did. I may also say that naval men have written to me stating that it

is not impossible that some of the contrivances mentioned in “The Great War Syndicate” may some day be used in marine warfare. I myself have no doubt of this, for there is no reason why a turtle-backed little ironclad, almost submerged, should not steam under the stern of a great man-of-war like the “Camperdown,” and having disabled her propeller blades, tow her _nolens volens_ into an American port, where she could be detained until peace should be declared.

_Guest._ I would not like to live in the port in whose harbor the captive vessel was detained.

_Host._ It might be disagreeable; perhaps it would be better to keep the captured vessel continually on the tow-path through unfrequented waters.

_Guest._ But we were speaking of the necessity of having a definite purpose at the outset of a piece of work.

_Host._ It amounts to a necessity, almost. For instance, if I am about to write a fairy tale, I must get my mind in an entirely different condition from what it would be were I planning a story of country life of the present day. With me the proper condition often requires hard work. The fairy tale will come when the other kind is wanted. But the ideas of one class must be kept back and those of the other encouraged until at last the proper condition exists and the story begins. But I suppose you poets do not set out in this way.

_Guest._ It would be a revelation to the public to be let into the secret of some of our “motives,” and the various ways we have of mingling “poetic-honey” and “trade-wax,” as Tom Hood calls it. The spur of necessity, real or fancied, is often a capital provocation to eloquence. I know a woman who writes verses, who is not only unnecessarily neglectful of worldly interests, but is careless in detail, and self-indulgent and absent-minded. On one occasion, losing quite a sum of money from her pocket-book, and wishing to give herself a lesson to be remembered, she set herself the task of writing certain verses to defray the expenses of her carelessness, as it were. Involuntarily, and yet with a kind of grim fitness in things, the subject that came to hand was, “Losses.” The poem was written and disposed of, and the writer was square with her conscience once more; and the poem was not manifestly worse for having a prosaic prompting behind it. It is well, I think, that the public doesn’t always fathom these little hidden sequences in our logic.

_Host._ Speaking of “hidden sequences in logic,” as you call them, reminds me of a story a little girl told me. There was a nest in a tree, and the nest was full of young birds. One very forward one always would sit on the edge of the nest, and had several falls in this way. The old birds picked it up repeatedly, and told it that it would most certainly be caught by cats. After they found that it would not reform, the mother-bird took it by one wing and the father-bird took it by the other, and together they carried it to London, where they left it. I could not imagine why they carried it to London; but a day or two later I discovered that the little girl had been reading the story of Dick Whittington, which was founded on the fact that there were no cats in London.

_Guest._ I am constantly surprised at the adroitness children manifest in their little stories. Where does it vanish when they grow older? If almost any child kept up the promise of its story-telling infancy, every grown person would be a clever novelist. But there was a question I had in mind to ask you while we were on the subject of suggestion and plot. Do you ever receive any available ideas from other people?

_Host._ Yes, a great many excellent suggestions have come to me from others. But the better they are the less I like to use them, for a good idea deserves hard work, and when the work were done I would not feel that the story were really mine. In a few cases I have used suggestions from other people. For instance, there have been publishers who desired a story written upon a certain incident or idea.

_Guest._ The sense of ideal property is strong. One feels an honest indignation at taking what belongs to another, even though but a thought, and that of no account to the thinker, in his own opinion of it. Nevertheless, you feel how easily this ideal property of his might be “realized” with just a touch of art. Somehow, that touch of art, contributed by you, you feel would not quite make the material yours.

_Host._ I have been thinking why it is that very often the work of an author of fiction is not as true as the work of an artist, and I have concluded that the artist has one great advantage over the author of fiction, and over the poet, even. The artist has his models for his characters--models which he selects to come as near as possible to what his creations are going to be. The unfortunate author has no such models. He must rely entirely upon the characters he has casually seen, upon reading, upon imagination. How I envy my friend Frost! Last summer, when he wished to sketch a winter scene in Canada, he had a model sitting with two overcoats on, and the day was hot. Now, I couldn’t have any such models. I should have to describe my cold man just by thinking of him.

_Guest._ Or learn to shiver, yourself, like the boy in “Grimm’s Tales”--and describe that!

_Host._ But it is a serious matter. The best artists have live models to work from. But your writer of fiction--how, for instance, can he see a love scene enacted? He must describe it as best he can, and, although he may remember some of his own, he will never describe those.

_Guest._ Goethe was able to overcome such objections, I believe; and Heine tells us that,

“Out of my own great woes I make my little songs.”

But please go on.

_Host._ I think the beautiful young heroine of fiction generally gives the author of love stories a great deal of trouble. Such ladies exist, and their appearances may be described; but it is very difficult to find out what they would do under certain conditions necessary to the story, and therefore the author is obliged to rely upon his imagination, or upon the few examples he has met with in his reading, where men or women have delivered love-clinics at their own bedsides, or have had the rare opportunities of describing them at the bedsides of others. For this reason people who are not in love, and whose actions are open to the observations of others, are often better treated by the novelist than are his lovers. I have sometimes thought that a new profession might be created--that of Literary Model. Of course we would have none but the very highest order of dramatic performers, but such assistance as they might be able to give would be invaluable. Suppose the writer wanted to portray the behavior of a woman who has just received the tidings of the sudden death of her rejected lover. How does a writer, who has never heard such intelligence delivered, know what expressions of face, or what gestures, to give to his heroine in this situation? How would the intense, high-strung, nervous woman conduct herself? How would the fair-haired, phlegmatic type of women receive the news? The professional literary model might be enormously useful in delineating the various phases assumed by one’s hero or heroine.

_Guest._ The idea is certainly novel. But I’m afraid the professional literary model, if a woman, would never be content with “well enough.” She would want to excel herself; and, if you didn’t employ her constantly, would be devising new rôles for herself to fill. She would be super-serviceable.

_Host._ Perhaps. But such zeal could easily be restrained. It might be a good idea for a novel-writer to have a study near the greenroom of a theatre, and then between the acts he might send for this or that performer to give him a living picture of a certain character in a certain situation. It might not take a minute to do this. By the way, the writer’s model would have a better time than one who sat for an artist, for the sittings would generally be very short.

_Guest._ All the world’s a stage, and a thoroughly good actor might make a good literary model. But all sorts of people must help as models, by simply going on with their own little dramas of life, before the eyes of the sagacious author.

_Host._ That is true enough, so far as the comedy scenes of the play are concerned. But, as I said before, who is going to set the author the copy for tragedy or love scenes? Occasionally you get oblique views--mere intimations of such scenes. I wish I had had the good fortune to see what a lady of my acquaintance saw a while ago. She is one of the very few who have ever seen a proposal of love and its acceptance, carried on before spectators, exactly as if the contracting parties were alone. The scene took place in a street car between two young persons of foreign tongue, one of whom was about to take a steamer; and the man knew that what he had to say must be said then or never said at all. With the total oblivion of the presence of others these two opened their hearts to each other, the affair proceeded through all its stages, and the compact was sealed. This would have been a rare opportunity for a literary artist.

_Guest._ How perverse fate is in this respect! It seems as if there were a conspiracy to show up the most dramatic scenes either just before we come into the audience or just after we have left. But, take it all in all, I suppose the material we are best fitted to make use of is the kind that sooner or later comes in our way. We only take what we can easiest assimilate; the novelist his own proper food, the essayist another sort, the writer of verse the “cud of sweet and bitter fancies,” most likely. Have I asked a great many questions? I want to ask just one more--have you ever written any poetry? It is a pet theory of mine that everybody has, at some time or other, made verses because he couldn’t help it--it’s instinctive! Now for a clean confession.

_Host._ Let me see. Yes, now I remember one such effort. I devised a poem, and two lines at the beginning of it and two lines at the end of it came readily into my mind. But I had only written two or three lines when a breeze came up and blew my paper away.

_Guest._ Lost, like the Sibylline books! Do you remember what the lines were?

_Host._ Only the first two and the last two, which had been in my mind for some time. Those I put on paper are entirely gone.

_Guest._ Can you give me the lines and the intervening argument?

_Host._ The poem began thus:

“We walked in a garden of roses, Miss Jane, Sir Cupid, and I.”

The story then proceeded to the effect that Sir Cupid and I walked through the narrow alleys side by side, while Miss Jane always flitted some distance in front, and would never stop that I might overtake her. I entreated her to wait for me, but she always laughed, and declined, hurrying on, sometimes picking a white rose, sometimes a red, and always answering, when she spoke at all, that the paths were not wide enough for three. After a good deal of this fruitless chase I became disheartened, and, with my companion, Sir Cupid, left the garden. The poem concluded thus:

“The next time I looked into the garden The rascal was walking with her.”

Now, will you not take these lines and these ideas and finish the poem?[1] I shall never be able to do it.

_Guest._ Ah! Those Sibylline leaves should have blown into the hands of a Dobson. But we’ll try at restoring the lost passages.

_Host._ The experiment may lead to great things. I almost think I see a new volume, with the title, “Collaborative Verses,” etc. And now choose whether you will go for a drive to Green Village or to the Black Meadows.

_A Gentle Voice of Deprecation._ Oh! don’t take her to Green Village! There isn’t anything remarkable there. She will like the Black Meadows much more.

_Guest._ Yes, there might be adventures in such a region. And I want to put in a plea to be taken to that sylvan road where you saw the original sign of the Squirrel Inn.

_Host._ Well, it shall be to the Black Meadows, and so, on!

* * * * *

[1] MISS JANE, SIR CUPID, AND I.

_A Collaborative Poem by E. M. T. and F. R. S._

We walked in a garden of roses, Miss Jane, Sir Cupid, and I-- Nay, rather, she walked by herself, And never would answer me why.

The more I besought her, still farther And farther she flitted ahead, Laughing and scattering roses-- Roses, the white and the red.

At last she gave me her “reason;” Surely I “ought to have known”-- “Sir Cupid”--and--“Three are too many,” She’d walk with me, if alone!

So, lost in the maze of the roses, Forever she flitted before; And I said, with a sigh, to Sir Cupid: “I’ll follow the truant no more!”

The next time I drew near to the roses, I listened; I heard a faint stir, And when I looked into the garden The rascal was walking with her!

Then softly I crept in, and caught her; She blushed, but would not be free. By keeping Sir Cupid between us There was room in those alleys for three.

“INCURABLE”

A GHETTO TRAGEDY

BY I. ZANGWILL,

Author of “Children of the Ghetto.”

“Cast off among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave. Whom thou rememberest no more, and they are cut off from thy hand. Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, in dark places, in the deeps. Thy wrath lieth hard upon me, and thou hast afflicted me with all thy waves. Thou hast put mine acquaintance far from me; thou hast made me an abomination unto them; I am shut up, and I cannot come forth. Mine eye wasteth away by reason of affliction. I have called daily upon thee, O Lord, I have spread forth my hands unto thee.”--_Eighty-eighth Psalm._

There was a restless air about the Refuge. In a few minutes the friends of the patients would be admitted. The incurables would hear the latest gossip of the Ghetto, for the world was still very much with these abortive lives, avid of sensations, Jewish to the end. It was an unpretentious institution--two corner houses knocked together--near the east lung of London; supported mainly by the poor at a penny a week, and scarcely recognized by the rich, so that paraplegia and vertigo and rachitis and a dozen other hopeless diseases knocked hopelessly at its narrow portals. But it was a model institution all the same, and the patients lacked for nothing except freedom from pain. There was even a miniature synagogue for their spiritual needs, with the women’s compartment religiously railed off from the men’s, as if these grotesque ruins of sex might still distract each other’s devotions.

Yet the rabbis knew human nature. The sprightly hydrocephalous paralytic, Leah, had had the chair she inhabited carried down into the men’s sitting-room to beguile the moments, and was smiling fascinatingly upon the deaf blind man who had the Braille Bible at his fingers’ ends, and read on as stolidly as St. Anthony. Mad Mo had strolled vacuously into the ladies’ ward, and, indifferent to the pretty, white-aproned Christian nurses, was loitering by the side of a weird, hatchet-faced cripple, with a stiletto-shaped nose supporting big spectacles. Like most of the patients, she was up and dressed. Only a few of the white pallets ranged along the walls were occupied.

“Leah says she’d be quite happy if she could walk like you,” said Mad Mo, in complimentary tones. “She always says Milly walks so beautiful. She says you can walk the whole length of the garden.” Milly, huddled in her chair, smiled miserably.

“You’re crying again, Rachel,” protested a dark-eyed, bright-faced dwarf, in excellent English, as she touched her friend’s withered hand. “You are in the blues again. Why, that page is all blistered.”

“No, I feel so nice,” said the sad-eyed Russian in her quaint, musical accent, “You sall not tink I cry because I am not happy. When I read sad tings--like my life--den only I am happy.”

The dwarf gave a short laugh that made her pendant earrings oscillate. “I thought you were brooding over your love affairs,” she said.

“Me!” cried Rachel. “I lost too young my leg to be in love. No, it is Psalm lxxxviii that I brood over. ‘I am afflicted and ready to die from my youth up.’ Yes, I was only a girl when I had to go to Königsberg to find a doctor to cut off my leg. ‘Lover and friend hast thou put far from me, and mine acquaintance into darkness.’”

Her face shone ecstatic.

“Hush!” whispered the dwarf, with a warning nudge and a slight nod in the direction of a neighboring waterbed, on which a pale, rigid, middle-aged woman lay with shut, sleepless eyes.

“Se cannot understand Englis,” said the Russian girl, proudly.

“Don’t be so sure. Look how the nurses here have picked up Yiddish!”

Rachel shook her head incredulously. “Sarah is a Polis’ woman,” she said. “For years dey are in England and dey learn noding.”

“_Ich bin krank! Krank! Krank!_” suddenly moaned a shrivelled Polish grandmother, as if to corroborate the girl’s contention. She was squatting monkey-like on her bed, every now and again murmuring her querulous burden of sickness, and jabbering at the nurses to shut all the windows. Fresh air she objected to as vehemently as if it were butter or some other heterodox dainty.

Hard upon her crooning came blood-curdling screams from the room above, sounds that reminded the visitor he was not in a Barnum show, that the monstrosities were genuine. Pretty Sister Margaret--not yet indurated--thrilled with pity, as before her inner vision rose the ashen, perspiring face of the palsied sufferer, who sat quivering all the long day in an easy-chair, her swollen, jelly-like hands resting on cotton-wool pads, an air pillow between her knees, her whole frame racked at frequent intervals by fierce spasms of pain, her only diversion faint, blurred reflections of episodes of the street in the glass of a framed picture: yet morbidly suspicious of slow poison in her drink, and cursed with an incurable vitality.

Meantime Sarah lay silent, bitter thoughts moving beneath her white, impassive face like salt tides below a frozen surface. It was a strong, stern face, telling of a present of pain and faintly hinting of a past of prettiness. She seemed alone in the populated ward, and, indeed, the world was bare for her. Most of her life had been spent in the Warsaw Ghetto, where she was married at sixteen, nineteen years before. Her only surviving son--a youth whom the English atmosphere had not improved--had sailed away to trade with the Kafirs. And her husband had not been to see her for a fortnight.

When the visitors began to arrive her torpor vanished. She eagerly raised the half of her that was not paralyzed, partially sitting up. But gradually expectation died out of her large gray eyes. There was a buzz of talk in the room--the hydrocephalous girl was the gay centre of a group; the Polish grandmother who cursed her grandchildren when they didn’t come, and when they did, was denouncing their neglect of her to their faces; everybody had somebody to kiss or quarrel with. One or two acquaintances approached the bed-ridden wife, too, but she would speak no word, too proud to ask after her husband, and wincing under the significant glances occasionally cast in her direction. By and by she had the red screen placed round her bed, which gave her artificial walls and a quasi-privacy. Her husband would know where to look for her.

“Woe is me!” wailed her octogenarian countrywoman, rocking to and fro. “What sin have I committed to get such grandchildren? You only come to see if the old grandmother isn’t dead yet. So sick! So sick! So sick!”

Twilight filled the wards. The white beds looked ghostly in the darkness. The last visitor departed. Sarah’s husband had not yet come.

“He is not well, Mrs. Kretznow,” Sister Margaret ventured to say in her best Yiddish. “Or he is busy working. Work is not so slack any more.” Alone in the institution she shared Sarah’s ignorance of the Kretznow scandal. Talk of it died before her youth and sweetness.

“He would have written,” said Sarah, sternly. “He is wearied of me. I have lain here a year. Job’s curse is on me.”

“Shall I to him,” Sister Margaret paused to excogitate the word, “write?”

“No. He hears me knocking at his heart.”

They had flashes of strange savage poetry, these crude yet complex souls. Sister Margaret, who was still liable to be startled, murmured feebly, “But----”

“Leave me in peace!” with a cry like that of a wounded animal.

The matron gently touched the novice’s arm, and drew her away. “I will write to him,” she whispered.

Night fell, but sleep fell only for some. Sarah Kretznow tossed in a hell of loneliness. Ah, surely her husband had not forgotten her; surely she would not lie thus till death--that far-off death her strong religious instinct would forbid her hastening! She had gone into the Refuge to save him the constant sight of her helplessness and the cost of her keep. Was she now to be cut off forever from the sight of his strength?

The next day he came by special invitation. His face was sallow, rimmed with swarthy hair; his under lip was sensuous. He hung his head, half veiling the shifty eyes.

Sister Margaret ran to tell his wife. Sarah’s face sparkled.

“Put up the screen!” she murmured, and in its shelter drew her husband’s head to her bosom and pressed her lips to his hair.

But he, surprised into indiscretion, murmured: “I thought thou wast dying.”

A beautiful light came into the gray eyes.

“Thy heart told thee right, Herzel, my life, I was dying for a sight of thee.”

“But the matron wrote to me pressingly,” he blurted out.

He felt her breast heave convulsively under his face; with her hands she thrust him away.

“God’s fool that I am--I should have known; to-day is not visiting day. They have compassion on me--they see my sorrows--it is public talk.”

His pulse seemed to stop. “They have talked to thee of me,” he faltered.

“I did not ask their pity. But they saw how I suffered--one cannot hide one’s heart.”

“They have no right to talk,” he muttered, in sulky trepidation.

“They have every right,” she rejoined, sharply. “If thou hadst come to see me even once--why hast thou not?”

“I--I--have been travelling in the country with cheap jewelry. The tailoring is so slack.”

“Look me in the eyes! The law of Moses? No; it is a lie. God shall forgive thee. Why hast thou not come?”

“I have told thee.”

“Tell that to the Sabbath fire-woman! Why hast thou not come? Is it so very much to spare me an hour or two a week? If I could go out like some of the patients, I would come to thee. But I have tired thee out utterly----”

“No, no, Sarah,” he murmured uneasily.

“Then why----”

He was covered with shame and confusion. His face was turned away. “I did not like to come,” he said desperately.

“Why not?” Crimson patches came and went on the white cheeks; her heart beat madly.

“Surely thou canst understand?”

“Understand what? I speak of green and thou answerest of blue.”

“I answer as thou askest.”

“Thou answerest not at all.”

“No answer is also an answer,” he snarled, driven to bay. “Thou understandest well enough. Thyself saidst it was public talk.”

“Ah-h-h!” in a stifled shriek of despair. Her intuition divined everything. The shadowy, sinister suggestions she had so long beat back by force of will took form and substance. Her head fell back on the pillow, the eyes closed.

He stayed on, bending awkwardly over her.

“So sick! So sick! So sick!” moaned the grandmother.

“Thou sayest they have compassion on thee in their talk,” he murmured at last, half deprecatingly, half resentfully. “Have they none on me?”

Her silence chilled him. “But thou hast compassion, Sarah,” he urged. “Thou understandest.”

Presently she reopened her eyes.

“Thou art not gone?” she murmured.

“No; thou seest I am not tired of thee, Sarah, my life. Only----”

“Wilt thou wash my skin and not make me wet?” she interrupted bitterly. “Go home. Go home to her!”

“I will not go home.”

“Then go under like Korah.”

He shuffled out. That night her lonely hell was made lonelier by the opening of a peephole into paradise--a paradise of Adam and Eve and forbidden fruit. For days she preserved a stony silence toward the sympathy of the inmates. Of what avail words against the flames of jealousy in which she writhed?

He lingered about the passage on the next visiting day, vaguely remorseful; but she would not see him. So he went away sulkily indignant, and his new housemate comforted him, and he came no more.

When you lie on your back all day and all night, you have time to think, especially if you do not sleep. A situation presents itself in many lights from dawn to dusk, and from dusk to dawn. One such light flashed on the paradise and showed it to her as but the portico of purgatory. Her husband would be damned in the next world, even as she was in this. His soul would be cut off from among its people.

On this thought she brooded till it loomed horribly in her darkness. And at last she dictated a letter to the matron, asking Herzel to come and see her.

He obeyed, and stood shame-faced at her side, fidgeting with his peaked cap. Her hard face softened momentarily at the sight of him, her bosom heaved, suppressed sobs swelled her throat.

“Thou hast sent for me?” he murmured.

“Yes; perhaps thou didst again imagine I was on my deathbed?” she replied, with bitter irony.

“It is not so, Sarah. I would have come of myself, only thou wouldst not see my face.”

“I have seen it for twenty years--it is another’s turn now.”

He was silent.

“It is true all the same. I am on my deathbed.”

He started. A pang shot through his breast. He darted an agitated glance at her face.

“Is it not so? In this bed I shall die. But God knows how many years I shall lie in it.”

Her calm gave him an uncanny shudder.

“And till the Holy One, blessed be He, takes me, thou wilt live a daily sinner.”

“I am not to blame. God has stricken me. I am a young man.”

“Thou art to blame!” Her eyes flashed fire. “Blasphemer! Life is sweet to thee, yet perhaps thou wilt die first.”

His face grew livid.

“I am a young man,” he repeated tremulously.

“Thou dost forget what Rabbi Eliezer said: ‘Repent one day before thy death’--that is to-day, for who knows?”

“What wouldst thou have me do?”

“Give up----”

“No, no,” he interrupted. “It is useless. I cannot. I am so lonely.”

“Give up,” she repeated inexorably, “thy wife.”

“What sayest thou? My wife! But she is not my wife. Thou art my wife.”

“Even so. Give me up. Give me Gett [divorce].”

His breath failed, his heart thumped at the suggestion.

“Give thee Gett!” he whispered.

“Yes. Why didst thou not send me a bill of divorcement when I left thy home for this?”

He averted his face. “I thought of it,” he stammered. “And then----”

“And then?” He seemed to see a sardonic glitter in the gray eyes.

“I--I was afraid.”

“Afraid!” She laughed in grim mirthlessness. “Afraid of a bed-ridden woman!”

“I was afraid it would make thee unhappy.” The sardonic gleam melted into softness, then became more terrible than before.

“And so thou hast made me happy instead!”

“Stab me not more than I merit. I did not think people would be cruel enough to tell thee.”

“Thine own lips told me.”

“Nay, by my soul,” he cried, startled.

“Thine eyes told me, then.”

“I feared so,” he said, turning them away. “When she--came into my house, I--I dared not go to see thee--that was why I did not come, though I always meant to, Sarah, my life. I feared to look thee in the eyes. I foresaw they would read the secret in mine--so I was afraid.”

“Afraid!” she repeated, bitterly. “Afraid I would scratch them out! Nay, they are good eyes. Have they not seen my heart? For twenty years they have been my light. Those eyes and mine have seen our children die.”

Spasmodic sobs came thickly now. Swallowing them down, she said: “And she--did she not ask thee to give me Gett?”

“Nay; she was willing to go without. She said thou wast as one dead--look not thus at me. It is the will of God. It was for thy sake, too, Sarah, that she did not become my wife by law. She, too, would have spared thee the knowledge of her.”

“Yes, ye have both tender hearts! She is a mother in Israel, and thou art a spark of our father Abraham.”

“Thou dost not believe what I say?”

“I can disbelieve it and still remain a Jewess.” Then, satire boiling over into passion, she cried, vehemently: “We are threshing empty ears. Thinkst thou I am not aware of the judgments--I, the granddaughter of Reb Shloumi? Thinkst thou I am ignorant thou couldst not obtain a Gett against me--me, who have borne thee children, who have wrought no evil? I speak not of the Beth-Din, for in this impious country they are loath to follow the judgments, and from the English Beth-Din thou wouldst find it impossible to obtain the Gett in any case, even though thou didst not marry me in this country, nor according to its laws. I speak of our own Rabbonim--thou knowest even the Maggid would not give thee Gett merely because thy wife is bed-ridden. That--that is what thou wast afraid of.”

“But if thou art willing,” he replied, eagerly, ignoring her scornful scepticism.

His readiness to accept the sacrifice was salt upon her wounds.

“Thou deservest I should let thee burn in the lowest Gehenna,” she cried.

“The Almighty is more merciful than thou,” he answered. “It is He that hath ordained it is not good for man to live alone; and yet men shun me--people talk--and she--she may leave me to my loneliness again.” His voice faltered with self-pity. “Here thou hast friends, nurses, visitors. I--I have nothing. True, thou didst bear me children, but they withered as by the evil eye. My only son is across the ocean; he hath no love for me or you.”

The recital of their common griefs softened her toward him.

“Go,” she whispered. “Go and send me the Gett. Go to the Maggid; he knew my grandfather. He is the man to arrange it for thee with his friends. Tell him it is my wish.”

“God shall reward thee. How can I thank thee for giving thy consent?”

“What else have I to give thee, my Herzel, I, who eat the bread of strangers? Truly says the proverb: ‘When one begs of a beggar, the Herr God laughs!’”

“I will send thee the Gett as soon as possible.”

“Thou art right, I am a thorn in thine eye. Pluck me out quickly.”

“Thou wilt not refuse the Gett when it comes?” he replied, apprehensively.

“Is it not a wife’s duty to submit? Nay, have no fear. Thou shalt have no difficulty in serving the Gett upon me. I will not throw it in the messenger’s face. And thou wilt marry her?”

“Assuredly. People will no longer talk. And she must bide with me. It is my one desire.”

“It is mine likewise. Thou must atone and save thy soul.”

He lingered uncertainly.

“And thy dowry?” he said at last. “Thou wilt not make claim for compensation?”

“Be easy--I scarce know where my cesubah [marriage certificate] is. What need have I of money? As thou sayest, I have all I want. I do not even desire to purchase a grave--lying already so long in a charity grave. The bitterness is over.”

He shivered. “Thou art very good to me,” he said. “Good-by.”

He stooped down; she drew the bedclothes frenziedly over her face.

“Kiss me not!”

“Good-by, then,” he stammered. “God be good to thee!” He moved away.

“Herzel!” She had uncovered her face with a despairing cry. He slouched back toward her, perturbed, dreading she would retract.

“Do not send it--bring it thyself. Let me take it from thy hand.”

A lump rose in his throat. “I will bring it,” he said, brokenly.

The long days of pain grew longer; the summer was coming, harbingered by sunny days, that flooded the wards with golden mockery. The evening Herzel brought the Gett, Sarah could have read every word on the parchment plainly if her eyes had not been blinded by tears.

She put out her hand toward her husband, groping for the document he bore. He placed it in her burning palm. The fingers closed automatically upon it, then relaxed, and the paper fluttered to the floor. But Sarah was no longer a wife.

Herzel was glad to hide his burning face by stooping for the fallen bill of divorcement. He was long picking it up. When his eyes met hers again, she had propped herself up in her bed. Two big round tears trickled down her cheeks, but she received the parchment calmly, and thrust it into her bosom.

“Let it lie there,” she said stonily, “there, where thy head hath lain. Blessed be the true Judge!”

“Thou art not angry with me, Sarah?”

“Why should I be angry? She was right--I am but a dead woman. Only no one may say Kaddish for me--no one may pray for the repose of my soul. I am not angry, Herzel. A wife should light the Sabbath candles, and throw in the fire the morsel of dough. But thy house was desolate; there was none to do these things. Here I have all I need. Now thou wilt be happy, too.”

“Thou hast been a good wife, Sarah,” he murmured, touched.

“Recall not the past, we are strangers now,” she said, with recurrent harshness.

“But I may come and see thee--sometimes?” He had stirrings of remorse as the moment of final parting came.

“Wouldst thou reopen my wounds?”

“Farewell, then.”

He put out his hand timidly. She seized it and held it passionately.

“Yes, yes, Herzel! Do not leave me! Come and see me here--as a friend, an acquaintance, a man I used to know. The others are thoughtless--they forget me--I shall lie here--perhaps the Angel of Death will forget me, too.” Her grasp tightened till it hurt him acutely.

“Yes, I will come--I will come often,” he said, with a sob of physical pain.

Her clasp loosened. She dropped his hand.

“But not till thou art married,” she said.

“Be it so.”

“Of course, thou must have a ‘still wedding.’ The English Synagogue will not marry thee.”

“The Maggid will marry me.”

“Thou wilt show me her cesubah when thou comest next?”

“Yes, I will borrow it of her.”

A week passed. He brought the marriage certificate.

Outwardly she was calm. She glanced through it.

“God be thanked!” she said, and handed it back.

They chatted of indifferent things, of the doings of the neighbors. When he was going she said: “Thou wilt come again?”

“Yes, I will come again.”

“Thou art so good to spend thy time on me thus. But thy wife. Will she not be jealous?”

He stared, bewildered by her strange, eery moments.

“Jealous of thee!” he murmured.

She took it in its contemptuous sense, and her white lips twitched. But she only said: “Is she aware thou hast come here?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “Do I know? I have not told her.”

“Tell her.”

“As thou wishest.”

There was a pause. Presently the woman spoke.

“Wilt thou not bring her to see me? Then she will know that thou hast no love left for me.”

He flinched as at a stab. After a painful moment he said, “Art thou in earnest?”

“I am no marriage jester. Bring her to me. Will she not come to see an invalid? It is a Mitzvah [good deed] to visit the sick. It will wipe out her trespass.”

“She shall come.”

She came. Sarah stared at her for an instant with poignant curiosity; then her eyelids drooped to shut out the dazzle of her youth and freshness. Herzel’s wife moved awkwardly and sheepishly. But she was beautiful; a buxom, comely country girl from a Russian village, with a swelling bust and a cheek rosy with health and confusion.

Sarah’s breast was racked by a thousand needles; but she found breath at last.

“God bless--thee, Mrs.--Kretznow,” she said gaspingly. She took the girl’s hand. “How good thou art to come and see a sick creature!”

“My husband willed it,” the new wife said, in clumsy deprecation. She had a simple, stupid air that did not seem wholly due to the constraint of the strange situation.

“Thou wast right to obey. Be good to him, my child. For three years he waited on me, when I lay helpless. He has suffered much. Be good to him!”

With an impulsive movement she drew the girl’s head down to her and kissed her on the lips. Then, with an anguished cry of “Leave me for to-day!” she jerked the blanket over her face and burst into tears. She heard the couple move hesitatingly away. The girl’s beauty shone on her through the opaque coverings.

“O God!” she wailed, “God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, let me die now! For the merits of the patriarchs take me soon, take me soon!”

Her vain, passionate prayer, muffled by the bedclothes, was wholly drowned by ear-piercing shrieks from the ward above--screams of agony mingled with half-articulate accusations of attempted poisoning--the familiar paroxysm of the palsied woman who clung to life.

The thrill passed again through Sister Margaret. She uplifted her sweet, humid eyes.

“Ah, Christ!” she whispered, “if I could die for her!”

“HUMAN DOCUMENTS.”

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES.

A. CONAN DOYLE, whose father was an artist, was born in Edinburgh, in 1859. He began to write at the early age of seventeen, while studying medicine. He wrote some sixty short stories in the ten years before he became known through his widely-read “Sherlock Holmes” tales, and he has since given to the reading world such sustained efforts as “The White Company,” “Micah Clarke,” “The Refugees,” and “The Great Shadow.” Conan Doyle has given up the practice of medicine, in order to devote himself to literature exclusively. He is a close student of old romances, a great admirer of Scott and Fenimore Cooper, and has lectured on George Meredith, whom he places at the head of contemporary novel writers.

The Arctic explorer, R. E. PEARY, C. E., U. S. N., was born in Pennsylvania, forty years ago. His family having removed to Maine in his childhood, he lived there till after reaching manhood. He was graduated at Bowdoin College, and, eight years ago, was selected by competitive examination to be one of the civil engineers of the United States Navy, with the same rank and pay as that of lieutenant. But he is improperly called “Lieutenant” in the press. He has written for magazines, geographical journals, and newspapers. His report on his experiences in Nicaragua as a civil engineer appeared in the “National Geographical Magazine.” His report on his reconnoissance of the Greenland inland ice in 1886, and especially his reports and articles on the North Greenland Expedition, have made him widely known. His book on this last expedition was nearly completed when he again started on another Greenland expedition a few months ago.

CAMILLE FLAMMARION, the French astronomer, was born in 1842. He received his education in ecclesiastical seminaries; first at Langres and afterwards in Paris. He was a student in the Imperial Observatory from 1858 till 1862, when he became editor of the “Cosmos.” In 1865 he was made scientific editor of “Siècle.” He began about this time to lecture on astronomy, and a few years later his giving in his adhesion to spiritualism brought him great notoriety. In 1868 he made a number of balloon ascents, in order to study the condition of atmosphere at high altitudes, but he is above all an astronomer. He is called in France a “_vulgarisateur_” of astronomy, which means that he has presented to the people, in a picturesque and easily comprehended manner, the science of astronomy. His notable works are: “The Imaginary World and the Real;” “Celestial Marvels;” “God in Nature;” “History of Heaven;” “Scientific Contemplations;” “Aerial Voyages;” “The Atmosphere;” “History of this Planet;” and “The Worlds of Heaven.”

F. HOPKINSON SMITH was born in Baltimore, Md., October 23, 1838. By profession Mr. Smith is a civil engineer, and he has built a number of public edifices, many under contract with the United States. It was Mr. Smith who built the Race Rock Lighthouse, off New London Harbor, in Long Island Sound, between 1871 and 1877. In 1879 he built the Block Island breakwater. Mr. Smith has achieved success as a writer and lecturer. His best known water colors are “In the Darkling Wood” (1876); “Pegotty on the Harlem” (1881); “Under the Towers, Brooklyn Bridge” (1883); “In the North Woods” (1884); and “A January Thaw” (1887). Mr. Smith has also illustrated his own books, the books of others, and many magazine articles. Mr. Smith’s well-read books are: “Col. Carter of Cartersville;” “A White Umbrella in Mexico;” “Well-worn Roads of Spain, Holland, and Italy”; “Old Lines in New Black and White;” “A Day at Laguerre’s, and Other Days;” and “The Tile Club.”

A. CONAN DOYLE.

R. E. PEARY, C. E., U. S. N.

CAMILLE FLAMMARION.

F. HOPKINSON SMITH.

THE PERSONAL FORCE OF CLEVELAND.

BY E. JAY EDWARDS.

In his eulogium upon President Garfield, Mr. Blaine touched with impressive emphasis upon the rapidity with which honors came to him. Within six years after Williams College had sent Garfield forth equipped, “he was successively president of a college, State Senator of Ohio, Major-General of the Army of the United States, and a Representative-elect to the national Congress. A combination of honors so varied, so elevated, within a period so brief and to a man so young, is without precedent or parallel in the history of the country.”

Those whose privilege it was to hear that matchless eulogy will not forget the meaning glance with which Mr. Blaine, lifting his eyes from his manuscript, swept that splendid company before him, the President and his Cabinet, the Justices of the Supreme Court, in their silken robes, the deliberate Senate and impetuous House, and the remaining distinguished heroes of the war, in brilliant uniform, as though saying to them, “You at least can understand how wonderful a thing it is to so speedily gain such honors as these.”

Yet before the echoes of this eulogy had ceased, a political career had been begun which was to be more marvellous in its successes and the celerity of its successive achievements than that of Garfield. Within ten years after Mr. Blaine pronounced this eulogy, a man then unknown beyond the city in which he lived had been chosen Governor of New York by a plurality unparalleled in the history of any State; had stepped from that office before its term was ended to the chair of the Chief Executive of the nation, and had again been elected to the presidency; and elected the second time while a private citizen--an unmatched political honor.

The swiftly succeeding successes of Garfield are no longer unparalleled and unprecedented; that distinction is now Grover Cleveland’s. Carrying a torch as a private in evening campaign processions in 1880, he was to be four years later the successful presidential candidate of his party. He had gained no distinction for subtle or extraordinary strategy; he had not sat as a member in a legislative hall; his name had been associated with no important measure conceived and executed for public good; not of social inclination, not greatly learned, possessing no wide acquaintance, and having somewhat limited experience, he, nevertheless, revealed himself to the American people within the short space of two years as a man of extraordinary personal force, the quality of which is a puzzling mystery, which men of intellectual power seem to find a fascination in trying to analyze.

What is this mysterious and impressive quality? We may tell its manifestations; its influence has made history.

“What is it that is so impressive and overwhelming about your friend Governor Cleveland?” said a distinguished politician to the late Daniel Manning, at a time when Mr. Manning was with great skill directing the politics that had Cleveland’s first presidential nomination in view.

“I do not know what it is, but I know that it is there,” was Mr. Manning’s reply.

“My political intuitions are infallible,” said Governor Tilden, after a single interview with Mr. Cleveland; “and I am of opinion that this man is of somewhat coarse mental fibre and disposition, but of great force and stubbornly honest in his convictions.”

“His name should be Petros,” Mr. Blaine once said of Mr. Cleveland, “for when he has once formed opinions he stands upon them with the firmness of a granite foundation.”

It would be possible to quote many similar opinions uttered by able men who have had opportunity to see and study Mr. Cleveland. Some of these opinions do not wholly compliment Cleveland’s mental powers. But all of the opinions, whether uttered by political friends or enemies, have this in common: they express amazement, not so much at the swift successes of his career, as for that mystic personal quality which has made him able to hold the politicians of his party in the hollow of his hand, to defy political conventionalities, to break down machines, and, above all, to gain the confidence of the American people. This personal quality, which has given him these victories, he seems to have furnished no hint of in his childhood or youth. Before he came to his majority he must have led an unimpressive life, for those who knew him in those early days have no anecdote to tell of him which suggests that anything he did or said was of uncommon quality.

The Buffalo bar at that time was a brilliant one. The leaders of it were men of great ambition. It would have been impossible for a young man, and especially for a young Democrat, to have gained influence with those men had there not been even then some personal quality which won their respect; and Mr. Cleveland gained a great measure of respect while he was still a very young man, and he seems to have been able to form close and permanent intimacies with young men whose advantage in beginning life had been much greater than his. He passed swiftly from the ranks of the poor law-student to the companionship of such men.

When young Bissell, fresh from his successful career at Yale College, blessed with some wealth, and possessing all the advantages which gentle social relations give, returned to Buffalo from his college life, one of his closest intimacies was developed with Grover Cleveland. Mr. Folsom, one of the brightest men at the Buffalo bar, must have been early impressed by this quality of Cleveland’s, for he took the young man into partnership, and before Cleveland was thirty years of age he had established, with men of intellectual power, a standing not due to unusual mental gifts, but to this same personal quality which has made him conspicuous above other Americans for the past twelve years.

In 1884, after Mr. Cleveland’s nomination for the presidency, President Arthur was asked if he knew the man whom the Democratic party had nominated.

“I know him slightly, and have heard much of him,” was the President’s reply. “I know that he is a good companion among the rather worldly men at the Buffalo bar, or was when he was there; but I also know this of him: he is a man of splendid moral fibre, and I have been told that his fidelity to his convictions and professional duties is regarded by his associates at the Buffalo bar as something wonderful. I do not think that he is a man of strong, original mind, but he is the faithfullest man to what he believes to be right and his duty that his party has--at least in New York State.”

Roscoe Conkling, not long after Mr. Cleveland’s nomination, was asked if he knew the Democratic candidate, and Mr. Conkling replied, with more of emphasis than he was accustomed to employ in speaking of any public man at that time:

“I do not know much about Mr. Cleveland as a politician, but my impression is that he is no politician, as the word is commonly understood. But I do know this about him. As a lawyer he prepares his cases well, as thoroughly, perhaps, as any man whom I have known in my practice.”

Mr. Manning said, after he had retired from Mr. Cleveland’s cabinet:

“Whatever may be said of the President as to his relations with the politicians, this much must be said, that he has never done anything since he has been in the White House for any selfish, personal motive, and that he is the most conscientious man in his adherence to what he believes to be his duty, and in his attempts to make out his duty when he is not entirely clear about it, that I have ever seen; and I do not believe any President has ever exceeded him in these respects.”

One of the greater powers in one of the greatest railway systems of the United States, not long ago meeting a company of friends at a private dinner in the Union League Club, sat for some time listening to the very interesting and acute analyses of Cleveland which were made by many brilliant men who were in that party.

This railway prince, for that word justly describes him, at last said:

“I do not think any of you has touched upon what is, after all, the quality which has made Mr. Cleveland what he is in American politics. I had some reason to know wherein his power lies, at a time when he probably had no other thought of his future than the expectation of earning a competence at the bar. It so happened that I was associated with certain litigations in which Mr. Cleveland was employed as counsel. He was not employed either for or against the interests which I represented, for they were merely incidental to these suits. I was amazed, after a little experience with him, to see the way in which he worked. I thought I had seen hard work and patient fidelity, but I never saw a lawyer so patient and so faithful to his clients as Cleveland was. I remember speaking about it to an eminent lawyer who has since become a judge, and he told me that Grover Cleveland was the most conscientious man in his relations with his clients that he had ever met. I spoke of it to somebody else, and that man told me that Cleveland had once actually lost a case by over-conscientiousness and too thorough preparation. He had examined his witnesses so persistently and exhaustively in private, and had pursued the case in all its details with such supreme drudgery, that when his witnesses went upon the stand their testimony seemed to the jury to be almost parrot-like; to be so glib, so perfectly consistent, that it seemed as though there must be a weakness in the case, and that such perfection must have come from rehearsals. For that reason the jury decided against him, although he won the case afterwards on appeal.

“Now, I am satisfied that it is just this quality in that man which made it possible for him, in Buffalo, where the Republican party was predominant, to gain minor political victories, and it certainly was that which brought to him such Republican support as enabled him to carry the city in a mayoralty election. We have been seeing just this thing manifested throughout the country since Cleveland became prominent. There probably never was a President since Washington who so completely gained the confidence of a great element in the opposing party as Mr. Cleveland has done; and you can’t explain it in any other way than that just as in Buffalo, in his professional struggles, or in political contests, he was believed to be a faithful man, rigid and true in his convictions; so the opinion has spread throughout the United States, and is entertained by a great many members of the opposing political party, that here is a man who is absolutely true to his own convictions and who is faithful to his responsibilities as he understands them. Now, I have seen enough of American politics to know that while our people admire talent, and sometimes go into spasms of enthusiasm over men who have emotional qualities which appeal to the masses, and which make them personally popular, yet, after all, there is an abiding faith in sincerity, fidelity, and character which compels the American masses to choose the man who has these qualities rather than that one who has brilliant talents; and I think there is no doubt that it was a latent suspicion that Mr. Blaine did not always possess that higher character, while endowed with far more brilliant genius than Mr. Cleveland possesses, which caused the people to choose Cleveland rather than Blaine in 1884.”

We had some indication that this railway prince was correct in his estimate, at a time during the past summer when Mr. Cleveland was in some peril of physical ailment. The greatest of American advocates, himself an ardent Republican, a man whom his party would be delighted to honor if he would permit it, having heard of Mr. Cleveland’s illness, said to a friend:

“I am more deeply interested in these reports about Mr. Cleveland’s health than I can tell you. I have every confidence in Mr. Cleveland’s integrity of purpose, and in the sincerity of his desire to lift these financial questions above the range of partisanship, and it would be a terrible misfortune for this country if he were to be disabled by illness at this time.”

This from a man who did not vote for Cleveland, who had never met him more than once or twice, but who had intuitively recognized that quality which is Cleveland’s power. Again, another man, one of preëminent genius in the world of finance, a very strong Republican, having also heard that Mr. Cleveland was seriously ill, went to a friend who had intimacy with the President, and said:

“I wish you would find out for me whether it is true that the President is in danger. I have heard that it is so, and if it is, it is the blackest cloud upon our horizon to-day. I did not vote for Mr. Cleveland, for I do not believe in some of the principles of his party, and I do not agree with him in some of his views. Yet if he had been the candidate of my party I would gladly have voted for him, for I think he is the most conscientious man I ever knew. I have perfect faith in his fidelity to his sense of duty, and I have never seen an action of his as President which I thought was inspired simply by a desire for partisan advantage. I think he is the faithfullest public man that we have had since Lincoln in his adherence to his convictions.”

There is only one word that will give a name to this quality that distinguishes Mr. Cleveland, and that is, CHARACTER--that quality which Emerson describes as a reserve force which acts directly and without means, whose essence, with Mr. Cleveland, is the courage of truth.

Not long ago a group of notable men were discussing Cleveland as a politician, and they seemed to be agreed that in the sense in which the word “politician” is customarily used he is not a man of remarkable ability, and there were anecdotes told to justify such opinion as that. His nomination for governor was the result of as purely political manipulation as New York State has ever seen, but he had no part in it. Those who were sincerely urging his nomination permitted him to take no part in these politics, for they had learned that he was possessed of two weaknesses as a politician, which, unless he were restrained, would be likely to defeat their plans: one of them the political fault of honesty. It was displayed in Buffalo once, when, it being proposed to nominate him for mayor, and the ticket agreed upon having been shown to him, he declared, with expressions more emphatic than pious, that he would not permit his name to go on the ticket upon which was the name of a certain man whom he believed to be unworthy, although this man had great political influence.

Another weakness, from the politicians’ point of view, is a seeming incapacity to understand the need of organization in political work. It is not only incapacity to understand the need, but also ignorance of the way in which organization can be effected. It has been revealed in all of Mr. Cleveland’s campaigns. After his election as Governor of New York by a plurality of nearly two hundred thousand, his availability as a presidential candidate was recognized, and, later, was strengthened by the assurance that his messages while Mayor of Buffalo had brought him the respect and confidence of the independent element; yet Mr. Cleveland’s friends very soon discovered that if they were to bring about his nomination for President, it must be done through organization of which he was either ignorant or to which he would be indifferent. So Mr. Cleveland had almost no part in that splendid game of 1884. He knew almost nothing of those things which were being done for him. Mr. Manning and the others had taken him up at first because of his availability; but Mr. Manning soon discovered that a man might be available and still be as ignorant of the science of politics, as understood by those who make it a professional pursuit, as a child.

After Mr. Cleveland became President, he sometimes drove his friends almost to distraction by his seeming incapacity to understand movements in the game of politics, which his friends suggested to him. A number of them went to him some time near the middle of his term as President, to set forth the political condition in New York State. They were men of long training and considerable achievement in politics. They had made successes both in New York City and New York State. They spoke to him with freedom--some of them with bluntness. They said to Mr. Cleveland that the then Governor of New York, Mr. Hill, was constructing with unusual cunning and consummate ability a political machine which might not be friendly, and was perhaps likely to be actively hostile, to him; and then, with much of detail, they showed Mr. Cleveland how he could break down such organization, utterly scatter it, and create and maintain in New York State one upon which he could rely with serenity. The merest tyro in politics can easily understand with what chagrin and astonishment these friends departed from his presence, because he did not seem to have been impressed in the slightest by their assertion that he was in political danger in New York State, and did not appear to comprehend the methods which they suggested by which the danger could be overcome.

Then again, in the spring and summer of 1892, when it seemed for a time as though the tide was setting against his nomination, when it was certain that the most powerful influence ever arrayed against a leading candidate for a presidential nomination had been secured, and one which, according to all precedent, would be successful, Mr. Cleveland astonished and almost vexed those friends of his who were working in and out of season to bring about his nomination, by professing indifference to the opposition of the New York State delegation, and of some of the most powerful politicians in the Democratic party. He had been at the Victoria Hotel one evening, listening in an almost perfunctory way to the plaints and warnings of his friends. He had no suggestions to offer, no advice to give. A stranger seeing him there would have thought that he was not one of that company holding this consultation, but perhaps a friend, there by chance, whose presence was not offensive, and was therefore tolerated.

At last, complaining of the warmth of the evening, he proposed a stroll; then, taking two friends by their arms, he walked slowly up Fifth Avenue, and astonished them by saying:

“These things which you have told me do not alarm me at all. They can do their worst, and yet I shall be nominated in spite of them.”

And, later on, after his prediction was justified, and his name in the Chicago Convention had triumphed over all political precedent, and conquered the most powerful and perfect opposition ever arrayed against a candidate, while there was still grumbling and bitter feeling and revengeful threats of New York State, he again amazed these friends by saying to them, when they proposed a certain form of counter-organization to prevent treachery, “No, no, do not do it. Let them do their worst; I can be elected without New York.”

At a time when the financial clouds were gathering last spring, a little company of politicians, who were personal friends as well, called upon Mr. Cleveland by appointment, and were received in that upper chamber through which for many days a persistent procession filed before the President asking for office. Mr. Cleveland planted himself firmly for an instant before each supplicant, so firmly that it almost seemed to these friends of his standing a little way off that his determination to be persuaded by no appeal to emotion, gratitude, friendship, or by any other thing than fitness revealed itself even in the rigidness of the muscles of his body. Patiently listening to each request and making perfunctory response, the President then received the next and then the next, and no man of all that number who thus met him knew whether his plea had met with favor or refusal. At last the throng was gone, the doors were closed, and there came to the face of the President a strange, hard look, tinged with something of surprise, and turning to his friends who remained he threw himself wearily into his chair and was silent for a moment. When he spoke there was something of sadness, something of reproach, in his tone and manner, and he said:

“You have seen a picture which I see every day, and you may now know why it is that my ears must be deaf to such appeals; why I scarcely hear the words they speak; why I almost fear that with most men who seek with great persistence political office the sense of truth is apt to be blunted, and why, therefore, it is imperative for me to be always suspicious.” Then the President added, with something of indignation:

“But how any man who is a good citizen can come to me now and plead for office, when there is impending financial calamity, I cannot understand. Politics! Is it possible that the politicians do not see that the best as well as the imperative politics now is that which will bring the country back to financial prosperity?”

Some hours later, one of that company had another glimpse of the President. Washington was still for the night. The White House was dark, excepting for a light that burned in the room where the President works. At his desk sat the man who had said in the morning that his ears were deaf to the office-seekers’ appeals, and yet with patient drudgery he was now examining the indorsements and recommendations of the different applicants, as he had been doing for hours. Then, taking up his pen, he began to write. The pen seemed scarcely ever to stop, and, watching through the partly opened door that led into an outer office, the President’s friend was reminded by it of something which he had read or heard. “Where have I heard or seen something which that sight brings to my memory?” he asked himself. The impression remained with him after he left Washington, until at last, taking down from his library shelf a biography, he read this passage:

“Since we sat down I have been watching a hand which I see behind the window of that room across the street. It fascinates my eye; it never stops. Page after page is finished and put upon a heap of manuscript, and still the hand goes on unwearied, and so it will be till candles are brought, and God knows how long after that. It is the same every night. I well know what hand it is--’tis Walter Scott’s.”

Cleveland is not, however, indifferent to political organization. He believes in it; he supports it. That was revealed at the conference which he held in October, 1892, in the Victoria Hotel, with some of the leaders of what is called the Democratic machine in New York. Some time there will be a revelation of what was said and done there in all detail, and it will furnish important light upon Mr. Cleveland’s character as well as his more purely political capacity. This much is known: that he did there and with emphasis maintain the right and duty of party men to form associations, to submit to discipline, and to act by common agreement--in other words, to use a colloquialism, he “recognized the machine.” But he also made one magnificent manifestation of that higher quality of his which is his character, for when there was something like threatening intimation made by one of those present, Mr. Cleveland declared that rather than do the thing that was asked of him he would withdraw from the ticket, and the country would know why he had withdrawn; and, after he said that, he held those men who had dared to make such intimation of threat subdued and supple in the hollow of his fist, from which condition they have not strayed from that day to this.

He would have been a failure in the House of Representatives as a parliamentary leader, probably a failure as a debater. The parliamentary leader is for his party always, right or wrong, and Mr. Cleveland could never have assumed command incurring such responsibilities as that. His intellectual processes are not quick enough for the give and take of debate. Blaine or Garfield, Randall or Thurman, would have overmatched him. Probably no member of either House has more greatly interested him than Mr. Reed, who in all respects, excepting personal force, differs from him. Each has expressed something of regard for the personal qualities of the other, and there has come to light a keen interest in Mr. Cleveland’s eyes as friends have described Reed, the parliamentary leader and debater, to him. He has never seen Reed standing in the aisle just beyond his desk, a throng of associates with hot, eager faces surrounding him, he towering above them, his head thrust slightly forward and a little to one side, a half-whimsical, half-defiant curl upon his lips, and the sneer of the coming sarcasm already betrayed by suggestive swelling of his nostrils; or else with the placid, serene, and tantalizing composure with which he prepares to hurl an epigram, already in his mind, at his antagonists. Nor has Mr. Cleveland seen that readiness to deliver almost tiger-like ferocity of attack if it be needed. The black flag--no quarter asked or given--hoisted when necessary, that furious, all-controlling, unconquerable determination to win, to beat down opposition at all hazards and any cost except outright dishonor, straining even a little toward unfair advantage when that and nothing else will win, and expecting to meet unfairness in return; bent on winning--somehow, anyhow, but winning--Mr. Cleveland has never seen such impressive spectacle as Reed makes when at his finest as the champion of his party in parliamentary battle and debate. But they have told him of these things, and he has seemed not to tire, but to delight to hear them.

He could not do that. He would stand by a principle or fall with it. Reed might beat him down in a turbulent body like the House, but he would go down like Galileo, crying, “But the world DOES move!”

Mr. Cleveland has himself recognized this intellectual defect, if it be one, for last spring, when a company of New York friends were speaking to him about the financial condition, he said, with great earnestness, “I do not quite see where I am; I must have time;” and then added a favorite expression of his, “My head is in a bag now; I cannot see clearly.” But these men, when they heard him say this, realized that when he did see clearly, as he believed, then his convictions would become established, and it would almost be as easy to move the earth from its axis as to shift him from them.

When he met his first cabinet, there were gathered around the table two men of extraordinary brilliancy of intellect, another of splendid repute and vast experience, and all of them were men of perhaps finer intellectual quality, and certainly had many advantages, both natural and acquired, which he did not possess. Yet Secretary Whitney, speaking of this meeting to an old college friend of his, some time after, said, “When we met the President in the cabinet room, we had not been there ten minutes before we realized that ‘Where MacGregor sat, there was the head of the table.’” Whitney himself was the only member of the cabinet who was younger than Cleveland, and three members of it had been active in public life before Cleveland was admitted to the bar.

After Mr. Cleveland had been elected to the presidency the second time, but before his inauguration, he spent an evening with a gentleman whose political experience began with the formation of the Republican party. They were together in Mr. Cleveland’s library in New York, until long past midnight. The conversation touched upon public men and political history, and it was then revealed to his visitor that Mr. Cleveland had that order of intellect which absorbs not from books but from personal contact with men of experience. It was evident that he had learned far more of public men than he was believed to know, and he had gleaned this information by persistent inquiry. It was made plain that he got such grasp of public questions as he possessed, by searching investigation, not of books, but of men’s minds and experience. Late that night Mr. Cleveland asked his visitor about Lincoln, being anxious to know everything that this man could tell him about the Republican party’s first President; and when Mr. Cleveland put a certain question to his friend, then it was made plain that Lincoln’s career had been deeply studied by Mr. Cleveland, and that he anxiously sought to learn the secret of his mastery of men and direction of events. That question was, “How was Mr. Lincoln able to overcome the politicians, to defeat conspiracies, to control a half-rebellious and not personally loyal cabinet, and to maintain himself in spite of attack, open and insidious?” And the visitor, who knew Lincoln well, said in reply, “Mr. Cleveland, Lincoln did this because he weighed every act by his judgment of what the estimation of the plain people of the country would be about it. He reached over the heads of the politicians, and out to that great body of American citizens whom he called ‘the plain people.’ He believed that the plain people were year in and out accurate in their judgments, and he believed that the man who had their confidence could face the politicians with contempt even, because he was sure to be right.”

For some moments Mr. Cleveland said nothing, and then, with great impressiveness and something of serenity, he said, “I have long seen that. The public man cannot go astray who follows the plain people, nor can the politician err who respects their impulses.” In this single remark we have probably the secret revealed of the influence which controls Mr. Cleveland.

It has been said of Mr. Cleveland that Republicans have supported him because he is a better man than his party, but the assertion seems a flippant and thoughtless one. Mr. Cleveland is no better than the best ideals of the Democratic party, although he is immeasurably better than the false and abhorrent influences and elements which have been pleased to associate themselves with that party. At its best the Democratic party is a splendid force. Mr. Cleveland is esteemed better than his party by some Republicans, because his party has not always been true to its principles. But he is a true Democrat.

PATTI AT CRAIG-Y-NOS.

BY ARTHUR WARREN.

Two queens travel from the Paddington station of the Great Western Railway in London to their palatial homes--the Queen of England, and the Queen of Song. If you ask at Paddington for directions to Craig-y-Nos Castle, the porters will inform you with not less alacrity than they would have shown had you inquired the way to Windsor. And you observe they delight in the duty. They make you as comfortable as possible for your two-hundred-mile journey. You depart with the circumstance of an ambassador. Had you been accredited to the foot of the throne by some reigning monarch of the continent you could not be more thoughtfully attended by the railway serving-men. You are a guest of Madame Patti, and that, in the eyes of these honest fellows, is as good as being a guest of Queen Victoria.

I pulled up at the end of a broiling hot day in August, at a wee bit station on the top of a Welsh mountain. The station is called “Penwyllt;” it overlooks the Swansea Valley, and stands about half-way between Brecon and the sea. When a traveller alights at Penwyllt there is no need to question his purpose. He can have but one destination, and that is Craig-y-Nos Castle. A carriage from the castle was awaiting me, and we set off down the steep road to the valley, a sudden turn showing the Patti palace there on the banks of the Tawe. The place was two miles distant, and a thousand feet below our wheels, but I could see an American flag flying from the square tower, and there it waved during the successive days of my visit; for it is Madame Patti’s way to welcome a guest with the emblem of his nationality. A prettier compliment is not conceivable.

Mr. Gladstone, in a vein of pleasantry, once told Madame Patti that he would like to make her Queen of Wales. But she is that already, and more. She is Queen of Hearts the world over, and every soul with an ear is her liege. But, literally, in Wales Madame Patti is very like a queen. She lives in a palace; people come to her from the ends of the earth; she is attended with “love, honor, troops of friends;” and whenever she stirs beyond her own immediate domain the country folk gather by the roadside, dropping courtesies, and throwing kisses to her bonny majesty.

Her greeting of me was characteristic of this most famous and fortunate of women, this unspoiled favorite of our whirling planet. A group of her friends stood merrily chatting in the hall, and, as I approached, a dainty little woman with big brown eyes came running out from the centre of the company, stretched forth a hand, spoke a hearty welcome, and accompanied it with the inimitable smile which has made slaves of emperors. The vivacious and charming creature was Madame Patti, or, as we know her in private life, Madame Patti-Nicolini. Her husband is a handsome man of fifty-eight, though he looks twenty years younger. He is as devoted as if he were the newly accepted lover of an entrancing lass in her teens, and though his English is rather hazardous, he contrives to get about bravely in Wales.

My visit could not have been more happily timed. I found a sort of family party at Craig-y-Nos, and there was no stiff ceremonial to be encountered.

NOTE.--Our illustrations of Craig-y-Nos, interior and exterior, are reproductions from photographs specially taken for MCCLURE’S MAGAZINE by W. Arthur Smith, Swansea, South Wales.--ED. as the case usually is in British country-houses. La Diva’s guests were intimate friends, and chiefly a company of fair English girls who pass every summer with her. When the guests, in full dinner-dress, assembled in the drawing-room, I found that we covered five nationalities--Italian, German, French, English, and American--and while we awaited the appearance of our hostess, the gathering seemed like a polyglot congress.

As the chimes in the clock-tower pealed the hour of eight, a pretty vision appeared at the drawing-room door. It was Patti, royally bedecked. The defects of the masculine mind leave me incapable of describing the attire of that sparkling little woman. But the spectacle brought us to our feet, bowing as if we had been a company of court-gallants in the “spacious days of great Elizabeth,” and we added the modern tribute of applause, which our queen acknowledged with a silvery laugh. I remember only that the gown was white, and of some silky stuff, and that about La Diva’s neck were loops of pearls, and that above her fluffy chestnut hair were glittering jewels. With women it may be different, but no man can give a list of Patti’s adornments on any occasion; he knows only that they become her, and that he sees only her radiant face. Before our murmurs of delight had ceased, Patti, who had not entered the room, but merely stood in the portal of it, turned, taking the arm of the guest who was to sit at her right hand, and away we marched in her train, as if she were truly the queen, through the corridors to the conservatory, where dinner was served.

It was my privilege at the castle table to sit at Madame Patti’s left. At her right was one whose friendship with her dates from the instant of her first European triumph, thirty-two years ago. I was taken into the family, as it were. But the best of my privilege was that it brought me so near our hostess, and made easy conversation possible. The delight of those _déjeuners_ and dinners at Craig-y-Nos is not to be forgotten. There is a notion abroad that these meals are held in state; but they are not. There is merely the ordinary dinner custom of an English mansion. The _menu_, though, is stately enough, for the art culinary is practised in its most exquisite fashion there. The dining-room is very seldom used, for, handsome as that apartment is, Patti, and her guests too, for that matter, prefer to eat in the great glass room which was formerly the conservatory and is still called so. There we sit, as far as outlook goes, out of doors, for, in whatever direction we gaze, we look up or down the Swansea Valley, across to the mountains, and along the tumbling course of the river Tawe. To the imminent neglect of my repast, I sat gazing at the wood-covered cliffs of Craig-y-Nos (Rock-of-the-Night) opposite, and listening to the ceaseless music of the mountain stream. Patti, noticing my admiration for the view, said, “You see what a dreadful place it is in which I bury myself.”

“‘Bury’ yourself! On the contrary, you have here all the charms of life, and you seem to have discovered the fountain of perpetual youth. A ‘dreadful’ place? Indeed, it is a paradise in miniature!”

“But one of your countrymen says that I hide far from the world among the ugly Welsh hills. He writes it in an American journal of fabulous circulation, and I suppose people believe the tale, do they not?” La Diva laughed heartily at the thought of a too credulous public, and then she added: “Really, they do write the oddest things about my home, as if it were either the scene of Jack the Giant-killer’s exploits on the top of the Beanstalk, or a prison in a desolate land.”

After visiting Patti at Craig-y-Nos one need no longer wonder why this enchanting woman sings “Home, Sweet Home” with such feeling. For she inhabits a paradise. There is not anywhere a lovelier spot, nor is there elsewhere a place so remote and at the same time so complete in attractiveness, and in every resource of civilization.

The dinner passed on merrily. Merrily is exactly the word to describe it. Up and down the table good stories flew, sometimes faster than we could catch them. Nobody likes a good joke better than Patti, and when she heard one that particularly pleased her she would interpret it to some guest who had not sufficiently mastered the language in which the original anecdote was told. It was delightful comedy, and after watching it with high pleasure, while La Diva spoke in a brace of languages, I said: “I wonder if you have what people call a native tongue, or whether in all of them you are ‘native and to the manner born’?”

“Oh, I don’t know so many,” she replied, “only--let’s see--English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, and Russian.”

“And which language do you speak best, if I may ask?”

“I really don’t know. To me there is no difference, as far as readiness goes, and I suppose that in all of them readiness helps.”

“But you have a favorite among them?”

“Oh, yes, Italian. Listen!” And then she recited an Italian poem. Next to hearing Patti sing, the sweetest sound is her Italian speech. I expressed my delight, and she said:

“Speaking of languages, Mr. Gladstone paid me a pretty compliment a little while ago. I will show you his letter to-morrow, if you care to see it.”

Patti forgets nothing. The next day she brought me Mr. Gladstone’s letter. The Grand Old Man had been among her auditors at Edinburgh, and after her performance he went upon the stage to thank her for the pleasure he had felt in listening to her songs. He complained a little of a cold which had been troubling him, and Patti begged him to try some lozenges which she had found useful. That night she sent a little box of them to Mr. Gladstone, and the statesman acknowledged the gift with this letter:

“6 ROTHESAY TERRACE, EDINBURGH, _October 22, 1890._

“DEAR MADAME PATTI:

“I do not know how to thank you enough for your charming gift. I am afraid, however, that the use of your lozenges will not make me your rival. _Voce quastata di ottante’ anni non si ricupera._

“It was a rare treat to hear from your Italian lips last night the songs of my own tongue, rendered with a delicacy of modulation and a fineness of utterance such as no native ever in my hearing has reached or even approached. Believe me,

“Faithfully yours,

“W. E. GLADSTONE.”

This letter very naturally gave our conversation a reminiscent turn, and, after some talk of great folk she has known, I asked Madame Patti what had been the proudest experience in her career. “For a great and unexpected honor most gracefully tendered, nothing that has touched me deeper than a compliment paid by the Prince of Wales and a distinguished company, at a dinner given in honor of the Duke of York and the Princess May, a little while before their wedding. The dinner was given by Mr. Alfred Rothschild, one of my oldest and best friends. There were many royalties present, and more dukes and duchesses than I can easily remember. During the ceremonies the Prince of Wales arose, and to my great astonishment, proposed the health of his ‘old and valued friend Madame Patti.’ He made _such_ a pretty speech, and in the course of it said that he had first seen and heard me in Philadelphia in 1860, when I sang in ‘Martha,’ and that since then his own attendance at what he was good enough to call my ‘victories in the realm of song’ had been among his most pleasant recollections. He recalled the fact that on one of the occasions when the princess and himself had invited me to Marlborough House, his wife had held up little Prince George, in whose honor we were this night assembled, and bade him kiss me, so that in after life he might say that he had ‘kissed the famous Madame Patti.’ And then, do you know, that whole company of royalty, nobility, and men of genius rose and cheered me and drank my health. Don’t you think that any little woman would be proud, and ought to be proud, of a spontaneous tribute like that?”

It is difficult, when repeating thus in print such snatches of autobiography, to suggest the modest tone and manner of the person whose words may be recorded. It is particularly difficult in the case of Madame Patti, who is as absolutely unspoiled as the freshest _ingénue_. Autobiography such as hers must read a little fanciful to most folk; it is so far removed from the common experiences of us all, and even from the extraordinary experiences of the renowned persons we usually hear about. But there is not a patch of vanity in Patti’s sunny nature. Her life has been a long, unbroken record of success--success of a degree attained by no other woman; no one else has won and held such homage; no one else has been so wondrously endowed with beauty and genius and sweet simplicity of nature--a nature unspoiled by flattery, by applause, by wealth, by the possession and exercise of power. Patti at fifty is like a girl in her ways, in her thoughts, in her spirit, in her disinterestedness, in her enjoyments. Time has dimmed none of her charms, it has lessened none of her superb gifts. She said to me one day: “They tell me I am getting to be an old woman, but I don’t believe it. I don’t feel old. I feel young. I am the youngest person of my acquaintance.” That is true enough, as they know who see Patti from day to day. She has all the enthusiasms and none of the affectations of a young girl. When she speaks of herself it is with the most delicious frankness and lack of self-consciousness. She is perfectly natural.

She promised to show me the programme of that Philadelphia performance before the Prince of Wales so long ago, and the next day she put it before me. It is a satin programme with gilt fringe, and its announcement is surmounted by the Prince of Wales’s feathers. At that Philadelphia performance Adelina Patti made her first appearance before royalty. In the next year she made her London début. It was at Covent Garden, as Amina in “La Sonnambula.” The next morning Europe rang with the fame of the new prima donna from America. “I tried to show them that the young lady from America was entitled to a hearing,” said she, as we looked over the old programmes.

“And has the ‘young lady from America’ retained that spirit of national pride, or has she become so much a citizen of the world that no corner of it has any greater claim than another upon her affections?”

“I love the Italian language, the American people, the English country, and my Welsh home.”

“A choice yet catholic selection. The national preferences, if you can be said to own any, have reason on their side. Your parents were Italian, you were born in Spain, you grew from girlhood to womanhood in America, you first won international fame in England, and among these Welsh hills you have planted a paradise.”

“How nice of you! That evening at Mr. Alfred Rothschild’s, the Prince of Wales asked me why I do not stay in London during ‘the season,’ and take some part in its endless social pleasures. ‘Because, your Royal Highness,’ I replied, ‘I have a lovely home in Wales, and whenever I come away from it I leave my heart there.’ ‘After all,’ said the prince, ‘why should you stay in London when the whole world is only too glad to make pilgrimages to Craig-y-Nos?’ Wasn’t that pretty?”

I wish I could somehow convey the _naïveté_ with which the last three words were uttered. The tone expressed the most innocent pleasure in the world. Indeed, when Patti speaks in this way she seems to be wondering why people should say and do so many pleasant things in her behalf. There is an air of childish wonder in her look and voice.

I said: “All good republicans have a passion for royalty. I find that an article about a king or a queen or a prince is in greater demand in the United States than anywhere else in the world. Do tell me something more about the Prince and Princess of Wales. I promise you, as a zealous democrat, that no one on the far side of the Atlantic will skip a word. Have the prince and princess visited Craig-y-Nos?”

“No. But they were coming here a couple of years ago. See--here is the prince’s letter fixing the date. But it was followed by their sudden bereavement, and then for many, many months they lived in quiet and mourning, only coming forth in their usual way just before the recent royal wedding. They sent me an invitation to the wedding festivities. But alas! I could not attend them. I had just finished my season, and was lying painfully ill with rheumatism. You heard of that? For weeks I suffered acutely. It’s an old complaint. I have had it at intervals since I was a child. But about the royal wedding. When the Prince and Princess of Wales learned that I was too ill to accept their gracious invitation, they--well, what do you suppose they did next?”

“Something very apt and graceful.”

“They sent me two large portraits of themselves, bearing their autographs, and fitted into great gilt frames. You shall see the portraits after dinner. They occupy the place of honor in Craig-y-Nos Castle.”

We had reached the coffee stage of the dinner, and the cigars were being passed. The ladies did not withdraw, according to the mediæval and popular English habit, but the company remained unbroken, and while the gentlemen smoked, the ladies kept them in conversation. Presently, some one proposed Patti’s health, and we all stood, singing “For She’s a Jolly Good Fellow.”

That put the ball of merriment in motion. One of the young ladies, a goddaughter of our hostess, carolled a stanza from a popular ditty. At first I thought it audacious that any one should sing in the presence of La Diva. It seemed an act of sacrilege. But in another instant we were all at it, piping the chorus, and Patti leading off. The fun of the thing was infectious. The song finished, we ventured another, and Patti joined us in the refrains of a medley of music-hall airs, beginning with London’s latest mania, “Daisy Bell, or a Bicycle Made for Two,” and winding up with Chevalier’s “Old Kent Road” and the “Coster’s Serenade,” Coburn’s “Man that Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo,” and the transatlantic “Daddy Wouldn’t Buy me a Bow-Wow.”

Madame turned with an arch look--“You will think our behavior abominable.”

“On the contrary, I find it very jolly, not to say a rare experience; for it is not everybody who has heard you sing comic songs.”

Patti’s answer was a peal of laughter, and then she sat there singing very softly a stanza of “My Old Kentucky Home,” and as we finished the chorus she lifted a clear, sweet note, which thrilled us through and through, and stirred us to rapturous applause. “What have I done?” Patti put the question with a puzzled look. The reply came from the adjoining library: “High E.” One of our number had run to sound the piano pitch. Then I recalled what Sir Morell Mackenzie had told me a little while before he died. I was chatting with the great physician in that famous room of his in Harley Street. We happened to mention Madame Patti. “That great singer,” said Sir Morell, “has the most wonderful throat I have ever seen; it is the only one I have ever seen with the vocal chords in absolutely perfect condition after many years of use. They are not strained, or warped or roughened, but, as I tell you, they are absolutely perfect. There is no reason why they should not remain so ten years longer, and with care and health twenty years longer.”

Remembering this, I asked Madame Patti if she had taken extraordinary care of her voice. “I have never tired it,” said she; “I never sing when I am tired, and that means that I am never tired when I sing. And I have never strained for high notes. I have heard that the first question asked of new vocalists nowadays is ‘How high can you sing?’ But I have always thought _that_ the least important matter in singing. One should sing only what one can sing with perfect ease.”

“But in eating and drinking? According to all accounts you are most abstemious in these things.”

“No, indeed. I avoid very hot and very cold dishes, otherwise I eat and drink whatever I like. My care is chiefly to avoid taking cold, and to avoid indigestion. But these are the ordinary precautions of one who knows that health is the key to happiness.”

“And in practising? Have you rigid rules for that? One hears of astounding exercise and self-denial.”

“Brilliant achievements in fiction. For practising I run a few scales twenty minutes a day. After a long professional tour I let my voice rest for a month and do not practise at all during that time.”

During my visit to Craig-y-Nos we usually spent our evenings in the billiard-rooms. There are two at the castle, an English room and a French one. In the French room there is the great orchestrion which Madame Patti had built in Geneva at a cost of twenty thousand dollars. It is operated by electricity, and is said to be the finest instrument of the kind in the world. Monsieur Nicolini would start it of an evening, and the wonderful contrivance would “discourse most eloquent music” from a repertoire of one hundred and sixteen pieces, including arias from grand operas, military marches, and simple ballads. Music is the one charm that Madame Patti cannot resist. The simplest melody stirs her to song. In the far corner from the orchestrion she will sit, in an enticing easy-chair, and hum the air that is rolling from the organ-pipes, keeping time with her dainty feet, or moving her head as the air grows livelier. Now and again she sends forth some lark-like troll, and then she will urge the young people to a dance, or a chorus, and when every one is tuned to the full pitch of melody and merriment she will join in the fun as heartily as the rest. I used to sit and watch her play the castanets, or hear her snatch an air or two from “Martha,” “Lucia,” or “Traviata.”

One night the younger fry of us were chanting negro melodies, and Patti came into the room, warbling as if possessed by an ecstasy. “I love those darky songs,” said she, and straightway she sang to us, with that inimitable purity and tenderness which are hers alone, “Way Down Upon the Swanee River,” and “Massa’s in the Cold, Cold Ground,” and after that “Home, Sweet Home,” while all of us listeners felt the tears rising, or the lumps swelling in our throats.

Guests at Craig-y-Nos are the most fortunate of mortals. If the guest be a gentleman, a valet is told off to attend upon him; if the guest be a lady, a handmaid is placed at her service. Breakfast is served in one’s room at any hour one may choose. Patti never comes down before high noon. She rises at half-past eight, but remains until twelve in her apartments, going through her correspondence with her secretary, and practising a little music. At half-past twelve an elaborate _déjeuner_ is served in the glass pavilion. Until that hour a guest is free to follow his own devices. He may go shooting, fishing, riding, walking, or he may stroll about the lovely demesne, and see what manner of heavenly nook nature and Patti have made for themselves among the hills of Wales. Patti’s castle is in every sense a palatial dwelling. She saw it fifteen years ago, fell in love with it, purchased it, and has subsequently expended at least half a million dollars in enlarging and equipping it. The castellated mansion, with the theatre at one end and the pavilion and winter garden at the other, shows a frontage of fully a thousand feet along the terraced banks of the Tawe. But the place has been so often described that it is unnecessary for me to repeat the oft-told story, or to give details of the gasworks, the electric-lighting station, the ice-plant and cold-storage rooms, the steam-laundry, the French and English kitchens, the stables, the carriage-houses, the fifty servants, the watchfulness of Caroline Baumeister, the superintending zeal of William Heck. These matters are a part of the folk-lore of England and America. But I would like to say something of Patti’s little theatre. It is her special and particular delight. She gets more pleasure from it than from any other of the many possessions of Craig-y-Nos. It is a gem of a place, well-proportioned and exquisitely decorated. Not only can the sloping floor be quickly raised, so that the auditorium may be transformed into a ballroom, but the appurtenances of the stage are the most elaborate and perfect extant. For this statement I have the authority of an assistant stage-manager of the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden. This expert was supervising some alterations at the Patti theatre while I was at Craig-y-Nos, and he told me that the pretty house contained every accessory for the production of forty operas.

Occasionally Patti sings at concerts in her theatre. All her life she has treasured her voice for the public; she has never exhausted it by devising an excess of entertainment for her personal friends. So most of the performances in the little theatre are pantomimic. Although Patti seemed to me always to be humming and singing while I was at the castle, yet there was nothing of the “performing” order in what she