given by one in this position cannot be in a direct line, and must therefore lose much of its force. Though we cannot be always guarded, particularly in attacking an enemy, yet we should, as much as possible, preserve our guard. Upon this principle, the arm should be drawn but very little back to strike, for the guard is lost in proportion to the retrograde motion. An adversary also gets notice of his danger, and is, of course, prepared to receive the assault. A blow should be struck, without any previous alteration of attitude, for even should it fail, the attempt is productive of little mischief, and leaves no opening, if the guard be immediately recovered.
But this cannot be done when the weight and strength of the body are thrown in with the blow, a measure which never ought to take place, unless it is absolutely certain that an opponent cannot defend it. A skilful boxer will never hazard a blow without the prospect of putting in a second to more advantage. Feints, though extremely useful, and the effects of science, are not so much attended to as they merit. If, in fencing, they prove so decisive, why should they not be adopted with equal success in pugilism? It is urged by some that a boxer should always keep his arms in motion to and fro. The reason given in its defence, that the action of the fists prevents the approach of a blow from being perceived, is, perhaps, not strictly just.
For is not the violent increase of motion as easily discerned as its beginning? If this be true, it will follow that it is better to keep the arms steady, because motion will cause an antagonist to be more carefully on his guard, since he must, every moment, expect an assault, whereas their firmness may betray him into fancied security. Closing has been for some time exploded. and this alone may serve as an argument to show that boxing is greatly improved, since what was formerly of much utility is now esteemed unnecessary or of little value. Yet pugilists should familiarise themselves to closing, that whenever it occurs they ought to be prepared for the worst. In concluding this subject, It is thus Sir John Sinclair, in his Code of Health and Longevity, observes, with respect to fencing, and which applies with equal force towards the improvement of the Constitution, as derived from the exercise of sparring, many instances of which the author of this work has been well assured of from the teachers of pugilism, that induced him to make the following extract.
There is no exercise, says Sir John, with a view to health better entitled to the attention of those who are placed among the higher classes of society than that of fencing. The positions of the body, in fencing, have for their objects erectness, firmness, and balance. And in practising that art, the chest, the neck, and the shoulders are placed in positions the most beneficial to health. The various motions of the arms and limbs, whilst the body maintains its erect position, enables the muscles in general to acquire vigorous strength, and in young people the bones of the chest and thorax necessarily become more enlarged, by means of which a consumptive tendency may be prevented. Various instances may be adduced where fencing has prevented consumption and other disorders.
It has been remarked also that those who practice this art are, in general, remarkable for long life and the good health they have enjoyed. These considerations, combined with the graceful movements which it establishes, and the elegant means of self-defence which it furnishes, certainly render the art an object of considerable importance. Sparring equally produces the above beneficial effects In every point of view.
End of Boxiana, or sketches of... Ancient and Modern Pugilism by Pierce Egan.
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13 Silly Novels by Lady Novelists 1:04:46
Silly Novels by Lady Novelists by George Eliot. This is a LibriVox. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Jalefa Sully Novels by Lady Novelists by George Eliot.
Silly novels by lady novelists are a genus with many species, determined by the particular quality of silliness that predominates in them—the frothy, the prosy, the pious, or the pedantic. But it is a mixture of all these, a composite order of feminine fatuity, that produces the largest class of such novels, which we shall distinguish as the mind and millinery species. The herring is usually an heiress, probably a peeress in her own ride, with perhaps a vicious baronet, an amiable duke, and an irresistible younger son of a marquise as lovers in the foreground, a clergyman and a poet sighing for her in the middle distance, and a crowd of undefined adorers dimly indicated beyond.
Her eyes and her wit are both dazzling, her nose and her morals are alike free from any tendency to irregularity. She has a superb contralto, and a superb intellect, she is perfectly well-dressed and perfectly religious, she dances like a sylph, and reads the Bible in the original tongues. Or it may be that Heron is not an heiress, that rank and wealth are the only things in which she is deficient. But she infallibly gets into high society. She has a time of refusing many matches and securing the best, and she wears some family jewels, Rosa, as a sort of crown of righteousness at the end. Rakish men either bite their lips in impotent confusion at her repudies, or are touched to penitence by her reproves, which, on appropriate occasions, rise to a lofty strain of rhetoric.
Indeed, there is a general propensity in her to make speeches, and to rhapsodize at some lengths when she retires to her bedroom. In her recorded conversations, she is amazingly eloquent, and in her unrecorded conversations, amazingly witty.
She is understood to have a depth of insight that looks through and through the shallow theories of philosophers, and her superior instincts are a sort of dial by which men have only to set their clocks and watches, and all will go well. The men play a very subordinate part, by her side. You are consoled, now and then, by a hint that they have affairs, which keeps you in mind that the working-day business of the world is somehow being carried on. But ostensibly the final cause of their existence is that they may accompany the herring on her starring expedition through life. They see her at a ball, and are dazzled, at a flower-show, and they are fascinated. On a riding excursion, and they are waged by her noble horsemanship.
A church, and they are awed by the sweet solemnity of her demeanour. She is the ideal woman in feelings, faculties, and flounces. For all this, she as often as not marries the wrong person to begin with, and she suffers terribly from the plots and intrigues of the vicious baronet. But even death has a soft place in his heart for such a paragon, and remedies all mistakes for her just at the right moment. The vicious baronet is sure to be killed in a duel, and the tedious husband dies in his bed, requesting his wife, as a particular favor to him, to marry the man she loves best. And having already dispatched to know to the lover, informing him of a comfortable arrangement. Before matters arrive at this desirable issue, our feelings are tried by seeing the noble, lovely, and gifted heron passer through many mauvais moments.
But we have the satisfaction of knowing that her sorrows are wept into embroidered pocket-handkerchiefs, that the fainting form reclines on the very best upholstery. and that whatever vicissitudes she may undergo, from being dashed out of her carriage to having her head shaved in a fever, she comes out of them all with a complexion more blooming and looks more redundant than ever.
We may remark, by the way, that we have been relieved from a serious scruple by discovering that silly novels by lady novelists rarely introduce us into any other than very lofty and fashionable society. We had imagined that destitute women turned novelists as if they turned governesses, because they had no other ladylike means of getting their bread. On this supposition, vacillating syntax and Improbable incident had a certain pay toss for us, like the extremely supererogatory pincushions and ill-devised nightcaps that are offered for sale by a blind man. We felt the commodity to be a nuisance, but we were glad to think that the money went to relieve the necessities. And we pictured to ourselves lonely women struggling for maintenance, or wives and daughters devoting themselves to the production of copy out of pure heroism, perhaps to pave the husband's debts, or to purchase luxuries for a sick father.
Under these impressions we shrank from criticizing a lady's lover. Her English might be forty, But, we said to ourselves, her motives are irreproachable. Her imagination may be uninventive, but her patience is untiring. Empty writing was excused by an empty stomach, and Twaddle was consecrated by tears. But no, this theory of ours, like many other British theories, has had to give way before observation.
Women's Silly Novels We are now convinced, are written under totally different circumstances. The fair writers have evidently never talked to tradesmen except from a carriage window. They have no notion of the working classes except as dependents. They think five hundred a year a miserable pittance. and Baronial Halls are their primary truths, and they have no idea of feeling interest in any man who is not at least a great landed proprietor, if not a prime minister. It is clear that they write in elegant boudoirs, with violet-colored ink and ruby pen, that they must be entirely indifferent to publishers' accounts, and inexperienced in every form of poverty, except poverty of brains. It is true that you are constantly struck with the want of verisimilitude in their representations of the high society in which they seem to live, but then they betray no closer acquaintance with any other form of life.
If their peers and peeresses are improbable, their literary men, tradespeople and cottages are impossible, And their intellect seems to have the peculiar impartiality of reproducing both what they have seen and heard, and what they have not seen and heard, with equal unfaithfulness.
There are few women, we suppose, who have not seen something of children under five years of age, yet in compensation, a recent novel of the minor millinery species, which calls itself a story of real life, We have a child of four and a half years old, talking in this oceanic fashion.
Oh, I am so happy, dear Grandmamma. I have seen—I have seen such a delightful person. He is like everything beautiful, like the smell of sweet flowers, and the view from Ben-Lemont. I know better than that. He is like what I think of and see when I am very, very happy. And he's really like Mama, too, when she sings, and his forehead is like that distant sea," she continued, pointing to the blue Mediterranean. There seems no end, no end, or like the clusters of stars are like best to look at on a warm, fine night. Don't look so. Your forehead is like Loch Lomond when the wind is blowing and the sun has gone in. I like the sunshine best when the lake is smooth. So now I like it better than ever.
It is more beautiful still from the dark cloud that has gone over it, when the sun suddenly lights up all the colors of the forests and shining purple rocks, as it is all reflected in the waters below.
We are not surprised to learn that the mother of this infant phenomenon, who exhibits symptoms so alarmingly like those of adolescence, repressed by gin, is herself a phoenix. We are assured again and again that she had a remarkably original mind, that she was a genius and conscious of her originality, and she was fortunate enough to have a lover who was also a genius and a man of most original mind.
This lover, we read, though wonderfully similar to her in powers and capacity, was infinitely superior to her in faith and development. And she saw in him the Agape, so rare to find, of which he had read and admired the meaning in her Greek testament, having, from her great facility in learning languages, read the scriptures in their original tongues. Of course, Greek and Hebrew are mere play to her, and Sanskrit is no more than A.B.C. to her. And she can talk with perfect correctness in any language, except English. She is a polking polyglot, a cruiser in crinoline. Poor men! There are so few of you, who know even Hebrew. You think it something to boast of. Like Bolingbroke, you only understand that sort of learning and what is written about it.
And you are, perhaps, adoring women who can think slightingly of you in all the Semitic languages successively. But then, as we are almost invariably told, that a heron has a beautiful small head, and as her intellect has probably been early invigorated by an attention to costume and deportment, we may conclude that you can pick up the Oriental tongues, to say nothing of their dialects, with the same aerial facility that a butterfly-sip's nectar. Besides, there can be no difficulty in conceiving the depths of the heroine's erudition when that of the authoress is so evident.
In Laura Gay, another novel of the same school, the heroine seems less at home in Greek and Hebrew, but she makes up for the deficiency by quite playful familiarity with the Latin classics, with the dear old Virgil, The graceful Horace, the humane Cicero, and the pleasant Livy. Indeed, it is such a matter of course with her to quote Latin, that she does it at a picnic in a very mixed companion, having, we are told, no conception that the nobler sex were capable of jealousy on this subject, and if indeed— Continues the biographer of Laura Gay. The wisest and noblest portion of that sex were in the majority. No such sentiment would exist, but while Miss Wyndham's and Mr. Rutford's abound, great sacrifices must be made to their existence.
Such a sacrifice, as we presume, as abstaining from Latin quotations, of extremely moderate interest and applicability, which the wise and noble minority of the other sex would be quite as willing to dispense with as a foolish and ignoble majority. It is as little the custom of well-bred men as of well-bred women to quote Latin in mixed parties, They can contain their familiarity with the humane cicero without allowing it to boil over in ordinary conversation, and even references to the pleasant livy are not absolutely irrepressible. But Cicerone in Latin is the mildest form of Miss Gay's conversational power. Being on the palatine with her party of side-seers, she falls into the following vein of well-rounded remark.
Truth can only be pure objectively, for even in the creeds where it predominates, being subjective, and pass it out into portions, each of these necessarily receives a hue of idiosyncrasy, that is, attained a superstition more or less strong, while in such creeds as the Roman Catholic, ignorance, interest, the bias of ancient idolatries, and the force of authority, Have gradually accumulated on the pure truth, and transformed it, at last, into a mass of superstition for the majority of its votaries. And how few are there, alas, whose zeal, courage, and intellectual energy are equal to the analysis of this accumulation, and to the discovery of the pearl of great prize, which lies hidden beneath this heap of rubbish!
We have often met with women much more novel and profound in their observations than Laura Gay, but rarely with any so inopportunely long-minded. A clerical lord, who is half in love with her, is alarmed by the daring remarks just quoted, and begins to suspect that she is inclined to free thinking. But he is mistaken when, in a moment of sorrow, he delicately backs sleeve to—to Recall to her memory a depot of strength and consolation and reflection, which, until we are hard-bressed by the trials of life, we are too apt to forget. We learn that she really has recurrence to that sacred depot, together with the tea-pot. There is a certain flavor of orthodoxy mixed with the parade of fortunes and fine carriages in Laura Gay.
But it is an orthodoxy metagated by study of the humane Cicero, and by an intellectual disposition to analyze.
Compensation is much more heavily dosed with doctrine, than it has a troubled amount of snobbish wordliness, and absurd incident to tickle the palate of pious frivolity. The heroine is still more speculative and spiritual than Laura Gay, but she has been presented, and has more and far grander lovers. Very wicked and fascinating women are introduced, even a French lion, and no expense are spared to get up as exciting a story as you will find in the most immoral novels. In fact, it is a wonderful potpourri of Almec's, Scotch a second sight, Mr. Rogers's breakfasts, Italian brigands, death-bed conversions, superior authoresses, Italian mistresses, and attempts at poisoning old ladies. The whole served up with a garnish of talk about faith and development and most original minds.
Even, M. Susan Barton, The superior authoress, whose pen moves in a quick decided manner when she is composing, declines the finest opportunities of marriage, and, though old enough to be Linda's mother, since we are taught that she refused Linda's father, has her hand sought by young Earl, the heroine's rejected lover. Of course, genius and morality must be backed by eligible offers, or they would seem rather a dull affair, and piety, like other things, in order to be comme il faut, must be in society, and have admittance to the best circles.
Rank and beauty is a more frothy and less religious variety of the mind and millinery species. The heroine, we are taught, if she inherited her father's pride of birth and her mother's beauty of person, had in herself a tone of enthusiastic feeling that perhaps belongs to her age, even in the lowly-born, but which is refined into the high spirit of wild romance only in the far-descendant who feel that it is at their best inheritance.
This enthusiastic young lady, by dint of reading the newspapers to her father, falls in love with the prime minister, who, through the medium of leading articles and the resume of debates, shines upon her imagination as a bright particular star, which has no parallax for her, living in the country as simple as Wyndham. But she forthwith becomes the Baroness Umphreville in her own right, astonishes the world with its beauty and accomplishments, when she bursts upon it from her mansion and spring gardens, And, as you foresee, will presently come into contact with the unseen objet et me. Perhaps the words Prime Minister suggest to you a wrinkled or obese sexagenarian, but pray dismiss the image.
Lord Rupert Conway has been called while still almost a youth to the first situation which a subject can halt in the universe. And even leading articles and a resume of the debates have not conjured up a dream that surpasses the fact. The door opened again, and Lord Robert Conway entered. Evelyn gave one glance. It was enough. She was not disappointed. It seemed as if a picture on which he had long gazed was suddenly instinct with life, and had stepped from its frame before her. His tall figure, the distinguished simplicity of his air. It was a living Van Dyck, a cavalier, one of his noble cavalier ancestors, or one to whom her fancy had always likened him, who, long of your head, was an unfreville, fort de pae, far beyond sea.
Was this reality? Very less like it, certainly. By and by it becomes evident that the ministerial heart is touched. Lady Unfreville is on a visit to the Queen at Windsor, and—the last evening of her stay, when they returned from riding—Mr. Wyndham took her and a large party to the top of the keep to see the view. She was leaning on the battlement, gazing from that stately hide at the prospect beneath her, when Lord Rupert was by his side. What an unrivalled view! exclaimed she. "'Yes, it would have been wrong to go without having been up here. You are pleased with your visit? Enchanted! A queen to live and die under, to live and die for!' "'Ha!' cried he, with sudden emotion, and with a eureka expression of countenance, as if he had indeed found a heart in unison with his own."
The eureka expression of countenance, you see, at once to be prophetic of marriage at the end of the third volume. But before that desirable consummation, there are very complicated misunderstandings arising chiefly from the vindictive plotting of Sir Luttrell Wycherley, who is a genius, a poet, and in every way a most remarkable character indeed. He is not only a romantic poet, but a hardened rake and a cynical wit. Yet his deep passion for Lady Unfraville has so impoverished his epigrammatic talent that he cuts an extremely poor figure in conversation. When she rejects him, he rushes into the shrubbery, and rolls himself in the dirt, and on recovering devotes himself to the most diabolical and laborious schemes of vengeance, in the course of which he disguises himself as a quag physician, and enters into general practice, foreseeing that Aveline will fall ill, and that he shall be called in to attend her.
At last, when all his schemes are frustrated, he takes leave of her in a long letter, Written, as you will perceive from the following passage, entirely in the style of an eminent literary man. O lady, nursed in pomp and pleasure, will you ever cast one thought upon the miserable being who addresses you? Will you ever, as your gilded galley is floating down the unruffled stream of prosperity, will you ever, while lulled by the sweetest music, then own praises, hear the far-off sigh from that world to which I am going.
On the whole, however, frothy as it is, we rather prefer rank and beauty to the two other novels we have mentioned. The dialogue is more natural and spirited. There is some frank ignorance, and no pedantry, and you are allowed to take the herring's astounding intellect upon trust, without being called on to read her conversational refutations of skeptics and philosophers, or her rhetorical solutions of the mysteries of the universe.
Writers of the mind in millinery school are remarkably unanimous in their choice of diction. In their novels, there is usually a lady or gentleman who is more or less of a europa's tree. The lover has a manly breast, minds are redolent of various things, Hearts are hollow. Events are utilized. Friends are consigned to the tomb. Infancy is an engaging period. The sun is a luminary that goes to his western couch, or gathers the raindrops into his refulgent bosom. Life is a melancholy boon. Albion and Scotia are conversational epithets. There was a striking resemblance, too, in the character of their moral commons, such, for instance, as that—that It is a fact no less true than melancholy, that all people, more or less, richer or poorer, are swayed by bad example.
That, books, however trivial, contain some subjects from which useful information may be drawn. That, vice can too often borrow the language of virtue. that, Merit and nobility of nature must exist to be accepted, for clamor and pretension cannot impose upon those too well-read in human nature to be easily deceived, and that, In order to forgive, we must have been injured. There is, doubtless, a class of readers to whom these remarks appear peculiarly pointed and pungent. For we often find them doubly and drabily scored with a pencil, and delicate hands, giving in their determined adhesion to these hardly novelties, by a distinct «très vrai», emphasized by many notes of exclamation. The colloquial style of these novels is often marked by much ingenious inversion, and a careful avoidance of such cheap radiology as can be heard every day.
"'Angry young gentlemen!' exclaim. "'It is ever thus, methinks.' And in the half-hour before dinner, a young lady informed her next neighbor that the first day she read Shakespeare, she stole away into the park, and beneath the shadow of the greenwood-tree, devoured with rapture the inspired page of the great magician.
But the most remarkable efforts of the minor millinery writers lie in their philosophic reflections. The authoress of Laura Gay, for example, Having married her hero and heroine, improves the event by observing that, if those sceptics, whose eyes have so long gazed on matter that they can no longer see aught else in men, could once enter with heart and soul into such bliss as this, they would come to say that the soul of man and the polypus are not of common origin, or of the same texture.
Lady novelists, it appears, can see something else besides matter. They are not limited to phenomena, but can relieve their eyesight by occasional glimpses of the noumenon, and are therefore naturally better able than anyone else to confound sceptics, even of that remarkable but as unknown school, which maintains that the soul of man is of the same texture as a polypus. The most pitiable of all silly novels by lady novelists are what we may call the oracular species, novels intended to expand writers' religious, philosophical, or moral theories. There seems to be a notion abroad among women, rather akin to the superstition that the speech and actions of idiots are inspired, and that a human being most entirely exhausted of common sense is the fittest vehicle of revelation.
To judge from their writings, there are certain ladies who think that an amazing ignorance, both of science and of life, is a best possible qualification for forming an opinion on the naughtiest moral and speculative questions. Apparently, their recipe for solving all such difficulties is something like this. Take a woman's head, stuff it with a smattering of philosophy and literature, chopped small, and with false notions of society baked hard. Let it hang over a desk a few hours every day, and serve up hot in feeble English when not required. You will rarely meet with a lady novelist of the oracular class who is diffident of her ability to decide in theological questions. Who has any suspicion that she is not capable of discriminating with the nicest accuracy between the good and evil in all church parties, who does not see precisely how it is that men have gone wrong hitherto, and pity philosophers in general that they have not had the opportunity of consulting her.
Great writers, Who have modestly contented themselves with putting their experience into fiction, and have thought it quite the sufficient task to exhibit men and things as they are. She sighs over, as deplorably deficient in the application of their powers. They have solved no great questions. And she is ready to remedy their remission by setting before you a complete theory of life and manual of divinity in a love-story, where ladies and gentlemen of good family go through genteel vicissitudes to the utter confusion of deists, to the perfect establishment of that particular view of Christianity, which either condenses itself into a sentence of small caps, or explodes into a cluster of stars on the three hundred and thirtieth page.
It is true. The ladies and gentlemen will probably seem to you remarkably little like any you have had the fortune or misfortune to meet with, for, as a general rule, The ability of a lady novelist to describe actual life and her fellow-men is in inverse proportion to her confident elegance about God and the other world, and the means by which he usually chooses to conduct you to true ideas of the invisible is a totally false picture of the visible.
As typical a novel of the oracular kind as we can hope to meet with is The Enigma, Leave from the chronicles of the Walkerley House. The enigma which it does novelist to solve is certainly one that demands powers no less gigantic than those of lady novelists, being neither more nor less than the existence of evil. The problem is stated, and the answer dimly foreshadowed on the very first page. The spirited young lady with raven hair says, All life is in an inextricable confusion. And the meek young lady with auburn hair looks at the picture of the Madonna which is copying, and—there seemed the solution of that mighty enigma. The style of this novel is quite as lofty as its purpose. Indeed, some passages on which we have spent much patient study are quite beyond our reach, in spite of the illustrative aid of italics and small caps, and we must await further development in order to understand them.
Of Ernest, the modern young clergyman who set everyone right on all occasions we read, that he held not of marriage in the marketable kind after social desecration, that on one eventful night sleep had not visited his divided heart, where tumultuated, in varied type and combination, the aggregate feelings of grief and joy. And that, for the marketable human article, he had no toleration, be it of what sort, or set for what value it might, whether for worship or class, his upright soul abhorred it, whose ultimatum, the self-deceiver, was to him the great spiritual lie, living in a vain show, deceiving, and being deceived, since he did not suppose the philactory and enlarged border on the garment to be merely a social trick.
The italics and small caps are the authors, and we hope they assist the reader's comprehension. Of Sir Lionel, the model or gentleman, we are told that— The simple ideal of the Middle Age, apart from its anarchy and decadence, in him most truly seemed to live again when the ties which knit men together were of heroic caste. The first-born colors of bristine faith and truth, engraven on the common soul of man, and blended to the wide arc of brotherhood, where the primeval law of order grew and multiplied, each perfect after his kind, and mutually interdependent.
You see clearly, of course, how colors are first engraven on a saw, and then blend into a wide arch, on which arch of colors, apparently rainbow, the law of order grew and multiplied, each, apparently the arc and the law, perfect after his kind. If, after this, you can possibly want any further aid towards knowing what Sir Lionel was, we can tell you that in his saw— The scientific combinations of thought could adduce no fewer harmonies of the good and the true than lay in the primeval pulses which floated as an atmosphere around it, and that when he was sealing a letter, lo, The responsive flop in that good man's bosom echoed back in simple truth, the honest witness of a heart that condemned him not, as his eye, bedewed with love, rested, too, with something of ancestral pride, on the undimmed motto of the family, Loyalty.
The slightest matters have their vulgarity fumigated out of them by the same elevated style. Commonplace people would say that a copy of Shakspeare lay on a drawing-room table, but the authors of the enigma bent on edifying paraphrases tells you that there lay on the table that fund of human thought and feeling which it teaches the heart through the little name Shakspeare. A watchman sees a light burning in an upper window rather longer than usual, and thinks that people are foolish to sit up late when they have an opportunity of going to bed. But lest this fact should seem too low and common, it is presented to us in the following striking and metaphysical manner. He marvelled, as man will think for others, in a necessarily separate personality, consequently, Though disallowing it, in false mental premise, how differently he should act, how gladly he should prize the rest so lightly held of within.
A footman, an ordinary James, with larger calves and aspirated vowels, answers the door-bell, and the opportunity has ceased to tell you that he was a type of the large class of pampered menials, who followed the curse of Cain, vagabonds on the face of the earth. And whose estimate of the human class varies in the graduated scale of money and expenditure. These, and such as these, O England, be the false lights of thy morbid civilization.
We have heard of various false lights, from Dr. Cumming to Robert Owen, from Dr. Pusey to the Spirit Rappers, but we never before heard of the false light that emanates from plush and powder.
In the same way, very ordinary events of civilized life are exalted into the most awful crises, and ladies in full skirts and manches a la chinoise conduct themselves not unlike the herions of sanguinary melodramas. Mrs. Percy, A shallow woman of the world, wishes her son Horace to marry the auburn-haired Grace, she being an heiress, but he, after the manner of sons, falls in love with the raven-haired Kate, the heiress's portionless cousin. And, moreover, Grace herself shows every symptom of perfect indifference to Horace. In such cases, Sons are often sulky or fiery, mothers are alternately maneuvering and waspish, and the portionless young lady often lies awake at night and cries a good deal.
We are getting used to these things now, just as we are used to eclipses of the moon, which no longer set us howling and beating tin kettles. We never heard of a lady in a fashionable front behaving like Mrs. Percy under these circumstances. Happening one day to see Horace talking to Grace at window, without in the least knowing what they are talking about, or having the least reason to believe that Grace, who is mistress of the house, and a person of dignity, would accept her son if he were to offer himself, she suddenly rushes up to them and clasps them both, saying— With a flushed countenance, and in an excited manner. This is indeed happiness, for may I not call you so, Grace? My Grace, my Horace's Grace, my dear children.
Her son tells her she is mistaken, and that she is engaged to Kate, whereupon we have the following scene and tableau. Gathering herself up to an unprecedented height, her eyes lightening forth the fire of her anger. "'Wretched boy,' she said, hoarsely and scornfully, and clenching her hand, "'take then the doom of your own choice. Bow down your miserable head and let a mother's—' "'Curse not,' spake a deep, low voice from behind, and Mrs. Percy started, scared, as though she had seen a heavenly visitant appear, to break upon her in the midst of her sin. "'Meantime,' Horace had fallen on his knees at her feet, and hid his face in his hands. Who, then, is she? Who? Truly his guardian spirit hath a step between him and the fearful words, which, however unmerited, must have hung as a pall over his future existence, a spell which could not be unbound, which could not be unsaid.
Of an earthly paleness, but calm was his still, iron-bound calmness of death, the only calm one there, Catherine stood, and her words smote on the ear in tones, as appallingly slow and separate intonation rung on the heart like the chill, isolated, hawing of some fatal knell. He would have plighted me his face, but I did not accept it. You cannot, therefore—you dare not curse him. And here she continued, raising her hands to heaven, where her large dark eyes also rose with a chastened glow. Which for the first time's suffering had lighted him those passionate orbs. Here I promise, come well, come, oh, that Horace Walkley and I do never interchange vows without his mother's sanction, without his mother's blessing.
Here, and throughout the story, we see that confusion of purpose which is so characteristic of silly novels written by women. It is a story of quite modern drawing-room society. A society in which polkas are played, a puseousm discussed, yet we have characters, and incidents, and traits of manner introduced, which are mere struts from the most heterogeneous romances. We have a blind Irish harper, relic of the picturesque bards of yore, startling us at a Sunday-school festival of tea and cake in an English village. We have a crazy gypsy. in a scarlet cloak, singing snatches of romantic song, and revealing a secret on a death-bed with the testimony of a dwarfish middley merchant who salutes strangers with a curse and a devilish laugh, goes to prove that Ernest, the model young clergyman, is Cade's brother, and we have an ultra-vertious Irish Barney, discovering that the document is forged, by comparing the date of the paper with the date of the alleged signature, Although the same document has passed through court of law and occasioned a fatal decision.
The hall in which is Sir Lyon lives is the venerable country-seat of an old family, and this, we suppose, sets the imagination of the authoress flying to dungeons and battlements, where, lo, the warder blows his horn! For, as the inhabitants are in their bedrooms on a night, certainly within the recollection of placement ten, and a breeze springs up which we are first taught was feigned, and then, that it made the old setters bow their branches to the greensward, she falls into this medieval vein of description. The italics are ours. The banner unfurled it at the sound, and shook its guardian wing above, while the startled owl flapped her in the ivy. The firmament looking down through her argus eyes.
Ministers of Heaven's mute melodies. And, lo, two strokes told from out toward a tower, and two o'clock re-echoed its interpreter below.
Such stories as this of the Enigma remind us of the pictures clever children sometimes draw out of their own head, where you will see a modern villa on the right, Two knights in helmets fighting in the foreground, and the tiger grinning in the jungle on the left, the several objects being brought together because the artist thinks each pretty, and perhaps still more, because he remembers seeing them in other pictures.
But we, like the authoress, much better on her medieval stilts than on her oracular ones, when she talks of the ich and of the subjective and objective, and lays down the exact line of Christian verity between right-hand excesses and left-hand declensions. Persons who deviate from this line are introduced with a patronizing air of charity. Of a certain Miss Inskine, she informs us, with all the lucidity of italics and small caps, that function not form as the inevitable outer expression of the spirit in this tabernacled age weakly engrossed her. And, apropos of Miss Major, an evangelical lady who is little too apt to talk of her visits to sick women and the state of their souls, We are told that the model clergyman is, not one to disallow, through the supercrust, the undercurrent towards good in the subject, or the positive benefits nevertheless to the object.
We imagined a double refined accent and protrusion of chin which are feebly represented by the italics in the lady sentences. We abstain from quoting any of her oracular doctrinal passages, because they refer to matters too serious for our pages just now.
The episode silly may seem impertinent, applied to a novel which indicates so much reading and intellectual activity as the enigma, but we use this episode advisedly. If, as the world has long agreed, a very great amount of instruction will not make a wise man, still that will a very mediocre amount of instruction make a wise woman. And the most mischievous form of feminine silliness is a literary form, because it tends to confirm the popular prejudice against the more solid education of women. When men see girls wasting their time in consultations about bonnets and bowl-dresses, and in giggling or sentimental love confidences, or middle-aged women mismanaging their children, and solacing themselves with accurate gossip, they can hardly help saying— For heaven's sake, let girls be better educated.
Let them have some better objects of thought, some more solid occupations. But after a few hours' conversation with an oracular literary woman, or a few hours' reading of her books, they are likely enough to say, After all, when a woman gets some knowledge, see what use she makes of it. Her knowledge remains acquisition, instead of passing into culture, instead of being subdued into modesty and simplicity by a larger acquaintance with thought and fact, she has a feverish consciousness of her attainments. She keeps a sort of mental pocket-mirror, and is continually looking in it at her own intellectuality. She spoils the taste of one's muffin by questions of metaphysics, puts down men at the dinner-table with the superior information, and seizes the opportunity of a soiree to catechise us on the vital question of the relation between mind and matter.
And then look at her writings. She mistakes vagueness for depth, bombasts for eloquence, And a factation for originality. She struts on one page, rolls her eyes on another, grimaces in a third, and is hysterical in a fourth. She may have read many writings of great men, and a few writings of great women, but she is unable to discern the difference between her own style and theirs, as a Yorkshire man is to discern the difference between his own English and a Londoner's. Rhoda Montaigne is a native accent of her intellect. No, the average nature of women is too shallow and feeble a soil to bear much tillage. It is only fit for the very lightest crops.
It is true that the men who come to such a decision on such a very superficial and imperfect observation may not be among the wisest in the world, but we have not now to contest their opinion. We are only pointing out how it is unconsciously encouraged by many women who have volunteered themselves as representatives of the feminine intellect. We do not believe that a man was ever strengthened in such an opinion by associating with a woman of true culture, whose mind had absorbed her knowledge instead of being absorbed by it. A rarely cultured woman, like a rarely cultured man, is all the simpler and the less obtrusive for her knowledge. It has made her see herself and her opinions in something like just proportions.
She does not make it a pedestal from which she flatters herself that she commands a complete view of men and things, but makes it a point of observation from which to form a right estimate of herself. She neither spouts poetry nor quotes Cicero on slight provocation, not because she thinks that a sacrifice must be made to the prejudices of men, but because that mode of exhibiting her memory and identity does not present itself to her as edifying or graceful. She does not write books to confound philosophers, perhaps because she is able to write books that delight them. In conversation she is the least formidable of women, because she understands you, without wanting to make you aware that you can't understand her.
She does not give you information, which is a raw material of culture. She gives you sympathy, which is its subtlest essence. A more numerous class of silly novels than the oracular, which are generally inspired by some form of high church or transcendental Christianity, is what we may call the white neck-cloth species, which represent the tone of thought and feeling in the evangelical party. This species is a kind of genteel tract on a large scale, intended as a sort of medicinal sweetmeat for low-church young ladies, an evangelical substitute for the fashionable novel, and the main meetings are a substitute for the opera. Even quaker children, one would think, can hardly have been denied the indulgence of a doll, But it must be a doll dressed in a drab gown and a cold, subtle bonnet, not a worldly doll in gauze and spangles.
And there are no young ladies you imagine, unless they belong to the Church of United Brethren, in which people are married without any love-making, who can dispense with love-stories.
Thus, for Evangelical young ladies, There are evangelical love-stories, in which the vicissitudes of the tender passion are sanctified by saving views of regeneration and the atonement. These novels differ from the oracular ones, as a low-churchwoman often differs from a high-churchwoman. They are a little less supercilious, and a great deal more ignorant, a little less correct in their syntax, and a great deal more vulgar.
The Orlando of Evangelical literature is a young curate, looked at from the point of view of the middle class, where Cambric bands are understood to have as thrilling an effect on the hearts of young ladies as Ipaulets have in the classes above and below it. In the ordinary type of these novels, the hero is almost sure to be a young curate, Frowned upon, perhaps, by worldly mammas, but carrying captive the hearts of their daughters, who can never forget that sermon. Tender glances are seized from the pulpit stairs instead of the opera-box. Dead-a-deeds are seasoned with quotations from scripture instead of quotations from the poets, and questions as to the state of the heron's affections are mingled with anxiety as to the state of a soul.
The young curate always has a background of well-dressed and wealthy, if not fashionable society, for Evangelical silliness is as snobbish as any other kind of silliness, and the Evangelical lady novelist, while she explains to you the type of the scapegoat on one page, is ambitious on another to represent the manners and conversation of aristocratic people. Her pictures of fashionable society are often curious studies considered as efforts of the evangelical imagination, but in one particular, the novels of the white-neck cloth school are meritoriously realistic. Their favorite hero, the evangelical young curate, is always rather an insipid personage.
The most recent novel of this species, that we happen to have before us is the old grey church. It is utterly tame and feeble. There is no one set of objects on which the writer seems to have a stronger grasp than on any other, and we should be entirely at a loss to conjecture among what phases of life her experience has been gained, but for certain vulgarisms of style, which sufficiently indicate that she has had the advantage Though she has been unable to use it, of mingling chiefly with men and women whose manners and characters have not had all their bosses and angles rubbed down by refined conventionalism. It is less excusable in an unevangelical novelist than in any other, graciously, to seek a subject among titles and carriages.
The real drama of evangelicalism and it has abundance of fine drama, for any one who has genius enough to discern and reproduce it, lies among the middle and lower classes, and are not evangelical opinions understood to give an especial interest in the weak things of the earth rather than in the mighty? Why, then, cannot our evangelical lady novelists show us the operation of their religious views among people? There really are many such in the world, who keep no courage, Not so much as a brass-bound gig, who even managed to eat their dinner without a silver fork, and in whose mouths the authoress' questionable English would be strictly consistent. Why can we not have pictures of religious life among the industrial classes in England as interesting as Mrs.
Stowe's pictures of religious life among the Negroes? Instead of this, Pious ladies nauseate us with novels which remind us of what we sometimes see in a worldly woman recently converted. She is as fond of a fine dinner-table as before, but she invites clergymen instead of beaux. She thinks as much of her dress as before, but she adopts a more sober choice of colors and patterns. Her conversation is as trivial as before, but the triviality is flavored with gospel instead of gossip.
In the old great church, we have the same sort of evangelical travesty of the fashionable novel, and, of course, the vicious, intriguing baronet is not wanting. It is worthwhile to give a sample of the style of conversation attributed to this high-born rake, a style that in its profuse italics and palpable inurandos is worthy of misqueer. In an evening visit to the ruins of the Colosseum, Eustace, the young clergyman, has been withdrawing the herring, Miss Lushington, from the rest of the party for the sake of a tete-a-tete. The baronet is jealous, and ventes peak in this way. There they are, and Miss Lushington no doubt quite safe, for she is under the holy guidance of poet Eustace the first who has of course been delivering to her an edifying homily on the wickedness of the heathens of yore, who, as tradition tells us, in this very place let loose the wild-beasties on poor St.
Paul. Oh, no, by-the-bye I believe I am wrong, and betraying my want of clergy, that it was not at all St. Paul, nor was it here, but no matter, it would equally serve as a text to preach from, and from which to diverge to the degenerate heathen Christians of the present day, and all the naughty practices, and so end with an exhortation to come out from among them, and be separate. And I am sure, Miss Lushington, you have most scrupulously conformed to that injunction this evening, for we have seen nothing of you since our arrival. But every one seems agreed it has been a charming party of pleasure, and I am sure we all feel much indebted to Mr. Gray for having suggested it. And as he seems so capital as Ciceroon, I hope you will think of something else equally agreeable at all.
This drivelling kind of dialogue, and equally drivelling narrative, which, like a bad drawing, represents nothing, and barely indicates what is meant to be represented, runs through the book, and we have no doubt is considered by the amiable authors to constitute an improving novel, which Christian mothers will do well to put into the hands of their daughters.
But everything is relative. We have met with American vegetarians whose normal diet was dry meal, and who, when their appetite wanted stimulation, tickled it with wet meal, and so we can imagine that there are evangelical circles in which the old great church is devoured as a powerful and interesting fiction. But perhaps the least readable of silly women's novels are the modern antique species, Which infall to us, the domestic life of Jens and Jambas, the private love affairs of Senecrop, or the mental struggles and ultimate conversion of Demetrius the silversmith. From most silly novels we can at least extract a laugh, but those of the modern antique school have a ponderous, a leaden kind of fatuity under which we groan.
What can be more demonstrative of the inability of literary women to measure their own powers than the frequent assumption of a task which can only be justified by the rarest concurrence of acquirement with genius? The finest effort to re-animate the past is, of course, only approximative, is always more or less an infusion of the modern spirit into the ancient form. Was er den Geistertzeiten heißt, das ist im Grund der Herren eigene Geist, Indemn die Zeiten sich bespiegeln.
Admitting that genius, which has familiarized itself with all the relics of an ancient period, can sometimes, by the force of its sympathetic divination, restore the missing notes in the music of humanity, and reconstruct the fragments into a hole which will really bring the remote past nearer to us, and interpret it to our duller apprehension, This form of imaginative power must always be among the very rarest, because it demands as much accurate and minute knowledge as creative vigor. Yet we find ladies constantly choosing to make their mental mediocrity more conspicuous by clothing it in a masquerade of ancient names, by putting their feeble sentimentality into the mouths of Roman Vestals or Egyptian Princesses, and attributing their rhetorical arguments to Jewish high-priests and Greek philosophers.
A recent example of this heavy imbecility is Adenesia, a tale of the Jewish dispersion. Which forms part of a series uniting, we are told, taste, humor, and sound principles. Adonija, we presume, exemplifies a tale of sound principles. The taste and humor are to be found in other members of the series. We are told on the cover that the incidents of this tale are fraught with unusual interest, and the preface winds up thus. To those who feel interested in the disperse of Israel and Judea, these pages may afford, perhaps, information on an important subject as well as amusement. Since the important subject on which this book is to afford information is not specified, it may possibly lie in some esoteric meaning to which we have no key.
But if it has relation to the disperse of Israel and Judea at any period of their history, We believe a tolerably well-informed schoolgirl already knows much more of it than she will find in this tale of the Jewish dispersion. At Anidia, is simply the feeblest kind of love-story, supposed to be instructive, we presume, because a hero is a Jewish captive, and the heron a Roman vestal, because they and their friends are converted to Christianity after the shortest and easiest method approved by the Society for Promoting the Conversion of the Jews, and because, instead of being written in plain language, it is endorned with that peculiar style of grandiloquence, Which is held by some lady novelists, to give an antique colouring, and which we recognise at once in such phrases as these.
The splendid regnal talents undoubtedly possessed by the Emperor Nero. The expiring sign of a lofty stem. The verges partner of Viscouge. Ah, by Vesta, and, I tell thee, Roman, Among the quotations which serve at once for instruction and ornament on the cover of this volume, there is one from Miss Sinclair, who informs us that, "'Works of imagination are reviledly read by men of science, wisdom, and piety,' from which we suppose the readers to gather the cheering inference, That Dr. Daubney, Mr. Mill, or Mrs. Maurice, may openly indulge himself with the perusal of Adenasia, without being obliged to secrete it among the sofa cushions, or read it by snatchers under the dinner-table. "'Be not a baker if your head be made of butter,' says the homely proverb, which, being interpreted, may mean that no woman rush into print who is not prepared for the consequences.' We are aware that our remarks are in a very different tone from that of the reviewers, who, with the perennial recurrence of precisely similar emotions, only paralleled, we imagine, in the experience of monthly nurses, tell one lady novelist after another that they hail her productions with delight.
We are aware that the ladies at whom our criticism is pointed are accustomed to be told in the choicest phraseology of Puffery that their pictures of life are brilliant, their characters well drawn, their style fascinating, and their sentiments lofty. But if they are inclined to resent our plainness of speech, we ask them to reflect for a moment on the cherry praise, and often captures blame, which their panegyrists give to writers whose works are on the way to become classics. No sooner does a woman show that she has genius or effective talent than she received the tribute of being moderately praised and severely criticized. By a peculiar themometric adjustment, When a woman's talent is at zero, journalistic approbation is at a boiling pitch.
When she attains mediocrity, it is already at no more than summer heat, and if ever she reaches excellence, critical enthusiasm drops to the freezing point. Harriet Martineau, Curra Bell, and Mrs. Gaskell have been treated as cavalierly as if they had been men. And every critic who forms a high estimate of the share women may ultimately take in literature will, on principle, abstain from any exceptional indulgence towards the productions of literary women. For it must be plain to every one who looks impartially and extensively into feminine literature that its greatest deficiencies are due hardly more to the want of intellectual power than to the want of those moral qualities that contribute to literary excellence.
Patient diligence, A sense of the responsibility involved in publication, and an appreciation of the sacredness of the writer's art. In the majority of women's books, you see that kind of facility which springs from the absence of any high standard, that fertility, an imbecile combination, or feeble imitation, which a little self-criticism would check and reduce to barrenness. Just as with a total want of musical ear, people will sing out a tune, While a degree more melodic sensibility would suffice to render them silent.
The foolish vanity of wishing to appear in print, instead of being counterbalanced by any consciousness of the intellectual or moral derogation implied in futile authorship, seems to be encouraged by the extremely false impression that to write at all is a proof of superiority in a woman. On this ground, we believe that the average intellect of women is unfairly represented by the mass of feminine literature, and that while the few women who write well are very far above the ordinary intellectual level of their sex, the many women who write ill are very far below it. So that, after all, the severer critics are fulfilling its chivalrous duty, and depriving the mere fact of feminine authorship of any false prestige which may give it a delusive attraction, and in recommending women of mediocre faculties, as at least in negative service they can render their sex, to abstain from writing.
The sterling apology for women who become writers without any special qualification is, That society shuts them out from other spheres of occupation. Society is a very culpable entity, and has to answer for the manufacture of many unwholesome commodities, from bad pickles to bad poetry. But society, like matter, and Her Majesty's government, and other lofty abstractions, has its share of excessive blame as well as excessive praise. Where there is one woman who writes from necessity, We believe there are three women who write from vanity, and besides, there is something so antiseptic in the mere healthy fact of working for one's bread that the most drashy and rotten kind of feminine literature is not likely to have been produced under such circumstances.
In all labor there is profit, but ladies' silly novels, we imagine, are less the result of labor than of busy idleness.
Happily, we are not dependent on argument to prove that fiction is a department of literature in which women can, after their kind, fully equal men. A cluster of great names, both living and dead, rush to our memories in evidence that women can produce novels not only fine, but among the very finest, novels, too, that have a precious specialty, lying quite apart from masculine aptitudes and experience. No educational restrictions can shut women out from the materials of fiction, and there is no species of art which are so free from rigid requirements. Like crystalline masses, it may take any form, and yet be beautiful. We have only to pour in derived elements, genuine observation, humor, and passion.
But it is precisely this absence of rigid requirement which constitutes The fatal seduction of novel writing to the incompetent women. Ladies are not wont to be very grossly deceived as to their power of playing on the piano. Here, certain positive difficulties of execution have to be conquered, and incompetence inevitably breaks down.
Every art which has its absolute technique is, to a certain extent, guarded from the intrusions of mere left-handed imbecility. But in novel writing, there are no barriers for incapacity to stumble against, no external criteria to prevent a writer from mistaking foolish facility for mastery. And so we have again and again the old story of La Fontaine's Heirs, who puts his nose to the flute, and finding that he elicits some sound, exclaims, Moi aussi, je joue de la A favor which we commend at parting to the consideration of any feminine reader who is in danger of adding to the number of silly novels by lady novelists.
The End of Silly Novels by Lady Novelists by George Eliot
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14 Telegrams - Telephone 6:54
Telegrams, The Telephone, from Business Hunts for Men and Women, by Alfred Rochefort Calhoun.
This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox. Reading by Bellona Times. Telegrams. The Telephone. By Alfred Rochefort Calhoun.
To send a telegram, you or your messenger must take what you have written to the nearest telegraph office. You may write a telegram on any kind of paper, provided always that the writing is plain. All telegraph offices are provided with regular blank forms, which may be had without cost, and it is better to use these when they are available. The blank is properly ruled, with lines for the date, for the address of the one to whom it is to be sent, and for the message. Charges. The Telegraph Company charges a fixed sum for a message of, say, ten words. These words do not include the name and address of the sender. The amount of the charge is always dependent on the distance between the office from which the message is sent and the one at which it is received.
Every word over ten in the message pays an extra fee, dependent again on the distance. Getting just what you mean into ten words may seem difficult, when you have a lot to say, but it is surprising how you can boil the message down when each additional word costs five or more cents. It may pay to practice this. If it is actually necessary to make your meaning clear by the addition of more words, do not hesitate at the cost. If you are known at the telegraph office, you can send a message to be collected from the receiver. Never permit the receiver to pay for a message that is exclusively on your own business. Always make and keep a copy of every important telegram you send away. Do not neglect this.
If you have neglected to keep a copy of a telegram, or, having made one, have lost it, you may get a copy from the telegraph office, provided the application be made within six months of the sending of the message. Telegrams are delivered by the company's messengers. You must give receipt to the messenger on the delivery of a telegram. Where the receiver lives a long distance from the telegraph office, it is customary to pay the messenger an additional fee, depending on the distance. The charges for telegrams to be sent at night and delivered in the morning are much lower than for day messages. For an additional charge less than the original, messages may be repeated back to ensure their accuracy.
Read over to the official, or still better, have him read your message over in your presence, that you may be sure he understands it as written. You cannot hold others responsible for your own mistakes.
Telegraphing Money. You can telegraph money with as much safety as you can send it through a bank. In handling money in this way, the telegraph company does not act as a banker, but as a carrier. Telegraph money orders are a great convenience when one wants to send cash to a distant point in a hurry. Country telegraph offices do not, as a rule, transmit money. That function is left to the offices in the larger centres. The method. One wishing to wire money will find at the telegraph office suitable blanks. They are furnished gratis. On lines provided for the Purpose and properly indicated, as in a postal-order form, write the name and address of the person to receive the money with the amount.
This paper, properly signed, is handed to the clerk with the money to be sent and the fee for transmission. The fee is doubled that charge for an ordinary message of the same length. If, for any reason, the person to whom the money is sent cannot be found within forty-eight hours, The money is returned to the sender, but the fees are retained, as the company is not to blame for failure. The receiver of a money order, if unknown, must identify himself as he would at a bank, and he must receipt for the money. If the person to receive the money is an entire stranger in the place to which the money is sent, the sender knows it, and he provides for the situation by signing On the reverse of the application, an order to the distant operator to pay the money to the person named within without further identification.
When a telegraph operator receives a money order, he at once seeks out the person to whom it is sent, and pays the money in accordance with his instructions as to identification.
The telephone. The telephone, local and long distance, is fast superseding the telegraph as a medium for speedy business communications. Its use is not confined to large cities, as at first. Nearly every village is now in communication with the outer world through the telephone. The world has just awakened to the needs of its food producer, the farmer. In Norway, which is not a rich country, the telephone has been introduced on the farms. The rates are low, And the benefits are inestimable. On our large farms in the West, telephones have been in use for some time as an essential part of the machinery. Now there is a move on foot to make them available for every farmer in the more settled regions.
While business can be conducted over the telephone as if the speakers stood face to face, yet such transactions not being recorded will not stand in law if one of the parties should dispute the other's word.
End of Telegrams, the Telephone by Alfred Rochefort Calhoun.
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15 Voltaire 33:33
M. de Voltaire by John Watts.
Reading by Greg Marguerite. Monsieur de Voltaire by John Watts.
Francois-Marie Arouet, better known by the name of Voltaire, was born at Chatenay on the 20th of February, 1694. By assuming the name of Voltaire, young Arouet followed the custom at that time generally practiced by the rich citizens and younger sons, who, leaving the family name to the heir, assumed that of a fief, or perhaps of a country house. The father of Monsieur de Voltaire was treasurer to the Chamber of Accounts. and his mother, Margaret d'Aumarre, was of a noble family of Poitou. The fortune which the father enjoyed enabled him to bestow a first-class education upon the young Arouet, who was sent to the Jesuit's college, where the sons of the nobility received their education. While at school, Voltaire began to write poetry and gave signs of a remarkable genius.
His tutors, Father Poirier and Jay, from the boldness and independence of his mind, predicted that he would become the apostle of Deism in France. This prediction he fulfilled. Voltaire was, says Lord Brougham, through his whole life a sincere believer in the existence and attributes of the Deity. He was a firm and decided and an openly declared unbeliever in Christianity, but he was, without any hesitation or any intermission, A Theist. His open declaration of disbelief in the inspiration of the Bible and his total rejection of the dogmas of Christianity laid him open to the malignant attacks and misrepresentations of the priesthood and the bigots of Europe. And so strong were they that his life was continually in danger.
Lord Brougham, in his Men of Letters of the time of George III, says, Voltaire's name is so intimately connected in the minds of all men with infidelity, in the minds of most men with irreligion, and in the minds of all who are not well informed with these qualities alone, that whoever undertakes to write his life and examine his claims to the vast reputation which all the hostile feelings excited by him against himself have never been able to destroy, or even materially to impair. has to labor under a great load of prejudice, and can hardly expect by any detail of particulars to obtain for his subject even common justice at the hands of the general reader. Voltaire was born in a corrupt age, and in a capital where it was fashionable to be immoral.
When he left college, he was introduced by his own godfather to the Abbe de Chauteneuve and the notorious Ninon de L'Inclos, who at her death left him by will two thousand livres to purchase books. In estimating the character of Voltaire, a due consideration must be had for the period in which he lived, and of the nature of the society amidst which he was reared. He lived twenty years under the reign of Louis XIV, and during the whole of the reign of the infamous Louis XV, when kings, courtiers, and priests set the example of the grossest immorality. It was then, as Voltaire said, that to make the smallest fortune it was better to say four words to the mistress of a king than to write a hundred volumes.
Voltaire's life from his youth upwards was a stormy one. After he left college, his father, finding him persisting in writing poetry and living at large, forbade him his house. He insisted upon his son binding himself to an attorney. But his restless disposition quite unfitted him for regular employment, and he soon quitted the profession. He early made the acquaintance of the most celebrated men of his time, but his genius, his wit, and his sarcasm soon raised up numerous enemies. At the age of twenty-two, he was accused of having written a satire upon Louis XIV, who was just dead, and was thrown into the Bastille. But he was not cast down. It was here that he sketched his poem of the League, corrected his tragedy of Oedipus, and wrote some merry verses on the misfortune of being a prisoner.
The regent-duke of Orleans, being informed of his innocence, restored him to freedom and granted him a recompense. I thank your Royal Highness, said Voltaire, for having provided me with food, but I hope you will not hereafter trouble yourself concerning my lodging. Voltaire, with his activity of mind and living to so great an age, must necessarily produce many works. They are voluminous, consisting of history, poetry, and philosophy. His dramatic pieces are numerous and many, of which are considered second only to Shakespeare's. Oedipus, Zadig. Ingeneu, Zahre, Henriade, Irene, Tancred, Mohamed, Merope, Saul, Alzier, Le Fanatisme, Mariamne, Gaston de Foix, Enfranc, Peau-de-Joux, Boussiel de Orleans, An essay on fire, The Elements, History of Charles XII, Lectures on man, Letters on England, Memoirs, Voyage of Sacramentado, Micromegas, Maid of Orleans, Brutus, Adelaide, Death of Caesar, Temple of Taste, Essays on the Manners and Spirit of Nations, an examination of the Holy Scriptures, and the Philosophical Dictionary are works that emanated from the active brain of this wit, poet, satirist, and philosopher.
In 1722, while at Brussels, Voltaire met Jean-Baptiste Rousseau, whose misfortunes he deplored and whose poetic talents he esteemed. Voltaire read some of his poems to Rousseau, and he in return read to Voltaire his ode addressed to posterity, which Voltaire, it is asserted, told him would never arrive at the place to which it was addressed. The two poets parted irreconcilable foes. In 1725, Voltaire was again shut up in the Bastille, through attempting to revenge an insult inflicted upon him by a courtier. At the end of six months, he was released, but ordered to quit Paris. He sought refuge in England in 1726. He was the guest in that country of a Mr. Falconer of Wandsworth, whose hospitality he remembered with affection so long as life lasted.
Voltaire was known to most of the wits and freethinkers of that day in England. At this early age he was at war with Christianity. His visit to England, says Lamartine, gave assurance and gravity to his incredulity, for in France he had only known libertines. In England he knew philosophers. He went to visit Congreve, who had the affection to tell him that he, Congreve, valued himself not on his authorship, but as a man of the world. To which Voltaire administered a just rebuke by saying, "'I should never have come so far to see a gentleman.'" Voltaire soon acquired an ample fortune, much of which was expended in aiding men of letters, and in encouraging such youth as he thought discovered the seeds of genius.
The use he made of riches might prevail on envy itself to pardon him of their acquirement. His pen and his purse were ever at the service of the oppressed. Calais, an infirm old man living at Toulouse, was accused of having hung his son to prevent his becoming a Catholic. The Catholic population became inflamed, and the young man was declared to be a martyr. The father was condemned to the torture and the wheel and died protesting his innocence. The family of Calais was ruined and disgraced. Voltaire, assuring himself of the innocence of the old man, determined to obtain justice for the family. To this end, he labored incessantly for three years. In all this time, he said a smile did not escape him from which he did not reproach himself as for a crime.
His efforts were successful. Nor was this the only cause in which he was engaged on the side of the weak and the wronged against the powerful and the persecuting. His whole life, though maligned as an infidel and a scoffer, was one long act of benevolence. On learning a young niece of Cornel languished in a condition unworthy of his name, Voltaire, in the most delicate manner, invited her to his house, and she there received an education suitable to the rank that her birth had marked for her in society. It is the duty of a soldier, he said, to succor the niece of his general. Voltaire lived for a time at the court of Frederick the Great of Prussia, and for many years carried on a correspondence with that monarch.
He quarreled with the king and left the court in a passion. An emissary was dispatched to him to request an apology, who said he was to carry back to the king his answer verbatim. Voltaire told him that the king might go to the devil. On being asked if that was the message he meant to be delivered, yes, he answered, and add to it that I told you that you might go there with him. In his memoirs, he has drawn a most amusing picture of his Prussian majesty. He also says priests never entered the palace, and in a word, Frederick lived without religion, without a council, and without a court. Wearied with his rambling and unsettled mode of living, Voltaire bought an estate at Ferney, in the Pas-de-Zex, where he spent the last twenty years of his life.
He rebuilt the house, laid out gardens, kept a good table, and had crowds of visitors from all parts of Europe. Removed from whatever could excite momentary or personal passion, he yielded to his zeal for the destruction of prejudice, which was the most powerful and active of all the sensations he felt. This peaceful life, seldom disturbed except by the threats of persecution rather than persecution itself, was adorned by those acts of enlightened and bold benevolence which, while they relieve the suffering of certain individuals, are of any service to the whole human race. He was known to Europe as the Sage of Ferney. After an absence of more than twenty-seven years, he revisited Paris in the beginning of He had just finished his play of Irene and was anxious to see it performed.
His visit was an ovation. He had outlived all his enemies. After having been the object of unrelenting persecution by the priests and corrupt courtiers of France for a period of more than fifty years, he yet lived to see the day when all that was most eminent in station or most distinguished in talents, all that most shone in society or most ruled in court, seemed to bend before him. At this period he, for the first time, saw Benjamin Franklin. They embraced each other in the midst of public acclamations, and it was said to be Solon who embraced Sophocles. Voltaire did not survive his triumph long. His unwearied activity induced him at his great age to commence a dictionary upon a novel plan, which he prevailed upon the French Academy to take up.
These labors brought on spitting of blood, followed by sleeplessness, to obviate which he took opium in considerable quantities. Condorcet says that the servant mistook one of the doses, which threw him into a state of lethargy from which he never rallied. He lingered for some time, but at length expired on the 30th of May, 1778, in his 85th year. It was the custom in those days, and prevails to a considerable extent even in our own time, for the religious world to fabricate horrible deathbeds of all free-thinkers. Voltaire's last moments were distorted by his enemies after the approved fashion, and, nonwithstanding the most unqualified denial on the part of Dr. Berard and others who were present at his death, there are many who believe these falsehoods at this moment.
Voltaire died in peace, with the exception of the petty annoyances to which he was subjected by the priests. The philosophers, too, who wished that no public stigma should be cast upon him by the refusal of Christian burial, persuaded him to undergo confession and absolution. This, to oblige his friends, he submitted to. But when the cure one day drew him from his lethargy by shouting into his ear, Do you believe the divinity of Jesus Christ? Voltaire exclaimed, In the name of God, sir, speak to me no more of that man, but let me die in peace. This put to flight all doubts of the pious, and the certificate of burial was refused. But the prohibition of the Bishop of Troy came too late. Voltaire was buried at the monastery of Salaris in Champagne, of which his nephew was abbot.
Afterwards, during the First French Revolution, the body, at the request of the citizens, was removed to Paris and buried in the Pantheon. Lamartine, in his History of the Girardinists, Page One Forty Nine, speaking of the ceremony, says, On the Eleventh of July, the Departmental and Municipal authorities went in state to the Barrier of Charenton to receive the mortal remains of Voltaire, which were placed on the ancient site of the Bastille, like a conqueror on his trophies. His coffin was exposed to public gaze, and a pedestal was formed for it of stones torn from the foundations of this ancient stronghold of tyranny. And thus, Voltaire, when dead, triumphed over those stones which had triumphed over and confined him when living.
On one of the blocks was the inscription, Receive on this spot, where despotism once fettered thee, the honors decreed to thee by thy country. The coffin of Voltaire was deposited between those of Descartes and Mirabeau, the spot predestined for this intermediary genius between philosophy and policy, between the design and the execution. The aim of Voltaire's life was the destruction of prejudice and the establishment of reason. Deists, said W. J. Fox in 1819, have done much for toleration and religious liberty. It may be doubted if there be a country in Europe where that cause has not been advanced by the writings of Voltaire. In the preface and conclusion to the examination of scriptures, Voltaire says, The ambition of domineering over the mind is one of the strongest passions.
A theologian, a missionary, or a partisan of any description is always for conquering like a prince, and there are many more sects than there are sovereigns in the world. To whose guidance shall I submit my mind? Must I be a Christian because I happened to be born in London or in Madrid? Must I be a mussulman because I was born in Turkey? As it is myself alone that I ought to consult, the choice of a religion is my greatest interest. One man adores God by Mohammed, another by the Grand Lama, and another by the Pope. Weak and foolish men adore God by your own reason. I have learned that a French vicar of the name of John Messillier, who died a short time since, prayed on his deathbed that God would forgive him for having taught Christianity.
I have seen a vicar in Dorsetshire relinquish a living of two hundred pounds a year, and confess to his parishioners that his conscience would not permit him to preach the shocking absurdities of the Christians. But neither the will nor the testament of John Messillier or the declaration of this worthy vicar are what I consider decisive proofs. Uriel Acosta, a Jew, publicly renounced the Old Testament in Amsterdam. However, I pay no more attention to the Jew Acosta than to Parson Messillier. I will read the arguments on both sides of the trial, with careful attention, not suffering the lawyers to tamper with me, but will weigh before God, the reasons of both parties, and decide according to my conscience.
I commence my being, my own instructor. I conclude that every sensible man, every honest man, ought to hold Christianity in abhorrence. The great name of Theist, which we can never sufficiently revere, is the only name we ought to adopt. The only gospel we should read is the grand Book of Nature, written with God's own hand, and stamped with His own seal. The only religion we ought to profess is to adore God and act like honest men. It would be as impossible for this simple and eternal religion to produce evil as it would be impossible for Christian fanaticism not to produce it. But what shall we substitute in its place, say you? What? A ferocious animal has sucked the blood of my relatives. I tell you to rid yourself of this beast, and you ask me, what shall you put in its place?
Is it you that put this question to me? Then you are a hundred times more odious than the pagan pontiffs who permitted themselves to enjoy tranquility among their ceremonies and sacrifices, who did not attempt to enslave the mind by dogmas, who never disputed the powers of the magistrates, and who introduced no discord among mankind. You have the face to ask what you must substitute in the place of your fables. As will be seen by his exclamation on his deathbed, Voltaire was no believer in the divinity of Christ. He disbelieved the Bible in toto. The accounts of the doings of the Jewish kings as represented in the Old Testament he has unsparingly ridiculed in the drama Saul. The quiet irony of the following will be easily appreciated.
Divinity of Jesus. The Socinians, who are regarded as blasphemers, do not recognize the divinity of Jesus Christ. They dare to pretend with the philosophers of antiquity, with the Jews, with the Mohammedans, and most other nations that the idea of a God-man is monstrous, that the distance from God to man is infinite, and that it is impossible for a perishable body to be infinite, immense, or eternal. They have the confidence to quote Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea, in their favor, who in his ecclesiastical history, Book I, chapter IX, declares that it is absurd to imagine the uncreated and unchangeable nature of Almighty God taking the form of a man. They cite the fathers of the Church, Justin and Tertullian, who have said the same thing.
Justin in his dialogue with Trifonius, and Tertullian in his discourse against Praxeus. They quote St. Paul, who never calls Jesus Christ God, and who calls him man very often. They carry their audacity so far as to affirm that the Christians passed three entire ages in forming by degrees the Apothesis of Jesus. And that they only raised this astonishing edifice by the example of the pagans who had deified mortals. At first, according to them, Jesus was only regarded as a man inspired by God, and then as a creature more perfect than others. They gave him some time after a place above the angels, as St. Paul tells us. Every day added to his greatness. He in time became an emanation proceeding from God.
This was not enough. He was even born before time. At last, he was God consubstantial with God. Crelius, Vocalcius, Natalus, Alexander, and Hornbeck have supported all these blasphemies by arguments which astonish the wise and mislead the weak. Above all, Faustus Socinius spread the seeds of this doctrine in Europe, and at the end of the sixteenth century a new species of Christianity was established. There were already more than three hundred.
Though a firm and consistent believer in the being of God, Voltaire was no bigot. The calm reasoning of the following passage does honor to its author. Faith. Divine faith, about which so much has been written, is evidently nothing more than incredulity brought under subjection. For we certainly have no other faculty than the understanding by which we can believe, and the objects of faith are not those of the understanding. We can believe only what appears to be true, and nothing can appear true but in one of the three following ways. By intuition or feeling, as I exist, I see the sun. Or by an accumulation of probability amounting to certainty. as there is a city called Constantinople, or by positive demonstration, as triangles of the same base and height are equal.
Faith, therefore, being nothing at all of this description, can no more be a belief, a persuasion, than it can be yellow or red. It can be nothing but the annihilation of reason, a silence of adoration at the contemplation of things absolutely incomprehensible. Thus, speaking philosophically, no person believes the Trinity, no person believes that the same body can be in a thousand places at once. And he who says, I believe these mysteries, will see beyond the possibility of a doubt, if he reflects for a moment on what passes in his mind, that these words mean no more than, I respect thee, mysteries. I submit myself to those who announce them. For they agree with me that my real reason, their own reason, believe them or not, but it is clear if my reason is not persuaded I am not persuaded and my reason cannot possibly be two different things.
It is an absolute contradiction that I should receive that as true which my understanding rejects as false. Faith, therefore, is nothing but submissive or deferential incredulity. Why should this submission be exercised when my understanding invincibly recoils? The reason, we well know, is that my understanding has been persuaded that the mysteries of my faith are laid down by God Himself. All, then, that I can do as a reasonable being is to be silent and adore. That is what divines call external faith, and this faith neither is nor can be anything more than respect for things incomprehensible. In consequence of the reliance, I place on those who teach them. If God Himself were to say to me, Thought is of an olive color.
The square of a certain number is bitter. I should certainly understand nothing at all from these words. I could not adopt them either as true or false, but I will repeat them if He commands me to do it, and I will make others repeat them at the risk of my life. This is faith. It is nothing more than obedience. In order to obtain a foundation, then, for this obedience, it is merely necessary to examine the books which require it. Our understanding, therefore, should investigate the books of the Old and New Testament, just as it would Plutarch or Levi, and if it finds in them incontestable and decisive evidences, evidences obvious to all minds, and such as would be admitted by men of all nations, that God himself is their author.
Then it is our incumbent duty to subject our understanding to the yoke of faith. I.B.D. Page 4. 74. Prayer. We know of no religion without prayers. Even the Jews had them, although there was no public form of prayer among them before the time when they sang their canticles in their synagogues, which did not take place until a late period. The people of all nations, whether actuated by desires or fears, have summoned the assistance of the divinity. Philosophers, however, more respectful to the supreme being and rising more above human weakness, have been habituated to substitute for prayer resignation. This, in fact, is all that appears proper and suitable between creature and creator. But philosophy is not adapted to the great mass of mankind.
It soars too highly above the vulgar. It speaks a language they are unable to comprehend. To propose philosophy to them would be just as weak as to propose the study of conic sections to peasants or fishwomen. Among philosophers themselves, I know of no one besides Maximus Tyreus who has treated of this subject. The following is the substance of his ideas upon it. The designs of God exist from all eternity. If the object prayed for be conformable to his immutable will, it must be perfectly useless to request of him the very thing which he has determined to do. If he is prayed to for the reverse of what he has determined to do, he is prayed to be weak, fickle, and inconsistent. Such a prayer implies that this is thought to be his character, and is nothing better than ridicule or mockery of him.
You either request of him what is just and right, in which case he ought to do it and it will be actually done without any solicitation, which in fact shows distrust of his rectitude, or what you request is unjust and then you insult him. You are either worthy or unworthy of the favor you implore. If worthy, he knows it better than you do yourself. If unworthy, you commit an additional crime in requesting that which you do not merit. In a word, we offer up prayers to God only because we have made Him after our own image. We treat Him like a pacha or sultan who is capable of being exasperated and appeased. In short, all nations pray to God. The sage is resigned and obeys Him. Let us pray with the people and let us be resigned to Him with the sage.
We have already spoken of the public prayer of many nations and of those of Jews. That people have had one from time immortal which deserves all our attention, from its resemblance to the prayer taught us by Jesus Christ Himself. This Jewish prayer is called the Kaddish, and begins with these words, O God, let Thy name be magnified and sanctified. Make Thy kingdom to prevail. Let redemption flourish, and the Messiah come quickly. As this radish is recited in Chalde, it has induced the belief that this is as ancient as the captivity, and that it was at that period that the Jews began to hope for a Messiah, a Liberator, or Redeemer, who they have since prayed for in the Ihi seasons of their calamities.
Voltaire's contempt for the Bible led him to use the language of holy writ in the coarsest of jokes, though perhaps with such material the jokes could not well be otherwise than coarse. The following letter he addressed to M. Bayan, intendant of Lyon, on account of a poor Jew taken up for uttering contraband goods. This kind of writing obtained for Voltaire the title of scoffer. Blessings on the Old Testament, which gives me this opportunity of telling you that amongst all those who adore the New, there is not one more devoted to your service than myself. A certain descendant of Jacob, a peddler, as all these gentlemen are, whilst he is waiting for the Messiah, waits also for your protection, which at present he has the most need of.
Some honest men of the first trade of St. Matthew, who gathered together the Jews and Christians at the gates of your city, have seized something in the breeches pocket of an Israelitish page belonging to the poor circumcised. Who has the honor to tender you this billet, with all proper submission and humility. I beg leave to join my amen to his at a venture. I but just saw you at Paris as Moses saw the deity, and should be very happy in seeing you face to face, if the word face can in any ways be applied to me. Preserve some remembrance of your old eternal humble servant, who loves you with that chaste and tender affection which the religious Solomon had for his three hundred shuhamites. Voltaire's prodigious wit and sarcasm were so exuberant that he expended them upon all people and all subjects, even himself, when occasion admitted of it.
In one of his letters addressed to the Elector Palatine, September 9th, 1761, he gives this excuse for not attending at the court. "'I should really make an excellent figure amidst the rejoicings of your Electoral Highness.' It was only, I think, in the Egypt of antiquity that skeletons were admitted to a place in their festivals. To say the truth, my lord, it is all over with me. I laugh, indeed, sometimes, but am forced to acknowledge that pain is an evil. It is a comfort to me that your Highness is well, but I am fitter for an extreme unction than a baptism. May the peace serve for an era to mark the prince's birth, and may his august father preserve his regard for and accept the profound respects of his little Swiss, Voltaire.
In politics, Voltaire was not very far advanced. He seems to have had no idea of a nation without a king. A monarch who should not commit any very flagrant acts of tyranny was as much as he appeared to desire. He evidently did not foresee the great revolution that was so soon to burst forth in France, but that he mainly contributed by his writings to bring it about, there can be no doubt. His influence upon the men of his time, both in France and Europe, is ably depicted by such writers as Lamartine, Quiney, and Brougham. Voltaire's was the one great mind of his day, whose thoughts engrossed the attention of all men. He was great by his learning, his genius, and his benevolence. And this man was the champion of reason, the enemy of superstition, and an infidel.
Quine, in his lectures on the Romish church, says, I watch for forty years the reign of one man who is in himself the spiritual director, not of his country, but of his age. From the corner of his chamber he governs the kingdom of spirits. Intellects are every day regulated by his. One word written by his hand traverses Europe. Princes love and kings fear him. They think they are not sure of their kingdom if he be not with them. Whole nations on their side adopt without discussion and emulously repeat every syllable that falls from his pen. Who exercises this incredible power, which had been nowhere seen since the Middle Ages? Is he another Gregory, the second? Is he a Pope? No. Voltaire. We conclude our sketch with the eloquent words of Lamartine, who describes in a few sentences the inestimable services rendered to free thought and intellectual progress by the sage of Ferney.
If we judge of men by what they have done, Then Voltaire is incontestably the greatest writer of modern Europe. No one has caused through the powerful influence of his genius alone, and the perseverance of his will, so great a commotion in the minds of men. His pen aroused a world, and has shaken a far mightier empire than that of Charlemagne, the European empire of a theocracy. His genius was not force, but light. Heaven had destined him not to destroy, but to illuminate. And wherever he trod, light followed him. For reason, which is light, had destined him to be first her poet, then her apostle, and lastly her idol.