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Alaska Statehood Act

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SEC. 1. That, subject to the provisions of this act, and upon issuance of the proclamation required by section 8(c) of this Act, the State of Alaska is hereby declared to be a State of the United States of America, is declared admitted into the Union on an equal footing with the other States in all respects whatever, and the constitution formed pursuant to the provisions of the Act of the Territorial Legislature of Alaska entitled, "An Act to provide for the holding of a constitutional convention to prepare a constitution for the State of Alaska; to submit the constitution to the people for adoption or rejection; to prepare for the admission of Alaska as a State; to make an appropriation; and setting an effective date", approved March 19, 1955 (Chapter 46, Session Laws of Alaska, 1955), and adopted by a vote of the people of Alaska in the election held an April 24, 1956, is hereby found to be republican in form and in conformity with the Constitution of the United States and the principles of the Declaration of Independence, and is hereby accepted, ratified, and confirmed.

SEC. 2. The State of Alaska shall consist of all the territory, together with the territorial waters appurtenant thereto, now included in the Territory of Alaska.

SEC. 3. The constitution of the State of Alaska shall always be republican in form and shall not be repugnant to the Constitution of the United States and the principles of the Declaration of Independence.

SEC. 4. As a compact with the United States said State and its people do agree and declare that they forever disclaim all right and title to any lands or other property not granted or confirmed to the State or its political subdivisions by or under the authority of this Act, the right or title to which is held by the United States or is subject to disposition by the United States, and to any lands or other property, (including fishing rights), the right or title to which may be held by any Indians, Eskimos, or Aleuts (hereinafter called natives) or is held by the United States in trust for said natives; that all such lands or other property, belonging to the United States or which may belong to said natives, shall be and remain under the absolute jurisdiction and control of the United States until disposed of under its authority, except to such extent as the Congress has prescribed or may hereafter prescribe, and except when held by individual natives in fee without restrictions on alienation: Provided, That nothing contained in this act shall recognize, deny, enlarge, impair, or otherwise affect any claim against the United States, and any such claim shall be governed by the laws of the United States applicable thereto; and nothing in this Act is intended or shall be construed as a finding, interpretation, or construction by the Congress that any law applicable thereto authorizes, establishes, recognizes, or confirms the validity or invalidity of any such claim, and the determination of the applicability or effect of any law to any such claim shall be unaffected by anything in this Act: And provided further, That no taxes shall be imposed by said State upon any lands or other property now owned or hereafter acquired by the United States or which, as hereinabove set forth, may belong to said natives, except to such extent as the Congress has prescribed or may hereafter prescribe, and except when held by individual natives in fee without restrictions on alienation.

SEC. 5. The State of Alaska and its political subdivisions, respectively, shall have and retain title to all property, real and personal, title to which is in the Territory of Alaska or any of the subdivisions. Except as provided in section 6 hereof, the United States shall retain title to all property, real and personal, to which it has title, including public lands.

SEC. 6.
 * (a) For the purposes of furthering the development of and expansion of communities, the State of Alaska is hereby granted and shall be entitled to select, within twenty-five years after the date of the admission of the State of Alaska into the Union, from lands within national forests in Alaska which are vacant and unappropriated at the time of their selection not to exceed four hundred thousand acres of land, and from the other public lands of the United States in Alaska which are vacant, unappropriated, and unreserved at the time of their selection not to exceed another four hundred thousand acres of land, all of which shall be adjacent to established communities or suitable for prospective community centers and recreational areas. Such lands shall be selected by the State of Alaska with the approval of the Secretary of Agriculture as to national forest lands and with the approval of the Secretary of the Interior as to other public lands: Provided, That nothing herein contained shall affect any valid existing claim, location, or entry under the laws of the United States, whether for homestead, mineral, right-of-way, or other purpose whatsoever, or shall affect the rights of any such owner, claimant, locator, or entryman to the full use and enjoyment of the land so occupied.

 * (b) The State of Alaska, in addition to any other grants made in this section, is hereby granted and shall be entitled to select, within twenty-five years after the admission of Alaska into the Union, not to exceed one hundred and two million five hundred and fifty thousand acres from the public lands of the United States in Alaska which are vacant, unappropriated, and unreserved at the time of their selection: Provided, That nothing herein contained shall affect any valid existing claim, location, or entry under the laws of the United States, whether for homestead, mineral, right-of-way, or other purpose whatsoever, or shall affect the rights of any such owner, claimant, locator, or entryman to the full use and enjoyment of the lands so occupied: And provided further, That no selection hereunder shall be made in the area north and west of the line described in section 10 without approval of the President or his designated representative.

 * (c) Block 32, and the structures and improvements thereon, in the city of Juneau are granted to the State of Alaska for any or all of the following purposes or a combination thereof: A residence for the Governor, a State museum, or park and recreational use.

 * (d) Block 19, and the structures and improvements thereon, and the interests of the United States in blocks C and 7, and the structures and improvements thereon, in the city of Juneau, are hereby granted to the State of Alaska.

 * (e) All real and personal property of the United States situated in the Territory of Alaska which is specifically used for the sole purpose of conservation and protection of the fisheries and wildlife of Alaska, under the provisions of the Alaska game law of July 1, 1943 (57 Stat. 301; 48 U.S.C., sections 192-211), as amended, and under the provisions of the Alaska commercial fisheries laws of June 26, 1906 (34 Stat. 478; 48 U.S.C., sections 230-239 and 241-242), and June 6, 1924 (43 Stat. 465; 48 U.S.C., sections 221-228), as supplemented and amended, shall be transferred and conveyed to the State of Alaska by the appropriate Federal agency: Provided, That the administration and management of the fish and wildlife resources of Alaska shall be retained by the Federal Government under existing laws until the first day of the first calendar year following the expiration of ninety legislative days after the Secretary of the Interior certifies to the Congress that the Alaska State Legislature has made adequate provision for the administration, management, and conservation of said resources in the broad national interest: Provided, That such transfer shall not include lands withdrawn or otherwise set apart as refuges or reservations for the protection of wildlife nor facilities utilized in connection therewith, or in connection with general research activities relating to fisheries or wildlife. Sums of money that are available for apportionment or which the Secretary of the Interior shall have apportioned, as of the date the State of Alaska shall be deemed to be admitted into the Union, for wildlife restoration in the Territory of Alaska, pursuant to section 8 (a) of the Act of September 2, 1937, as amended (16 U.S.C., section 669g-1), and for fish restoration and management in the Territory of Alaska, pursuant to section 12 of the Act of August 9, 1950 (16 U.S.C., section 777k), shall continue to be available for the period, and under the terms and conditions in effect at the time, the apportionments are made. Commencing with the year during which Alaska is admitted into the Union, the Secretary of the Treasury, at the close of each fiscal year, shall pay to the State of Alaska 70 per centum of the net proceeds, as determined by the Secretary of the Interior, derived during such fiscal year from all sales of sealskins or sea otter skins made in accordance with the provisions of the Act of February 26, 1944 (58 Stat. 100; 16 U.S.C., sections 631a-631q), as supplemented and amended. In arriving at the net proceeds, there shall be deducted from the receipts from all sales all costs to the United States in carrying out the provisions of the Act of February 26, 1944, as supplemented and amended, including, but not limited to, the costs of handling and dressing the skins, the costs of making the sales, and all expenses incurred in the administration of the Pribilof Islands. Nothing in this Act shall be construed as affecting the rights of the United States under the provisions of the Act of February 26, 1944, as supplemented and amended, and the Act of June 28, 1937 (50 Stat. 325), as amended (16 U.S.C., section 772 et seq.).

 * (f) Five per centum of the proceeds of sale of public lands lying within said State which shall be sold by the United States subsequent to the admission of said State into the Union, after deducting all the expenses incident to such sales, shall be paid to said State to be used for the support of the public schools within said State.

 * (g) Except as provided in subsection (a), all lands granted in quantity to and authorized to be selected by the State of Alaska by this Act shall be selected in such manner as the laws of the State may provide, and in conformity with such regulations as the Secretary of the Interior may prescribe. All selections shall be made in reasonably compact tracts, taking into account the situation and potential uses of the lands involved, and each tract selected shall contain at least five thousand seven hundred and sixty acres unless isolated from other tracts open to selection. The authority to make selections shall never be alienated or bargained away, in whole or in part, by the State. Upon the revocation of any order of withdrawal in Alaska, the order of revocation shall provide for a period of not less than ninety days before the date on which it otherwise becomes effective, if subsequent to the admission of Alaska into the Union, during which period the State of Alaska shall have a preferred right of selection, subject to the requirements of this Act, except as against prior existing valid rights or as against equitable claims subject to allowance and confirmation. Such preferred right of selection shall have precedence over the preferred right of application created by section 4 of the Act of September 27, 1944 (58 Stat. 748; 43 U. S. C., section 282), as now or hereafter amended, but not over other preference rights now conferred by law. Where any lands desired by the State are unsurveyed at the time of their selection, the Secretary of the Interior shall survey the exterior boundaries of the area requested without any interior subdivision thereof and shall issue a patent for such selected area in terms of the exterior boundary survey; where any lands desired by the State are surveyed at the time of their selection, the boundaries of the area requested shall conform to the public land subdivisions established by the approval of the survey. All lands duly selected by the State of Alaska pursuant to this Act shall be patented to the State by the Secretary of the Interior. Following the selection of lands by the State and the tentative approval of such selection by the Secretary of the Interior or his designee, but prior to the issuance of final patent, the State is hereby authorized to execute conditional leases and to make conditional sales of such selected lands. As used in this subsection, the words "equitable claims subject to allowance and confirmation" include, without limitation, claims of holders of permits issued by the Department of Agriculture on lands eliminated from national forests, whose permits have been terminated only because of such elimination and who own valuable improvements on such lands.

 * (h) Any lease, permit, license, or contract issued under the Mineral Leasing Act of February 25, 1920 (41 Stat. 437; 30 U.S.C., section 181 and following), as amended, or under the Alaska Coal Leasing Act of October 20, 1914 (38 Stat. 741; 30 U. S. C., section 432 and following), as amended, shall have the effect of withdrawing the lands subject thereto from selection by the State of Alaska under this Act, unless such lease, permit, license, or contract is in effect on the date of approval of this Act, and unless an application to select such lands is filed with the Secretary of the Interior within a period of five years after the date of the admission of Alaska into the Union. Such selections shall be made only from lands that are otherwise open to selection under this Act, and shall include the entire area that is subject to each lease, permit, license, or contract involved in the selections. Any patent for lands so selected shall vest in the State of Alaska all right, title, and interest of the United States in and to any such lease, permit, license, or contract that remains outstanding on the effective date of the patent, including the right to all rentals, royalties, and other payments accruing after that date under such lease, permit, license, or contract, and including any authority that may have been retained by the United States to modify the terms and conditions of such lease, permit, license, or contract: Provided, That nothing herein contained shall affect the continued validity of any such lease, permit, license, or contract or any rights arising thereunder.

 * (i) All grants made or confirmed under this Act shall include mineral deposits. The grants of mineral lands to the State of Alaska under subsections (a) and (b) of this section are made upon the express condition that all sales, grants, deeds, or patents for any of the mineral lands so granted shall be subject to and contain reservation to the State of all of the minerals in the lands so sold, granted, deeded, or patented, together with the right to prospect for, mine, and remove the same. Mineral deposits in such lands shall be subject to lease by the State as the State legislature may direct: Provided, That any lands or minerals hereafter disposed of contrary to the provisions of this section shall be forfeited to the United States by appropriate proceedings instituted by the Attorney General for that purpose in the United States District Court for the District of Alaska.

 * (j) The schools and colleges provided for in this Act shall forever remain under the exclusive control of the State, or its governmental subdivisions, and no part of the proceeds arising from the sale or disposal of any lands granted herein for educational purposes shall be used for the support of any sectarian or denominational school, college, or university.

 * (k) Grants previously made to the Territory of Alaska are hereby confirmed and transferred to the State of Alaska upon its admission. Effective upon the admission of the State of Alaska into the Union, section 1 of the Act of March 4, 1915 (38 Stat. 1214; 48 U.S.C., section 353), as amended, and the last sentence of section 35 of the Act of February 25, 1920 (41 Stat. 450; 30 U. section C, section 191), as amended, are repealed and all lands therein reserved under the provisions of section 1 as of the date of this Act shall, upon the admission of said State into the Union, be granted to said State for the purposes for which they were reserved; but such repeal shall not affect any outstanding lease, permit, license, or contract issued under said section 1, as amended, or any rights or powers with respect to such lease, permit, license, or contract, and shall not affect the disposition of the proceeds or income derived prior to such repeal from any lands reserved under said section 1, as amended, or derived thereafter from any disposition of the reserved lands or an interest therein made prior to such repeal.

 * (l) The grants provided for in this Act shall be in lieu of the grant of land for purposes of internal improvements made to new States by section 8 of the Act of September 4, 1841 (5 Stat. 455), and sections 2378 and 2379 of the Revised Statutes (43 U.S.C., section 857), and in lieu of the swampland grant made by the Act of September 28, 1850 (9 Stat. 520), and section 2479 of the Revised Statutes (43 U.S.C., section 982), and in lieu of the grant of thirty thousand acres for each Senator and Representative in Congress made by the Act of July 2, 1862, as amended (12 Stat. 503; 7 U.S.C., sections 301-308), which grants are hereby declared not to extend to the State of Alaska.

 * (m) The Submerged Lands Act of 1953 (Public Law 31, Eighty-third Congress, first session; 67 Stat. 29) shall be applicable to the State of Alaska and the said State shall have the same rights as do existing States thereunder.

SEC. 7. Upon enactment of this Act, it shall be the duty of the President. President of the United States, not later than July 3, 1958, to certify such fact to the Governor of Alaska. Thereupon the Governor, on or after July 3, 1958, and not later than August 1, 1958, shall issue his proclamation for the elections, as hereinafter provided, for officers of all elective offices and in the manner provided for by the constitution of the proposed State of Alaska, but the officers so elected shall in any event include two Senators and one Representative in Congress.

SEC. 8.

 * (a) The proclamation of the Governor of Alaska required by section 7 shall provide for holding of a primary election and a general election on dates to be fixed by the Governor of Alaska: Provided, That the general election shall not be held later than December 1, 1958, and at such elections the officers required to be elected as provided in section 7 shall be, and officers for other elective offices provided for in the constitution of the proposed State of Alaska may be, chosen by the people. Such elections shall be held, and the qualifications of voters thereat shall be, as prescribed by the constitution of the proposed State of Alaska for the election of members of the proposed State legislature. The returns thereof shall be made and certified in such manner as the constitution of the proposed State of Alaska may prescribe. The Governor of Alaska shall certify the results of said elections to the President of the United States.

 * (b) At an election designated by proclamation of the Governor of Alaska, which may be the general election held pursuant to subsection (a) of this section, or a Territorial general election, or a special election, there shall be submitted to the electors qualified to vote in said election, for adoption or rejection, by separate ballot on each, the following propositions:

 * "(1) Shall Alaska immediately be admitted into the Union as a State?

 * "(2) The boundaries of the State of Alaska shall be as prescribed in the Act of Congress approved (date of approval of this Act) and all claims of this State to any areas of land or sea outside the boundaries so prescribed are hereby irrevocably relinquished to the United States.

 * "(3) All provisions of the Act of Congress approved (date of approval of this Act) reserving rights or powers to the United States, as well as those prescribing the terms or conditions of the grants of lands or other property therein made to the State of Alaska, are consented to fully by said State and its people."

 * In the event each of the foregoing propositions is adopted at said election by a majority of the legal votes cast on said submission, the proposed constitution of the proposed State of Alaska, ratified by the people at the election held on April 24, 1956, shall be deemed amended accordingly. In the event any one of the foregoing propositions is not adopted at said election by a majority of the legal votes cast on said submission, the provisions of this Act shall thereupon cease to be effective.

 * The Governor of Alaska is hereby authorized and directed to take such action as may be necessary or appropriate to insure the submission of said propositions to the people. The return of the votes cast on said propositions shall be made by the election officers directly to the Secretary of Alaska, who shall certify the results of the submission to the Governor. The Governor shall certify the results of said submission, as so ascertained, to the President of the United States.

 * (c) If the President shall find that the propositions set forth in the preceding subsection have been duly adopted by the people of Alaska, the President, upon certification of the returns of the election of the officers required to be elected as provided in section 7 of this Act, shall thereupon issue his proclamation announcing the results of said election as so ascertained. Upon the issuance of said proclamation by the President, the State of Alaska shall be deemed admitted into the Union as provided in section 1 of this Act.

 * Until the said State is so admitted into the Union, all of the officers of said Territory, including the Delegate in Congress from said Territory, shall continue to discharge the duties of their respective offices. Upon the issuance of said proclamation by the President of the United States and the admission of the State of Alaska into the Union, the officers elected at said election, and qualified under the provisions of the constitution and laws of said State, shall proceed to exercise all the functions pertaining to their offices in or under or by authority of the government of said State, and officers not required to be elected at said initial election shall be selected or continued in office as provided by the constitution and laws of said State. The Governor of said State shall certify the election of the Senators and Representative in the manner required by law, and the said Senators and Representative shall be entitled to be admitted to seats in Congress and to all the rights and privileges of Senators and Representatives of other States in the Congress of the United States.

 * (d) Upon admission of the State of Alaska into the Union as herein provided, all of the Territorial laws then in force in the Territory of Alaska shall be and continue in full force and effect throughout said State except as modified or changed by this Act, or by the constitution of the State, or as thereafter modified or changed by the legislature of the State. All of the laws of the United States shall have the same force and effect within said State as elsewhere within the United States. As used in this paragraph, the term "Territorial laws" includes (in addition to laws enacted by the Territorial Legislature of Alaska) all laws or parts thereof enacted by the Congress the validity of which is dependent solely upon the authority of the Congress to provide for the government of Alaska prior to the admission of the State of Alaska into the Union, and the term "laws of the United States" includes all laws or parts thereof enacted by the Congress that (1) apply to or within Alaska at the time of the admission of the State of Alaska into the Union, (2) are not "Territorial laws" as defined in this paragraph, and (3) are not in conflict with any other provisions of this Act.

SEC. 9. The State of Alaska upon its admission into the Union shall be entitled to one Representative until the taking effect of the next reapportionment, and such Representative shall be in addition to the membership of the House of Representatives as now prescribed by law: Provided, That such temporary increase in the membership shall not operate to either increase or decrease the permanent membership of the House of Representatives as prescribed in the Act of August 8, 1911 (37 Stat. 13) nor shall such temporary increase affect the basis of apportionment established by the Act of November 15, 1941 (55 Stat. 761; 2 U.S.C., section 2a), for the Eighty-third Congress and each Congress thereafter.

SEC. 10.

 * (a) The President of the United States is hereby authorized to establish, by Executive order or proclamation, one or more special national defense withdrawals within the exterior boundaries of Alaska, which withdrawal or withdrawals may thereafter be terminated in whole or in part by the President.

 * (b) Special national defense withdrawals established under subsection (a) of this section shall be confined to those portions of Alaska that are situated to the north or west of the following line: Beginning at the point where the Porcupine River crosses the international boundary between Alaska and Canada; thence along a line parallel to, and five miles from, the right bank of the main channel of the Porcupine River to its confluence with the Yukon River; thence along a line parallel to, and five miles from, the right bank of the main channel of the Yukon River to its most southerly point of intersection with the meridian of longitude 160 degrees west of Greenwich; thence south to the intersection of said meridian with the Kuskokwim River; thence along a line parallel to, and five miles from the right bank of the Kuskokwim River to the mouth of said river; thence along the shoreline of Kuskokwim Bay to its intersection with the meridian of longitude 162 degrees 30 minutes west of Greenwich; thence south to the intersection of said meridian with the parallel of latitude 57 degrees 30 minutes north; thence east to the intersection of said parallel with the meridian of longitude 156 degrees west of Greenwich; thence south to the intersection of said meridian with the parallel of latitude 50 degrees north.

 * (c) Effective upon the issuance of such Executive order or proclamation, exclusive jurisdiction over all special national defense withdrawals established under this section is hereby reserved to the United States, which shall have sole legislative, judicial, and executive power within such withdrawals, except as provided hereinafter. The exclusive jurisdiction so established shall extend to all lands within the exterior boundaries of each such withdrawal, and shall remain in effect with respect to any particular tract or parcel of land only so long as such tract or parcel remains within the exterior boundaries of such a withdrawal. The laws of the State of Alaska shall not apply to areas within any special national defense withdrawal established under this section while such areas remain subject to the exclusive jurisdiction hereby authorized: Provided, however, That such exclusive jurisdiction shall not prevent the execution of any process, civil or criminal, of the State of Alaska, upon any person found within said withdrawals: And provided further, That such exclusive jurisdiction shall not prohibit the State of Alaska from enacting and enforcing all laws necessary to establish voting districts, and the qualification and procedures for voting in all elections.

 * (d) During the continuance in effect of any special national defense withdrawal established under this section, or until the Congress otherwise provides, such exclusive jurisdiction shall be exercised within each such withdrawal in accordance with the following provisions of law:

 * (1) All laws enacted by the Congress that are of general application to areas under the exclusive jurisdiction of the United States, including, but without limiting the generality of the foregoing, those provisions of title 18, United States Code, that are applicable within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States as defined in section 7 of said title, shall apply to all areas within such withdrawals.

 * (2) In addition, any areas within the withdrawals that are reserved by Act of Congress or by Executive action for a particular military or civilian use of the United States shall be subject to all laws enacted by the Congress that have application to lands withdrawn for that particular use, and any other areas within the withdrawals shall be subject to all laws enacted by the Congress that are of general application to lands withdrawn for defense purposes of the United States.

 * (3) To the extent consistent with the laws described in paragraphs (1) and (2) of this subsection and with regulations made or other actions taken under their authority, all laws in force within such withdrawals immediately prior to the creation thereof by Executive order or proclamation shall apply within the withdrawals and, for this purpose, are adopted as laws of the United States: Provided, however, That the laws of the State or Territory relating to the organization or powers of municipalities or local political subdivisions, and the laws or ordinances of such municipalities or political subdivisions shall not be adopted as laws of the United States.

 * (4) All functions vested in the United States commissioners by the laws described in this subsection shall continue to be performed within the withdrawals by such commissioners.

 * (5) All functions vested in any municipal corporation, school district, or other local political subdivision by the laws described in this subsection shall continue to be performed within the withdrawals by such corporation, district, or other subdivision, and the laws of the State or the laws or ordinances of such municipalities or local political subdivision shall remain in full force and effect notwithstanding any withdrawal made under this section.

 * (6) All other functions vested in the government of Alaska or in any officer or agency thereof, except judicial functions over which the United States District Court for the District of Alaska is given jurisdiction by this act or other provisions of law, shall be performed within the withdrawals by such civilian individuals or civilian agencies and in such manner as the President shall from time to time, by Executive order, direct or authorize.

 * (7) The United States District Court for the District of Alaska shall have original jurisdiction, without regard to the sum or value of any matter in controversy, over all civil actions arising within such withdrawals under the laws made applicable thereto by this subsection, as well as over all offenses committed within the withdrawals.

 * (e) Nothing contained in subsection (d) of this section shall be construed as limiting the exclusive jurisdiction established in the United States by subsection (c) of this section or the authority of the Congress to implement such exclusive jurisdiction by appropriate legislation, or as denying to persons now or hereafter residing within any portion of the areas described in subsection (b) of this section the right to vote at all elections held within the political subdivisions as prescribed by the State of Alaska where they respectively reside, or as limiting the jurisdiction conferred on the United States District Court for the District of Alaska by any other provision of law, or as continuing in effect laws relating to the Legislature of the Territory of Alaska. Nothing contained in this section shall be construed as limiting any authority otherwise vested in the Congress or the President.

SEC. 11.

 * (a) Nothing in this Act shall affect the establishment, or the right, ownership, and authority of the United States in Mount McKinley National Park, as now or hereafter constituted; but exclusive jurisdiction, in all cases, shall be exercised by the United States for the national park, as now or hereafter constituted; saving, however, to the State of Alaska the right to serve civil or criminal process within the limits of the aforesaid park in suits or prosecutions for or on account of rights acquired, obligations incurred, or crimes committed in said State, but outside of said park; and saving further to the said State the right to tax persons and corporations, their franchises and property on the lands included in said park; and saving also to the persons residing now or hereafter in such area the right to vote at all elections held within the respective political subdivisions of their residence in which the park is situated.

 * (b) Notwithstanding the admission of the State of Alaska into the Union, authority is reserved in the United States, subject to the proviso hereinafter set forth, for the exercise by the Congress of the United States of the power of exclusive legislation, as provided by article I, section 8, clause 17, of the Constitution of the United States, in all cases whatsoever over such tracts or parcels of land as, immediately prior to the admission of said State, are owned by the United States and held for military, naval, Air Force, or Coast Guard purposes, including naval petroleum reserve numbered 4, whether such lands were acquired by cession and transfer to the United States by Russia and set aside by Act of Congress or by Executive order or proclamation of the President or the Governor of Alaska for the use of the United States, or were acquired by the United States by purchase, condemnation, donation, exchange, or otherwise: Provided, (i) That the State of Alaska shall always have the right to serve civil or criminal process within the said tracts or parcels of land in suits or prosecutions for or on account of rights acquired, obligations incurred, or crimes committed within the said State but outside of the said tracts or parcels of land; (ii) that the reservation of authority in the United States for the exercise by the Congress of the United States of the power of exclusive legislation over the lands aforesaid shall not operate to prevent such lands from being a part of the State of Alaska, or to prevent the said State from exercising over or upon such lands, concurrently with the United States, any jurisdiction whatsoever which it would have in the absence of such reservation of authority and which is consistent with the laws hereafter enacted by the Congress pursuant to such reservation of authority; and (iii) that such power of exclusive legislation shall rest and remain in the United States only so long as the particular tract or parcel of land involved is owned by the United States and used for military, naval, Air Force, or Coast Guard purposes. The provisions of this subsection shall not apply to lands within such special national defense withdrawal or withdrawals as may be established pursuant to section 10 of this Act until such lands cease to be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction reserved to the United States by that section.

SEC. 12. Effective upon the admission of Alaska into the Union—

 * (a) The analysis of chapter 5 of title 28, United States Code, immediately preceding section 81 of such title, is amended by inserting immediately after and underneath item 81 of such analysis, a new item to be designated as item 81A and to read as follows: "81A Alaska";

 * (b) Title 28, United States Code, is amended by inserting immediately after section 81 thereof a new section, to be designated as section 81A, and to read as follows:

 * "§81A. Alaska
 * "Alaska constitutes one judicial district.
 * "Court shall be held at Anchorage, Fairbanks, Juneau, and Nome.";

 * (c) Section 133 of title 28, United States Code, is amended by inserting in the table of districts and judges in such section immediately above the item: "Arizona * * * 2", a new item as follows: "Alaska * * * 1";

 * (d) The first paragraph of section 373 of title 28, United States Code, as heretofore amended, is further amended by striking out the words: "the District Court for the Territory of Alaska,": Provided, That the amendment made by this subsection shall not affect the rights of any judge who may have retired before it takes effect;

 * (e) The words "the District Court for the Territory of Alaska," are stricken out wherever they appear in sections 333, 460, 610, 753, 1252, 1291, 1292, and 1346 of title 28, United States Code;

 * (f) The first paragraph of section 1252 of title 28, United States Code, is further amended by striking out the word "Alaska," from the clause relating to courts of record;

 * (g) Subsection (2) of section 1294 of title 28, United States Code, is repealed and the later subsections of such section are renumbered accordingly;

 * (h) Subsection (a) of section 2410 of title 28, United States Code, is amended by striking out the words: "including the District Court for the Territory of Alaska,";

 * (i) Section 3241 of title 18, United States Code, is amended by striking out the words: "District Court for the Territory of Alaska, the";

 * (j) Subsection (e) of section 3401 of title 18, United States Code, is amended by striking out the words: "for Alaska or";

 * (k) Section 3771 of title 18, United States Code, as heretofore amended, is further amended by striking out from the first paragraph of such section the words: "the Territory of Alaska,";

 * (l) Section 3772 of title 18, United States Code, as heretofore amended, is further amended by striking out from the first paragraph of such section the words: "the Territory of Alaska," ;

 * (m) Section 2072 of title 28, United States Code, as heretofore amended, is further amended by striking out from the first paragraph of such section the words: "and of the District Court for the Territory of Alaska";

 * (n) Subsection (q) of section 376 of title 28, United States Code, is amended by striking out the words: "the District Court for the Territory of Alaska,": Provided, That the amendment made by this subsection shall not affect the rights under such section 376 of any present or former judge of the District Court for the Territory of Alaska or his survivors;

 * (o) The last paragraph of section 1963 of title 28, United States Code, is repealed;

 * (p) Section 2201 of title 28, United States Code, is amended by striking out the words: "and the District Court for the Territory of Alaska"; and

 * (q) Section 4 of the Act of July 28, 1950 (64 Stat. 380; 5 U.S.C., section 341b) is amended by striking out the word: "Alaska,".

SEC. 13. No writ, action, indictment, cause, or proceeding pending in the District Court for the Territory of Alaska on the date when said Territory shall become a State, and no case pending in an appellate court upon appeal from the District Court for the Territory of Alaska at the time said Territory shall become a State, shall abate by the admission of the State of Alaska into the Union, but the same shall be transferred and proceeded with as hereinafter provided.

All civil causes of action and all criminal offenses which shall have arisen or been committed prior to the admission of said State, but as to which no suit, action, or prosecution shall be pending at the date of such admission, shall be subject to prosecution in the appropriate State courts or in the United States District Court for the District of Alaska in like manner, to the same extent, and with like right of appellate review, as if said State had been created and said courts had been established prior to the accrual of said causes of action or the commission of such offenses; and such of said criminal offenses as shall have been committed against the laws of the Territory shall be tried and punished by the appropriate courts of said State, and such as shall have been committed against the laws of the United States shall be tried and punished in the United States District Court for the District of Alaska.

SEC. 14. All appeals taken from the District Court for the Territory of Alaska to the Supreme Court of the United States or the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, previous to the admission of Alaska as a State, shall be prosecuted to final determination as though this act had not been passed. All cases in which final judgment has been rendered in such district court, and in which appeals might be had except for the admission of such State, may still be sued out, taken, and prosecuted to the Supreme Court of the United States or the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit under the provisions of then existing law, and there held and determined in like manner; and in either case, the Supreme Court of the United States, or the United States Court of Appeals, in the event of reversal, shall remand the said cause to either the State supreme court or other final appellate court of said State, or the United States district court for said district, as the case may require: Provided, That the time allowed by existing law for appeals from the district court for said Territory shall not be enlarged thereby.

SEC. 15. All causes pending or determined in the District Court for the Territory of Alaska at the time of the admission of Alaska as a State which are of such nature as to be within the jurisdiction of a district court of the United States shall be transferred to the United States District Court for the District of Alaska for final disposition and enforcement in the same manner as is now provided by law with reference to the judgments and decrees in existing United States district courts. All other causes pending or determined in the District Court for the Territory of Alaska at the time of the admission of Alaska as a State shall be transferred to the appropriate State court of Alaska. All final judgments and decrees rendered upon such transferred cases in the United States District Court for the District of Alaska may be reviewed by the Supreme Court of the United States or by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in the same manner as is now provided by law with reference to the judgments and decrees in existing United States district courts.

SEC. 16. Jurisdiction of all cases pending or determined in the District Court for the Territory of Alaska not transferred to the United States District Court for the District of Alaska shall devolve upon and be exercised by the courts of original jurisdiction created by said State, which shall be deemed to be the successor of the District Court for the Territory of Alaska with respect to cases not so transferred and, as such, shall take and retain custody of all records, dockets, journals, and files of such court pertaining to such cases. The files and papers in all cases so transferred to the United States district court, together with a transcript of all book entries to complete the record in such particular cases so transferred, shall be in like manner transferred to said district court.

SEC. 17. All cases pending in the District Court for the Territory of Alaska at the time said Territory becomes a State not transferred to the United States District Court for the District of Alaska shall be proceeded with and determined by the courts created by said State with the right to prosecute appeals to the appellate courts created by said State, and also with the same right to prosecute appeals or writs of certiorari from the final determination in said causes made by the court of last resort created by such State to the Supreme Court of the United States, as now provided by law for appeals and writs of certiorari from the court of last resort of a State to the Supreme Court of the United States.

SEC. 18. The provisions of the preceding sections with respect to the termination of the Jurisdiction of the District Court for the Territory of Alaska, the continuation of suits, the succession of courts, and the satisfaction of rights of litigants in suits before such courts, shall not be effective until three years after the effective date of this Act, unless the President, by Executive order, shall sooner proclaim that the United States District Court for the District of Alaska, established in accordance with the provisions of this Act, is prepared to assume the functions imposed upon it. During such period of three years or until such Executive order is issued, the United States District Court for the Territory of Alaska shall continue to function as heretofore. The tenure of the judges, the United States attorneys, marshals, and other officers of the United States District Court for the Territory of Alaska shall terminate at such time as that court shall cease to function as provided in this section.

SEC. 19. The first paragraph of section 2 of the Federal Reserve Act (38 Stat. 251) is amended by striking out the last sentence thereof and inserting in lieu of such sentence the following: "When the State of Alaska is hereafter admitted to the Union the Federal Reserve districts shall be readjusted by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in such manner as to include such State. Every national bank in any State shall, upon commencing business or within ninety days after admission into the Union of the State in which it is located, become a member bank of the Federal Reserve System by subscribing and paying for stock in the Federal Reserve bank of its district in accordance with the provisions of this Act and shall thereupon be an insured bank under the Federal Deposit Insurance Act, and failure to do so shall subject such bank to the penalty provided by the sixth paragraph of this section."

SEC. 20. Section 2 of the Act of October 20, 1914 (38 Stat. 742; 48 U.S.C. section 433), is hereby repealed.

SEC. 21. Nothing contained in this Act shall operate to confer United States nationality, nor to terminate nationality heretofore lawfully acquired, nor restore nationality heretofore lost under any law of the United States or under any treaty to which the United States may have been a party.

SEC. 22. Section 101(a)(36) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (66 Stat. 170, 8 U.S.C. section 1101(a)(36)) is amended by deleting the word "Alaska,".

SEC. 23. The first sentence of section 212(d)(7) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (66 Stat. 188, 8 U.S.C. section 1182(d)(7)) is amended by deleting the word "Alaska,".

SEC. 24. Nothing contained in this Act shall be held to repeal, amend, or modify the provisions of section 304 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (66 Stat. 237, 8 U.S.C. section 1404).

SEC. 25. The first sentence of section 310(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (66 Stat. 239, 8 U.S.C. section 1421(a)) is amended by deleting the words "District Courts of the United States for the Territories of Hawaii and Alaska" and substituting therefor the words "District Court of the United States for the Territory of Hawaii".

SEC. 26. Section 344(d) of the Immigration and Nationality Act. (66 Stat. 265, 8 U.S.C. section 1455(d)) is amended by deleting the words "in Alaska and".

SEC. 27.

 * (a) The third proviso in section 27 of the Merchant Marine Act, 1920, as amended (46 U.S.C. section 883), is further amended by striking out the word "excluding" and inserting in lieu thereof the word "including".

 * (b) Nothing contained in this or any other Act shall be construed as depriving the Federal Maritime Board of the exclusive jurisdiction heretofore conferred on it over common carriers engaged in transportation by water between any port in the State of Alaska and other ports in the United States, its Territories or possessions, or as conferring upon the Interstate Commerce Commission jurisdiction over transportation by water between any such ports.

SEC. 28.

 * (a) The last sentence of section 9 of the Act entitled "An Act to provide for the leasing of coal lands in the Territory of Alaska, and for other purposes", approved October 20, 1914 (48 U.S.C. 439), is hereby amended to read as follows: "All net profits from operation of Government mines, and all bonuses, royalties, and rentals under leases as herein provided and all other payments received under this Act shall be distributed as follows as soon as practicable after December 31 and June 30 of each year: (1) 90 per centum thereof shall be paid by the Secretary of the Treasury to the State of Alaska for disposition by the legislature thereof; and (2) 10 per centum shall be deposited in the Treasury of the United States to the credit of miscellaneous receipts."

 * (b) Section 35 of the Act entitled "An Act to promote the mining of coal, phosphate, oil, oil shale, gas, and sodium on the public domain", approved February 25, 1920, as amended (30 U.S.C. 191), is hereby amended by inserting immediately before the colon preceding the first proviso thereof the following: ", and of those from Alaska 52 1/2 per centum thereof shall be paid to the State of Alaska for disposition by the legislature thereof".

SEC. 29. If any provision of this Act, or any section, subsection, sentence, clause, phrase, or individual word, or the application thereof to any person or circumstance is held invalid, the validity of the remainder of the Act and of the application of any such provision, section, subsection, sentence, clause, phrase, or individual word to other persons and circumstances shall not be affected thereby.

SEC. 30. All Acts or parts of Acts in conflict with the provisions of this Act, whether passed by the legislature of said Territory or by Congress, are hereby repealed.

title: Alaska Statehood Act


text: The Hundred Best Poems (lyrical) in the English language - second series/A Dream of Fair Women

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


text:
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 Warm though the morning was, a suspicion of chill descended upon the breakfast-table. A certain coldness seemed to come into Lucille's face. She could not always share Archie's fresh young enthusiasms.

"Do you think so?"

"Wonderful figure, too!"

"Yes?"

"Well, what I mean to say, fair to medium," said Archie, recovering a certain amount of that intelligence which raises man above the level of the beasts of the field. "Not the sort of type I admire myself, of course."

"You know her, don't you?"

"Absolutely not and far from it," said Archie, hastily. "Never met her in my life."

"You've seen her on the stage. Her name's Vera Silverton. We saw her in"

"Of course, yes. So we did. I say, I wonder what she's doing here? She ought to be in New York, rehearsing. I remember meeting what's-his-name—you know—chappie who writes plays and what not—George Benham—I remember meeting George Benham, and he told me she was rehearsing in a piece of his called—I forget the name, but I know it was called something or other. Well, why isn't she?"

"She probably lost her temper and broke her contract and came away. She's always doing that sort of thing. She's known for it. She must be a horrid woman."

"Yes."

"I don't want to talk about her. She used to be married to someone, and she divorced him. And then she was married to someone else, and he divorced her. And I'm certain her hair wasn't that colour two years ago, and

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Rh I don't think a woman ought to make up like that, and her dress is all wrong for the country, and those pearls can't he genuine, and I hate the way she rolls her eyes about, and pink doesn't suit her a bit. I think she's an awful woman, and I wish you wouldn't keep on talking about her."

"Right-o!" said Archie, dutifully.

They finished breakfast, and Lucille went up to pack her bag. Archie strolled out on to the terrace outside the hotel, where he smoked, communed with nature, and thought of Lucille. He always thought of Lucille when he was alone, especially when he chanced to find himself in poetic surroundings like those provided by the unrivalled scenery encircling the Hotel Hermitage. The longer he was married to her the more did the sacred institution seem to him a good egg. Mr. Brewster might regard their marriage as one of the world's most unfortunate incidents, but to Archie it was, and always had been, a bit of all right. The more he thought of it the more did he marvel that a girl like Lucille should have been content to link her lot with that of a Class C specimen like himself. His meditations were, in fact, precisely what a happily-married man's meditations ought to be.

He was roused from them by a species of exclamation or cry almost at his elbow, and turned to find that the spectacular Miss Silverton was standing beside him. Her dubious hair gleamed in the sunlight, and one of the criticised eyes was screwed up. The other gazed at Archie with an expression of appeal.

"There's something in my eye," she said.

"No, really!"

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118 "I wonder if you would mind? It would be so kind of you!"

Archie would have preferred to remove himself, but no man worthy of the name can decline to come to the rescue of womanhood in distress. To twist the lady's upper lid back and peer into it and jab at it with the corner of his handkerchief was the only course open to him. His conduct may be classed as not merely blameless but definitely praiseworthy. King Arthur's knights used to do this sort of thing all the time, and look what people think of them. Lucille, therefore, coming out of the hotel just as the operation was concluded, ought not to have felt the annoyance she did. But, of course, there is a certain superficial intimacy about the attitude of a man who is taking a fly out of a woman's eye which may excusably jar upon the sensibilities of his wife. It is an attitude which suggests a sort of rapprochement or camaraderie or, as Archie would have put it, what not.

"Thanks so much!" said Miss Silverton.

"Oh no, rather not," said Archie.

"Such a nuisance getting things in your eye."

"Absolutely!"

"I'm always doing it!"

"Rotten luck!"

"But I don't often find anyone as clever as you to help me."

Lucille felt called upon to break in on this feast of reason and flow of soul.

"Archie," she said, "if you go and get your clubs now, I shall just have time to walk round with you before my train goes."

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 "Oh, ah!" said Archie, perceiving her for the first time. "Oh, ah, yes, right-o, yes, yes, yes!"

On the way to the first tee it seemed to Archie that Lucille was distrait and abstracted in her manner; and it occurred to him, not for the first time in his life, what a poor support a clear conscience is in moments of crisis. Dash it all, he didn't see what else he could have done. Couldn't leave the poor female staggering about the place with squads of flies wedged in her eyeball. Nevertheless

"Rotten thing getting a fly in your eye," he hazarded at length. "Dashed awkward, I mean."

"Or convenient."

"Eh?"

"Well, it's a very good way of dispensing with an introduction."

"Oh, I say! You don't mean you think"

"She's a horrid woman!"

"Absolutely! Can't think what people see in her."

"Well, you seemed to enjoy fussing over her!"

"No, no! Nothing of the kind! She inspired me with absolute what-d'you-call-it—the sort of thing chappies do get inspired with, you know."

"You were beaming all over your face."

"I wasn't. I was just screwing up my face because the sun was in my eye."

"All sorts of things seem to be in people's eyes this morning!"

Archie was saddened. That this sort of misunderstanding should have occurred on such a topping day and at a moment when they were to be torn asunder for about

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120 thirty-six hours made him feel—well, it gave him the pip. He had an idea that there were words which would have straightened everything out, but he was not an eloquent young man and could not find them. He felt aggrieved. Lucille, he considered, ought to have known that he was immune as regarded females with flashing eyes and experimentally-coloured hair. Why, dash it, he could have extracted flies from the eyes of Cleopatra with one hand and Helen of Troy with the other, simultaneously, without giving them a second thought. It was in depressed mood that he played a listless nine holes; nor had life brightened for him when he came back to the hotel two hours later, after seeing Lucille off in the train to New York. Never till now had they had anything remotely resembling a quarrel. Life, Archie felt, was a bit of a wash-out. He was disturbed and jumpy, and the sight of Miss Silverton, talking to somebody on a settee in the corner of the hotel lobby, sent him shooting off at right angles and brought him up with a bump against the desk behind which the room-clerk sat.

The room-clerk, always of a chatty disposition, was saying something to him, but Archie did not listen. He nodded mechanically. It was something about his room. He caught the word "satisfactory."

"Oh, rather, quite!" said Archie.

A fussy devil, the room-clerk! He knew perfectly well that Archie found his room satisfactory. These chappies gassed on like this so as to try to make you feel that the management took a personal interest in you. It was part of their job. Archie beamed absently and went in to lunch. Lucille's empty seat stared at him mournfully, increasing his sense of desolation.

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Rh He was half-way through his lunch, when the chair opposite ceased to be vacant. Archie, transferring his gaze from the scenery outside the window, perceived that his friend, George Benham, the playwright, had materialised from nowhere and was now in his midst.

"Hallo!" he said.

George Benham was a grave young man whose spectacles gave him the look of a mournful owl. He seemed to have something on his mind besides the artistically straggling mop of black hair which swept down over his brow. He sighed wearily, and ordered fish-pie.

"I thought I saw you come through the lobby just now," he said.

"Oh, was that you on the settee, talking to Miss Silverton?"

"She was talking to me," said the playwright, moodily.

"What are you doing here?" asked Archie. He could have wished Mr. Benham elsewhere, for he intruded on his gloom, but, the chappie being amongst those present, it was only civil to talk to him. "I thought you were in New York, watching the rehearsals of your jolly old drama."

"The rehearsals are hung up. And it looks as though there wasn't going to be any drama. Good Lord!" cried George Benham, with honest warmth, "with opportunities opening out before one on every side—with life extending prizes to one with both hands—when you see coal-heavers making fifty dollars a week and the fellows who clean out the sewers going happy and singing about their work—why does a man deliberately choose a job like writing plays? Job was the only man that ever lived who was really qualified to write a play, and he would have found

title: Page:Indiscretions of Archie.djvu/125


text: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Lord High Steward


text:
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 it pretty tough going if his leading woman had been anyone like Vera Silverton!"

Archie—and it was this fact, no doubt, which accounted for his possession of such a large and varied circle of friends—was always able to shelve his own troubles in order to listen to other people's hard-luck stories.

"Tell me all, laddie," he said. "Release the film! Has she walked out on you?"

"Left us flat! How did you hear about it? Oh, she told you, of course?"

Archie hastened to try to dispel the idea that he was on any such terms of intimacy with Miss Silverton.

"No, no! My wife said she thought it must be something of that nature or order when we saw her come in to breakfast. I mean to say," said Archie, reasoning closely, "woman can't come into breakfast here and be rehearsing in New York at the same time. Why did she administer the raspberry, old friend?"

Mr. Benham helped himself to fish-pie, and spoke dully through the steam.

"Well, what happened was this. Knowing her as intimately as you do"

"I don't know her!"

"Well, anyway, it was like this. As you know, she has a dog"

"I didn't know she had a dog," protested Archie. It seemed to him that the world was in conspiracy to link him with this woman.

"Well, she has a dog. A beastly great whacking brute of a bulldog. And she brings it to rehearsal." Mr. Benham's eyes filled with tears, as in his emotion he swallowed a mouthful of fish-pie some eighty-three

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text:
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 Fahrenheit hotter than it looked. In the intermission caused by this disaster his agile mind skipped a few chapters of the story, and, when he was able to speak again, he said, "So then there was a lot of trouble. Everything broke loose!"

"Why?" Archie was puzzled. "Did the management object to her bringing the dog to rehearsal?"

"A lot of good that would have done! She does what she likes in the theatre."

"Then why was there trouble?"

"You weren't listening," said Mr. Benham, reproachfully. "I told you. This dog came snuffling up to where I was sitting—it was quite dark in the body of the theatre, you know—and I got up to say something about something that was happening on the stage, and somehow I must have given it a push with my foot."

"I see," said Archie, beginning to get the run of the plot. "You kicked her dog."

"Pushed it. Accidentally. With my foot."

"I understand. And when you brought off this kick"

"Push," said Mr. Benham, austerely.

"This kick or push. When you administered this kick or push"

"It was more a sort of light shove."

"Well, when you did whatever you did, the trouble started?"

Mr. Benham gave a slight shiver.

"She talked for a while, and then walked out, taking the dog with her. You see, this wasn't the first time it had happened."

title: Page:Indiscretions of Archie.djvu/127


text:
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 "Good Lord! Do you spend your whole time doing that sort of thing?"

"It wasn't me the first time. It was the stage-manager. He didn't know whose dog it was, and it came waddling on to the stage, and he gave it a sort of pat, a kind of flick"

"A slosh?"

"Not a slosh," corrected Mr. Benham, firmly. "You might call it a tap—with the promptscript. Well, we had a lot of difficulty smoothing her over that time. Still, we managed to do it, but she said that if anything of the sort occurred again she would chuck up her part."

"She must be fond of the dog," said Archie, for the first time feeling a touch of goodwill and sympathy towards the lady.

"She's crazy about it. That's, what made it so awkward when I happened—quite inadvertently—to give it this sort of accidental shove. Well, we spent the rest of the day trying to get her on the 'phone at her apartment, and finally we heard that she had come here. So I took the next train, and tried to persuade her to come back. She wouldn't listen. And that's how matters stand."

"Pretty rotten!" said Archie, sympathetically.

"You can bet it's pretty rotten—for me. There's nobody else who can play the part. Like a chump, I wrote the thing specially for her. It means the play won't be produced at all, if she doesn't do it So you're my last hope!"

Archie, who was lighting a cigarette, nearly swallowed it.

"I am?"

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text:
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 "I thought you might persuade her. Point out to her what a lot hangs on her coming back. Jolly her along. You know the sort of thing!"

"But, my dear old friend, I tell you I don't know her!"

Mr. Benham's eyes opened behind their zareba of glass.

"Well, she knows you. When you came through the lobby just now she said that you were the only real human being she had ever met."

"Well, as a matter of fact, I did take a fly out of her eye. But"

"You did? Well, then, the whole thing's simple. All you have to do is to ask her how her eye is, and tell her she has the most beautiful eyes you ever saw, and coo a bit."

"But, my dear old son!" The frightful programme which his friend had mapped out stunned Archie. "I simply can't! Anything to oblige and all that sort of thing, but when it comes to cooing, distinctly Napoo!"

"Nonsense! It isn't hard to coo."

"You don't understand, laddie. You're not a married man. I mean to say, whatever you say for or against marriage—personally I'm all for it and consider it a ripe egg—the fact remains that it practically makes a chappie a spent force as a cooer. I don't want to dish you in any way, old bean, but I must firmly and resolutely decline to coo."

Mr. Benham rose and looked at his watch.

"I'll have to be moving," he said. "I've got to get back to New York and report. I'll tell them that I haven't been able to do anything myself, but that I've left the matter in good hands. I know you will do your best."

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126 "But, laddie!"

"Think," said Mr. Benham, solemnly, "of all that depends on it! The other actors! The small-part people thrown out of a job! Myself—but no! Perhaps you had better touch very lightly or not at all on my connection with the thing. Well, you know how to handle it. I feel I can leave it to you. Pitch it strong! Good-bye, my dear old man, and a thousand thanks. I'll do the same for you another time." He moved towards the door, leaving Archie transfixed. Half-way there he turned and came back. "Oh, by the way," he said, "my lunch. Have it put on your bill, will you? I haven't time to stay and settle. Good-bye! Good-bye!"

title: Page:Indiscretions of Archie.djvu/130


text: Indiscretions of Archie/Chapter 12

title: Indiscretions of Archie/Chapter 12


text:
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Rh to myself as I was then without seeing it as the background to all my comings and goings—a background that lends colour to my colourless life.

III

I can understand my ignorance and blindness and indifference, if I cannot forgive them. All my long eleven years at the Convent I had had the virtue of obedience duly impressed upon me, and, though there custom led me easily into the temptation of disobedience, when I returned to Philadelphia I was at first too frightened and bewildered to defy Philadelphia's laws written and especially unwritten, for in these I was immediately concerned. I was the more bewildered because I had come away from the Convent comfortably convinced of my own importance, and it was disconcerting to discover that Philadelphia, so far from sharing the conviction, dismissed me as a person of no importance whatever. I had also my natural indolence and moral cowardice to reckon with. I have never been given to taking the initiative when I can avoid it and it is one of my great grievances that, good and thorough American as I am, I should have been denied my rightful share of American go. Anyway, I did not have to stay long in Philadelphia to learn for myself that the Philadelphia law of laws obliged every Philadelphian to do as every other Philadelphian did, and that every Philadelphian was too much occupied in evading what was not the thing in the present to bother to cultivate a sentiment for the


text:
Executive Order 13606

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. 1701 et seq.) (IEEPA), the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1601 et seq.), section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, as amended (8 U.S.C. 1182(f)), and section 301 of title 3, United States Code, I,, President of the United States of America, hereby determine that the commission of serious human rights abuses against the people of Iran and Syria by their governments, facilitated by computer and network disruption, monitoring, and tracking by those governments, and abetted by entities in Iran and Syria that are complicit in their governments' malign use of technology for those purposes, threaten the national security and foreign policy of the United States. The Governments of Iran and Syria are endeavoring to rapidly upgrade their technological ability to conduct such activities. Cognizant of the vital importance of providing technology that enables the Iranian and Syrian people to freely communicate with each other and the outside world, as well as the preservation, to the extent possible, of global telecommunications supply chains for essential products and services to enable the free flow of information, the measures in this order are designed primarily to address the need to prevent entities located in whole or in part in Iran and Syria from facilitating or committing serious human rights abuses. In order to take additional steps with respect to the national emergencies declared in Executive Order 12957 of March 15, 1995, as relied upon for additional steps in subsequent Executive Orders, and in Executive Order 13338 of May 11, 2004, as modified in scope and relied upon for additional steps in subsequent Executive Orders, and to address the situation described above, I hereby order:

Barack Obama The White House, April 23, 2012. [FR Doc. 2012–10034 Filed 4–23–12; 11:15 am] Billing Code 3295–F2–PBilling Code 4811–33–C

Individuals  Ali MAMLUK [director of the Syrian General Intelligence Directorate, born 1947]

Entities  Syrian General Intelligence Directorate Syriatel Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps

Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security

Law Enforcement Forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran

Datak Telecom

title: Executive Order 13606


text:
Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 05.pdf/232

Rh It may be that the course claimed by Mr. Hunter to have been advised by him, would have been the wiser. Indeed, in the light of the present, it might have been wiser not to have fought at all, but to have surrendered at Lincoln's call for 75,000 men!

But whatever men may think of that, I believe it will not be considered extravagant to say that a proposition to surrender the cause and abandon the battle for freedom, after the conference at Hampton Roads, would have been received (and justly, as I think,) by the army and the people as the inspiration of either pusillanimity or treason.

,

Ex-Aide-de-Camp to President Jefferson Davis.

The war which placed General Grant in the high position he so lately occupied, is so recent and was so fierce, that it is natural his contemporaries should entertain opinions widely different as to the conduct and capacity of the successful general who ended it.

Even European critics have been affected by the flood of military reports which have been poured forth by the able and ingenious historians who accompanied the Northern armies—and their discrimination has been dazzled by the glare of the great results accomplished by General Grant—so that they oftentimes seem to overestimate his capacities as a commander.

On the other hand, it has been difficult for the conquered people of the South to recognize the virtues or even to admit the high capacities which may be found in the leaders who have wrought us so much evil.

But there are indications of a returning sense of justice in the factions so lately arrayed against each other in the bloodiest drama of modern times, and as the era of peace and fraternity, of which we of the South have heard so much and seen so little, is near at hand, a discussion of the military conduct of the great Captains who led the opposing hosts may now be conducted in a spirit of fairness—and in such manner as may conserve the interests of history.


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16


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Rh


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18


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36

With the exception of the liberal donation of W. W. Corcoran, Esq., who, last November, added $500 to his donation of the year before, the Committee has been dependent for the means of carrying on its work upon membership fees and subscriptions to our Papers.

The following summary will exhibit our receipts and disbursements, from November 1st, 1876, to October 30th, 1877:

We have liabilities on account of printing and binding amounting to $2,100.

To liquidate this amount, we have the following assets:

There will be due us on the 1st of January next, for renewal fees and subscriptions, $3,600.


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Author:William Sotheby

Works

 * Poems (1790)
 * A tour through parts of Wales, sonnets, odes, and other poems (1794)
 * The Battle of the Nile (1799)
 * The Cambrian Hero, or Llewelyn the Great: an Historical Tragedy (n.d.)
 * The Siege of Cuzco (1800)
 * Julian and Agnes, or the Monks of the Great St. Bernard (1801)
 * A Poetical Epistle to Sir George Beaumont, Bart., on the Encouragement of the British School of Painting (1801)
 * Oberon: or, Huon de Bourdeaux: a Mask: and, Orestes: a Tragedy (1802)
 * Saul (1807)
 * Constance de Castille (1810)
 * A Song of Triumph on the Peace (1814)
 * Five Tragedies (1814)
 * Ivan; a tragedy (1816)
 * Farewell to Italy, and occasional Poems (1818)
 * Poems (1825)
 * Italy, and other poems (1828)
 * Lines suggested by the third meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, held at Cambridge, in June, 1833 (1834)

Translations

 * Oberon, a poem (1798), by Christoph Martin Wieland, in 2 vols. [external scan]
 * The Georgics of Virgil (1800) [external scan]
 * The First Book of the Iliad, a Specimen of a New Version of Homer (1830)
 * The Iliad of Homer (1831), by Homer, in 2 vols. [external scan]
 * The Iliad and Odyssey (1833), by Homer, in 4 vols.

title: Author:William Sotheby


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a shadowy solitary valley of Southern Kentucky and beside a noiseless stream there stands to-day a great French abbey of white-cowled Trappist monks. It is the loneliest of human habitations. Though not a ruin, an atmosphere of gray antiquity hangs about and forever haunts it. The pale-gleaming cross on the spire looks as though it would fall to the earth, weary of its aged unchangeableness. The long Gothic windows; the rudely carven wooden crucifixes, suggesting the very infancy of holy art; the partly encompassing wall, seemingly built to resist a siege; the iron gate of the porter's lodge, locked against profane intrusion—all are the voiceless but eloquent emblems of a past that still enchains the memory by its associations as it once enthralled the reason by its power.

Over the placid stream and across the fields to the woody crests around float only the sounds of the same sweet monastery bells that in the quiet evening air ages ago summoned a ruder world to nightly rest and pious thoughts of heaven. Within the abbey at midnight are heard the voices of monks chanting the self-same masses that ages ago were sung by others, who all night long from icy chapel floors lifted up piteous hands with intercession for poor souls suffering in purgatory. One


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136 almost expects to see coming along the dusty Kentucky road which winds through the valley meek brown palmers returning from the Holy Sepulchre, or through an upper window of the abbey to descry lance and visor and battle-axe flashing in the sunlight as they wind up a distant hill-side to the storming of some perilous citadel.

Ineffable influences, too, seem to bless the spot. Here, forsooth, some saint, retiring to the wilderness to subdue the devil in his flesh, lived and struggled and suffered and died, leaving his life as an heroic pattern for others who in the same hard way should wish to win the fullest grace of Christlike character. Perhaps even one of the old monks, long since halting towards the close of his pilgrimage, will reverently lead you down the aisle to the dim sepulchre of some martyr, whose relics repose under the altar while his virtues perpetually exhale heavenward like gracious incense.

The beauty of the region, and especially of the grounds surrounding the abbey, thus seems but a touching mockery. What have these inward-gazing, heavenward-gazing souls to do with the loveliness of Nature, with change of season, or flight of years, with green pastures and waving harvest-fields outside the wall, with flowers and orchards and vineyards within?

It was in a remote corner of the beautiful gardens of the monastery that a young monk, Father Palemon, was humbly at work one morning some years ago amid the lettuces and onions and fast-growing potatoes. The sun smote the earth with the fierce heat of departing June; and pausing to wipe the thick bead of perspiration from his forehead, he rested a moment, breathing heavily. His powerful legs were astride a row of the succulent shoots, and his hands clasped the handle of the hoe that


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Rh gave him a staff-like support in front. He was dressed in the sacred garb of his order. His heavy sabots crushed the clods in the furrows. His cream-colored serge cowl, the long skirt of which would have touched the ground, had been folded up to his knees and tied with hempen cords. The wide sleeves, falling away, showed up to the elbows the superb muscles of his bronzed arms; and the calotte, pushed far back from his head, revealed the outlines of his neck, full, round, like a column. Nearly a month had passed since the convent barber had sheared his poll, and his yellow hair was just beginning to enrich his temples with a fillet of thick curling locks. Had Father Palemon's hair been permitted to grow, it would have fallen down on each side in masses shining like flax and making the ideal head of a saint. But his face was not the face of a saint. It had in it no touch of the saint's agony—none of those fine subtle lines that are the material net-work of intense spirituality brooding within. Scant vegetarian diet and the deep shadows of cloistral life had preserved in his complexion the delicate hues of youth, noticeable still beneath the tan of recent exposure to the summer sun. His calm, steady blue eyes, also, had the open look peculiar to self-unconscious childhood; so that as he stood thus, tall, sinewy, supple, grave, bareheaded under the open sky, clad in spotless white, a singular union of strength, manliness, and unawakened innocence, he was a figure startling to come upon.

As he rested, he looked down and discovered that the hempen cords fastening the hem of his cowl were becoming untied, and walking to the border of grass which ran round the garden just inside the monastery wall, he sat down to secure the loosened threads. He was very


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138 tired. He had come forth to work before the first gray of dawn. His lips were parched with thirst. Save the little cup of cider and a slice of black bread with which he had broken his fast after matins, he had not tasted food since the frugal meal of the previous noon. Both weary and faint, therefore, he had hardly sat down before, in the weakness of his flesh, a sudden powerful impulse came upon him to indulge in a moment's repose. His fingers fell away from the untied cords, his body sank backward against the trunk of the gnarled apple-tree by which he was shaded, and closing his eyes, he drank in eagerly all the sweet influences of the perfect day.

For Nature was in an ecstasy. The sunlight never fell more joyous upon the unlifting shadows of human life. The breeze that cooled his sweating face was heavy with the odor of the wonderful monastery roses. In the dark green canopy overhead two piping flame-colored orioles drained the last bright dew-drop from the chalice of a leaf. All the liquid air was slumbrous with the minute music of insect life, and from the hon eysuckles clambering over the wall at his back came the murmur of the happy, happy bees.

But what power have hunger and thirst and momentary weariness over the young? Father Palemon was himself part of the pure and beautiful nature around him. His heart was like some great secluded crimson flower that is ready to burst open in a passionate seeking of the sun. As he sat thus in the midst of Nature's joyousness and irrepressible unfoldings, and peaceful consummations, he forgot hunger and thirst and weariness in a feeling of delicious languor. But beneath even this, and more subtle still, was the stir of restlessness and the low fever of vague desire for something


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Author:August Friedrich Ferdinand von Kotzebue

Works

 * The Negro Slaves: A Dramatic-historical Piece, 1796 external scan
 * Lovers' Vows translated by Elizabeth Inchbald (1798)
 * Count Benyowsky; Or, The Conspiracy of Kamtschatka.: A Tragi-comedy, in Five Acts, 1798 external scan
 * The natural son; a play, in five acts, 1798 external scan
 * The stranger: a comedy. 1798 external scan
 * Pizarro : The spaniards in Peru; or, The death of Rolla. A tragedy, in five acts, 1799 external scan
 * The virgin of the sun.: A play, in five acts: 1799 external scan
 * False Shame: A Comedy, in Four Acts, 1799 external scan
 * The Dramatic Works of Baron Kotzebue, 1800 vol 1, vol 2, vol 3
 * Sketch of the life and literary career of Augustus von Kotzebue, 1800 external scan
 * The Most Remarkable Year in the Life of Augustus Von Kotzebue: 1802 vol 1, vol 2
 * Travels from Berlin, through Switzerland, to Paris, 1804 vol 1, vol 2, vol 3
 * Travels Through Italy, in the Years 1804 and 1805, 1806 vol 1, vol 2, vol 3, vol 4
 * Novellettes, 1807 vol 1, vol 2, vol 3
 * How to die for love.; a farce in two acts, 1812 external scan
 * The patriot father, a play; 1819 external scan
 * "The Test of Love" in Forget Me Not for 1824 (1823)
 * "The Philosophic Mouse" in Forget Me Not for 1824 (1823)

Works about von Kotzebue

 * A Memoir of Charles Louis Sand: including a narrative of the circumstances attending the death of Augustus von Kotzebue, 1819 external scan
 * A Memoir of Charles Louis Sand: including a narrative of the circumstances attending the death of Augustus von Kotzebue, 1819 external scan


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Rh wholly beyond his experience. He sighed and opened his eyes. Right before them, on the spire beyond the gardens, was the ancient cross to which he was consecrated. On his shoulders were the penitential wounds he had that morning inflicted with the knotted scourge. In his ears was the faint general chorus of saints and martyrs, echoing backward ever more solemnly to the very passion of Christ. While Nature was everywhere clothing itself with living greenness, around his gaunt body and muscular limbs—over his young head and his coursing hot blood—he had wrapped the dead white cowl of centuries gone as the winding-sheet of his humanity. These were not clear thoughts in his mind, but the vaguest suggestions of feeling, which of late had come to him at times, and now made him sigh more deeply as he sat up and bent over again to tie the hempen cords. As he did so, his attention was arrested by the sound of voices just outside the monastery wall, which was low here, so that in the general stillness they became entirely audible.

Outside the wall was a long strip of woodland which rose gently to the summit of a ridge half a mile away. This woodland was but little used. Into it occasionally a lay-brother drove the gentle monastery cows to pasture, or here a flock sheltered itself beneath forest oaks against the noontide summer heat. Beyond the summit lay the homestead of a gentleman farmer. As one descended this slope towards the abbey, he beheld it from the most picturesque side, and visitors at the home stead usually came to see it by this secluded approach.


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140 If Father Palemon could have seen beyond the wall, he would have discovered that the voices were those of a young man and a young woman—the former a slight, dark cripple, and invalid. He led the way along a foot path up quite close to the wall, and the two sat down beneath the shade of a great tree. Father Palemon, listening eagerly, unconsciously, overheard the following conversation:

"I should like to take you inside the abbey wall, but, of course, that is impossible, as no woman is allowed to enter the grounds. So we shall rest here a while. I find that the walk tires me more than it once did, and this tree has become a sort of outside shrine to me on my pilgrimages."

"Do you come often?"

"Oh yes. When we have visitors, I am appointed their guide, probably because I feel more interest in the place than any one else. If they are men, I take them over the grounds inside; and if they are women. I bring them thus far and try to describe the rest."

"As you will do for me now?"

"No; I am not in the mood for describing. Even when I am, my description always disappoints me. How is one to describe such human beings as these monks? Sometimes, during the long summer days, I walk over here alone and lie for hours under this tree, until the influences of the place have completely possessed me and I feel wrought up to the point of description. The sensation of a chill comes over me. Look up at these Kentucky skies! You have never seen them before. Are there any more delicate and tender? Well, at such times, where they bend over this abbey, they look as hard and cold as a sky of Landseer's. The sun seems no longer


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Rh to warm the pale cross on the spire yonder, the great drifting white clouds send a shiver through me as though uplifted snow-banks were passing over my head. I fancy that if I were to go inside I should see the white butterflies dropping down dead from the petals of the white roses, finding them stiff with frost, and that the white rabbits would be limping trembling through the frozen grass, like the hare in 'The Eve of St. Agnes.' Every thing becomes cold to me—cold, cold, cold! The bleak and rugged old monks themselves, in their hoary cowls, turn to personifications of perpetual winter; and if I were in the chapel, I should expect to meet in one of them Keats's very beadsman–patient, holy man, meagre, wan—whose fingers were numb while he told his rosary, and his breath frosted as it took flight for heaven. Ugh! I am cold now. My blood must be getting very thin."

"No; you make me shiver also."

"At least the impression is a powerful one. I have watched these old monks closely. Whether it is from the weakness of vigils and fasts or from positive cold, they all tremble—perpetually tremble. I fancy that their souls ache as well. Are not their cowls the grave-clothes of a death in life?"

"You seem to forget, Austin, that faith warms them."

"By extinguishing the fires of nature! Why should not faith and nature grow strong together? I have spent my life on the hill-side back yonder, as you know, and I have had leisure enough for studying these monks. I have tried to do them justice. At different times I have almost lived with St. Benedict at Subiaco, and St. Patrick on the mountain, and St. Anthony in the desert, and St. Thomas in the cell. I understand and value


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142 the elements of truth and beauty in the lives of the ancient solitaries. But they belong so inalienably to the past. We have outgrown the ideals of antiquity. How can a man now look upon his body as his evil tenement of flesh? How can he believe that he approaches sainthood by destroying his manhood? The highest type of personal holiness is said to be attained in the cloister. That is not true. The highest type of personal holiness is to be attained in the thick of the world's temptations. Then it becomes sublime. It seems to me that the heroisms worth speaking of nowadays are active, not meditative. But why should I say this to you, who as much as any one else have taught me to think thus—I who myself am able to do nothing? But though I can do nothing, I can at least look upon the monastic ideal of life as an empty, dead, husk, into which no man with the largest ideas of duty will ever compress his powers. Even granting that it develops personal holiness, this itself is but one element in the perfect character, and not even the greatest one."

"But do you suppose that these monks have deliberately and freely chosen their vocation? You know perfectly well that often there are almost overwhelming motives impelling men and women to hide themselves away from the world—from its sorrows, its dangers, its temptations."

"You are at least orthodox. I know that such motives exist, but are they sufficient? Of course there was a time when the cloister was a refuge from dangers. Certainly that is not true in this country now. And as for the sorrows and temptations, I say that they must be met in the world. There is no sorrow befalling a man


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Author:Anne Plumptre

Novels

 * Antoinette (1796)
 * The Rector's Son (1798)
 * Something New; or Adventures at Campbell House (1801)
 * The History of Myself and my Friend (1813)

Travel

 * A Narrative of a Three Years' Residence in France (1810)
 * Narrative of a Residence in Ireland (1817)

Translations

 * The Count of Burgundy (1798) by August Friedrich Ferdinand von Kotzebue
 * The Natural Son (1798) by August Friedrich Ferdinand von Kotzebue
 * Pizarro, or the Spaniards in Peru (1799) by August Friedrich Ferdinand von Kotzebue
 * The Virgin Of the Sun (1799) by August Friedrich Ferdinand von Kotzebue
 * La-Peyrouse (1799) by August Friedrich Ferdinand von Kotzebue
 * The Force of Calumny (1799) by August Friedrich Ferdinand von Kotzebue
 * The Widow and the Riding Horse (1799) by August Friedrich Ferdinand von Kotzebue
 * Letters Written from Various Parts of the Continent (1799) by Friedrich von Matthisson
 * Physionomical Travels (1800) by Johann Karl August Musäus
 * Sketch of the Life and Literary Career of Augustus von Kotzebue (1801) by August Friedrich Ferdinand von Kotzebue
 * Historical Relation of the Plague at Marseilles in 1720 (1805) by Jean-Baptiste Bertrand
 * Travels in Southern Africa (1812–1815) by Hinrich Lichtenstein
 * Travels Through the Morea, Albania, and Other Parts of the Ottoman Empire (1813) by François Pouqueville
 * Voyages and Travels to Brazil, the South Sea, Camscatka, and Japan (1813–1814) by Karl Christian von Langsdorf
 * Lover's Vows (1814) by August Friedrich Ferdinand von Kotzebue

With Annabella Plumptre

 * Tales of Wonder, of Honour, and of Sentiment, Original and Translated (1818)

title: Author:Anne Plumptre


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270

day when I was busy with my books and Mr. Pocket, I received a note by the post, the mere outside of which threw me into a great flutter; for, though I had never seen the handwriting in which it was addressed, I divined whose hand it was. It had no set beginning, as Dear Mr. Pip, or Dear Pip, or Dear Sir, or Dear Anything, but ran thus:

"I am to come to London the day after to-morrow by the mid-day coach. I believe it was settled you should meet me? At all events Miss Havisham has that impression, and I write in obedience to it. She sends you her regard.—Yours, ."

If there had been time, I should probably have ordered several suits of clothes for this occasion; but as there was not, I was fain to be content with those I had. My appetite vanished instantly, and I knew no peace or rest until the day arrived. Not that its arrival brought me either; for, then I was worse than ever, and began haunting the coach-office in Wood-street, Cheapside, before the coach had left the Blue Boar in our town. For all that I knew this perfectly well, I still felt as if it were not safe to let the coach-office be out of my sight longer than five minutes at a time; and in this condition of unreason I had performed the first half-hour of a watch of four or five hours, when Wemmick ran against me.

"Halloa, Mr. Pip," said he, "how do you do? I should hardly have thought this was your beat."

I explained that I was waiting to meet somebody who was coming up by coach, and I inquired after the Castle and the Aged.

"Both flourishing, thankye," said Wemmick, "and particularly the Aged. He's in wonderful feather. He'll be eighty-two next birthday. I have a notion of firing

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92 The love of youth, the hope of better years, The source of softest wishes, tenderest fears. The only living thing he could not hate. Was reft at once—and he deserv'd his fate. But did not feel it less;—the good explore, For peace, those realms where guilt can never soar: The proud—the wayward—who have fixed below Their joy—and find this earth enough for woe, Lose in that one their all—perchance a mite— But who in patience parts with all delight? Full many a stoic eye and aspect stern Mask hearts where grief hath little left to learn; And many a withering thought lies hid—not lost— In smiles that least befit who wear them most.

By those, that deepest feel, are ill exprest The indistinctness of the suffering breast; Where thousand thoughts begin to end in one, Which seeks from all the refuge found in none; No words suffice the secret soul to show. And Truth denies all eloquence to Woe.

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Rh eighty-two times, if the neighbourhood shouldn't complain, and that cannon of mine should prove equal to the pressure. However, this is not London talk. Where do you think I am going to?"

"To the office," said I, for he was tending in that direction.

"Next thing to it," returned Wemmick, "I am going to Newgate. We are in a banker's-parcel case just at present, and I have been down the road taking a squint at the scene of action, and thereupon must have a word or two with our client."

"Did your client commit the robbery?" I asked.

"Bless your soul and body, no," answered Wemmick, very drily. "But he is accused of it. So might you or I be. Either of us might be accused of it, you know."

"Only neither of us is," I remarked.

"Yah!" said Wemmick, touching me on the breast with his forefinger; "you're a deep one, Mr. Pip! Would you like to have a look at Newgate? Have you time to spare?"

I had so much time to spare that the proposal came as a relief, notwithstanding its irreconcilability with my latent desire to keep my eye on the coach-office. Muttering that I would make the inquiry whether I had time to walk with him, I went into the office, and ascertained from the clerk with the nicest precision and much to the trying of his temper, the earliest moment at which the coach could be expected—which I knew beforehand, quite as well as he. I then rejoined Mr. Wemmick, and affecting to consult my watch and to be surprised by the information I had received, accepted his offer.

We were at Newgate in a few minutes, and we passed through the lodge where some fetters were hanging up on the bare walls among the prison rules, into the interior of the jail. At that time, jails were much neglected, and the period of exaggerated reaction consequent on all public wrong-doing—and which is always its heaviest and longest punishment—was still far off. So, felons were not lodged and fed better than soldiers (to say nothing of paupers), and seldom set fire to their prisons with the excusable

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272 of improving the flavour of their soup. It was visiting time when Wemmick took me in; and a potman was going his rounds with beer; and the prisoners, behind bars in yards, were buying beer, and talking to friends; and a frouzy, ugly, disorderly, depressing scene it was.

It struck me that Wemmick walked among the prisoners, much as a gardener might walk among his plants. This was first put into my head by his seeing a shoot that had come up in the night, and saying, "What, Captain Tom? Are you there? Ah, indeed?" and also, "Is that Black Bill behind the cistern? Why I didn't look for you these two months; how do you find yourself?" Equally in his stopping at the bars and attending to anxious whisperers—always singly—Wemmick, with his post-office in an immovable state, looked at them while in conference, as if he were taking particular notice of the advance they had made, since last observed, towards coming out in full blow at their trial.

He was highly popular, and I found that he took the familiar department of Mr. Jaggers's business: though something of the state of Mr. Jaggers hung about him too, forbidding approach beyond certain limits. His personal recognition of each successive client was comprised in a nod, and in his settling his hat a little easier on his head with both hands, and then tightening the post-office, and putting his hands in his pockets. In one or two instances, there was a difficulty respecting the raising of fees, and then Mr. Wemmiek, backing as far as possible from the insufficient money produced, said, "It's no use, my boy. I am only a subordinate. I can't take it. Don't go on in that way with a subordinate. If you are unable to make up your quantum, my boy, you had better address yourself to a principal; there are plenty of principals in the profession, you know, and what is not worth the while of one, may be worth the while of another; that's my recommendation to you, speaking as a subordinate. Don't try on useless measures. Why should you? Now who's next?"

Thus, we walked through Wemmick's greenhouse, until he turned to me and said, "Notice the man I shall shake

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