text:
Ned Bratts

'T was Bedford Special Assize, one daft Midsummer's Day: A broiling blasting June, — was never its like, men say. Corn stood sheaf-ripe already, and trees looked yellow as that; Ponds drained dust-dry, the cattle lay foaming around each flat. Inside town, dogs went mad, and folk kept bibbing beer While the parsons prayed for rain. 'T was horrible, yes — but queer: Queer — for the sun laughed gay, yet nobody moved a hand To work one stroke at his trade: as given to understand That all was come to a stop, work and such worldly ways, And the world's old self about to end in a merry blaze. Midsummer's Day moreover was the first of Bedford Fair, With Bedford Town's tag-rag and bobtail a-bowsing there.

But the Court House, Quality crammed: through doors ope, windows wide, High on the Bench you saw sit Lordships side by side. There frowned Chief Justice Jukes, fumed learned Brother Small, And fretted their fellow Judge: like threshers, one and all, Of a reek with laying down the law in a furnace. Why? Because their lungs breathed flame — the regular crowd forbye — From gentry pouring in — quite a nosegay, to be sure! How else could they pass the time, six mortal hours endure Till night should extinguish day, when matters might haply mend? Meanwhile no bad resource was — watching begin and end Some trial for life and death, in a brisk five minutes' space, And betting which knave would 'scape, which hang, from his sort of face.

So, their Lordships toiled and moiled, and a deal of work was done (I warrant) to justify the mirth of the crazy sun As this and t' other lout, struck dumb at the sudden show Of red robes and white wigs, boggled nor answered "Boh!" When asked why he, Tom Styles, should not — because Jack Nokes Had stolen the horse — be hanged: for Judges must have their jokes, And louts must make allowance — let's say, for some blue fly Which punctured a dewy scalp where the frizzles stuck awry — Else Tom had fleered scot-free, so nearly over and done Was the main of the job. Full-measure, the gentles enjoyed their fun, As a twenty-five were tried, rank puritans caught at prayer In a cow-house and laid by the heels, — have at 'em, devil may care! — And ten were prescribed the whip, and ten a brand on the cheek, And five a slit of the nose — just leaving enough to tweak.

Well, things at jolly high-tide, amusement steeped in fire, While noon smote fierce the roof's red tiles to heart's desire, The Court a-simmer with smoke, one ferment of oozy flesh, One spirituous humming musk mount-mounting until its mesh Entoiled all heads in a fluster, and Serjeant Postlethwayte — Dashing the wig oblique as he mopped his oily pate — Cried "Silence, or I grow grease! No loophole lets in air? Jurymen, — Guilty, Death! Gainsay me if you dare!" — Things at this pitch, I say, — what hubbub without the doors? What laughs, shrieks, hoots and yells, what rudest of uproars?

Bounce through the barrier throng a bulk comes rolling vast! Thumps, kicks, — no manner of use! — spite of them rolls at last Into the midst a ball which, bursting, brings to view Publican Black Ned Bratts and Tabby his big wife too: Both in a muck-sweat, both. . . were never such eyes uplift At the sight of yawning hell, such nostrils — snouts that sniffed Sulphur, such mouths a-gape ready to swallow flame! Horrified, hideous, frank fiend-faces! yet, all the same, Mixed with a certain. . . eh? how shall I dare style — mirth The desperate grin of the guess that, could they break from earth, Heaven was above, and hell might rage in impotence Below the saved, the saved!

"Confound you! (no offence!)   Out of our way, — push, wife! Yonder their Worships be!" Ned Bratts has reached the bar, and "Hey, my Lords," roars he, "A Jury of life and death, Judges the prime of the land, Constables, javelineers, — all met, if I understand, To decide so knotty a point as whether 't was Jack or Joan Robbed the henroost, pinched the pig, hit the King's Arms with a stone, Dropped the baby down the well, left the tithesman in the lurch . . . Or, three whole Sundays running, not once attended church! What a pother — do these deserve the parish-stocks or whip, More or less brow to brand, much or little nose to snip, —   When, in our Public, plain stand we — that's we stand here, I and my Tab, brass-bold, brick-built of beef and beer,  — Do not we, slut? Step forth and show your beauty, jade! Wife of my bosom — that's the word now! What a trade We drove! None said us nay: nobody loved his life So little as wag a tongue against us, — did they, wife? Yet they knew us all the while, in their hearts, for what we are  — Worst couple, rogue and quean, unhanged — search near and far! Eh, Tab? The pedlar, now — o'er his noggin — who warned a mate To cut and run, nor risk his pack where its loss of weight Was the least to dread, — aha, how we two laughed a-good As, stealing round the midden, he came on where I stood With billet poised and raised, — you, ready with the rope, — Ah, but that's past, that's sin repented of, we hope! Men knew us for that same, yet safe and sound stood we! The lily-livered knaves knew too (I've baulked a d——— ) Our keeping the 'Pied Bull' was just a mere pretence: Too slow the pounds make food, drink, lodging, from out the pence! There's not a stoppage to travel has chanced, this ten long year, No break into hall or grange, no lifting of nag or steer, Not a single roguery, from the clipping of a purse To the cutting of a throat, but paid us toll. Od's curse! When Gipsy Smouch made bold to cheat us of our due, — Eh, Tab? the Squire's strong-box we helped the rascal to — I think he pulled a face, next Sessions' swinging-time! He danced the jig that needs no floor, — and, here's the prime, 'T was Scroggs that houghed the mare! Ay, those were busy days!

"Well, there we flourished brave, like scripture-trees called bays, Faring high, drinking hard, in money up to head — Not to say, boots and shoes, when . . . Zounds, I nearly said —    Lord, to unlearn one's language! How shall we labour, wife? Have you, fast hold, the Book? Grasp, grip it, for your life! See, sirs, here's life, salvation! Here's — hold but out my breath — When did I speak so long without once swearing? 'Sdeath, No, nor unhelped by ale since man and boy! And yet All yesterday I had to keep my whistle wet While reading Tab this Book: book? don't say 'book' — they're plays, Songs, ballads and the like: here's no such strawy blaze, But sky wide ope, sun, moon, and seven stars out full-flare! Tab, help and tell! I'm hoarse. A mug! or — no, a prayer!    Dip for one out of the Book! Who wrote it in the Jail  — He plied his pen unhelped by beer, sirs, I'll be bail!

"I've got my second wind. In trundles she — that's Tab. 'Why, Gammer, what's come now, that — bobbing like a crab On Yule-tide bowl — your head's a-work and both your eyes Break loose? Afeard, you fool? As if the dead can rise! Say — Bagman Dick was found last May with fuddling-cap Stuffed in his mouth: to choke's a natural mishap!' 'Gaffer, be — blessed,' cries she, 'and Bagman Dick as well! I, you, and he are damned: this Public is our hell:   We live in fire: live coals don't feel! — once quenched, they learn — Cinders do, to what dust they moulder while they burn!'

" 'If you don't speak straight out,' says I — belike I swore — 'A knobstick, well you know the taste of, shall, once more, Teach you to talk, my maid!' She ups with such a face, Heart sunk inside me. 'Well, pad on, my prate-apace!'

" 'I've been about those laces we need for . . . never mind! If henceforth they tie hands, 't is mine they'll have to bind. You know who makes them best — the Tinker in our cage, Pulled-up for gospelling, twelve years ago: no age   To try another trade, — yet, so he scorned to take Money he did not earn, he taught himself the make Of laces, tagged and tough — Dick Bagman found them so! Good customers were we! Well, last week, you must know His girl, — the blind young chit, who hawks about his wares, — She takes it in her head to come no more — such airs These hussies have! Yet, since we need a stoutish lace, — "I'll to the jail-bird father, abuse her to his face!" So, first I filled a jug to give me heart, and then, Primed to the proper pitch, I posted to their den —    Patmore — they style their prison! I tip the turnkey, catch My heart up, fix my face, and fearless lift the latch — Both arms a-kimbo, in bounce with a good round oath Ready for rapping out:, no "Lawks" nor "By my troth!"

" 'There sat my man, the father. He looked up: what one feels When heart that leapt to mouth drops down again to heels! He raised his hand . . . Hast seen, when drinking out the night. And in, the day, earth grow another something quite Under the sun's first stare? I stood a very stone.

" ' "Woman!" (a fiery tear he put in every tone),   "How should my child frequent your house where lust is sport, Violence — trade? Too true! I trust no vague report. Her angel's hands, which stops the sight of sin, leaves clear The other gate of sense, lets outrage through the ear. What has she heard! — which, heard shall never be again. Better lack food than feast, a Dives in the — wain Or reign or train — of Charles!" (His language was not ours: 'T is my belief, God spoke: no tinker has such powers.) "Bread, only bread they bring — my laces: if we broke Your lump of leavened sin, the loaf's first crumb would choke!"

" 'Down on my marrow-bones! Then all at once rose he: His brown hair burst a-spread, his eyes were suns to see: Up went his hands: "Through flesh, I reach, I read thy soul! So may some stricken tree look blasted, bough and bole, Champed by the fire-tooth, charred without, and yet, thrice-bound With dreriment about, within may life be found, A prisoned power to branch and blossom as before, Could but the gardener cleave the cloister, reach the core, Loosen the vital sap: yet where shall help be found? Who says 'How save it?' — nor 'Why cumbers it the ground?' Woman, that tree art thou! All sloughed about with scurf, Thy stag-horns fright the sky, thy snake-roots sting the turf! Drunkenness, wantonness, theft, murder gnash and gnarl Thine outward, case thy soul with coating like the marle Satan stamps flat upon each head beneath his hoof! And how deliver such? The strong men keep aloof, Lover and friend stand far, the mocking ones pass by, Tophet gapes wide for prey: lost soul, despair and die! What then? 'Look unto me and be ye saved!' saith God: 'I strike the rock, outstreats the life-stream at my rod! Be your sins scarlet, wool shall they seem like, — although As crimson red, yet turn white as the driven snow!' "

" 'There, there, there! All I seem to somehow understand Is — that, if I reached home, 't was through the guiding hand Of his blind girl which led and led me through the streets And out of town and up to door again. What greets First thing my eye, as limbs recover from their swoon? A book — this Book she gave at parting. "Father's boon — The Book he wrote: it reads as if he spoke himself: He cannot preach in bonds, so, — take it down from shelf When you want counsel, — think you hear his very voice!"

" 'Wicked dear Husband, first despair and then rejoice! Dear wicked Husband, waste no tick of moment more, Be saved like me, bald trunk! There's greenness yet at core. Sap under slough! Read, read!'

"Let me take breath, my lords! I'd like to know, are these — hers, mine, or Bunyan's words? I'm 'wildered — scarce with drink, — nowise with drink alone! You'll say, with heat: but heat's no stuff to split a stone Like this black boulder — this flint heart of mine: the Book — That dealt the crashing blow! Sirs, here's the fist that shook   His beard till Wrestler Jem howled like a just-lugged bear! You had brained me with a feather: at once I grew aware Christmas was meant for me. A burden at your back, Good Master Christmas? Nay, — yours was that Joseph's sack,  — Or whose it was, — which held the cup, — compared with mine! Robbery loads my loins, perjury cracks my chine, Adultery . . . nay, Tab, you pitched me as I flung! One word, I'll up with fist . . . No, sweet spouse, hold your tongue!

"I'm hasting to the end. The Book, sirs — take and read! You have my history in a nutshell, — ay, indeed!   It must off, my burden! See, — slack straps and into pit, Roll, reach the bottom, rest, rot there — a plague on it! For a mountain's sure to fall and bury Bedford Town, 'Destruction' — that's the name, and fire shall burn it down! O 'scape the wrath in time! Time's now, if not too late. How can I pilgrimage up to the wicket-gate? Next comes Despond the slough: not that I fear to pull Through mud, and dry my clothes at brave House Beautiful — But it's late in the day, I reckon: had I left years ago Town, wife, and children dear . . . Well, Christmas did, you know! —    Soon I had met in the valley and tried my cudgel's strength On the enemy horned and winged, a-straddle across its length! Have at his horns, thwick — thwack: they snap, see! Hoof and hoof — Bang, break the fetlock-bones! For love's sake, keep aloof Angels! I'm man and match, — this cudgel for my flail, — To thresh him, hoofs and horns, bat's wing and serpent's tail! A chance gone by! But then, what else does Hopeful ding Into the deafest ear except — hope, hope's the thing? Too late i' the day for me to thrid the windings: but There's still a way to win the race by death's short cut! Did Master Faithful need climb the Delightful Mounts? No, straight to Vanity Fair, — a fair, by all accounts, Such as is held outside, — lords, ladies, grand and gay, — Says he in the face of them, just what you hear me say. And the Judges brought him in guilty, and brought him out To die in the market-place — St. Peter's Green's about The same thing: there they flogged, flayed, buffeted, lanced with knives, Pricked him with swords, — I'll swear, he'd full a cat's nine lives, — So to his end at last came Faithful, — ha, ha, he! Who holds the highest card? for there stands hid, you see, Behind the rabble-rout, a chariot, pair and all: He's in, he's off, he's up, through clouds, at trumpet-call, Carried the nearest way to Heaven-gate! Odds my life — Has nobody a sword to spare? not even a knife? Then hang me, draw and quarter! Tab — do the same by her! O Master Worldly-Wiseman. . . that's Master Interpreter, Take the will, not the deed! Our gibbet's handy close: Forestall Last Judgment-Day! Be kindly, not morose! There wants no earthly judge-and-jurying: here we stand — Sentence our guilty selves: so, hang us out of hand! Make haste for pity's sake! A single moment's loss Means — Satan's lord once more: his whisper shoots across All singing in my heart, all praying in my brain, 'It comes of heat and beer!' — hark how he guffaws plain! 'To-morrow you'll wake bright, and, in a safe skin, hug Your sound selves, Tab and you, over a foaming jug! You've had such qualms before, time out of mind!' He's right! Did not we kick and cuff and curse away, that night When home we blindly reeled, and left poor humpback Joe I' the lurch to pay for what. . . somebody did, you know! Both of us maundered then 'Lame humpback, — never more Will he come limping, drain his tankard at our door! He'll swing, while — somebody. . .' Says Tab, 'No, for I'll peach!' 'I'm for you, Tab,' cries I, 'there's rope enough for each!' So blubbered we, and bussed, and went to bed upon The grace of Tab's good thought: by morning, all was gone! We laughed — 'What's life to him, a cripple of no account?' Oh, waves increase around — I feel them mount and mount! Hang us! To-morrow brings Tom Bearward with his bears: One new black-muzzled brute beats Sackerson, he swears: (Sackerson, for my money!) And, baiting o'er, the Brawl They lead on Turner's Patch, — lads, lasses, up tails all, — I'm i' the thick o' the throng! That means the Iron Cage, — Means the Lost Man inside! Where's hope for such as wage War against light? Light's left, light's here, I hold light still. So does Tab — make but haste to hang us both! You will?"

I promise, when he stopped you might have heard a mouse Squeak, such a death-like hush sealed up the old Mote House. But when the mass of man sank meek upon his knees, While Tab, alongside, wheezed a hoarse "Do hang us, please!" Why, then the waters rose, no eye but ran with tears, Hearts heaved, heads thumped, until, paying all past arrears Of pity and sorrow, at last a regular scream outbroke Of triumph, joy and praise.

My Lord Chief Justice spoke, First mopping brow and cheek, where still, for one that budged, Another bead broke fresh: "What Judge, that ever judged Since first the world began, judged such a case as this? Why, Master Bratts, long since, folk smelt you out, I wis! I had my doubts, i' faith, each time you played the fox Convicting geese of crime in yonder witness-box —   Yea, much did I misdoubt, the thief that stole her eggs Was hardly goosey's self at Reynard's game, i' feggs! Yet thus much was to praise — you spoke to point, direct — Swore you heard, saw the theft: no jury could suspect — Dared to suspect, — I'll say, — a spot in white so clear: Goosey was throttled, true: but thereof godly fear Came of example set, much as our laws intend; And, though a fox confessed, you proved the Judge's friend. What if I had my doubts? Suppose I gave them breath, Brought you to bar: what work to do, ere 'Guilty, Death,' —    Had paid our pains! What heaps of witnesses to drag From holes and corners, paid from out the County's bag! Trial three dog-days long! Amicus Curiæ — that's Your title, no dispute — truth-telling Master Bratts! Thank you, too, Mistress Tab! Why doubt one word you say? Hanging you both deserve, hanged both shall be this day! The tinker needs must be a proper man. I've heard He lies in Jail long since: if Quality's good word Warrants me letting loose, — some householder, I mean — Freeholder, better still, — I don't say but — between Now and next Sessions. . . Well! Consider of his case, I promise to, at least: we owe him so much grace. Not that — no, God forbid! — I lean to think, as you, The grace that such repent is any jail-bird's due: I rather see the fruit of twelve years' pious reign — Astræa Redux, Charles restored his rights again! — Of which, another time! I somehow feel a peace Stealing across the world. May deeds like this increase! So, Master Sheriff, stay that sentence I pronounced On those two dozen odd: deserving to be trounced Soundly, and yet. . . well, well, at all events despatch This pair of — shall I say, sinner-saints? — ere we catch Their jail-distemper too. Stop tears, or I'll indite All weeping Bedfordshire for turning Bunyanite!"

So, forms were galloped through. If Justice, on the spur, Proved somewhat expeditious, would Quality demur? And happily hanged were they, — why lengthen out my tale? — Where Bunyan's Statue stands facing where stood his Jail.

title: Ned Bratts


text:
Translation:Memento

You want to roam forever? See, the good lies so near. Learn to embrace happiness, because happiness is always there.

Goetheho vybrané básně/Připomenutí Erinnerung (Goethe)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Translation:Memento


text:
Page:Peter and Wendy.djvu/102

Rh Then they had to tell Peter of Tink's crime, and almost never had they seen him look so stern.

"Listen, Tinker Bell," he cried, "I am your friend no more. Begone from me for ever."

She flew on to his shoulder and pleaded, but he brushed her off. Not until Wendy again raised her arm did he relent sufficiently to say, "Well, not for ever, but for a whole week."

Do you think Tinker Bell was grateful to Wendy for raising her arm? Oh dear no, never wanted to pinch her so much. Fairies indeed are strange, and Peter, who understood them best, often cuffed them.

But what to do with Wendy in her present delicate state of health?

"Let us carry her down into the house," Curly suggested.

"Ay," said Slightly, "that is what one does with ladies."

"No, no," Peter said, "you must not touch her. It would not be sufficiently respectful."

"That," said Slightly, "is what I was thinking."

"But if she lies there," Tootles said, "she will die."

"Ay, she will die," Slightly admitted, "but there is no way out."

"Yes, there is," cried Peter. "Let us build a little house round her."

They were all delighted. "Quick," he ordered Rh

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Rh them, "bring me each of you the best of what we have. Gut our house. Be sharp."

In a moment they were as busy as tailors the night before a wedding. They skurried this way and that, down for bedding, up for firewood, and while they were at it, who should appear but John and Michael. As they dragged along the ground they fell asleep standing, stopped, woke up, moved another step and slept again.

"John, John," Michael would cry, "wake up! Where is Nana, John, and mother?"

And then John would rub his eyes and mutter, "It is true, we did fly."

You may be sure they were very relieved to find Peter.

"Hullo, Peter," they said.

"Hullo," replied Peter amicably, though he had quite forgotten them. He was very busy at the moment measuring Wendy with his feet to see how large a house she would need. Of course he meant to leave room for chairs and a table. John and Michael watched him.

"Is Wendy asleep?" they asked.

"Yes."

"John," Michael proposed, "let us wake her and get her to make supper for us," and as he said it some of the other boys rushed on carrying branches for the building of the house. "Look at them!" he cried. Rh

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 "Curly," said Peter in his most captainy voice, "see that these boys help in the building of the house."

"Ay, ay, sir."

"Build a house?" exclaimed John.

"For the Wendy," said Curly.

"For Wendy?" John said, aghast. "Why, she is only a girl!"

"That," explained Curly, "is why we are her servants."

"You? Wendy's servants!"

"Yes," said Peter, "and you also. Away with them."

The astounded brothers were dragged away to hack and hew and carry. "Chairs and a fender first," Peter ordered. "Then we shall build the house round them."

"Ay," said Slightly, "that is how a house is built; it all comes back to me."

Peter thought of everything. "Slightly," he cried, "fetch a doctor."

"Ay, ay," said Slightly at once, and disappeared, scratching his head. But he knew Peter must be obeyed, and he returned in a moment, wearing John's hat and looking solemn.

"Please, sir," said Peter, going to him, "are you a doctor?"

The difference between him and the other boys at such a time was that they knew it was Rh

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Rh, while to him make-believe and true were exactly the same thing. This sometimes troubled them, as when they had to make-believe that they had had their dinners.

If they broke down in their make-believe he rapped them on the knuckles.

"Yes, my little man," anxiously replied Slightly, who had chapped knuckles.

"Please, sir," Peter explained, "a lady lies very ill."

She was lying at their feet, but Slightly had the sense not to see her.

"Tut, tut, tut," he said, "where does she lie?"

"In yonder glade."

"I will put a glass thing in her mouth," said Slightly, and he made-believe to do it, while Peter waited. It was an anxious moment when the glass thing was withdrawn.

"How is she?" inquired Peter.

"Tut, tut, tut," said Slightly, this has cured her."

"I am glad!" Peter cried.

"I will call again in the evening," Slightly said; "give her beef tea out of a cup with a spout to it"; but after he had returned the hat to John he blew big breaths, which was his habit on escaping from a difficulty.

In the meantime the wood had been alive with the sound of axes; almost everything needed for a cosy dwelling already lay at Wendy's feet. Rh

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Rh "If only we knew," said one, "the kind of house she likes best."

"Peter," shouted another, "she is moving in her sleep."

"Her mouth opens," cried a third, looking respectfully into it. "Oh, lovely!"

"Perhaps she is going to sing in her sleep," said Peter. "Wendy, sing the kind of house you would like to have."

Immediately, without opening her eyes, Wendy began to sing:

They gurgled with joy at this, for by the greatest good luck the branches they had brought were sticky with red sap, and all the ground was carpeted with moss. As they rattled up the little house they broke into song themselves:

To this she answered rather greedily:

Rh

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text:
Page:Peter and Wendy.djvu/107

Rh With a blow of their fists they made windows, and large yellow leaves were the blinds. But roses——?

Roses!" cried Peter sternly.

Quickly they made-believe to grow the loveliest roses up the walls.

Babies?

To prevent Peter ordering babies they hurried into song again:

Peter, seeing this to be a good idea, at once pretended that it was his own. The house was quite beautiful, and no doubt Wendy was very cosy within, though, of course, they could no longer see her. Peter strode up and down, ordering finishing touches. Nothing escaped his eagle eye. Just when it seemed absolutely finished,

"There's no knocker on the door," he said.

They were very ashamed, but Tootles gave the sole of his shoe, and it made an excellent knocker.

Absolutely finished now, they thought.

Not a bit of it. "There's no chimney," Peter said; "we must have a chimney."

"It certainly does need a chimney," said John importantly. This gave Peter an idea. He Rh

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text:
Page:Peter and Wendy.djvu/108

Rh snatched the hat off John's head, knocked out the bottom, and put the hat on the roof. The little house was so pleased to have such a capital chimney that, as if to say thank you, smoke immediately began to come out of the hat.

Now really and truly it was finished. Nothing remained to do but to knock.

"All look your best," Peter warned them; "first impressions are awfully important."

He was glad no one asked him what first impressions are; they were all too busy looking their best.

He knocked politely, and now the wood was as still as the children, not a sound to be heard except from Tinker Bell, who was watching from a branch and openly sneering.

What the boys were wondering was, would any one answer the knock? If a lady, what would she be like?

The door opened and a lady came out. It was Wendy. They all whipped off their hats.

She looked properly surprised, and this was just how they had hoped she would look.

"Where am I?" she said.

Of course Slightly was the first to get his word in. "Wendy lady," he said rapidly, "for you we built this house."

"Oh, say you're pleased," cried Nibs.

"Lovely, darling house," Wendy said, and they Rh

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text:
Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Errata (1904).djvu/299

ABBOTT—CHILDERS

N.B.— f.e. stands for from end and l.l. for last line


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 {|style="float: right;"
 * Peter and Wendy pg 109.jpg
 * PETER ON GUARD
 * }
 * }

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Rh were the very words they had hoped she would say.

"And we are your children," cried the twins.

Then all went on their knees, and holding out their arms cried, "O Wendy lady, be our mother."

"Ought I?" Wendy said, all shining. "Of course it's frightfully fascinating, but you see I am only a little girl. I have no real experience."

"That doesn't matter," said Peter, as if he were the only person present who knew all about it, though he was really the one who knew least. "What we need is just a nice motherly person."

"Oh dear!" Wendy said, "you see I feel that is exactly what I am."

"It is, it is," they all cried; "we saw it at once."

"Very well," she said, "I will do my best. Come inside at once, you naughty children; I am sure your feet are damp. And before I put you to bed I have just time to finish the story of Cinderella."

In they went; I don't know how there was room for them, but you can squeeze very tight in the Neverland. And that was the first of the many joyous evenings they had with Wendy. By and by she tucked them up in the great bed in the home under the trees, but she herself slept that night in the little house, and Peter kept watch outside with drawn sword, for the pirates could be heard carousing far away and the wolves were on the prowl. The little house looked so cosy and Rh

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Rh safe in the darkness, with a bright light showing through its blinds, and the chimney smoking beautifully, and Peter standing on guard. After a time he fell asleep, and some unsteady fairies had to climb over him on their way home from an orgy. Any of the other boys obstructing the fairy path at night they would have mischiefed, but they just tweaked Peter's nose and passed on. Rh

title: Page:Peter and Wendy.djvu/112


text: Peter and Wendy - Margaret Ogilvy/Chapter 6


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Page:Peter and Wendy.djvu/113

 CHAPTER VII

THE HOME UNDER THE GROUND

of the first things Peter did next day was to measure Wendy and John and Michael for hollow trees. Hook, you remember, had sneered at the boys for thinking they needed a tree apiece, but this was ignorance, for unless your tree fitted you it was difficult to go up and down, and no two of the boys were quite the same size. Once you fitted, you drew in your breath at the top, and down you went at exactly the right speed, while to ascend you drew in and let out alternately, and so wriggled up. Of course, when you have mastered the action you are able to do these things without thinking of them, and then nothing can be more graceful.

But you simply must fit, and Peter measures you for your tree as carefully as for a suit of clothes: the only difference being that the clothes are made to fit you, while you have to be made to fit the tree. Usually it is done quite easily, as by your wearing too many garments or too few, but if Rh

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Author:Francis Donkin Bedford

Works

 * (illus.) A Book of Nursery Rhymes (1897).
 * (illus.) The Books of Shops (1899).
 * (illus.) Four and Twenty Toilers (1900).
 * (illus.) The Visit to London (1902).
 * (illus.) Peter and Wendy - Margaret Ogilvy, 1912.
 * (illus.) The Magic Fishbone (1921).
 * (illus.) A Christmas Carol (1923).
 * (illus.) The Cricket on the Hearth (1927).

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Rh open air, where I constructed a sort of oven of stone, which dried it completely. We began that very evening to strip, beat, and comb it; and I drew out such handfuls of soft, fine flax, ready for spinning, that my wife was overjoyed, and begged me to make her a wheel, that she might commence.

I had formerly had a little taste for turning, and though I had now neither lathe nor any other of the tools, yet I knew how a spinning-wheel and reel should be made, and, by dint of application, I succeeded in completing these two machines to her satisfaction. She began to spin with so much earnestness, that she would hardly take a walk, and reluctantly left her wheel to make dinner ready. She employed Francis to reel off the thread as she spun it, and would willingly have had the elder boys to take her place when she was called off; but they rebelled at the effeminate work, except Ernest, whose indolent habits made him prefer it to more laborious occupation.

In the mean time we walked over to Tent House to see the state of things, and found that winter had done more damage there than at Falcon’s Nest. The storm had overthrown the tent, carried away some of the sail-cloth, and injured our provisions so much, that great part was good for nothing, and the rest required to be immediately dried. Fortunately our beautiful pinnace had not suffered much,—it was still safe at anchor, and fit for use; but our tub boat was entirely destroyed.

Our most important loss was two barrels of gunpowder, which had been left in the tent, instead of under the shelter of the rock, and which the


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166 rain had rendered wholly useless. This made us feel still more strongly the necessity of securing for the future a more suitable shelter than a canvas tent, or a roof of foliage. Still I had small hope from the gigantic plan of Fritz or the boldness of Jack. I could not be blind to the difficulties of the undertaking. The rocks which surrounded Tent House presented an unbroken surface, like a wall without any crevice, and, to all appearance, of so hard a nature as to leave little hopes of success. However, it was necessary to try to contrive some sort of cave, if only for our gunpowder. I made up my mind, and selected the most perpendicular face of the rock as the place to begin our work. It was a much pleasanter situation than our tent, commanding a view of the whole bay, and the two banks of Jackal River, with its picturesque bridge. I marked out with chalk the dimension of the entrance I wished to give to the cave; then my sons and I took our chisels, pickaxes, and heavy miner’s hammers, and began boldly to how the stone.

Our first blows produced very little effect; the rock seemed impenetrable, the sun had so hardened the surface; and the sweat poured off our brows with the hard labour. Nevertheless, the efforts of my young workmen did not relax. Every evening we left our work advanced, perhaps, a few inches; and every morning returned to the task with renewed ardour. At the end of five or six days, when the surface of the rock was removed, we found the stone become easier to work; it then seemed calcarious, and, finally, only a sort of hardened clay, which we could


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The Lieutenant-Governor

Author’s dedication

 * To M. R. B.
 * In memory of the rescue of a man at sea

Contents

 * Chapter I. The Fly on the Wheel
 * Chapter II. The Odds Against Young Nisbet
 * Chapter III. A Face in the Crowd
 * Chapter IV. As Between Friends
 * Chapter V. A Brand from the Burning
 * Chapter VI. McGrath Laughs
 * Chapter VII. The Mirage of Power
 * Chapter VIII. The Governor Unmasks
 * Chapter IX. The Ninth Passes in Review
 * Chapter X. A Question and an Answer
 * Chapter XI. Young Nisbet Finds His Tongue
 * Chapter XII. Diogenes
 * Chapter XIII. The Instrument of Fate
 * Chapter XIV. The Voice of Alleghenia

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Rh move with spades; and we began to hope. After a few days’ more labour, we found we had advanced about seven feet. Fritz wheeled out the rubbish, and formed a sort of terrace with it before the opening; while I was working at the higher part, Jack, as the least, worked below. One morning he was hammering an iron bar, which he had pointed at the end, into the rock, to loosen the earth, when he suddenly cried out—

"Papa! papa! I have pierced through!"

"Not through your hand, child?" asked I.

"No, papa!" cried he; "I have pierced through the mountain! Huzza!"

Fritz ran in at the shout, and told him he had better have said at once that he had pierced through the earth! But Jack persisted that, however his brother might laugh, he was quite sure he had felt his iron bar enter an empty space behind. I now came down from my ladder, and, moving the bar, I felt there was really a hollow into which the rubbish fell, but apparently very little below the level we were working on. I took a long pole and probed the cavity, and found that it must be of considerable size. My boys wished to have the opening enlarged and to enter immediately, but this I strictly forbade; for, as I leaned forward to examine it through the opening, a rush of mephitic air gave me a sort of vertigo. "Come away, children," cried I, in terror; "the air you would breathe there is certain death." I explained to them_ that, under certain circumstances, carbonic acid gas was frequently accumulated in caves or grottoes, rendering the air unfit for respiration; producing giddiness of the head, fainting, and eventually death. I sent them to collect


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168 some hay, which I lighted and threw into the cave; this was immediately extinguished; we repeated the experiment several times with the same result. I now saw that more active means must be resorted to.

We had brought from the vessel a box of fireworks, intended for signals; I threw into the cave, by a cord, a quantity of rockets, grenades, &c., and scattered a train of gunpowder from them; to this I applied a long match, and we retired to a little distance. This succeeded well; a great explosion agitated the air, a torrent of the carbonic acid gas rushed through the opening, and was replaced by the pure air; we sent in a few more rockets, which flew round like fiery dragons, disclosing to us the vast extent of the cave. A shower of stars, which concluded our experiment, made us wish the duration had been longer. It seemed as if a crowd of winged genii, carrying each a lamp, were floating about in that enchanted cavern. When they vanished, I threw in some more lighted hay, which blazed in such a lively manner, that I knew all danger was over from the gas; but, for fear of deep pits, or pools of water, I would not venture in without lights. I therefore despatched Jack, on his buffalo, to report this discovery to his mother, and bring all the candles she had made. I purposely sent Jack on the errand, for his lively and poetic turn of mind would, I hoped, invest the grotto with such charms, that his mother would even abandon her wheel to come and see it.

Delighted with his commission, Jack leaped upon his buffalo, and, waving his whip, galloped off with an intrepidity that made my hair stand on


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Rh end. During his absence, Fritz and I enlarged the opening, to make it easy of access, removed all the rubbish, and swept a road for mamma. We had just finished, when we heard the sound of wheels crossing the bridge, and the cart appeared, drawn by the cow and ass, led by Ernest. Jack rode before on his buffalo, blowing through his hand to imitate a horn, and whipping the lazy cow and ass. He rode up first, and alighted from his huge courser, to help his mother out.

I then lighted our candles, givin one to each, with a spare candle and flint and steel in our pockets. We took our arms, and proceeded in a solemn manner into the rock. I walked first, my sons followed, and their mother came last, with Francis. We had not gone on above a few steps, when we stopped, struck with wonder and admiration; all was glittering around us; we were in a grotto of diamonds! From the height of the lofty vaulted roof hung innumerable crystals, which, uniting with those on the walls, formed colonnades, altars, and every sort of gothic ornament of dazzling lustre, creating a fairy palace, or an illuminated temple.

When we were a little recovered from our first astonishment, we advanced with more confidence. The grotto was spacious, the floor smooth, and covered with a fine dry sand. From the appearance of these crystals, I suspected their nature, and, on breaking off a piece and tasting it, I found, to my great joy, that we were in a grotto of rock salt, which is found in large masses in the earth, usually above a bed of gypsum, and surrounded by fossils. We were charmed with this discovery, of which we could no longer have a doubt. What


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170 an advantage this was to our cattle, and to ourselves! We could now procure this precious commodity without care or labour. The acquisition was almost as valuable as this brilliant retreat was in itself, of which we were never tired of admiring the beauty. My wife was struck with our good fortune in opening the rock precisely at the right spot; but I was of opinion, that this mine was of great extent, and that we could not well have missed it. Some blocks of salt were scattered on the ground, which had apparently fallen from the vaulted roof. I was alarmed; for such an accident might destroy one of my children; but, on examination, I found the mass above too solid to be detached spontaneously, and I concluded that the explosion of the fireworks had given this shock to the subterranean palace, which had not been entered since the creation of the world. I feared there might yet be some pieces loosened; I therefore sent out my wife and younger sons. Fritz and I remained, and, after carefully examining the suspected parts, we fired our guns, and watched the effect; one or two pieces fell, but the rest remained firm, though we struck with long poles as high as we could reach. We were now satisfied of the security of our magnificent abode, and began to plan our arrangements for converting it into a convenient and pleasant habitation. The majority were for coming here immediately, but the wiser heads determined that, for this year, Falcon’s Nest was to continue our home. There we went every night, and spent the day at Tent House, contriving and arranging our future winter dwelling.


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The Lieutenant-Governor/Chapter I

Chapter I. The Fly on the Wheel
The offices of the Governor and the Lieutenant-Governor adjoined. Each had its ante-room, in which a private secretary wrote eternally at a roll-top desk, an excessively plain-featured stenographer rattled the keys of his typewriter, and a smug-faced page yawned over a newspaper, or scanned the cards of visitors with the air of an official censor. At intervals, an electric bell whirred once, twice, or three times; and, according to the signal, one of the trio disappeared into the presence of the august personage within.

A door connected the office of the chief executive with that of his lieutenant, but this was rarely opened by either, and then only after a formal tap and permission to enter had been given. It was a matter of general knowledge that the Governor and the Lieutenant-Governor were not in sympathy; but few, even among the intimates of either, were aware how deep, and wide, and hopelessly impassable was the gulf which lay between them. This was due not alone to disparity in age, though twenty-eight years separated the white-haired Governor from his handsome subordinate, who had been nominated to this, his first public office, on his thirtieth birthday; nor was it wholly a difference between the experience of the one and the inexperience of the other. The point of view of the veteran is, naturally, not that of the novice, particularly in politics. That the enthusiasms of Lieutenant-Governor Barclay should have been the disillusions of Governor Abbott, and his pitfalls his senior’s stepping-stones, — this was to be expected. The root of their dissimilarity lay deeper. It was nothing less than mutual distrust which kept the connecting door closed day after day, and clogged the channel of coöperation with the sharp-pointed boulders of antagonism.

The convention which nominated the successful ticket of the preceding year had been a veritable chaos of contending factions. The labor delegates, encouraged by the unexpected strength of their representation, were not content with such nominal plums as had fallen to their share in former conventions. Led by Michael McGrath, an agitator whose native Irish eloquence, made keener and more persuasive by practice in bar-room forensics, brought him naturally to the fore, they threatened, at one stage of the proceedings, to carry all before them. The more conservative faction, its strength sapped by the formation, in its very ranks, of a reform party determined upon the fall of the “machine,” was forced to yield ground. The reformers themselves, young men for the most part, distinguished by great ideals but small ability, were too few to impose their individual will upon their opponents, yet sufficiently numerous to make their support necessary to the success of either party. The usual smooth course of the convention, upset by this unlooked-for resistance from two quarters, staggered helplessly, and was on the point of coming to a deadlock. It was Michael McGrath’s shrewd perception of the situation which solved the problem. In a brief, impassioned speech he laid the claims of his faction before the delegates, winding up with a stirring picture of the coöperation of labor and reform, now possible, which held the convention in spellbound silence for ten seconds after he had closed, and then set the hall ringing to cheers and vigorously plied hands and feet. For an instant he paused, with his arms folded, and his keen blue eyes sliding over the faces before him, and then played his trump card. At his signal, a banner, hastily prepared, was borne, slowly revolving, down the central aisle, and on this were boldly lettered the words which at the same moment McGrath was thundering from the platform: —

LABOR AND REFORM!

ELIJAH ABBOTT.

JOHN HAMILTON BARCLAY.

McGrath had no need to look toward the labor faction for support. He knew what the name of Elijah Abbott meant in that quarter. His shifting glance was fixed upon the seats of the reform delegates, and a little smile twitched at the corners of his mouth, as he saw them rise with a cheer. Barclay was the chief spirit of their movement. They had not expected this recognition. But if, in the enthusiasm of unlooked-for victory, they did not perceive how little, in reality, was their gain, McGrath was far from being unaware how great was his own. Before the cheering of the now allied forces of labor and reform had fairly died away, he had moved that nominations were in order, and, ten minutes later, while the partisans of the “machine” were still endeavoring to collect their wits, the main business of the convention was an accomplished fact, and Abbott and Barclay were declared the regular Democratic nominees for Governor and Lieutenant-Governor of the state. In six weeks followed their election by a small plurality, and on the first of January the two men moved into their adjoining rooms, in the inexcusably unlovely state capitol, on the main hill of Kenton City, wherein they were, thenceforward, separated, one from the other, by two inches of Georgia pine and a practically infinite diversity of principle and prejudice.

From the first their relationship had been no better than an armed truce. Both were courteous men, the one because such was his policy, the other because he was to this manner born. There was no need for them to discuss their individual creeds. They tacitly accepted the fact that there was not a parallel between the two. From the moment when his election was assured by the returns, Abbott was candidly the man of the Labor — nay, more — of the Socialist party. McGrath and his associates manipulated him as readily as a marionette. The promises and pledges of the campaign were ruthlessly jettisoned. If Governor Abbott did not stand for anarchy, it was only because, for the moment, anarchy was not the demand of his party. Withal, he was dignified and self-possessed, robed in an agreeable suavity which became him at functions and ceremonials, and assured his popularity with those — and they were, as always, in the majority — who did not look below the surface.

Lieutenant-Governor Barclay had not been ten days in office before he realized the futility of resistance to the established order, as represented in his superior. He had accepted his nomination, and welcomed his election, with an almost Quixotic elation in the opportunity thus opened to him. He would accomplish — oh, there was no telling what Lieutenant-Governor Barclay would not accomplish!

He was standing at his office window now, staring out disconsolately over the sloping lawns of the capitol grounds, mottled with thin patches of snow, which had contrived to withstand the recent thaw, and he was telling himself, for the thousandth time, the dispiriting fact that, as a force for good or evil in the destiny of his state, he was no more significant than his stenographer’s Remington or his secretary’s roll-top desk. With all his ideals, with all those pledges which are infinitely more vital when made in private to one’s conscience than when made in public to one’s party, he found himself merely a cog in the state machinery — a cog, too, that, seemingly, might be skipped at any or every time, without in the least degree disturbing the progress of routine. On the few occasions, in the early days of their official relation, when he had ventured to set his will in opposition to that of the Governor, there had not been manifest in the latter’s attitude even that spirit of resistance which spurs men to more active and resolute endeavor. Governor Abbott had smiled pleasantly upon him, and then quietly shifted the conversation into other channels, with an air of selecting a topic more suited to his companion’s comprehension. Finally, on one occasion, when Barclay had voiced his opinion with an energy which savored of rebuke, the Governor had gone further, and had asked calmly — “And what were you proposing to do about it?” After that Barclay had relinquished the unequal struggle, and resigned himself to the unavoidable conclusion of his impotency.

It is a situation which tries men’s souls, this of utter helplessness in the face of plain duty. He could have no hope of making his position clear to the constituency to which he was responsible. Debarred on the one side from taking an active part in the administration of state affairs, and bitterly arraigned on the other on the grounds of inefficiency, laxity, and indifference to duty, the second month of office found John Barclay in a fair way to be ground to powder between the millstones of impuissance and hostile criticism. The men of his party who had, both in private conviction and public statement, based their hopes of political reform upon the frankly avowed platform of his principles, now passed him coldly, with a bare nod, sometimes with none whatever; the labor element jeered joyously at his attitude; the “machine” pointed to him as proof of the fallacy of the reform creed. It is easy to expect great performances from great promises, easier still to outline the duties and condemn the delinquencies of another, and not even Barclay’s knowledge of his own good faith was sufficient compensation for the sneers of press and public which fell to his share. As he surveyed the dispiriting prospect from his office window, on that late February afternoon, he was near to resigning his position, and with it all further pretension to political prominence.

In the opinion of those competent to judge, the state of Alleghenia was going to the dogs. A press distinguished alike for the amplitude of its headlines and the pitiable paucity of its principles; a legislature of which practically every member had, not only a price, but such a price as the advertisements describe as being “within the reach of all;” a Governor who avowedly stood ready to sanction the most extreme pretensions of the notoriously corrupt party which had secured him his election, — here, surely, were good and sufficient reasons for the generously bestowed disapproval of Alleghenia’s sister states. In all the personnel of her government there was but one man sincerely devoted to her advancement on the lines of integrity and non-partisanship. And that man was Lieutenant-Governor Barclay, whose influence on the trend of affairs was approximately that of the proverbial fly on the hub of the revolving wheel.

The Lieutenant-Governor had turned back to his desk, and was arranging his papers, preparatory to departing for the day, when his ears were greeted by the unusual and unwelcome sound of a rap upon the communicating door. Instinctively he braced himself for an unpleasant encounter before replying. It was his experience that the Governor’s room was like to Nazareth of old, in that no good might be expected to issue therefrom. Nevertheless, as Governor Abbott entered, in response to Barclay’s “Come!” it was difficult to believe that he was aught but what he appeared to be, — a courteous, conspicuously well-dressed and white-haired gentleman, of sixty or thereabouts, smooth-shaven save for chop side- whiskers of iron gray, with a habit of rubbing his hands, and an inclination from the hips forward which suggested a floor-walker. In brief, the Governor of Alleghenia seemed the type of a man who turns sideways and slips through narrow places, rather than run the risk of barking his elbows by a face-front advance. In reality he was somewhat less pliable than a steel rail.

“You are going?” he asked, seeing how Barclay was employed.

“I was thinking of it,” replied the Lieutenant-Governor. “Of course, if there is anything” —

Governor Abbott seated himself on the edge of the desk, holding a lapel of his coat in each hand, and surveyed his subordinate from under his drooping eyelids, with his head cocked on one side.

“I believe you know Peter Rathbawne,” he said.

“I do. I am engaged to his elder daughter.”

“Ah! That is what I thought.”

The Governor looked contemplatively at the ceiling, closing his right eye, and nibbling behind his pursed lips.

“Peter Rathbawne,” he said, “is the second most obstinate man in Kenton City, if not in Alleghenia. I’m afraid he thinks he is the most obstinate. If so, he does me an injustice. His mills are the largest in the state. I am told that when they are running full strength they employ over four thousand hands.”

“Something like that number, I believe,” put in Barclay, as the Governor seemed to expect a reply.

“Ah! It is a pity for such an industry as that to be tied up on account of one man’s obstinacy.”

“I had not heard” — began Barclay; but Governor Abbott continued steadily, disregarding the interruption.

“Yesterday morning Mr. Rathbawne discharged fifteen employees on the ground of incompetency. It is hard to see exactly what Mr. Rathbawne means by ‘incompetency’ These men were not newcomers. Some of them had been in the mills for as much as eighteen months. It seems as if he might have discovered the alleged incompetency long ago. It is more or less arbitrary, one might say, this discharging men by wholesale, as it were.”

“I suppose,” commented Barclay, “that a man may do as he will with his own.”

“Ah!” said the Governor, lifting his hands from his lapels with a little gesture of deprecation, but immediately replacing them. “But can he? A man in Peter Rathbawne’s position has a responsibility to fulfill toward the community. He cannot beggar men for a caprice — because his horse has gone lame, or his breakfast has not agreed with him. He must show reasons — give an accounting. He must be fair.”

“Oh, when it comes to fairness,” laughed the other, “I assure you, Governor Abbott, you won’t find Mr. Rathbawne’s equal this side of the Pacific. He’s famous for square dealing.”

“He has been,” corrected the Governor. “In the present instance he seems to have fallen below standard. He has declined to reconsider his decision in the case of the discharged men. What’s worse, he has flatly refused to see the committee appointed by the Union.”

“I’m not surprised at that,” said Barclay slowly, fingering a paper-cutter on the desk before him. “Mr. Rathbawne is peculiar in one respect; he supports and considers the Union in every other. But he has always insisted upon his right to discharge the hands at will, and without giving reasons. Incompetency is only a word which is used to cover more serious causes.”

“Well, he’s wrong,” said the Governor, with a heat unusual to him. “He’s dead wrong, Mr. Barclay, and he will find it out before he’s a day older.”

“Do you mean” —

“I mean that if the men in question are not taken back before to-morrow noon, every man, woman, and child in the employ of the Rathbawne Mills will be out on strike. The question is, what is Peter Rathbawne prepared to do?”

The silence that followed was broken only by the tap, tap, tap of the Lieutenant-Governor’s paper-cutter on the silver-mounted blotter. Presently he looked up and met the Governor’s eye.

“If you want my opinion, sir,” he answered, “it is that Mr. Rathbawne would fight such a point to a standstill. He’s sole owner of the mills, and he’s a rich man. He has always treated his employees as if they were his own children. If they turn on him now for something which, from their experience of his character, they must know was fair and justifiable” —

“But was it?” interrupted the Governor.

“I don’t know the facts, sir, but I know Peter Rathbawne,” said Barclay, throwing back his head, “and I can say, with clear conviction, that it must have been. If, as you suggest, the hands go out, I think he would close down the mills for a year, and go abroad. He’s a man who doesn’t argue; he simply acts. I fancy there wouldn’t be much opposition left by the time he wanted to reopen.”

“Provided always that there were any thing left to reopen,” suggested the Governor softly.

“The state troops have more than once proved their ability to assure the sanctity of property,” answered his subordinate, with a touch of the old pride with which he had assumed office.

“Hum!” said Governor Abbott. “But calling out the militia is a serious matter, Mr. Barclay, to say nothing of the expense entailed. Considering that the difficulty would be due entirely to the obstinacy of one man — er — one might not feel justified” —

He hesitated briefly under the Lieutenant-Governor’s keen glance, and then swerved from this line of suggestion.

“What I wanted to say was this: You are a friend of Mr. Rathbawne’s, — something more than a friend, indeed. No doubt he has a respect for your opinion, as you have for his. Now, if in the course of a quiet chat — it will have to be to-night — you should point out the situation that threatens him, the distress that a strike will cause, the probable destruction of his property, perhaps he might consent to reinstate the discharged men to morrow morning.”

“It would be a surrender of principle, to which he would never consent,” said Barclay firmly. “Of that I am sure. Moreover, sir, I should be speaking against my convictions were I to advise him to adopt such a course.”

The Governor’s lip wrinkled slightly.

“The Union is prepared to do the right thing by the man who settles this question,” he said.

“I hope you don’t mean that!” exclaimed Barclay. “You are the first man to make such a suggestion to me. Pardon me, Governor Abbott, but I cannot but think the executive chamber of the capitol of Alleghenia a singular place for it to be mentioned.”

The Governor held up his hand.

“You misunderstand me,” he said. “One would suppose I had offered you a purse! I mean simply that the popularity of the man who averts this strike will be an assured fact. He would be the idol of the working people, and hardly less esteemed by the element of capital. Moreover, he would be doing a humane and merciful thing. You are the only man who is in a position to approach Rathbawne, and, if you will excuse the suggestion, I think you can hardly afford to throw away the chance. As it is, you — er — you are not what might be called popular, Mr. Barclay.”

This time the silence was broken by a single sharp little click — the latch of the connecting door slipping into place. The Lieutenant-Governor sank slowly into his revolving chair, tipped back, swung round a half circle, and stared out disconsolately over the sloping lawns of the capitol grounds, mottled with thin patches of snow.

title: The Lieutenant-Governor/Chapter I


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Rh

last bed of rock, before we reached the cave which Jack had pierced, was so soft, and easy to work, that we had little difficulty in proportioning and opening the place for our door; I hoped that, being now exposed to the heat of the sun, it would soon become as hard as the original surface. The door was that we had used for the staircase at Falcon’s Nest; for as we only intended to make a temporary residence of our old tree, there was no necessity for solid fittings; and, besides, I intended to close the entrance of the tree by a door of bark, more effectually to conceal it, in case savages should visit us. I then laid out the extent of the grotto at pleasure, for we had ample space. We began by dividing it into two parts; that on the right of the entrance was to be our dwelling; on the left were, first, our kitchen, then the workshop and the stables; behind these were the store-rooms and the cellar. In order to give light and air to our apartments, it was necessary to insert in the rock the windows we had brought from the ship; and this cost us many days of labour. The right—hand portion was subdivided into three rooms: the first our own bedroom; the middle, the common sitting-room, and beyond the boys’ room. As we had only three windows, we appropriated one to each bedroom, and the third to the kitchen, contenting ourselves, at present, with a grating in the dining-room. I constructed a sort of chimney in the kitchen, formed of four boards, and conducted the smoke thus, through a


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IV.] development and energy to which only a distant approach was made under the most favourable circumstances in ancient times. The conscious and reflective users of speech, the instructed and cultivated, the writers of their thoughts, have become everywhere a class powerful in numbers as well as dominant in influence. Education, no longer confined to the upper layer, more or less pervades the whole mass of the people. Books are in every one's hands, assimilating and establishing the written and spoken usages of all. That form of the common speech in each country which has enlisted in its support the best minds, the sweetest and most sonorous tongues, is ever gaining ground upon the others, supplanting their usages, and promising to become and to continue the true popular language.

In America, the influences we have now been considering wear a somewhat peculiar form. On the one hand, the educated class nowhere else embraces so large a portion of the community, or has so vast a collective force; on the other hand, and partly for this very reason, the highest and best-educated class have less power here than in the less democratic countries of the Old World: the low-toned party newspaper is too much the type of the prevailing literary influence by which the style of speech of our rising generation is moulding. A tendency to slang, to colloquial inelegancies, and even vulgarities, is the besetting sin against which we, as Americans, have especially to guard and to struggle. To attain that thorough democracy which is the best life and vigour of language, to keep our English speech vivid with the thought and feeling of a whole people, we should not bring down the tone and style of the highest, nor average those of all classes; we should rather lift up the lower to the level of the higher.

Our review of the causes which determine the respective part played by the different processes of linguistic growth, and the rate at which they severally act, is far from being exhaustive. To treat the subject with thoroughness would require a treatise. Parts of it are of extreme subtlety and difficulty. Our attention has been directed almost solely to external historical circumstances, those of which the effect


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Rh you are bumpy in awkward places or the only available tree is an odd shape, Peter does some things to you, and after that you fit. Once you fit, great care must be taken to go on fitting, and this, as Wendy was to discover to her delight, keeps a whole family in perfect condition.

Wendy and Michael fitted their trees at the first try, but John had to be altered a little.

After a few days' practice they could go up and down as gaily as buckets in a well. And how ardently they grew to love their home under the ground; especially Wendy! It consisted of one large room, as all houses should do, with a floor in which you could dig if you wanted to go fishing, and in this floor grew stout mushrooms of a charming colour, which were used as stools. A Never tree tried hard to grow in the centre of the room, but every morning they sawed the trunk through, level with the floor. By tea-time it was always about two feet high, and then they put a door on top of it, the whole thus becoming a table; as soon as they cleared away, they sawed off the trunk again, and thus there was more room to play. There was an enormous fireplace which was in almost any part of the room where you cared to light it, and across this Wendy stretched strings, made of fibre, from which she suspended her washing. The bed was tilted against the wall by day, and let down at 6:30, when it filled nearly half the Rh

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172 hole made in the face of the rock. We made our work-room spacious enough for us to carry on all our manufactures, and it served also for our carthouse. Finally, all the partition-walls were put up, communicating by doors, and completing our commodious habitation. These various labours, the removal of our effects, and arranging them again, all the confusion of a change when it was necessary to be at once workmen and directors, took us a great part of summer; but the recollection of the vexations we should escape in the rainy season gave us energy.

We passed nearly all our time at Tent House, the centre of our operations; and, besides the gardens and plantations which surrounded it, we found many advantages which we profited by. Large turtles often came to deposit their eggs in the sand, a pleasant treat for us; but we raised our desires to the possession of the turtles themselves, living, to eat when we chose. As soon as we saw one on the shore, one of my sons ran to cut off its retreat. We then hastened to assist, turned the creature on its back, passed a long cord through its shell, and tied it firmly to a post close to the water. We then placed it on its legs, when of course it made for the water, but could only ramble the length of its cord; it seemed, however, very content, and we had it in readiness when we wanted it. The lobsters, crabs, muscles, and every sort of fish which abounded on the coast, plentifully supplied our table. One morning, we were struck with an extraordinary spectacle: a large portion of the sea appeared in a state of ebullition, and immense flocks of marine birds were hovering


text:
The Lieutenant-Governor/Chapter II

Chapter II. The Odds Against Young Nisbet
Young Nisbet leaned forward in his chair.

“And I’ve been thinking,” he added, “that perhaps — that perhaps” —

“That perhaps what?” asked the junior Miss Rathbawne, leaning forward in hers.

“If I don’t have tea instantly,” said her mother, with profound conviction, as she came ponderously through the portières, tugging at her gloves, “I shall expire! How de do, Mr. Nisbet. Do sit up straight, Dorothy, my dear.”

She sank heavily into a low chair, which brought her within the radius of lamp-light at the tea-table, and was thus revealed as a lady of generous proportions, with a conspicuous absence of features, and no observable lap. In speaking, she displayed a marked partiality for undue emphasis. Sublimely unconscious of the depression induced by her advent, she continued to talk, as she pulled off her gloves, which were a size too small, and came away with reluctance, leaving imprints of the stitching on her pudgy pink hands.

Young Nisbet surveyed her with a kind of mute despair. He was a very average young American, very conventionally in love, and the trifling remnant of self-assertiveness which had triumphed over the crescent humility natural to his condition inevitably evaporated into thin air at the approach of Mrs. Rathbawne; and always, as he was doing now, he turned in his toes excessively when she was present, hitched at his right trouser-leg, where the crease passed over his knee, and looked first at her, and then at the floor, and then at her again, with the purposeless regularity of a mechanical toy.

There was a tremendous and highly significant rattling of cups, saucers, and silver spoons, as Dorothy Rathbawne prepared her mother’s tea. All things considered, one found something very admirable about Dorothy at such a time as this. It was not complete submission, still less was it open revolt, but savored of both, and was incomparable as an attitude toward Mrs. Rathbawne. On some occasions it was almost as impossible to get on with Mrs. Rathbawne as it would have been, on others, to get on without her. The which, nowadays, is more or less true of all parents. And children.

“Natalie and your Aunt Helen got out at the florist’s,” went on the good lady, “but I came straight on, and sent the carriage back for them. I felt that I couldn’t exist an instant longer without my tea. I’m sure I don’t see how Natalie stands it. She was out all morning in the brougham, too. You had best make enough for three cups, Dorothy — and do sit up straight, my dear! — and order Thomas to bring in some more tartines. They are sure to be hungry, and they are apt to come in at any moment.”

“That is a family failing,” said Dorothy venomously, from behind the kettle.

“Well, I’m sure, my dear,” said Mrs. Rathbawne innocently, as she straightened her rings, and picked an imaginary speck out of one of her round, flat nails, “there is no disgrace at all in a healthy appetite. I’m thankful we all have it — though as for your Aunt Helen, hers is about like that of a fly.”

“Flies have very good appetites — judging from all I’ve seen, that is,” said Dorothy, “so I don’t think she is to be commiserated on that account.”

“That was only a figure of speech, my dear,” replied Mrs. Rathbawne, with engaging placidity. “Mercy! but I’m glad to get home. We’ve had a positively exhausting day with Natalie’s shopping, and the worst of it is to think what a lot more there is to do. A wedding certainly is an undertaking, Mr. Nisbet.”

“Is it?” answered young Nisbet, perceptibly startled at being thus abruptly included in the conversation.

“Decidedly!” asseverated Mrs. Rathbawne. “Of course, in the case of an ordinary man” —

“Two lumps, mother?”

“Always two lumps, Dorothy, my dear. Surely you must know that, by this time! As I was saying, Mr. Nisbet, the fact that my elder daughter is to marry Mr. Barclay” —

Dorothy’s eyebrows went up resignedly as she bent with affected solicitude over the alcohol lamp, than which none ever burned more blamelessly. There was no stopping Mrs. Rathbawne now!

“One has to keep his position in mind,” she was saying. “It isn’t like the usual marriage, which interests only the families and friends of the persons concerned, you know. It isn’t even as if only Kenton City were looking on. All Alleghenia will be on the qui vive, Mr. Nisbet, all the state of Alleghenia. I shouldn’t wonder if some notice were taken of the event, even at Washington. Marrying a statesman, you see, a Lieutenant-Governor! Oh, it’s quite different — quite! Do sit up straight, Dorothy, my dear!”

She continued to prattle of the momentous marriage impending, until her complacent chatter was interrupted by the entrance of her half-sister, Mrs. Wynyard, and the elder Miss Rathbawne.

The two newcomers were both beautiful, in widely dissimilar ways. Helen Wynyard, Mrs. Rathbawne’s junior by nearly a score of years, retained at thirty the transparent brilliancy of complexion which, at eighteen, had made her the most admired débutante of her season in San Francisco. Her marriage with Ellery Wynyard had caused a great to-do among the gossips, and, later, had defrauded them pitilessly of their self-promised “I told you so’s,” by reason of the death of the handsome young rake, before the rose-color of the honeymoon had begun to fade. Beauty, wit, and infallible tact she inherited from her mother, shrewd business ability and a keen insight into men and things from her father, and wealth and a certain attractive audacity of speech from her husband; and five years of widowhood only served to develop and emphasize the promise of her first season. There were numerous feet which aspired to be shod with Ellery Wynyard’s discarded shoes, but no one pair, said the world, so much as an inch in advance of the rest.

Mrs. Wynyard was spending the winter with her half-sister, and the Rathbawnes, whom the circumstance of widely distant residence had always kept from coming into close touch with her, were equally at a loss when they wondered how they had formerly contrived to exist without her, and in what manner they should resign themselves to giving her up. She was a woman who came amazingly near to being indispensable.

For the moment, Natalie Rathbawne, in reality the beauty which Dorothy by a fraction fell short of being, suffered by comparison with her sister. She was desperately tired — that was in her smile. But there was something else: a singular preoccupation which was nearly akin to listlessness. That was in the droop of her eyelids, in the eloquently inattentive gesture with which she touched a bowl of Gloire de Dijon roses as she passed, and in her conventionally courteous acknowledgment of young Nisbet’s greeting. And, too, as she seated herself beside her sister on the divan, there was perceptible purpose in her avoidance of the lamp-light, her withdrawal into the dark, deep corner. To the conversation which followed she contributed only such brief remarks as were made necessary by those occasionally addressed to her.

The two women brought with them a delicious, indefinite atmosphere of out-of-doors: that commingled smell of cold flowers, and cold flesh, and cold fur, which is to a drawing-room in winter what a whiff of salt air is in summer to a sun-baked hillside; and this proved almost too much for the self-possession, already tottering, of young Nisbet. He had always been accustomed to have the things he desired, had young Nisbet, but these, until now, had been either creature comforts, readily obtainable when one’s father is a multi-millionaire, or athletic honors, equally easy of attainment when one measures forty-two around the chest, and can do one’s quarter in something under fifty. Again, the Nisbets lived on a ranch, and when one does not know people in New York one spends the Sundays in New Haven, so that neither the terms nor the vacations incidental to his four years at Yale had equipped him, in the sense in which they equipped his fellows, for dealing with society.

Now that he was in Kenton City, representing his father’s interests, young Nisbet was painfully self-conscious of multitudinous shortcomings, totally unsuspected hitherto. His speech was apparently hopelessly incrusted with slang, his legs were too long, his ears protruded abominably, his hair was desperately unruly, his freckles and his capacity for blushing were inexhaustible. He was as much at ease in such surroundings as these in which he now found himself as a trout in a sand-pile. The great room, with its costly furnishings, the tea-table crowded with silver and fragile porcelain, the kettle purring contentedly above the iridescent flame of the alcohol lamp, — above all, the subtle, indefinable suggestion of femininity which unknowably pervaded his surroundings, — all these enthralled young Nisbet beyond expression, and awed him immeasurably, into the bargain. He was, as usual, very clear in his own mind as to what he wanted, and that was the younger Miss Rathbawne, but, for the first time in his experience, the means at his command did not seem to be sufficient unto the end. For the younger Miss Rathbawne was, very evidently, not the sort of triumph which is achieved by recourse to an imposingly ample bank-account, nor yet by two months’ loyalty to the exigencies of the training-table. And this was February, and he had known her since July, and, altogether, it was highly discouraging. Unwittingly, young Nisbet heaved a sigh so profound and so pitiable that Mrs. Wynyard immediately proffered her sympathy.

“Poor, dear Mr. Nisbet! I never heard a more pathetic sigh. Whatever is the matter?”

“He’s sleepy,” put in Dorothy. “He always is, after talking with me for a whole hour.”

“I was just thinking,” protested young Nisbet helplessly.

“Oh!” exclaimed Dorothy, “that’s it, is it? Then pray don’t discourage him, Aunt Helen. He’s really getting into some very good habits, of late.”

“Why, Dorothy!” said Mrs. Rathbawne, digging her chin reproachfully into her black velvet collar, “how can you say such things? Mr. Nisbet will think you have had no bringing up at all. And do sit up straight, my dear!”

“And if you don’t stop nagging, O most conscientious of parents,” retorted Dorothy, with her nose in the air, “Mr. Nisbet will think you bring people up by throwing them down!”

“And slang! Dorothy!”

“I always think,” said Mrs. Wynyard, “that Dorothy should have had a fairy godmother, to promise that every time she uttered a word of slang a pearl should pop out of her mouth. We should have all been wearing triple strings down to our knees within a week after she learned to talk.”

“That settles it!” exclaimed Dorothy. “If you are going to side with the enemy, Aunt Helen, there is nothing left for me to do but to beat a retreat. Come on, Mr. Nisbet, there is rest for the weary in the conservatory — that is, unless you want another cup of tea?”

In the conservatory the air was heavy with the moist, sweet smell of earth and moss, and faintly vibrant with the tiny plash of water, dripping from a pile of rocks into the circular central pool, wherein fat goldfish went idly to and fro, nuzzling floating specks upon the surface. Through the polished green of the surrounding palms and rubber-plants stared gardenias and camelias; below, between maidenhair and sword-ferns, winked the little waxen blossoms of fuchsias and begonias: at intervals poinsettia flared audaciously among its more quietly dressed neighbors; and, in the far corners the golden spheres were swelling to fairly respectable proportions on the branches of dwarf orange-trees.

Dorothy installed herself on a bench, and young Nisbet perched upon the rim of the pool, and stared at vacancy.

“It’s corking, in here,” he said, after a moment.

“Isn’t it, though?” agreed Dorothy, with a nod of approval. “It’s my favorite part of the house. You can’t imagine how many hours I spend here, sewing, or reading, or fiddling with the fish and all those funny little plants under the palms.”

“You bet!” said young Nisbet, with enthusiasm, if not much relevancy. “I’ve just got a picture of that, you know. Besides, we’ve spent a good many of those hours together in here, these past few months.”

“Oh, not a tenth of them!” exclaimed Dorothy, “and then only the very shortest.”

“Oh!” said young Nisbet gloomily. His fertile imagination was immediately peopled with the forms and faces of those who had shared the other hours, a score of eligible and attractive young men, his moral, mental, and physical superiors in every conceivable particular, faultlessly arrayed, scintillating with wit, and surpassingly skilled in the way to win a woman. The conservatory was full of them. He saw them in every imaginable posture: feeding the goldfish, watering the begonias, looking up into Dorothy’s eyes as they sat at her feet, looking down at her slender fingers, as she pinned gardenias to their lapels. And these had been granted the long hours, he only the short. Inwardly, young Nisbet groaned; aloud, as was his wont, he said the wrong thing.

“They seemed long enough to me.”

“Well!” said Dorothy.

“Oh, hang it all! I didn’t mean that. What an oaf I am!”

“Never mind,” said Dorothy consolingly. “I know you well enough to understand you, by this time.” She smoothed her skirt reflectively. “Let me see,” she added, “what were we talking about when we were swamped by the family?”

“I think,” answered young Nisbet, with one of his illogical blushes, “that I had just asked you what sort of a man you thought you would like to marry. I remember I was on the point of saying that I thought perhaps you had ideas like — er — like your mother’s.”

Dorothy raised her eyebrows.

“Like the Mater’s?”

“About a man being big and prominent, and all that, you know,” floundered young Nisbet. “She always makes such a point of Barclay’s being Lieutenant-Governor — I thought you might be for the same kind of thing.”

Dorothy looked him over, with a whimsical smile, as he was speaking. There was a deep bronze light in his close-cropped, ruddy hair, and his skin was very smooth and clean. His eyes were appealing, with that unspeakable eloquence of simple honesty which is almost pathetic. Under his blue cloth coat, the great muscles of his shoulders and chest stood out magnificently, rippling the fabric as he stirred, as if eager to throw off their trammels, and be given free play. About him there was a distinct suggestion of sane living and regular exercise. For all his freckles, and his nose that was too little, and his mouth that was too large, “the ugliest of the Nisbet boys” — he had often been called that! — was very emphatically good to look upon.

“A big man?” answered Dorothy. “Yes, I think I should like to marry a big man. I want him very clean, too — very clean! — morally, as well as otherwise. And honest as the day is long. And not too bright! I don’t want to be continually trying to live up to his brain, and continually failing. It is fatal to one’s self-respect, that sort of thing. Then, he must be heels over head in love with me — for keeps! And then — oh, he must be a man, a man through and through, who wouldn’t think anything he didn’t dare to say, nor say anything he didn’t dare to do! That’s what I want, and if I can get it, all the prominence in the world may go hang!”

“That’s just about John Barclay, though,” said young Nisbet, “with the prominence thrown in.”

“Well, I’m not saying I wouldn’t have married John Barclay, if I’d had the chance. He comes pretty close to being all I would ask for, in the way of a man. But, unfortunately, there’s only one John Barclay, and, like the rest of the world, he looked directly over poor little Me’s shoulders, and saw only Natalie. Good gracious! Who could blame him? She’s the loveliest little thing in the world! But, at all events, she nabbed him, so all that is left for me to do is to grin and bear the disappointment as best I may. He’s very much of a man, John Barclay is!”

“Yes,” assented young Nisbet, somewhat mournfully. “I can see that would be the kind of a chap that the dames would stand for everlastingly.”

“But, as I said before,” continued Dorothy, “it’s not because he’s Lieutenant-Governor, whatever the Mater may think about it, that I admire him. It’s just because he’s so big, and earnest, and loyal, and — and” —

“White,” said young Nisbet.

“Yes, isn’t he? That’s it — white!”

“I can understand a man like that getting spliced,” observed young Nisbet very earnestly. “He has so much to offer a girl. But as for the rest of us” —

“Oh, as to that,” broke in Dorothy airily, “John Barclay isn’t the only man in the world, by any manner of means! Besides, Natalie having already bagged him, it is plain I shall have to look elsewhere.”

There was a long pause, broken only by the plash of the water, which seemed, as the seconds slipped by, to grow amazingly loud. Then young Nisbet raised his eyes, and looked at her, blushing deplorably.

“I wish” he said, — “I wish” —

“Dorothy! Do excuse me, Mr. Nisbet, but really — dinner at seven, you know, and this child must be thinking about dressing. She takes ages!”

Mrs. Rathbawne folded her fat hands, and stood waiting, at the conservatory door. Young Nisbet rose.

“Of course!” he said. “I’m always so stupid about these things. Good-by, Miss Rathbawne. I’m off to New York to-morrow on some confounded business, so I probably won’t see you for a week or so. Good-by.”

“Would you mind going out by the hall, Mr. Nisbet?” suggested Mrs. Rathbawne. “Mr. Barclay is in the drawing-room with my elder daughter, and he is so greatly occupied with affairs of state that they have very little time together. I hate to have them interrupted. One can do so much harm sometimes, you know, by thoughtlessly interrupting people who are in love with each other. Thank you so much; good-by. Do try to stand a little straighter, Dorothy, my dear.”

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Rh over it, uttering piercing cries, and plunging into the waves. From time to time the surface, on which the rising sun now shone, seemed covered with little flames, which rapidly appeared and vanished. Suddenly, this extraordinary mass advanced to the bay; and we ran down, full of curiosity. We found, on our arrival, that this strange phenomenon was caused by a shoul of herrings. These shoals are so dense, that they are often taken for sand-banks, are many leagues in extent, and several feet in depth: they spread themselves over the seas, carrying to barren shores the resources that nature has denied them.

These brilliant, scaly creatures had now entered the bay, and my wife and children were lost in admiration of the wonderful sight; but I reminded them, that when Providence sends plenty, we ought to put forth our hands to take it. I sent immediately for the necessary utensils, and organized my fishery. Fritz and Jack stood in the water, and such was the thickness of the shoal, that they filled baskets, taking them up as you would water in a pail; they threw them on the sand; my wife and Ernest cut them open, cleaned them, and rubbed them with salt; I arranged them in small barrels, a layer of herrings and a layer of salt; and when the barrel was full, the ass, led by Francis, took them up to the storehouse. This labour occupied us several days, and at the end of that time we had a dozen barrels of excellent salt provision against the winter season.

The refuse of this fishery, which we threw into the sea, attracted a number of sea-dogs; we killed several for the sake of the skin and the oil, which


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152 is most easily traced. We have but hinted here and there at the more recondite and most potent influences which are deep-seated in the individual character of different tongues and the qualities of the people who speak them. That complex and intricate combination of native capacities and dispositions, acquired and inherited habits, and guiding circumstances, of which, in each individual community, the form and development of the common speech is a product, is in no two communities the same, and everywhere requires a special and detailed study in order to its comprehension. Ethnologists are obliged, in the main, to take the differences of national character as ultimate facts, content with setting them clearly forth, not claiming to explain them; and a like necessity rests upon the linguist as regards linguistic differences: not only can he not account for the presence of peculiarities of character which determine peculiarities of speech, but even their analysis eludes his search; they manifest themselves only in these special effects, and are not otherwise demonstrable. To ascribe the differences of language and linguistic growth directly to "physical causes," to make them dependent on "peculiarities of organization," whether cerebral, laryngal, or other, is wholly meaningless and futile. Language is not a physical product, but a human institution, preserved, perpetuated, and changed, by free human action. Nothing but education and habit limits any man to the idiom in the possession of which he has grown up; within the community of speakers of the same tongue may readily be found persons with endowments as unlike, in degree and kind, as those which characterize the average men of distant and diverse races. Physical causes do, indeed, affect language, but only in two ways: first, as they change the circumstances to which men have to adapt their speech; and second, as they alter men's nature and disposition. Every physical cause requires to be transmuted into a motive or a mental tendency, before it can affect the signs by which we represent our mental acts. It is universally conceded that physical circumstances do produce a permanent effect upon the characteristics of race, internal as well as external, and so upon those, among the rest, which govern linguistic


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Rh room; and all the boys slept in it, except Michael, lying like sardines in a tin. There was a strict rule against turning round until one gave the signal, when all turned at once. Michael should have used it also, but Wendy would have a baby, and he was the littlest, and you know what women are, and the short and the long of it is that he was hung up in a basket.

It was rough and simple, and not unlike what baby bears would have made of an underground house in the same circumstances. But there was one recess in the wall, no larger than a bird-cage, which was the private apartment of Tinker Bell. It could be shut off from the rest of the home by a tiny curtain, which Tink, who was most fastidious, always kept drawn when dressing or undressing. No woman, however large, could have had a more exquisite boudoir and bed-chamber combined. The couch, as she always called it, was a genuine Queen Mab, with club legs; and she varied the bedspreads according to what fruit-blossom was in season. Her mirror was a Puss-in-boots, of which there are now only three, unchipped, known to the fairy dealers; the wash-stand was Pie-crust and reversible, the chest of drawers an authentic Charming the Sixth, and the carpet and rugs of the best (the early) period of Margery and Robin. There was a chandelier from Tiddlywinks for the look of the thing, but of course she lit the residence Rh

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174 would he useful to burn in lamps, or even as an ingredient in soap, which I hoped to make at some future time.

At this time I greatly improved my sledge, by placing it on two small wheels belonging to the guns of the ship, making it a light and commodious carriage, and so low, that we could easily place heavy weights on it. Satisfied with our labours, we returned very happy to Falcon’s Nest, to spend our Sunday, and to thank God heartily for all the blessings he had given us.

went on with our labours but slowly, as many employments diverted us from the great work. I had discovered that the crystals of salt in our grotto had a bed of gypsum for their base, from which I hoped to obtain a great advantage. I was fortunate enough to discover, behind a projecting rock, a natural passage leading to our store-room, strewed with fragments of gypsum. I took some of it to the kitchen, and by repeated burnings calcined it, and reduced it to a fine white powder, which I put into casks, and carefully preserved for use. My intention was, to form our partition-walls of square stones, cemented with the gypsum. I employed my sons daily to collect this, till we had amassed a large quantity; using some, in the first place, effectually to cover our herring-barrels. Four barrels were salted and covered in this way; the rest my wife smoked in a little hut of reeds and branches, in the midst of which the


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IV.] development; but in what measure, at what rate, and through what details of change, is as yet matter of the widest difference of opinion and the liveliest controversy. There are headlong materialists who pronounce man the slave and sport of nature, guided and controlled by the external forces amid which he exists, and who claim that his history may be explained and foretold by means of a knowledge of those forces; when as yet they have not found out even the A-B-C of the modes in which human nature is moulded by its surroundings. These men have their counterparts also among students of language. But, whatever may be hoped from the future, it is certain that at present nothing of value has been done toward showing how linguistic growth is affected in its kind and rate by physical causes. There is no human dialect which might not maintain itself essentially unaltered in structure, though carried to climes very unlike those in which it had grown up, and though employed by a people whose culture and mode of life was rapidly varying; emigration, often assumed to be the chief and most powerful cause of linguistic change, also often appears to exercise a conservative influence. And, on the other hand, a language may rapidly disintegrate, or undergo phonetic transformation, or vary the substance of its vocabulary, without moving from the region of its origin, or becoming the organ of other conditions of human life. When linguistic scholars can fully account for such facts as that the Icelandic is the most antique in form of the idioms of its family, that the Lithuanian has preserved more of the primitive apparatus of Indo-European inflection than any other known tongue of modern times, that the Armenian has become with difficulty recognizable as an Iranian dialect, that the Melanesian, African, and American languages are the most changeful of human forms of speech—then, perhaps, they may claim to comprehend the circumstances that regulate the growth of language.

The variation of language in space, its change from one region to another, is a not less obvious fact than its variation in time, its change from one epoch to another. The earth is filled with almost numberless dialects, differing


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Rh herself. Tink was very contemptuous of the rest of the house, as indeed was perhaps inevitable, and her chamber, though beautiful, looked rather conceited, having the appearance of a nose permanently turned up.

I suppose it was all especially entrancing to Wendy, because those rampagious boys of hers gave her so much to do. Really there were whole weeks when, except perhaps with a stocking in the evening, she was never above ground. The cooking, I can tell you, kept her nose to the pot, and even if there was nothing in it, even though there was no pot, she had to keep watching that it came aboil just the same. You never exactly knew whether there would be a real meal or just a make-believe, it all depended upon Peter's whim: he could eat, really eat, if it was part of a game, but he could not stodge just to feel stodgy, which is what most children like better than anything else; the next best thing being to talk about it. Make-believe was so real to him that during a meal of it you could see him getting rounder. Of course it was trying, but you simply had to follow his lead, and if you could prove to him that you were getting loose for your tree he let you stodge.

Wendy's favourite time for sewing and darning was after they had all gone to bed. Then, as she expressed it, she had a breathing time for herself; and she occupied it in making new things for Rh

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Rh them, and putting double pieces on the knees, for they were all most frightfully hard on their knees.

When she sat down to a basketful of their stockings, every heel with a hole in it, she would fling up her arms and exclaim, "Oh dear, I am sure I sometimes think spinsters are to be envied!"

Her face beamed when she exclaimed this.

You remember about her pet wolf. Well, it very soon discovered that she had come to the island and found her out, and they just ran into each other's arms. After that it followed her about everywhere.

As time wore on did she think much about the beloved parents she had left behind her? This is a difficult question, because it is quite impossible to say how time does wear on in the Neverland, where it is calculated by moons and suns, and there are ever so many more of them than on the mainland. But I am afraid that Wendy did not really worry about her father and mother; she was absolutely confident that they would always keep the window open for her to fly back by, and this gave her complete ease of mind. What did disturb her at times was that John remembered his parents vaguely only, as people he had once known, while Michael was quite willing to believe that she was really his mother. These things scared her a little, and nobly anxious to do her duty, she tried to fix the old life in their minds by setting them Rh

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154 from one another in a greater or less degree, and some of them, at least, we know by historical evidence to be descendants of a common original. This state of things finds its ready and simple explanation in the principles which have been already laid down; they will demand, therefore, but a brief application and further illustration.

We have been speaking, when treating of the growth of language, of vital processes, as going on in the body of speech itself, like the process of fermentation in bread, or of the displacement and replacement of tissues in an animal organism. But we have been careful, at the same time, to bear in mind that the word "process" was thus used only in a figurative sense. Every item of change which goes to make up the growth of human speech is ultimately a result of the conscious effort of human beings. In language, the atoms which compose the fermenting mass and the growing tissue are not inert matter, acted on by laws of combination and affinity, but intelligent creatures, themselves acting for a purpose. A process of linguistic growth, then, is only the collective effect, in a given direction, of the acts of a number of separate individuals, guided by the preferences, and controlled by the assent, of the community of which those individuals form a part. And upon the joint and reciprocal action on language of the individual and the community depend all the phenomena of dialectic separation and coalescence.

For, in the first place, it is evident that the infinite diversity of character and circumstance in the intelligent beings who have language in charge must tend to infinite diversity in their action and its products. Each independent mind, working unrestrainedly according to its own impulses, would impress upon the development of speech a somewhat different history. It was shown almost at the beginning of our discussions that no two men speak exactly the same tongue: of course, then, they would not propagate the same. Each has his own vocabulary, his own pet words and phrases, his own deviations from the normal standard of pronunciation, of construction, of grammar; the needs of each are in some degree unlike those of others; his mind is somewhat