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412 in the Plaza, and saw the full, round moon rise up from behind the mountains, flooding the whole grand landscape with such a light as can only be seen, in perfection in the pure, dry atmosphere of Mexico, and throwing over the city of Puebla, with its ninety-seven churches, its ruined walls, its beautiful plazas, its green alamedas, and its hundred objects of historic interest, a beauty and a glory indescribable. Such a moonlight scene one witnesses nowhere outside the tropics, and rarely even there.

We entered Puebla on Saturday evening, and not caring to intrude upon the worshipers in the great cathedral on Sunday morning, concluded to defer our visit to that leading object of interest until another time. We therefore accepted the invitation of Mr. Adolfo Blumenkorn, an American citizen long resident here, to ride out through the suburbs, and see the ruin and desolation wrought by the late terrible war of which Puebla was the center. We went first to the old church of San Zavier, which was fortified by the Mexicans on the arrival of the French, and withstood the first attack. The streets leading to it all show evidences of the desperate struggle which here took place. All the buildings, for many blocks, are in ruins, or pitted with cannon-ball and bullet marks, and earth-works and temporary defenses, now in ruins, are seen in all directions.

After the defeat of the French by the Mexicans under General Zaragoza, on the Cinco de Mayo outside the city, they received re-enforcements, and having learned caution from sad experience, advanced on a different line, and in a more guarded manner, on the city. The new state-prison, which was almost finished when the war commenced, stands adjoining the great, old church


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Rh of San Zavier, on the side fartherest from the city, and of course in direct range of the batteries of the French, which were mounted upon a small hill some half mile further out. The state prison and church were held by the Mexicans until the walls were perforated everywhere by balls, and the flying stones, knocked down at every volley from the French batteries, made the position no longer tenable. They then retreated into the plaza, nearer the heart of the city, where they threw up entrenchments. The French immediately took up their position in the church and state-prison, but that night the Mexicans opened upon them, and sent four hundred cannon balls through the two structures before morning, and the French, after a loss of some five hundred men, found the buildings too hot to hold them. Both buildings are now so riddled and shattered as to be untenable and worthless, and it is the general opinion that it will be cheaper to pull down the walls of the state-prison and rebuild from the foundation, than to attempt to repair it.

When the Mexicans saw that the fall of Puebla was unavoidable, they blew up and wholly, or partially, destroyed a large number of churches around the outskirts of the city, to prevent their being used as defences by the French, when it should be their turn to become the besiegers, and that of the French to be the besieged. The wisdom of this action was demonstrated when General Porfiero Diaz, who had made the brilliant campaign of Tehuantepec and Oaxaca, sweeping everything before him like a hurricane, arrived before Puebla while Maximilian was being besieged at Queretaro, by Escobedo. Marquez, with the imperial troops, had advanced from the city of Mexico to Apizaco, only one

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 "They were, but no interfering busybody stopped them. Let me out of here, I'm going to"

"Monsieur," de Grandin did not raise his voice, but the look he bent upon the other was as hard and merciless as though it were a leveled bayonet, "you are going to remain right here and tell us how it came about. You will tell of tills transgression which has caused three deaths already and almost caused a fourth. Do not fear to speak, my friend. We are physicians, and your confidence will be respected. On the other hand, if you persist in silence we shall surely place you in restraint. You would like to be lodged in a madhouse, have your every action watched, be strapped in a straitjacket if you attempted self-destruction, bein?" Slowly spoken, his words had the impact of a bodily assault, and the other reeled as from a beating.

"Not that!'" he gasped. "O God, anything but that! I'll tell you everything if you will promise"

"You have our word, Monsieur; say on."

visitor drew his chair up closer to the fire, as if a sudden cold had chilled his marrow. He was some forty years of age, slim and quite attractive, immaculately dressed, well groomed. His eyes were brown, deep-set and drawn, as if unutterably weary, with little pouches under them. His shoulders sagged as if the weight they bore was too much for them. His hair was almost wholly gray. "Beaten" was the only adjective to modify him.

"I think perhaps you knew my parents, Doctor Trowbridge," he began. "My father was James Balderson."

I nodded. Jim Balderson had been a senior when I entered college, and his escapades were bywords on the campus. Nothing but the tolerance which stamps a rich youth's viciousness as merely indication of high spirits had kept him from dismissal since his freshman year, and faculty and townsfolk sighed with relief when he took his sheepskin and departed simultaneously. The Balderson and Aidridge fortunes were combined when he married Bronson Aldridge's sole heir and daughter, and though he settled down in the walnut-paneled office of the Farmers Loan & Trust Company, his sons had carried on his youthful zest for getting into trouble. Drunken driving, divorce cases, scandals which involved both criminal and civil courts, were their daily fare. Two of them had died by violence, one in a motor smash-up, one when an outraged husband showed better marksmanship than self-restraint One had died of poison liquor in the Prohibition era. We had just saved die sole survivor from attempted suicide. "Yes, I knew your father," I responded.

"Do you remember Horton Hall?" he asked.

I bent my brows a moment. "Wasn't that the school down by the Shrewsbury where they had a scandal?—something about the headmaster committing suicide, or"

"You're right. That's it. I was in die last class there. So were Eldridge, Trivers and Atkins.

"I was finishing my junior year when the war broke out in 'seventeen. Dad got bulletproof commissions for the older boys, but wouldn't hear of my enlisting in the Navy. 'You've a job to do right there at Horton,' he told me. 'Get your certificate; then we'll see about your joining up.' So back I went to finish out my senior year. Dad didn't know what he was doing to me. Things might have turned out differently if I'd gone in the service.

"Everyone who could was getting in the Army or the Navy. We'd lost most


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414 day's march from Puebla, to relieve the garrison and meet Diaz, when the latter determined on the desperate but brilliant movement which decided the contest at a blow. At three o'clock in the morning he ordered a general assault by all his forces upon the city, which had not been besieged for an hour, and his victorious, but almost exhausted and worn out army responding with enthusiasm, one of the most determined and desperate conflicts of our time followed.

Dividing his force into thirteen columns, and charging directly into the city from all points at once against a murderous fire from every house-top, earth-work and commanding position, he carried the place at the first assault with a loss of eleven hundred and seventy-six men, killing or capturing the entire Imperialist force with all its supplies, artillery, and munitions of war, and compelling Marquez to fall back on the capital in all haste, and put it in a condition to withstand a siege by the Republican forces, until the fall of Queretaro, the Empire and Maximilian rendered further resistance hopeless.

From the church of San Zavier we rode out to see the battle field of the Cinco de Mayo, already famous in song and story. It has been so often described that I will not go into details. Coming back we saw more of ruin resulting from war, than we had previously noticed in Mexico. The destruction of life and property by this infamous war must have been enormous, and I doubt if Puebla will ever fully recover from it. The population of the city cannot now exceed eighty thousand; it is doubtful if there is more than sixty thousand or seventy thousand, and after all the destruction, there is still one great church for every one thousand


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Rh men, women, and children in the city. There are various manufactories in and around the city, and the country in the vicinity being very productive, there is considerable trade, especially since the completion of the railroad to Mexico in September last, but the city cannot be said to be in a very prosperous condition, nevertheless.

We heard less here than in the city of Mexico concerning the pronunciamento against the Government in the Sierra, in the State of Puebla. The general opinion at Puebla was that the movement had not any head, and that the various bands were small in numbers, and acting without concert or definite plan. But on the other hand, it was said that a deputation had been sent to Oaxaca to consult with the famous military chieftain, Porfiero Diaz, and ask him to take command, promising him the support of the disaffected in every part of the country, and a general and preconcerted rising against the Juarez Government. Their success would be a greater disaster to Mexico than the French invasion. If Mexico is to exist, as an independent nation, she must have peace, and the inauguration of another general civil war would be the death knell of the Republic.

We saw troops marched through the streets, and found General Alatorre absent in the mountains with some three thousand men, operating against the bands of guerillas which were making all the trouble, but could learn nothing more definite. There had been no fighting since the Sixth Battalion was surprised and routed at Xochipulco, on the 29th of November, for the reason that the guerillas were too active and cautious to be caught, or risk an engagement without great


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416 on their side, and the character of the mountain country is such, as to make a successful campaign against them almost impossible. About sixty of the men of the battalion, wounded at Xochipulco, were there in the hospital under surgical treatment.

We made good use of our time while at Puebla, and in its vicinity. No part of our trip was more replete with interest, and we enjoyed it to the utmost. On the 19th we left Puebla, by railway, to visit the capital of the ancient Republic of Tlaxcala, renowned in the history of Spanish conquest for the part its people took in fixing the chain of the conquerors, upon the neck of Mexico. How the Mexicans, hearing of the arrival of Cortez at Vera Cruz, asked permission of their hereditary enemies, the Tlaxcalans, to be allowed to send commissioners through their territory, to see Cortez and find out what called him to the country; how the crafty Tlaxcalans consented, and then agreed to pilot them on their way, but secretly dispatched emissaries in advance to make a treaty with Cortez—which they did—and joined hands with the invaders against the Mexicans, whose costly presents to Cortez had excited his cupidity, and confirmed his determination to conquer their country, has all been told by historians, over and over, and I will therefore confine myself to what I saw and heard, on this old historic ground, in the last, bright, sunny days of the good year 1869.

From Puebla to the station of Santa Anna, by railway, is only twenty-one miles, English, and with a special train we made it in less than forty minutes; in Cortez' time it must have taken considerably longer. The old Indian town of Santa Anna, is half in ruins, but there is still a little life left there. We saw an immense


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Rh of timber, in the form of an amphitheater, which they were erecting for a "plaza de toros" where thousands of people doubtless nocked from all the surrounding country, about New Years, to indulge in and gloat over the brutalities of the bull-fight.

Entering carriages, sent for us by the Governor of Tlaxcala, to ride some three or four miles down to the ancient city, we met, a little distance down the road, a train of pack-Indians, coming in from the mountains with lumber, with which to complete the amphitheater. Each Indian carried on his back, suspended from his head by a leathern strap across his forehead, a pitch-pine beam, twenty feet long, ten inches wide, and six inches thick. The weight of each of these beams, according to the lowest estimate made by members of our party, was four hundred pounds—I think it more probable that they would weigh five hundred pounds—and the load for a mule is only three hundred pounds; yet these sturdy fellows earned them off at a dog-trot, talking good-naturedly as they went, and had probably brought them fifteen or twenty miles that day. Could our gymnasts do this?

Half an hour's ride over a dusty and heavy road, all out of repair, brought us to the ancient city, which, in its prime, occupied the heights on both sides of a narrow valley for many miles; at least, so Cortez said. There were four great chiefs of the Republic of Tlaxcala, and each dwelt in a grand palace on these heights. The Spaniards built churches on the site of each; and we have now only the ruinous old churches, and the doubtful statements of fishy, old historians, in evidence of their once having existed. The old town along the heights at the base of the Cerro Blanco, or


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 of our faculty when I went back in 'eighteen, and they'd put a new headmaster in, a Doctor Herbules. Fellows were leaving right and left, enlisting from the campus or being called by draft boards, and I was pretty miserable. One day as I was walking back from science lab., I ran full-tilt into old Herbules.

What's the matter, Balderson?' he asked. You look as if you'd lost your last friend.'

Well. I have, almost," I answered. "With so many fellows off at training-camp, having all kinds of excitement'

You want excitement, eh?' he interrupted. 'I can give it to you; such excitement as you've never dreamed of. I can make you' He stopped abruptly, and it seemed to me he looked ashamed of something, but he'd got my curiosity roused.

"'You're on, sir,' I told him. What is it, a prize-fight?'

"Herbules was queer. Everybody said so. He couldn't have been much past thirty; yet his hair was almost snow-white and there was a funny sort o' peaceful expression on his smooth face that reminded me of something that I couldn't cruite identify. He had the schoolmaster's trick of speaking with a sort of pedantic precision, and he never raised his voice; yet when he spoke in chapel we could understand him perfectly, no matter how far from the platform we were sitting. I'd never seen him show signs of excitement before, but now he was breathing hard and was in such deadly earnest that his lips were fairly trembling. 'What do you most want from life?' he asked me in a whisper.

Why, I don't know, just now I'd like best of all to get into the Army; I'd go to France and bat around with the mademoiselles, and get drunk any time I wanted'

You'd like that sort of thing?' he laughed. 'I can give it to you. and more; more than you ever imagined. Wine and song and gayety and women—beautiful, lovely, cultured women, not the street-trulls that you'd meet in France—you can have all this and more, if you want to, Balderson.'

Lead me to it,' I replied 'When do we start?'

"Ah, my boy, nothing's given for nothing. There are some things you'll have to do, some promises to make, something to be paid"

All right; how much?' I asked. Dad was liberal with me. I had a hundred dollars every month for spending money, and I could always get as much again from Mother if I worked it right.

No, no; not money,' he almost laughed in my face. 'The price of all this can't be paid in money. All we ask is that you give the Master something which I greatly doubt you realize you have, my boy.'

"It sounded pretty cock-eyed to me, but if the old boy really had something up his sleeve I wanted to know about it. Count me in,' I told him. "What do I do next?"

"There was no one within fifty yards of us, but he bent until his lips were almost in my ear before he whispered: "Next Wednesday at midnight, come to my house.'

Private party, or could I bring a friend or two?'

"His features seemed to freeze. 'Who is the friend?' he asked.

Well, I'd like to bring Eldridge and Trivers, and maybe Atkins, too. They're all pretty good eggs, and I know they crave excitement'

Oh, by all means, yes. Be sure to bring them. It's agreed, then? Next Wednesday night at twelve, at my house.'


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was waiting for us in a perfect fever of excitement when we tiptoed up his front-porch steps on Wednesday night He had a domino and mask for each of us. The dominoes were fiery red, with hoods that pulled up like monks' cowls; the masks were black, and hideous. They represented long, thin faces with out-jutting chins; the lips were purple and set in horrid grins; the eyebrows were bright scarlet wool and at the top there was another patch of bright red worsted curled and cut to simulate a fringe of hair. 'Good Lord,' said Atkins as he tried his on, 'I look just like the Devil!'

"I thought that Herbules would have a stroke when he heard Atkins speak. 'You'll use that name with more respect after tonight, my boy,' he said.

"After that we all got in his car and drove down toward Red Bank.

"We stopped about a mile outside of town and parked the car in a small patch of woods, walked some distance down the road, climbed a fence and cut across a field till we reached an old deserted house. I'd seen the place as I drove past, and had often wondered why it was unoccupied, for it stood up on a hill surrounded by tall trees and would have made an ideal summer home, but I'd been told its well was dry, and as there was no other source of water, nobody wanted it.

"We didn't go to the front door, but tiptoed round the back, where Herbules struck three quick raps, waited for a moment, then knocked four more. "We'd all put on our robes and masks white he was knocking, and when the door was opened on a crack we saw the porter was robed and masked as we were. Nobody said a word, and we walked through a basement entrance, down a long and narrow hall, and turned a corner where we met another door. Here Herbules went through the same procedure, and the door swung back to let us in.

"We were in a big room, twenty by forty feet, I guess, and we knew it was a cellar by the smell—stiflingly close, but clammy as a tomb at once. Rows of folding chairs like those used at bridge games—or funerals—were arranged in double rows with a passage like an aisle between, and at the farther end of the big room we saw an altar.

"In all my life I don't believe I'd been to church ten times, but we were nominally Protestants, so what I saw had less effect on me than if I'd been a Catholic or Episcopalian; but I knew at once the altar wasn't regulation. Oh, it was sufficiently impressive, but it had a sort of comic—no, not comic, grotesque, rather—note about it. A reredos of black cloth was hung against the wall, and before it stood a heavy table more than eight feet long and at least six wide, covered by a black cloth edged with white. It reminded me of something, though I couldn't quite identify it for a moment; then I knew. I'd seen a Jewish funeral once, and this cloth was like the black-serge pall they used to hide the plain pine coffin! At each end of the altar stood a seven-branched candelabrum made of brass, each with a set of tall black candles in it. These were burning and gave off a pale blue glow. They seemed to be perfumed, too, and the odor which they burned with was pleasant—at first. Then, as I sniffed a second time it seemed to me there was a faint suspicion of a stench about it, something like the fetor that you smell if you're driving down the road and pass a dog or cat that's been run over and has lain a while out in the sun—just a momentary whiff, but nauseating, just the same. Between the candelabra, right exactly in the center of the altar, but back against the wall, was a yard-high crucifix of some black wood with an ivory figure


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 on it, upside down. Before the cross there was a silver wine goblet and a box of gilt inlay about the size and shape of a lady's powder-puff box.

"I heard Atkins catch his breath and give a sort of groan. He'd been brought up an Episcopalian and knew about such things. He turned half round to leave, but I caught him by the sleeve.

Come on, you fool, don't be a sissy!' I admonished, and next moment we were all so interested that he had no thought of leaving.

"There was a sort of congregation in the chapel; every seat was occupied by someone masked and robed just as we were, save three vacant places by the altar steps. These, we knew, were kept for us, but when we looked about for Herbules he was nowhere to be seen; so we went forward to our seats alone. We could hear a hum of whispering as we walked up the aisle, and we knew some of the voices were from women; but who was man and who was woman was impossible to tell, for each one looked just like his neighbor in his shrouding robe.

whispering suddenly became intense, like the susurrus of a hive of swarming bees. Every neck seemed suddenly to crane, every eye to look in one direction, and as we turned our glances toward the right side of the cellar we saw a woman entering through a curtained doorway. She wore a long, loose scarlet cape which she held together with one hand, her hair was very black, her eyes were large and luminously dark, seeming to have a glance of overbearing sensuousness and sweet humility at once. Her white, set face was an imponderable mask; her full red lips were fixed in an uneven, bitter line. Beneath the hem of her red cloak we saw the small feet in the golden, high-heeled slippers were unstockinged. As she neared the altar she sank low in genuflection, then wheeled about and faced us. For a moment she stood there, svelte, graceful, mysteriously beautiful with that thin white face and scarlet lips so like a mask; then with a sudden kicking motion she unshod her feet, opened wide her cloak and let it fall in scarlet billows on the dull-black carpet of the altar steps.

"She was so beautiful it almost hurt the eyes to look at her as she stood there in white silhouette against the ebon background of the black-draped altar, with her narrow, boy-like hips, slim thighs and full, high, pointed breasts. She was a thing of snow and fire, her body palely cool and virginal, her lips like flame, her eyes like embers blazing when a sudden wind stirs them to brightness.

"The modern strip-tease routine was unthought of in those days, and though I was sophisticated far beyond my eighteen years I had never seen a woman in the nude before. The flame of her raced in my blood and crashed against my brain with almost numbing impact. I felt myself go faint and sick with sudden weakness and desire.


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 "A long-drawn sigh came from the audience; then the tableau was abruptly broken as the girl turned from us, mounted nimbly to the black-draped altar and stretched herself full length upon it, crossed her ankles and thrust her arms out right and left, so that her body made a white cross on the sable altar-cloth. Her eyes were closed as though in peaceful sleep, but her bosoms rose and fell with her tumultuous breathing. She had become the altar!

"Silence fell upon the congregation like a shadow, and next instant Herbules came in. He wore a priest's vestments, a long red cassock, over it the alb and stole, and in his hand he bore a small red book. Behind him came his acolyte, but it was not an altar-boy. It was a girl, slender, copper-haired, petite. She wore a short surcoat of scarlet, cut low around the shoulders, sleeveless, reaching just below the hips, like the tabards worn by medieval heralds. Over it she wore a lace-edged cotta. Otherwise she was unclothed. We could hear the softly-slapping patter of her small bare feet upon the altar-sill as she changed her place from side to side, genuflecting as she passed the reversed crucifix. She swung a brazen censer to and fro before her and the gray smoke curled in spurting puffs from it. filling the entire place with a perfume like that generated by the candles, but stronger, more intense, intoxicating.

"Herbules began the service with a muttered Latin prayer, and though he seemed to follow a set ritual even I could see it was not that prescribed, by any church, for when he knelt he did so with his back turned toward the altar; when he crossed himself he did it with the thumb of his left hand, and made the sign beginning at the bottom, rather than the top. But even in this mummers' parody the service was majestic. I could feel its power and compulsion as it swept on toward its climax. Herbules took up the silver chalice and held it high above his head, then rested it upon the living altar, placing it between her breasts, and we could see the flesh around her nails grow white as she grasped the black-palled altar table with her fingers. Her body, shining palely on the coffin-pall under the flickering candles' light, was arched up like a tauted bow, she shook as if a sudden chill had seized her, and from her tight-drawn, scarlet lips there issued little whimpering sounds, not cries nor yet quite groans, but something which partook of both, and at the same time made me think of the soft, whining sounds a new-born puppy makes.

"The kneeling acolyte chimed a sacring-bell and the congregation bent and swayed like a wheat-field swept across by sudden wind.

"When all was finished we were bidden to come forward and kneel before the altar steps. Herbules came down and stood above us, and each of us was made to kiss the red book which he held and take a fearful oath, swearing that he would abstain from good and embrace evil, serve Satan faithfully and well, and do his best to bring fresh converts to the worship of the Devil. Should we in any manner break our oath, we all agreed that Satan might at once foreclose upon his mortgage on our souls, and bear us still alive to hell, and the sign that we were come for was to be the odor of the perfume which the candles and the censer gave that night.

"When this ritual was finished we were bidden name our dearest wish, and told it would be granted. I could hear the others mumble something, but could not understand their words. I don't know what possessed me when it came my turn to ask a boon of Satan—possibly he put the thought into my mind, maybe it was my longing to get out of school and go


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 to France before the war was ended. At any rate, when Herbules bent over me I muttered, 'I wish the pater would bump off:

"He leaned toward me with a smile and whispered, "You begin your postulancy well, my son,' then held his hand out to me, signifying that I should return his clasp with both of mine. As I put out my hands to take his I saw by my wristwatch that it was exactly half-past twelve.

"What followed was the wildest party I had ever seen or dreamt of. The farmhouse windows had been boarded up and curtained, and inside the rooms were literally ablaze with light. Men and women, some draped in their red dominoes, some in evening dress, some naked as the moment that they first drew breath, mingled in a perfect saturnalia of unrestrained salacity. On tables stood ice-buckets with champagne, and beside them tall decanters of cut glass filled with port and sherry, tokay, madeira, muscatel and malaga. Also there was bottled brandy, vodka and whisky, trays of cigarettes, boxes of cigars, sandwiches, cake and sweetmeats. It was like the carnival at New Orleans, only ten times gayer, madder, more abandoned. I was grasped by naked men and women, whirled furiously around in a wild dance, then let go only to be seized by some new partner and spun around until I almost fell from dizziness. Between times I drank, mixing wine and spirits without thought, stuffed sandwiches and cake and candy in my mouth, then drank fresh drafts of chilled champagne or sharp-toned brandy.

"Staggering drunkenly about the table I was reaching for another glass when I felt a hand upon my shoulder. Turning, I beheld a pair of flashing eyes laughing at me through the peep-holes of a mask. 'Come with me, my neophyte,' the masked girl whispered; 'there is still a chalice you have left untasted.'

"She pulled me through the crowd, led me up the stairs and thrust a door ajar. The little room we entered was entirely oriental. A Persian lamp hung like a blazing ruby from the ceiling, on the floor were thick, soft rugs and piles of down-filled pillows. There was no other furniture.

"With a laugh she turned her back to me, motioning me to slip the knot which held the girdle of her domino; then she bent her head while I withdrew the pins that held her hair. It rippled in a cascade to her waist—below, nearly to her knees—black and glossy as the plumage of a grackle's throat, and as it cataracted down she swung around, shrugging her shoulders quickly, and let the scarlet domino fall from her. An upswing of her hand displaced the black-faced, purple, grinning mask, and I looked directly in the face of the pale girl who half an hour earlier had lain upon the altar of the Devil. 'Kiss me!' she commanded. 'Kiss me!' Her arms were tight about my neck, pulling my lips to hers, drawing her slender, unclothed body tight against me. Her lips clung to my mouth as though they were a pair of scarlet leeches; through her half-closed lids I saw the glimmer of her bright black eyes, burning like twin points of quenchless fire

daylight when we reached the dorm next day, and all of us reported sick at chapel. Sometime about eleven, as I rose to get a drink of water, a knock came at my door. It was a telegram that stated:

"I hurried back to school as soon as possible. My father's death had startled—frightened—me, but I put it down to coincidence. He'd been suffering from Bright's disease for several years, and


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 probably his number'd just turned up, I told myself. Besides, the longing for the celebration of the sacrilegious Mass with its sensual stimulation, followed by the orgiastic parties, had me in a grip as strong as that which opium exerts upon its addicts.

"Twice a week, each Wednesday and Friday, my three friends and I attended the salacious services held in the old farmhouse cellar, followed by the revels in the upper rooms, and bit by bit we learned about our fellow cultists. Herbules, the head and center of the cult, was a priest stripped of his orders. Pastor of a parish in the suburbs of Vienna, he had dabbled in the Blade Art, seduced a number of his congregation from their faith, finally celebrated the Black Mass. The ecclesiastical authorities unfrocked him, the civil government jailed him on a morals charge, but disgrace could not impair his splendid education or his brilliant mind, and as soon as his imprisonment was over he emigrated to America and at once secured a post as teacher. Though his talents were unquestionable, his morals were not, and scandal followed every post he held. He was at the end of his string when he managed to worm his way into the Horton trustees' confidence and secured the post left vacant by the former headmaster's entrance in the Army.

"Our companion Devil-worshippers were mostly college and preparatory students looking for a thrill, now tangled in the net of fascination that the cult spun round its devotees, but a few of them were simply vicious, while others turned to demonolatry because they had lost faith in God.

"One of these was Marescha Nurmi, the girl who acted as the living altar. She was my constant partner at the orgies, and bit by bit I learned her history. Only nineteen, she was the victim of a heart affection and the doctors gave her but a year to live. When they pronounced sentence she was almost prostrated; then in desperation she turned to religion, going every day to church and spending hours on her knees in private prayer. But medical examination showed her illness was progressing, and when she chanced to hear of Herbules' devil-cult she came to it. 'I'm too young, too beautiful to die!' she told me as we lay locked in each others' arms one night. 'Why should God take my life? I never injured Him. All right, if He won't have me, Satan will. He'll give me life and happiness and power, let me live for years and years; keep me young and beautiful when all these snivelling Christian girls are old and faded. What do I care if I go to hell to pay for it? I'll take my heaven here on earth, and when the bill's presented I won't welch!'

"There's an old saying that each time God makes a beautiful woman the Devil opens a new page in his ledger. He must have had to put in a whole set of books when Marescha was converted to our cult. She was attractive as a witch, had no more conscience than a snake, and positively burned with ardor to do evil. Night after night she brought new converts to the cult, sometimes young men, sometimes girls. 'Come on, you little fool,' I heard her urge a girl who shrank from the wild orgy following initiation. 'Take off your robe; that's what we're here for. This is our religion, the oldest in the world; it's revolt against the goody-goodies, revolt against the narrowness of God; we live for pleasure and unbridled passion instead of abnegation and renunciation—life and love and pleasure in a world of vivid scarlet, instead of fear and dreariness in a world all cold and gray. That's our creed and faith. We're set apart, we're marked for pleasure, we worshippers of Satan.


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 "Tiens, the lady was a competent sales-woman," de Grandin murmured. "Did she realize her dreams?"

The laugh that prefaced Balderson's reply was like the echo of a chuckle in a vaulted tomb. "I don't know if she got her money's worth, but certainly she paid," he answered. "It was nearing graduation time, and the celebrations were about to stop until the fall, for it would be impossible to keep the farm-house windows shuttered so they'd show no gleam of light, especially with so many people on the roads in summer. Herbules had just completed invocation, raised the chalice overhead and set it on Marescha's breast when we saw her twitch convulsively. The little whimpering animal-cries she always made when the climax of the obscene parody was reached gave way to a choked gasping, and we saw the hand that clutched the altar-table suddenly relax. She raised her head and stared around the chapel with a look that sent the chill of horror rippling through me, then cried out in a strangled voice: 'O Lord, be pitiful!' Then she fell back on the coffin-pall that draped the altar and her fingers dangled loosely on its edge, her feet uncrossed and lay beside each other.

was going on as if nothing had happened, but the woman who sat next to me let out a sudden wail. 'Look at her,' she screamed. 'Look at her face!'

"Marescha's head had turned a little to one side, and we saw her features in the altar-candles' light. Her dark hair had come unbound and fell about her face as though it sought to hide it. Her eyes were not quite closed, nor fully open, for a thread of gray eyeball was visible between the long black lashes. Her mouth was partly open,, not as though she breathed through it, but lax, slack, as though she were exhausted. Where a line of white defined the lower teeth we saw her tongue had fallen forward, lying level with the full, red lip.

"Somewhere in the rear of the chapel another woman's voice, shrilly pitched, but controlled, cried out: 'She's dead!'

"There was a wave of movement in the worshippers. Chairs were overturned, gowns rustled, whispered questions buzzed like angry bees. Then the woman sitting next me screamed again: 'This is no natural death, no illness killed her; she's been stricken dead for sacrilege, she's sacrificed for our sins—fly, fly before the wrath of God blasts all of us!'

"Herbules stood at the altar facing us. A mask as of some inner feeling, of strange, forbidden passions, of things that raced on scurrying feet within his brain, seemed to drop across his features. His face seemed old and ancient, yet at the same time ageless; his eyes took on a glaze like polished agate. He raised both hands above his head, the fingers flexed like talons, and laughed as if at some dark jest known only to himself. 'Whoso leaves the temple of his Lord without


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Author:Sverre Petterssen

Works

 * Convection in Theory and Practice (1946)

title: Author:Sverre Petterssen


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 partaking of this most unholy sacrament, the same will Satan cast aside, defenseless from the vengeance of an outraged God!' he cried.

"Then I knew. Karl Erik Herbules, renegade Christian priest, brilliant scholar, poisoner of souls and votary of Satan, was mad as any Tom o' Bedlam!

"He stood there by the Devil's altar hurling, curses at us, threatening us with Heaven's vengeance, casting an anathema upon us with such vile insults and filthy language as a fishwife would not dare to use.

"But panic had the congregation by the throat. They pushed and fought and scratched and bit like frenzied cats, clawing and slashing at one another till they gained the exit, then rushing pellmell down the hill to their parked cars without a backward look, leaving Herbules alone beside the altar he had raised to Satan, with the dead girl stretched upon it.

"There was no chance that Herbules would help. He kept reciting passages from the Black Mass, genuflecting to the altar, filling and refilling the wine-cup and stuffing his mouth with the wafers meant to parody the Host. So Trivers, Eldridge, Atkins and I took Marescha's body to the river, weighted it with window-irons and dropped it in the water. But the knots we tied must have been loose, or else the weights were insufficient, for as we turned to leave, her body Boated almost to the surface and one white arm raised above the river's glassy face, as though to wave a mute farewell. It must have been a trick the current played as the tide bore her away, but to us it seemed that her dead hand pointed to us each in turn; certainly there was no doubt it bobbed four times above the river's surface before the swirling waters sucked it out of sight.

"You've probably heard garbled rumors of what happened afterward. The farmhouse burned that night and because there was no water to be had, there was no salvage. Still, a few things were not utterly destroyed, and people in the neighborhood still wonder how those Persian lamps and brazen candlesticks came to be in that deserted house.

"Herbules committed suicide that night, and when the auditors went over his accounts they found he'd practically wrecked Horton. There was hardly a cent left, for he'd financed his whole grisly farce of Devil worship with the money he embezzled. The trustees made the losses good and gave up in disgust. Ours was the last class graduated.

"They found Marescha's body floating in the Shrewsbury two days later, and at first the coroner was sure she'd been the victim of a murder; for while the window-weights had fallen off, the cords that tied them were still knotted round her ankles. When the autopsy disclosed she'd not been drowned, but had been put into the river after death from heart disease, the mystery was deepened, but until tonight only four people knew its answer. Now there are only three."

"Three, Monsieur?" de Grandin asked.

"That's fight. Trivers, Atkins and Eldridge are dead. I'm still here, and you and Doctor Trowbridge"

"Your figures are at fault, my friend. You forget we are physicians, and your narrative was given us in confidence."

"But see here," I asked as the silence lengthened, "what is there about all this to make you want to kill yourself? If you'd been grown men when you joined these Devil-worshippers it would have been more serious, but college boys are always in some sort of mischief, and this all happened twenty years ago. You say you are sincerely sorry for it, and after all. the leaders in the movement died, so"

Balderson broke through my moralizing with a short, hard laugh. "Men die W. T.—1


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 A.D. 1840

in the gathering winterly twilight, at the intersection of Elizabeth and Flinders Streets, one instinctively remarks the long crowded suburban trains, laden with homeward-bound passengers, quitting the city and care for the night's charmed interval. All the streets of busy Melbourne are yet thronged, in spite of the apparently rapid diminution which is proceeding. The indefinable hum, noticeable in large urban populations at the close of the day, as the lamps are lit, which mark for most men the boundary between work and recreation, is increasingly audible. The grand outlines of the larger public buildings become suggestively indistinct. If your ear be good, you may hear the steam-whistle and the roar of the country trains at Spencer Street Station. The senses of the musing spectator are filled to saturation with the sights and sounds proper to the largest, the most highly civilised, the most prosperous city in the world, for the years of its existence. Stranger than fiction

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 does it not seem, that in the month of April, in the year of grace 1840, we should have migrated en famille from Sydney to assist in the colonisation of Port Phillip, in the founding of this city of Melbourne? The moderate-sized schooner which carried us safely hither in a few hours under a week had been chartered by Paterfamilias, so that we were unrestricted as to many matters not usually left to the discretion of passengers. It was a floating home. Colonists of ten years' standing, we had many things to bear with us, which under other circumstances of transit must have been left behind. There were carriage horses and cows, the boys' ponies, the children's canaries, poultry, and pigeons, dogs and cats, babies and nurses, furniture, flower-pots, workmen, house servants—all the component portions of a large household shifted bodily from a suburban home, and ready to be transferred to the first suitable dwelling in the new settlement. One can easily imagine to what a state of misery and confusion such a freight would have been reduced had bad weather come on. But the winds and the waves were kind, and on Saturday afternoon the harbour-master of Williamstown partook of some slight alcoholic refreshment on board, and welcomed us to Port Phillip. Well is remembered even now the richly-green appearance of the under-stocked grassy flat upon which the particularly small village of Williamstown stood. A few cottages, more huts—with certain public-houses, of course—made up the township. More distinctly marked even were the succulence and juiciness of the first Port Phillip mutton-chops upon which was regaled our keenly

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 hungry party. We had just quitted the enfeebled meat markets of Sydney, scarce recovered from that terrible drought which wasted the years of 1837, 1838, and 1839. We had reached a land of Goshen evidently—a land of milk and butter, if not of honey—a land of chops and steaks, of sirloins and "under-cuts"—of all youthful luxuries well-nigh forgotten—of late unattainable in New South Wales as strawberry ice in a cane-brake.

Among other trifles which our very complete outfit had comprehended was a small steamboat adapted for the tortuous but necessary navigation of the Yarra Yarra, of which noble stream, moving calmly through walls of ti-tree, we commenced to make the acquaintance. This steamerlet—she was a very tiny automaton, puffing out of all proportion to her speed—but the only funnel-bearer—think of that, Victorians of this high-pressure era!—had been sent down by the head of the family the voyage before, safely bestowed upon the deck of a larger vessel. "The Movastar was a better boat," I daresay, but the tiny Firefly bore us and the Lares and Penates of many other "first families "—in the sense of priority—safely to terra firma on the north side of what was then called the "Yarra Basin." This was an oval-shaped natural enlargement of the average width of the river, much as a waterhole in a creek exceeds the ordinary channel. The energetic Batman and the sturdy Cobbett of the south, Pascoe Fawkner, had thought it good to set about making a town, and here we found the bustling Britisher of the period engaged in building up Melbourne with might and main. Our leader laid it down at that

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 more easily than memories, Doctor. Besides"

"Yes, Monsieur, besides?" de Grandin prompted as our guest stared silently into the study fire.

"Do you believe the spirits of the dead—die dead who are in Hell, or at least cut off from Heaven—can come back to plague the living?" he demanded.

brushed the ends of his small waxed mustache with that gesture which always reminded me of a tomcat combing his whiskers. "You have experienced such a visitation?"

"I have. So did the others."

"Mordieu! How was it?"

"You may remember reading that Ted Eldridge hanged himself? Three days before it happened, he met me on the street, and I could see that he was almost frantic. 'I saw Marescha last night!' he told me in a frightened whisper.

Marescha? You must be off your rocker, man! We put her in the Shrewsbury'

And she's come back again. Remember the perfume of the candles and the incense Herbules used in celebrating the Black Mass? I'd come home from New York last night, and was getting ready for a drink before I went to bed, when I began to smell it. At first I thought it was some fool trick that my senses played on me, but the scent kept getting stronger. It seemed as if I were back in that dreadful chapel with the tall black candles burning and the hellish incense smoldering, Herbules in his red vestments and Marescha lying naked on the altar—I could almost hear the chanting of inverted prayers and the little whimpering noises that she made. I gulped my drink down in two swallows and turned round. She was standing there, with water on her face and streaming from her hair, and her hands held out to me'

You're crazy as a goat!' I told him. 'Come have a drink.'

"He looked at me a moment, then turned away, walking quickly down the street and muttering to himself.

"I'd not have thought so much about it if I hadn't read about his suicide next day, and if Stanley Trivers hadn't called me on the telephone. "Hear about Ted Eldridge?' he asked the moment I had said hello. When I told him I'd just read about it he demanded: 'Did you see him—recently?'

Yes, ran into him in Broad Street yesterday,' I answered.

Seemed worried, didn't he? Did he tell you anything about Marescha?'

Say, what is this?' I asked. 'Did he say anything to you'

Yes, he did, and I thought he had a belfry full o' bats.'

There's not much doubt the poor old lad was cuckoo'

That's where you're mistaken, Balderson. According to the paper he'd been dead for something like four hours when they found him. That would have made it something like four o'clock when he died.'

So what?'

So this: I waked up at four o'clock this morning, and the room was positively stifling with the odor of the incense they used in the Black Chapel'

Yeah? I suppose you saw Marescha, too?'

I did! She was standing by my bed, with water streaming from her face and body, and tears were in her eyes.'

"I tried to talk him out of it, tell him that it was a trick of his imagination stimulated by Ted Eldridge's wild talk, but he insisted that he'd really seen her. Two days later he committed suicide.

"Don Atkins followed. I didn't talk

W.T.—2


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 56 INDEX. " PAGE Stokes (Sir G. G.) ., 34 Story (R. H.) . . .4 Stone (W.H.). . . 34 Strachey (Sir E.) . . 25 Strachey (J. St. L.) . 37 Strachey (Gen. K.). . n Strangford(Viscountess) 47 Strettell (A.) . . 19 Stubbs (Dean) . . .45 Stubbs (Bishop) . .40 Sutherland (A.) . . 11 Swainson (H.). SVETE(Prof. H. B.). Swift (Dean) . Symonds (J. A.) Symonds (Mrs. J. A) Symons (A.) Taggart (W. S.) . Tainsh (E. C). Tait (Archbishop) . Tait(C. W. A.) Tait (Prof P. G.) Tanner (H.) . Tarr(R. S.) . Tavernier (J. B.) . Taylor (E. R.). Taylor (Franklin) . Taylor (Isaac). Taylor (Sedley) Tegetmeiek (W. B.) Temple (bishop) Temple (Sir R.) Tennant (Dorothy). Tenniel (Sir John) . Tennyson (Lord) 17, 19 Tennyson (Frederick) Tennyson (Lord H.) 15,49 Theodoli (Marchesa) . 24 Thompson (D 'A. V.) 8 Thompson (E.). . . i? Thompson (II. M.) . . 36 Thompson (S. P.) . . 34 Thomson (A. W.) . . 10 Thomson (Sir C. W.) . 50 Thomson (Hugh). . 14 Thoreau. . . .28 Thorne (Dr. Thome) 29 Thornton (J.). . . 7 Thornton (W. T.) 32, 37, 46 Thorpe (T. E.). . . 6, q Thring (E.). . 10, 28 Thrupp(J. F.). . . 38 Thikskield (J. R.). . 5 Todhunter (I.). . 6 Torrens(W.M.). . 5 Tourgbnief (I. S.). . 24 Tout(T.F.). . 5,14 Tozer(H. F.). . . 11 Traill (H.D.). . 4, 5, 36 Trench (Capt. F.). . 37 Trench (Archbishop). 45 Trevelyan (Sir G. O.) 14, 28 Trevor (G. H.). . 20 Tribe (A.). 15 j ^ , 45 i 34, 45 47 30 45 34 45, 26 PAGE Tristram (W. O.). . 15 Trollope (A.) ... 5 Truman (J.) • .20 Tucker (T. G.). . 46 Tuckwell (W.). .14 Tufts (J. H.). . .32 Tulloch (Principal). . 45 Turner (C. Tennyson). 20 Turner (G.). . . 1 Turner (H. H.). . 34 Turner (J. M. W.). . 15 Turpin (G S.). . .9 Tvlor(E. B.). . 1 I'yrwhitt (R. St. J.) 3, 20 Tyrrell (R. Y.). 16,28 Vaughan(C. J.) 35, 43, 41, 45 Vaughan (Rev. D. j.)25,28 45 Vaughan (Rev. E.T.). 45 Vaughan (Rev. R.). . 45 Veley (M.). . .24 Venn (Rev. J.). . 33, 45 Vernon (Hon. W. W.). 17 Verrall (A. W.). 17,46 Verrall (Mrs.). . 2 Vickerman (C.). . 38 Victor (H.). . .24 Vines (S.H.) ... 8 Viollet-Le-Duc (E. E.). 10 Wain (Louis). . .48 Waldstein (C.). . 2 Wat ker (Prof. F. A.). 36 Walker (Jas.). . 8 Walker (Louisa). . 38 Wallace (A. R.). 7, 30, 36 Wallace (Sir D. M.). 37 Walpole(S.) ... 36 Walton (I.). . .15 Ward (A. W.). 4, «, 16, 25 Ward (H. M.). . " . 7, 8 Ward(S.). . . .20 Ward(T. H.) ... 21 Ward (Mrs. T. H.) . 24,49 Ward(W.) . . 6, 2, 4 x Ware(W. R.) . . . 3 Waters (C. A.) . . 35 Waterton (Charles) 30, 47 Watson (E.) ... 6 Watson (R. S.) . . 47 Watson (W.) . . 20, 25 Way (A. S.) . . . 46 Webb(W.T.) . . 18, 20 Webster (Mrs. A.) . 20, 49 Weisbach (J.) . . 10 Welby-Gregory (Lady) . 41 Wei.ldon (Rev. J. E. C.) 45,46 West(M.) . . .24 Westcott(Bp.)^8,39, 40,41, 45 Westermarck (E.). . 1 Wetherell (J.) . . 32 Wheeler (J. T.) . . 14 Wiiewei.l(W.). . . 6 Wiutcomi) (L. S.) . 3,16 White (A.) ... 28 White (Gilbert) . 15,31 PAGE • 29 • 34 • 9 , 26, 28 • 45 • 45 36, 3^ 35, 49 • 36 • 41 i6,45 • 3° C) ) 2, I4i White (Dr. W. Hale) White (W.) . Whitney (W. D.) Whittier (J. G.) Whittuck (C. A.) Wickham (Rev. E. Wicksteed (P. H.) Wiedersheim (R.) Wieser (F. von) Wilbraham (F. M.) Wilkins (Prof. A. S Wilkinson (S.) Willey (A.) Williams (C. M.) Williams (C. T.J Williams (G. H.) Williams (H.). Williams (Montagu) Williams (S. K.) Williamson (M. B.) Willink(A.). Willoughuy(E. F.) Willoughby (F.) Wills (W. G.). Wilson (A. J.). Wilson (Sir C.) Wilson (Sir D.) Wilson (E. B.). Wilson (Dr. O.) Wilson (Archdeacon) Wilson (Mary). Winchester (Bishop of;. Windelband (W.) . Wingate (Major F. R.) . Winkworth (C.) . . Winkworth (S.) . Winter (W.) . Wolsei.ey (Gen. Viscount) Wood (A. G.) . Wood (C.J.) . Wood (Rev. E. G.) . Woods (Rev. F. H.). Woods (Miss M. A.). Woodward (C. M.) . Woolner (T.) . Wordsworth 4, 6, 17,20,26,28, 4 32 29 11 16 45 14 49 20 17 SO 6,28- • 45 . 16 ° 15 3° . 20 • 45 , 45 1 ax, 42 . 10- . 20 Worthey (Mrs.) Wright (Rev. A.) Wright (MissG.) Wright (J.) Wright iL). Wright (M. O.) Wright (W.A.) WuLKER(Dr.). Wurtz (Ad.). Wyatt (SirM. D.) Yeo(J.). Yoe (Shway) Yonge(C.M.)6,8,9, 13, t 3, 14, 24, '6, 28, 32, 38, 49. Young (E.W.) 10 Younghusband(G. J. and F. E.). . . . 30. Ziegler (Dr. E.). .a) . 24 • 39 • 9, 26 • 34 • 2?, 3i 9,18,25,40 16 9 MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd, LONDON. /50/3/96 J. PALMER, fKINlbR, ALEXANDRA STREET, CAMBRIDGE.

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1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Pfleiderer, Otto

PFLEIDERER, OTTO (1839-1908), German Protestant theologian, was born at Stetten near Cannstadt in Württemberg on the 1st of September 1839. From 1857 to 1861 he studied at Tübingen under F. C. Baur; and afterwards in England and Scotland. He then entered the ministry, became repetent at Tübingen, and for a short time held a pastorate at Heilbronn (1868). In 1870 he became chief pastor and superintendent at Jena and soon afterwards professor ordinarius of theology, but in 1875 he was called to the chair of systematic theology at Berlin, having made his name by a series of articles on New Testament criticism and Johannine and Pauline theology, which appeared in Adolf Hilgenfeld's Zeitschrift für wissenschaftliche Theologie, and by his Der Paulinismus, published in 1873 (2nd ed., 1890; Eng. trans., Paulinism: a Contribution to the History of Primitive Christian Theology, 2 vols., 1873, &c.). Das Urchristentum, seine Schriften und Lehren, in geschichtlichem Zusammenhang beschrieben was published in 1878 and considerably enlarged for a second edition in 1902 (Eng. trans., 1906). In 1890 appeared The Development of Theology since Kant, and its Progress in Great Britain since 1825, which was written for publication in England. A more elaborate work was his Religionsphilosophie auf geschichtlichen Grundlage (1878; 2nd ed., enlarged, 1883-1884; Eng. trans., from 2nd German ed., The Philosophy of Religion on the Basis of its History, 4 vols., 1886-1888). “The Influence of the Apostle Paul on the Development of Christianity” was the title of a course of Hibbert Lectures given in London in 1885. In 1894 he delivered the Gifford Lectures at Edinburgh, the subject being “The Philosophy and Development of Religion.” His later publications included: The Early Christian Conception of Christ (1905), Die Entstehung des Christentums (1905; Eng. trans., 1906), Religion und Religionen (1906; Eng. trans., 1907), and Die Entwicklung des Christentums (1907). He died on the 18th of July 1908, at Gross Lichterfelde, near Berlin. In New Testament criticism Pfleiderer belonged to the critical school which grew out of the impulse given by F. C. Baur. But, like other modern German theologians, he showed a greater disposition to compromise. All his work shows a judicial tone of mind, and is remarkable for the charm of its style.

Pfleiderer's younger brother (1842-1902) distinguished himself both in philosophy and theology. He too entered the ministry (1864) and during the Franco-German War served as army chaplain, an experience described in his Erlebnisse eines Feldgeistlichen (1890). He was afterwards appointed professor ordinarius of philosophy at Kiel (1873), and in 1878 he was elected to the philosophical chair at Tübingen. He published works on Leibnitz, empiricism and scepticism in Hume's philosophy, modern pessimism, Kantic criticism, English philosophy, Heraclitus of Ephesus and many other subjects.


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 April, 1S96. A CLASSIFIED CATALOGUE OF BOOKS IN GENERAL LITERATURE PUBLISHED BY MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD. BEDFORD STREET, STRAND, LONDON, W.C. For purely Educational Works see MACMILLAN AND Co.'s Educational Catalogue. AGRICULTURE. {See also Botany ; Gardening. ) FRANKLAND (Prof. P. F.).— A Handbook of Agricultural Chemical Analysis. Cr. Svo. js. ad. KING(F. H.).— The Soil, Its Nature, etc. Fcp. 8vo. 3$. net. LAURIE (A. P.). — Primer of Agricultural Chemistry, or The Food of Plants. Pott 8vo. is. MUIR (J.).— Manual of Dairy Work. Pott Svo. is. Agriculture, Practical and Scien- tific. Cr. 8vo. 4s. 6d. NICHOLLS (H. A. A.).— Text Book of Tropical Agriculture. Cr. 8vo. 6s. TANNER (Henry). — Elementary Lessons in the Science of Agricultural Prac- tice. Fcp. 8vo. 3s. 6d. First Principles of Agriculture. Pott 8vo. is. - The Principles of Agriculture. For Use in Elementary Schools. Ext. fcp. 8vo. — The Alphabet of the Principles of Agriculture, 6d. — Further Steps in the Principles of Agriculture, i*. — Elementary School Readings on the Principles of Agriculture for the Third Stage, is. The Abbot's Farm ; or, Practice with Science. Cr. 8vo. 3.5. 6d. ANATOMY, Human. [See Physiology.) ANTHROPOLOGY. BROWN (J. Allen).— Paleolithic Man in North-West Middlesex. Svo. ys. 6d.

DAWKINS (Prof. W. Boyd).—Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period. Med. 8vo. 25s.

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 Little he dreamed of this dreary Now, Or that ever he should stand With the pistol-muzzle at her brow, The trigger in his hand!

They kissed—they clung in a last embrace, They prayed a last deep prayer— Then proudly she raised her tearful face, And——a corse lay shuddering there!

He stooped, his love's soft eyes to close, He smoothed the bright brown hair, Smiled on the crowd of baffled foes, Then, scattered his brains in air.

THE END

Printed by, Edinburgh.

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 with him before he shot himself, but I'll wager that he saw her, too, and smelled that Devil's incense."

De Grandin looked at me with upraised brows, then shook his head to caution silence ere he turned to face our guest. "And you, Monsieur?" he asked.

"Yes, I too. Don killed himself sometime in early afternoon, and I was home that day. I'd say that it was shortly after two, for I'd lunched at the City Club and come home to pack a bag and take a trip to Nantakee. I had the highboy open and was taking out some shirts when I began to notice a strange odor in the air. But it wasn't strange for long; as it grew stronger I recognized it as the scent of Herbules' incense. It grew so strong that it was almost overpowering. I stood there by the chest of drawers, smelling the increasing scent, and determined that I'd not turn round. You know how Coleridge puts it:

"The odor of the incense grew until I could have sworn somebody swung a censer right behind me. Then, suddenly, I heard the sound of falling water. Drip—drip—drip! it fell upon the floor, drop by deliberate drop. The suspense was more than I could bear, and I wheeled about.

"Marescha stood behind me, almost close enough to touch. Water trickled from the hair that hung in gleaming strands across her breast and shoulders, it hung in little gleaming globules on her pale, smooth skin, ran in little rivulets across her forehead, down her beautifully shaped legs, made tiny puddles on the polished floor beside each slim bare foot. I went almost sick with horror as I saw the knotted cords we'd used to tie the window-weights on her still bound about her ankles, water oozing from their coils. She did not seem dead. Her lovely slender body seemed as vital as when I had held it in my arms, her full and mobile lips were red with rouge, her eyes were neither set and staring nor expressionless. But they were sad, immeasurably sad. They seemed to probe into my spirit's very depths, asking, beseeching, entreating. And to make their plea more eloquent, she slowly raised her lovely hands and held them out to me, palms upward, lingers slightly curled, as though she besought alms.

"There was a faint resemblance to her bitter, crooked smile upon her lips, but it was so sad, so hopelessly entreating, that it almost made me weep to see it.

Mar' I began, but the name stuck in my throat. This couldn't be the body that I'd held against my heart, those lips were not the lips I'd kissed a thousand times; this was no girl of flesh and blood. Marescha lay deep in a grave in Shadow Lawns Cemetery; had lain there almost twenty years. Dust had filled those sad, entreating eyes long before the college freshmen of this year were born. The worms

"Somewhere I had heard that if you called upon the Trinity a ghost would vanish. 'In the name of the Father' I began, but it seemed as if a clap of thunder sounded in my ears.

What right have you to call upon the Triune God?' a mighty voice seemed asking. 'You who have mocked at Heaven, taken every sacred name in vain, made a jest of every holy thing—how dare you invoke Deity? Your sacrilegious lips cannot pronounce the sacred name!'

"And it was true. I tried again, but the words clogged in my throat; I tried to force them out, but only strangling inarticulacies sounded.

"Marescha's smile was almost pityingly


text: Talk:Rambles in New Zealand

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 time, as the result of his experience of many lands, that the new colony, being outside of 36 deg. south latitude, would not be scourged with droughts as had been New South Wales from her commencement. In great measure, and absolutely as regarding the western portions of Victoria, this prophecy has been borne out.

Sufficient time had elapsed for the army of mechanics, then established in Port Phillip, to erect many weatherboard and a few brick houses. Into a cottage of the latter construction we were hastily inducted, pending the finishing of a two-storied mansion in Flinders Street, not very far from Prince's Bridge. Bridge was there none in those days, it is hardly necessary to say; not even the humble one with wooden piers that spanned the stream later, and connected Melbourne people with the sandy forest of South Yarra, then much despised for its alleged agricultural inferiority: still there was a punt. You could get across, but not always when you wanted. And I recall the incident of Captain Brunswick Smyth, late of the 50th Regiment, and the first commandant of mounted police, riding down to the ferry, from which the guardian was absent—"sick, or drunk, or suthin"—and, with military impatience, dashing on board with a brace of troopers, who pulled the lumbering barge across, and fastened her to the farther shore.

Large trees at that time studded the green meadow, which, after the winter rain, was marshy and reed-covered. There did I shoot, and bear home with schoolboy pride, a blue crane—the Australian heron—who, being only wounded, "went near" to

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1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Pfeiffer, Ida Laura

PFEIFFER, IDA LAURA (1797-1858), Austrian traveller, daughter of a merchant named Reyer, was born at Vienna on the 14th of October 1797. In 1820 she married Dr Pfeiffer, a lawyer of Lemberg, who subsequently incurred official persecution and was reduced to poverty. In her later life Mme Pfeiffer devoted her limited means to travel. In 1842 she visited Palestine and Egypt, and published an account of her journey in Reise einer Wienerin in das Heilige Land (Vienna, 1843). In 1845 she set out to Scandinavia and Iceland, describing her tour in two volumes, Reise nach dem skandinavischen Norden und der Insel Island (Pest, 1846). In 1846 she started on a journey round the world, visiting Brazil, Chile and other countries of South America, Tahiti, China, India, Persia, Asia Minor and Greece, and reaching home in 1848. The results were published in Eine Frauenfahrt um die Welt (Vienna, 1850). In 1851 she went to England and thence to South Africa, intending to penetrate into the interior; this proved impracticable, but she proceeded to the Malay Archipelago, spending eighteen months in the Sunda Islands and the Moluccas. After a visit to Australia, Madame Pfeiffer proceeded to California, Oregon, Peru, Ecuador, New Granada, the Missiones Territory, and north again to the Great Lakes, reaching home in 1854. Her narrative, Meine zweite Weltreise, was published at Vienna in 1856. In May of the same year she set out to explore Madagascar, where at first she

was cordially received by the queen. But she unwittingly allowed herself to be involved in a plot to overthrow the government, and was expelled the country. She died at Vienna on the 27th of October 1858.


text: Category:User ast-1

title: Category:User ast-1


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1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Pfeiffer, Franz

PFEIFFER, FRANZ (1815-1868), German scholar, was born at Bettlach near Soleure on the 27th of February 1815. After studying at the university of Munich he went to Stuttgart, where in 1846 he became librarian to the royal library. In 1856 Pfeiffer founded the Germania, a quarterly periodical devoted to German antiquarian research. In 1857, having established his fame as one of the foremost authorities on German medieval literature and philology, he was appointed professor of these subjects at the university of Vienna; and in 1860 was made a member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences. He died at Vienna on the 29th of May 1868.


text:
1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Pfalzburg

PFALZBURG, a town of Germany, in the imperial province of Alsace-Lorraine, lies high on the west slopes of the Vosges, 25 m. N.W. of Strassburg by rail. Pop. (1905), 3716. It contains an Evangelical and a Roman Catholic church, a synagogue and a teachers' seminary. Its industries include the manufacture of gloves, straw hats and liqueurs, and also quarrying.

The principality of Pfalzburg, of which this town was the capital, originally a part of Luxemburg, afterwards belonged in turn to the bishop of Metz, the bishop of Strassburg and the duke of Lorraine, and passed into the possession of France in 1661. The town was of importance as commanding the passes of the Vosges, and was strongly fortified by Vauban in 1680. The works resisted the Allies in 1814 and 1815, and the Germans for four months in 1870, but they were taken on the 12th of December of that year. They have since been razed.

title: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Pfalzburg


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1535.] longer. The boughs were bare, the stem was withered, the veins were choked with corruption; the ancient life-tree of monasticism would blossom and bear fruit no more. Faith had sunk into superstition; duty had died into routine; and the monks, whose technical discipline was forgotten, and who were set free by their position from the discipline of ordinary duty, had travelled swiftly on the downhill road of human corruption.

Only light reference will be made in this place to the darker scandals by which the abbeys were dishonoured. Such things there really were, to an extent which it may be painful to believe, but which evidence too abundantly proves. It is better, however, to bury the recollection of the more odious forms of human depravity; and so soon as those who condemn the Reformation have ceased to deny what the pain fulness of the subject only has allowed to remain disputed, the sins of the last English monks will sleep with them in their tombs. Here, in spite of such denials, the most offensive pictures shall continue to be left in the shade; and persons who wish to gratify their curiosity, or satisfy their unbelief, may consult the authorities for themselves. I shall confine my own efforts rather to


text: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Pfaff, Johann Friedrich


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302 the explanation of the practical, and, in the highest sense of the word, political, abuses, which, on the whole, perhaps, told most weightily on the serious judgment, of the age.

The abbeys, then, as the State regarded them, existed for the benefit of the poor. The occupants for the time being were themselves under vows of poverty; they might appropriate to their personal use no portion of the revenues of their estates; they were to labour with their own hands, and administer their property for the public advantage. The surplus proceeds of the lands, when their own modest requirements had been supplied, were to be devoted to the maintenance of learning, to the exercise of a liberal hospitality, and to the relief of the aged, the impotent, and the helpless. The popular clamour of the day declared that these duties were systematically neglected; that two-thirds, at least, of the religious bodies abused their opportunities unfairly for their own advantage; and this at a time when the obligations of all property were defined as strictly as its rights, and negligent lay owners were promptly corrected by the State whenever occasion required. The monks, it was believed, lived in idleness, keeping vast retinues of servants to do the work which they ought to have done themselves. They were accused of sharing dividends by mutual connivance,


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 pick out one of my eyes, wounding my cheek-bone with a sudden stab of his closed beak. The lovely bronze-wing pigeons were plentiful then amid the wild forest tracks of Newtown, afterwards Collingwood. Many times have I and my boy comrades stood at no great distance from the present populous suburb and wondered whether we were going straight for the "settlement," as we then irreverently styled the wonder-city. The streets of the new-born town had been "ruled off," as some comic person phrased it, very straight and wide; but there had not been sufficient money as yet available from the somewhat closely-guarded distant Treasury of Sydney to clear them from stumps. However, as in most communities during the speculative stage, any amount was forthcoming when required for purposes of amusement. Balls, picnics, races, and dinners were frequent and fashionable. Driving home from one of the first-named entertainments, through the lampless streets, a carriage, piloted by a gallant officer, came to signal grief against a stump. The ladies were thrown out, the carriage thrown over, and the charioteer fractured. Paterfamilias, absent on business, marked his disapproval of the expedition by resolutely refraining from repairing the vehicle. For years after it stood in the back yard with cracked panels, a monument of domestic miscalculation.

It must be terribly humiliating to the survivors of that "first rush" to consider what untold wealth lay around them in the town and suburban allotments, which the most guarded investment would have secured. The famous subdivision in Collins Street, upon which the present Bank of Australasia now

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1535.] they were forbidden by their rule to possess any private property whatever, and of wandering about the country in the disguise of laymen in pursuit of forbidden indulgences. They were bound by their statutes to keep their houses full, and if their means were enlarged, to increase their numbers; they were supposed to have allowed their complement to fall to half, and sometimes to a third, of the original foundation, fraudulently reserving the enlarged profits to themselves. It was thought, too, that they had racked their estates; that having a life-interest only, they had encumbered them with debts, mortgages, and fines; that in some cases they had wholly alienated lands, of which they had less right to dispose than a modern rector of his glebe. In the mean time, it was said that the poor were not fed, that hospitality was neglected, that the buildings and houses were falling to waste, that fraud and simony prevailed among them from the highest to the lowest, that the abbots sold the presentations to the benefices which were in their gift, or dishonestly retained the cures of souls in their own hands, careless whether the duties of the parishes could or could not be discharged; and that, finally, the vast majority of the monks themselves were ignorant, self-indulgent, profligate, worthless, dissolute.

These, in addition to the heavier accusations, were the charges which the popular voice had for more than


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304 a century brought against the monasteries, which had led Wycliffe to denounce their existence as intolerable, the House of Commons to petition Henry IV. for the secularization of their property, and Henry V. to appease the outcry, by the suppression of more than a hundred, as an ineffectual warning to the rest. At length, in the year 1489, at the instigation of Cardinal Morton, then Archbishop of Canterbury, a commission was issued by Innocent VIII. for a general investigation throughout England into the behaviour of the regular clergy. The Pope said that he had heard, from persons worthy of credit, that abbots and monks in many places were systematically faithless to their vows; he conferred on the Archbishop a special power of visitation, and directed him to admonish, to correct, to punish, as might seem to him to be desirable. On the receipt of these instructions, Morton addressed the following letter to the superior of an abbey within a few miles of London—a peer of the realm, living in the full glare of notoriety—a person whose offences, such as they were, had been committed openly, palpably, and conspicuously in the face of the world:—

'John, by Divine permission, Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of all England, Legate of the Apostolic See, to William, Abbot of the Monastery of St Alban's, greeting.


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1489.] 'We have received certain letters under lead, the copies whereof we herewith send you, from our most holy Lord and Father in Christ, Innocent, by Divine Providence Pope, the eighth of that name. We therefore, John, the Archbishop, the visitor, reformer, inquisitor, and judge therein mentioned, in reverence for the Apostolic See, have taken upon ourselves the burden of enforcing the said commission; and have determined that we will proceed by, and according to, the full force, tenour, and effect of the same.

'And it has come to our ears, being at once publicly notorious and brought before us upon the testimony of many witnesses worthy of credit, that you, the abbot aforementioned, have been of long time noted and diffamed, and do yet continue so noted, of simony, of usury, of dilapidation and waste of the goods, revenues, and possessions of the said monastery, and of certain other enormous crimes and excesses hereafter written. In the rule, custody, and administration of the goods, spiritual and temporal, of the said monastery, you are so remiss, so negligent, so prodigal, that whereas the said monastery was of old times founded and endowed by the pious devotion of illustrious princes of famous memory, heretofore kings of this land, the most noble progenitors of our most serene Lord and King that now is, in order that true religion might flourish there, that the name of the Most High, in whose honour and glory it was instituted, might be duly celebrated there;

'And whereas, in days heretofore the regular


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306 of the said rule was greatly regarded, and hospitality was diligently kept;

'Nevertheless, for no little time, during which you have presided in the same monastery, you and certain of your fellow monks and brethren (whose blood, it is feared, through your neglect, a severe Judge will require at your hand) have relaxed the measure and form of religious life; you have laid aside the pleasant yoke of contemplation, and all regular observances; hospitality, alms, and those other offices of piety which of old time were exercised and ministered therein have decreased, and by your faults, your carelessness, your neglect and deed, do daily decrease more and more, and cease to be regarded—the pious vows of the founders are defrauded of their just intent; the antient rule of your order is deserted; and not a few of your fellow monks and brethren, as we most deeply grieve to learn, giving themselves over to a reprobate mind, laying aside the fear of God, do lead only a life of lasciviousness—nay, as is horrible to relate, be not afraid to defile the holy places, even the very churches of God, by infamous intercourse with nuns.

'You yourself, moreover, among other grave enormities and abominable crimes whereof you are guilty, and for which you are noted and diffamed, have, in the first place, admitted a certain married woman, named Elena Germyn, who has separated herself without just cause from her husband, and for some time past has lived in adultery with another man, to be a nun or sister in the house or Priory of Pray, lying, as you pretend,


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 stands, was purchased by the Wesleyan denomination for £70! Acres and half-acres in Flinders, Collins, and Elizabeth Streets were purchased at the first Government sales held in Sydney at similar and lower rates. I have heard the late Mr. Jacques, at that time acting as Crown auctioneer, selling at the Sydney markets ever so much of Williamstown, at prices which would cause the heart of the land-dealer of the present day to palpitate strangely. I can hear now the old gentleman's full, sonorous voice rolling out the words, "Allotment so-and-so, parish of Will-will-rook," the native names being largely and very properly used. "Villamanatah" and "Maribyrnong" occurred, I think, pretty often in the same series of sales. The invariable increase in prices after the first sales led naturally to a species of South Sea stock bubbledom. He who bought to-day—and men of all classes shared in the powerful excitement—was so certain of an advance of 25, 50, or cent per cent, that every one who could command the wherewithal hastened to the land lottery, where every ticket was a prize. Speculative eagles in flocks were gathered around the carcase. Borrowing existed then, though undeveloped as one of the fine arts compared to its latest triumphs; bills, even in that struggling infancy of banking, were thick in the air. Successful or prospective sales necessitated champagne lunches, whereby the empty bottles—erstwhile filled with that cheerful vintage—accumulated in stacks around the homes and haunts of the leading operators. The reigning Governor-General, on a flying visit to the non-mineral precursor of Ballarat and Bendigo, noted the unparalleled

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1489.] within your jurisdiction. You have next appointed the same woman to be prioress of the said house, notwithstanding that her said husband was living at the time, and is still alive. And finally, Father Thomas Sudbury, one of your brother monks, publicly, notoriously, and without interference or punishment from you, has associated, and still associates, with this woman as an adulterer with his harlot.

'Moreover, divers other of your brethren and fellow monks have resorted, and do resort, continually to her and other women at the same place, as to a public brothel or receiving house, and have received no correction therefor.

'Nor is Pray the only house into which you have introduced disorder. At the nunnery of Sapwell, which you also contend to be under your jurisdiction, you change the prioresses and superiors again and again at your own will and caprice. Here, as well as at Pray, you depose those who are good and religious; you promote to the highest dignities the worthless and the vicious. The duties of the order are cast aside; virtue is neglected; and by these means so much cost and extravagance has been caused, that to provide means for your indulgence you have introduced certain of your brethren to preside in their houses under the name of guardians, when in fact they are no guardians, but thieves and notorious villains; and with their help you have caused and permitted the goods of the same priories to be dispensed, or to speak more truly to be dissipated, in the above-described corruptions and other enormous


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308 and accursed offences. Those places once religious are rendered and reputed as it were profane and impious; and by your own and your creatures' conduct are so impoverished as to be reduced to the verge of ruin.

'In like manner, also, you have dealt with certain other cells of monks, which you say are subject to you, even within the monastery of the glorious proto-martyr, Alban himself. You have dilapidated the common property; you have made away with the jewels; the copses, the woods, the underwood, almost all the oaks and other forest trees, to the value of eight thousand marks and more, you have made to be cut down without distinction, and they have by you been sold and alienated. The brethren of the abbey, some of whom, as is reported, are given over to all the evil things of the world, neglect the service of God altogether. They live with harlots and mistresses publicly and continuously, within the precincts of the monastery and without. Some of them, who are covetous of honour and promotion, and desirous therefore of pleasing your cupidity, have stolen and made away with the chalices and other jewels of the church. They have even sacrilegiously extracted the precious stones from the very shrine of St Alban; and you have not punished these men, but have rather knowingly supported and maintained them. If any of your brethren be living justly and religiously, if any be wise and virtuous, these you straightway depress and hold in hatred.… You.…'

But this overwhelming document need not be transcribed further. It pursues its way through mire and


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, and, it is said, refused on that account some request of the self-elected Patres Conscripti of our Rome in long clothes. Farms, in blocks of forty and eighty acres, had been marked off above the Yarra Falls. They had been purchased at prices tending to be high, as prices ruled then. But they could not have been really high, for one of them, since pretty well known as Toorak, for years rented for several thousands per annum, and possessing a value of about £1000 each for its eighty acres, was purchased by an early colonist for less than £1000, all told. It was subsequently sold by him, under the crushing pressure of the panic of 1842 and 1843, for £120.

What a different place was the Flemington racecourse, say, when Victor and Sir Charles ran for the Town Plate—when Romeo's white legs and matchless shoulder were to be seen thereon—when Jack Hunter's filly, Hellcat, won the Sir Charles Purse, furnished by a generous stud patron for the owners of descendants of that forgotten courser. Fancy the change to the Cup day with Martini-Henry coming in! Where racing springs up, there also do differences of opinion frequently occur. With respect to the said victory of Hellcat, then the property of Jack Hunter, it was objected by a well-known "horse couper" of the day, known as "Hopping Jack," that she was no true descendant of Sir Charles. He was contradicted very flatly, and sufficient proof having been afforded to the stewards, her owner received the stakes. Still the mighty mind of John Ewart held distrust as he ambled home, dangling his "game" leg on his eel-backed bay horse, the same which carried him overland from Sydney to Melbourne in

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1489.] filth to its most lame and impotent conclusion. The abbot was not deposed; he was invited merely to reconsider his conduct, and, if possible, amend it.

Offences similar in kind and scarcely less gross were exposed at Waltham, at St Andrew's, Northampton, at Calais, and at other places. Again, a reprimand was considered to be an adequate punishment.

Evils so deep and so abominable would not yield to languid treatment; the visitation had been feeble in its execution and limited in extent. In 1511 a second was attempted by Archbishop Warham. This inquiry was more partial than the first, yet similar practices were brought to light: women introduced to religious houses; nuns and abbesses accusing one another of incontinency, the alms collected in the chapels squandered by the monks in licentiousness. Once more, no cure was attempted beyond a paternal admonition. A third effort was made by Wolsey twelve years later: again exposure followed, and again no remedy was found.

If the condition of the abbeys had appeared intolerable before investigation, still less could it be endured when the justice of the accusations against them had been ascertained. But the Church was unequal to the work of self-reformation. Parliament alone could decide on the measures which the emergency made necessary; and preparatory to legislation, the true circumstances and present character of the religious bodies throughout


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310 the whole country were to be ascertained accurately and completely.

Accordingly, in the summer of 1535, directly after Sir Thomas More's execution, Cromwell, now 'vicegerent of the King in all his ecclesiastical jurisdiction within the realm,' issued a commission for a general visitation of the religious houses, the Universities, and other spiritual corporations. The persons appointed to conduct the inquiry were Doctors Legh, Leyton, and Ap Rice, ecclesiastical lawyers in holy orders, with various subordinates. Legh and Leyton, the two principal commissioners, were young, impetuous men, likely to execute their work rather thoroughly than delicately; but, to judge by the surviving evidence, they were as upright and plain-dealing as they were assuredly able and efficient. It is pretended by some writers that the inquiry was set on foot with a preconceived purpose of spoliation; that the duty of the visitors was rather to defame roundly than to report truly; and that the object of the commission was merely to justify an act of appropriation which had been already determined. The commission of Pope Innocent, with the previous inquiries, puts to silence so gratuitous a supposition; while it is certain that antecedent to the presentation of the report, an extensive measure of suppression was not so much as contemplated. The directions to the visitors, the injunctions which they were to carry with them to the various houses, the private letters to the


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 ten days—six hundred miles. "A sworn horse-courser," like Blount, was Hopping Jack, and, unlike Marmion's fast squire, had ridden many a steeplechase. In the quickly shifting adventure-scope of the day it chanced that the two Jacks went to sea, desiring to revisit Scotia, doubtless for their pecuniary benefit. A great storm arose, and the homeward-bound vessel was wrecked. The passengers barely escaped with their lives, and were forced to return to Port Phillip. At one period of the disaster there was little or no hope for the lives of all. As they clung gloomily to the uplifted deck—fast on a reef—Hopping Jack approached Mr. Hunter with a grave and resolved air. All waited to hear his words. In that solemn hour he proved the exquisite accuracy of the thought, "The ruling passion strong in death," by thus adjuring his turf acquaintance, "Look here, Mr. Hunter, we shall all be in — — in twenty minutes, it can't matter much now. Was Hellcat really a Sir Charles?" History is silent as to the reply.

How strange a Melbourne would the picture—still distinctly photographed on memory's wondrous "negative"—present to the inhabitant of 1884. A solitary wood cart is struggling down from the direction of Brighton along the unmade sandy track, patiently to await the convenience of the puntman. Frank Liardet is driving his unicorn omnibus team from the lonely beach, where now the sailors revel in many a glittering bar, and the tall sugar-refinery chimney "lifts its head" and smokes—or, at any rate, did recently. The squatter's wool-freighted bullock-teams lumber along the deep ruts of Flinders

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 Lane. John Pascoe Fawkner bustles up and down the western end, at that time the fashionable part, of Collins Street. The eastern portion of that street—now decorated with palatial clubs and treasuries, and dominated by doctors—was then principally known as "the way to the Plenty," a rivulet on the banks of which still abode certain cheerful young agricultural aristocrats, who had not had time quite to ruin themselves. Now a whole tribe of blacks—wondering and frightened, young and old, warriors and greybeards, women and children—is being driven along Collins Street by troopers, on their way to the temporary gaol, there to be incarcerated for real or fancied violence. The philanthropist may console himself with the knowledge that they burrowed under their dungeon slabs and, I think, escaped. If not, they were released next day.

Mr. Latrobe, successor of Captain Lonsdale, on a state day—not styled Governor, but his Honour the Superintendent—is riding towards Batman's Hill on a crop-eared hog-maned cob, yclept Knockercroghery, attired in uniform, escorted by Captain Smyth and his terrible mounted police, the only military force of the day. The great plains, the wide forest-parks, shut closely in the little town on every side. Countless swans and ducks are disporting themselves in unscared freedom upon the great West Melbourne marsh. The travel-stained squatter rides wearily up to the livery stable, as yet unable to shorten by coach or rail a mile of his journey.

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 THE FAR WEST

It seems only the other day—but surely it must be a long time ago—that January evening of 1844, when I camped my cattle near the old burying-ground at North Melbourne. I was bound for the Western district, where I proposed to "take up a run." And towards this pastoral paradise the dawn saw my "following" winding its way next morning.

A modest drove and slender outfit were mine; all that the hard times had spared. Two or three hundred well-bred cattle, a dray and team with provisions for six months, two stock-horses, one faithful old servant, one young ditto (unfaithful), £1 in my purse—voilà tout. Rather a limited capital to begin the world with; but what did I want with money in those days? I was a boy, which means a prince—happy, hopeful, healthy, beyond all latter-day possibilities, bound on a journey to seek my fortune. All the fairy-tale conditions were fulfilled. I had "horse to ride and weapon to wear"—that is, a 12-foot stock-whip by Nangus Jack—clothes, tools, guns, and ammunition; a new world around and

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Page:The Holy Bible, containing the Old & New Testament & the Apocrypha.djvu/900

Rh the Lord, and before his anointed: whose ox have I taken? or whose ass have I taken? or whom have I defrauded? whom have I oppressed? or of whose hand have I received any bribe to blind mine eyes therewith? and I will restore it you. And they said, Thou hast not defrauded us, nor oppressed us, neither hast thou taken ought of any man's hand. And he said unto them, The Lord is witness against you, and his anointed is witness this day, that ye have not found ought in my hand. And they answered, He is witness.

And Samuel said unto the people. It is the Lord that advanced Moses and Aaron, and that brought your fathers up out of the land of Egypt. Now therefore stand still, that I may reason with you before the Lord of all the righteous acts of the Lord, which he did to you and to your fathers. When Jacob was come into Egypt, and your fathers cried unto the Lord, then the Lord sent Moses and Aaron, which brought forth your fathers out of Egypt, and made them dwell in this place. And when they forgat the Lord their God, he sold them into the hand of Sisera, captain of the host of Hazor, and into the hand of the Philistines, and into the hand of the king of Moab, and they fought against them. And they cried unto the Lord, and said, We have sinned, because we have forsaken the Lord, and have served Baalim and Ashtaroth: but now de-


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 436 What the value of the gold, silver, and precious stones in the cathedral at present may be, I have no idea, and no one can do more than make a random guess at it. I was greatly disappointed in the cathedral of Mexico, which is much dilapidated, dusty, and tarnished throughout, and fell far short of my ideal, formed from descriptions I had read of it; but the cathedral of Puebla far surpassed my expectations.

We visited many other churches, the old college of the Jesuits, and the library—now secularized and thrown open to the public—which contains twenty-four thousand four hundred volumes, mostly of great age, and valuable only to the antiquarian; the school of design; the Glass Factory of Puebla, which is among the most extensive and complete works of the kind on the continent; the hills and fortifications of Loreto and Guadaloupe, from which the French army, forty thousand strong, was repulsed in the attack of the Cinco de Mayo, and many other objects of interest in and around Puebla.

Among the places visited was the Public Hospital of San Pedro, an excellent institution, clean, neat, and admirably managed, containing one hundred and sixty-three patients, of which fifty were women. While there, a printed slip was handed around with the following inscription:

"The American and Mexican Union are Sisters. Therefore the Asylums of the sick of Puebla, present their respects to the Hon. Mr. Seward as one of their Brothers. Hospital gral de San Pedro Diciembre 21 de 1869."

The manifestations in honor of Mr. Seward closed with a dinner to forty gentlemen, mostly Mexicans.