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THE IVORY TOWER indeed how could there be better proof than this present lucidity of her appeal to Mr. Betterman's guest on such a matter as her prompt thought for sparing him delay?

"If she didn't want you to wait to dress, it can only be, I guess, to make sure of seeing you before anything happens," his guide was at no loss to remark; "and if she can mention dinner while the old gentleman is—well, as he is—it shows she's not too beside herself to feel that you'll at any rate want yours."

"Oh for mercy's sake don't talk of dinner!" Gray pulled up under the influence of these revelations quite impatiently to request. "That's not what I'm most thinking of, I beg you to believe, in the midst of such prodigies and portents." They had crossed the small stretch of road which separated Mr. Betterman's gate from that of the residence they were addressed to; and now, within the grounds of this latter, which loomed there, through vague boskages, with an effect of windows numerously and precipitately lighted, the forces of our young friend's consciousness were all in vibration at once. "My wondrous uncle, I don't mind telling you, since you're so kind to me, has given me more extraordinary things to think of than I see myself prepared in any way to do justice to; and if I'm further to understand you that we have between us, you and I, destroyed this valuable life, I leave you to 123


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THE IVORY TOWER judge whether what we may have to face in consequence finds me eager."

"How do you know it's such a valuable life?" Miss Mumby surprisingly rejoined; sinking that question, however, in a livelier interest, before his surprise could express itself. "If she has sent me for you it's because she knows what she's about, and because I also know what I am—so that, wanting you myself so much to come, I guess I'd have gone over for you on my own responsibility. Why, Mr. Fielder, your place is right here by her at such a time as this, and if you don't already realise it I'm very glad I've helped you."

Such was the consecration under which, but a few minutes later, Gray found himself turning about in the lamp-lit saloon of the Gaws very much as he had a few hours before revolved at the other house. Miss Mumby had introduced him into this apartment straight from the terrace to which, in the warm air, a long window or two stood open, and then had left him with the assurance that matters upstairs would now be in shape for their friend to join him at once. It was perhaps because he had rather inevitably expected matters upstairs—and this in spite of his late companion's warning word—to assault him in some fulness with Miss Gaw's appearance at the door, that a certain failure of any such effect when she did appear had for him a force, even if it was hardly yet to be called a sense, beyond any air of her 124

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THE IVORY TOWER advancing on the tide of pain. He fairly took in, face to face with her, that what she first called for was no rattle of sound, however considerately pitched, about the question of her own fear; she had pulled no long face, she cared for no dismal deference: she but stood there, after she had closed the door with a backward push that took no account, in the hushed house, of some possible resonance, she but stood there smiling in her mild extravagance of majesty, smiling and smiling as he had seen women do as a preface to bursting into tears. He was to remember afterwards how he had felt for an instant that whatever he said or did would deprive her of resistance to an inward pressure which was growing as by the sight of him, but that she would thus break down much more under the crowned than under the menaced moment—thanks to which appearance what could be stranger than his inviting her to clap her hands? Still again was he later to recall that these hands had been the moment after held in his own while he knew himself smiling too and saying: "Well, well, well, what wonders and what splendours!" and seeing that though there was even more of her in presence than he had reckoned there was somehow less of her in time; as if she had at once grown and grown and grown, grown in all sorts of ways save the most natural one of growing visibly older. Such an oddity as that made her another person a good deal more than 125


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THE IVORY TOWER her show of not having left him behind by any break with their common youth could keep her the same.

These perceptions took of course but seconds, with yet another on their heels, to the effect that she had already seen him, and seen him to some fine sense of pleasure, as himself enormously different—arriving at that clearness before they had done more than thus waver between the "fun," all so natural, of their meeting as the frankest of friends and the quite other intelligence of their being parties to a crisis. It was to remain on record for him too, and however overscored, that their crisis, surging up for three or four minutes by its essential force, suffered them to stand there, with irrelevant words and motions, very much as if it were all theirs alone and nobody's else, nobody's more important, on either side, than they were, and so take a brush from the wing of personal romance. He let her hands go, and then, if he wasn't mistaken, held them afresh a moment in repeated celebration, he exchanged with her the commonest remarks and the flattest and the easiest, so long as it wasn't speaking but seeing, and seeing more and more, that mattered: they literally talked of his journey and his arrival and of whether he had had a good voyage and wasn't tired; they said "You sit here, won't you?" and "Shan't you be better there?"—they said "Oh I'm all right!" and "Fancy it's happening 126


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 all forms, however arbitrary they may be as to their literary structure.

As to the several species of the Hebrew Poetry, it can only be in an accommodated sense that we could apply to it any of those terms that belong to the Poetry of Greece, and which had their origin in the artistic intelligence of its people. There would be little meaning in the words if we spoke of Odes, Lyrics, or Epics, in this case. The Hebrew Poetry has its kinds; but they are peculiar to itself: it has originated species of Poetry: it has conformed itself to no models: it has sprung from nothing earlier than itself; or nothing that is extant:—it has had no cognates among contemporary literatures. Through the medium of innumerable versions the Biblical literature has combined itself in an intimate manner with the intellectual existence of modern (civilized) nations. Every people has made its wealth their own: in truth, itself drawing its force from the deepest and most universal principles of human nature, the Hebrew Scriptures, when once they have thoroughly permeated the popular mind, become an undistinguishable element, not only of the religious and the moral life of the people, but, to a great extent, of their intellectual life also. With ourselves—the British people—the Inspired writings of the Old Testament have become to us the milk of infancy and childhood, and the nourishment of manhood in its most robust stage. It is to these books that we owe whatever


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THE IVORY TOWER after all like this!" before there even faintly quavered the call of a deeper note. This was really because the deep one, from minute to minute, was that acute hush of her so clearly finding him not a bit what she might have built up. He had grown and grown just as she had, certainly; only here he was for her clothed in the right interest of it, not bare of that grace as he fancied her guessing herself in his eyes, and with the conviction sharply thrust upon him, beyond any humour he might have cultivated, that he was going to be so right for her and so predetermined, whatever he did and however he should react there under conditions incalculable, that this would perhaps more overload his consciousness than ease it. It could have been further taken for strange, had there been somebody so to note it, that even when their first vaguenesses dropped what she really at once made easiest for him was to tell her that the wonderful thing had come to pass, the thing she had whisked him over for—he put it to her that way; that it had taken place in conditions too exquisite to be believed, and that under the bewilderment produced by these she must regard him as still staggering.

"Then it's done, then it's done—as I knew it would be if he could but see you." Flushed, but with her large fan held up so that scarce more than her eyes, their lids drawn together in the same nearsighted way he remembered, presented 127


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 in our literature possesses most of simple majesty and force; whatever is the most fully fraught with feeling; whatever is the most true to nature, when nature is truest to virtue, and to wisdom. Whatever it is that enters, as by right, the moral consciousness;—whatever it is that the most effectively draws the soul away from its cleaving to the dust, and lifts the thoughts towards a brighter sphere—all such elements of our English literature, whether avowedly so or not, must trace their rise, directly or indirectly, to the Hebrew Scriptures, and especially to those portions of them that are, in spirit and in form, poetic.

If we were to affirm that certain portions of this Poetry are descriptive, or moral, or pastoral, this would be to misunderstand the purport of the samples we might adduce of these kinds. Vividly conscious as these writers, or most of them, are to what is sublime and beautiful in the visible world, they are thus conscious toward the things around them in one sense only—namely, as parts of God's creation. The Hebrew poet attempts no local description:—he does not dwell upon the picturesque;—albeit our modern sense of the picturesque has sprung from tastes and habits that have had their rise in the Hebrew Scriptures; nor do they at any time stop on their way to bring before us the scenic characteristics of their country. None of them has leisure to paint particular scenes, as do our Thomson, or Burns, or Cowper. It is a glance only that


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THE IVORY TOWER themselves over it, she fairly hunched her high shoulders higher for emphasis of her success. The more it might have embarrassed her to consider him without reserve the more she had this relief, as he took it, of her natural, her helpful blinking; so that what it came to really for her general advantage was that the fine closing of the eyes, the fine thing in her big face, but expressed effective scrutiny. Below her in stature—as various other men, for that matter, couldn't but be—he hardly came higher than her ear; and he for the shade of an instant struck himself as a small boy, literally not of man's estate, reporting, under some research, just to the amplest of mothers. He had reported to Mr. Betterman, so far as intent candour in him hadn't found itself distraught, and for the half hour had somehow affronted the immeasurable; but that didn't at all prevent his now quick sense of his never in his life having been so watched and waited upon by the uncharted infinite, or so subject to its operation—since infinites, at the rate he was sinking in, could apparently operate, and do it too without growing smaller for the purpose. He cast about, not at all upright on the small pink satin sofa to which he had unconsciously dropped; it was for him clearly to grow bigger, as everything about expressively smiled, smiled absolutely through the shadow cast by doctors and nurses again, in suggestion of; which, naturally, was what one would 128


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THE IVORY TOWER always want to do—but which any failure of, he after certain moments perfectly felt, wouldn't convert to the least difference for this friend. How could that have been more established than by her neglect of his having presently said, out of his particular need, that he would do anything in reason that was asked of him, but that he fairly ached with the desire to understand? She blinked upon his ache to her own sufficiency, no doubt; but no further balm dropped upon it for the moment than by her appearing to brood with still deeper assurance, in her place and her posture, on the beauty of the accomplished fact, the fact of her performed purpose and her freedom now but to take care—yes, herself take care—for what would come of it. She might understand that he didn't—all the way as yet; but nothing could be more in the line of the mild and mighty mother than her treating that as a trifle. It attenuated a little perhaps, it just let light into the dark warmth of her spreading possession of what she had done, that when he had said, as a thing already ten times on his lips and now quite having to come out, "I feel some big mistake about me somehow at work, and want to stop it in time!" she met this with the almost rude decision of "There's nothing you can stop now, Graham, for your fate, or our situation, has the gained momentum of a rush that began ever so far away and that has been growing and growing. 129


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THE IVORY TOWER It would be too late even if we wanted to—and you can judge for yourself how little that's my wish. So here we are, you see, to make the best of it."

"When you talk of my 'fate,'" he allowed himself almost the amusement of answering, "you freeze the current of my blood; but when you say 'our situation,' and that we're in it together, that's a little better, and I assure you that I shall not for a moment stay in anything, whatever it may be, in which you're not close beside me. So there you are at any rate—and I matter at least as much as this, whatever the mistake: that I have hold of you as tight as ever you've been held in your life, and that, whatever and whatever the mistake, you've got to see me through."

"Well, I took my responsibility years ago, and things came of it"—so she made reply; "and the other day I took this other, and now this has come of it, and that was what I wanted, and wasn't afraid of, and am not afraid of now—like the fears that came to me after the Dresden time." No more direct than that was her answer to his protest, and what she subjoined still took as little account of it. "I rather lost them, those old fears—little by little; but one of the things I most wanted the other day was to see whether before you here they wouldn't wholly die down. They're over, they're over," she repeated; "I knew three minutes of you would do it—and not a ghost of them remains." 130


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THE IVORY TOWER "I can't be anything but glad that you shouldn't have fears—and it's horrid to me to learn, I assure you," he said, "that I've ever been the occasion of any. But the extent to which," he then frankly laughed, "'three minutes' of me seems to be enough for people!"

He left it there, just throwing up his arms, passive again as he had accepted his having to be in the other place; but conscious more and more of the anomaly of her showing so markedly at such an hour a preoccupation, and of the very intensest, that should not have her father for its subject. Nothing could have more represented this than her abruptly saying to him, without recognition of his point just made, so far as it might have been a point: "If your impression of your uncle, and of his looking so fine and being so able to talk to you, makes you think he has any power really to pick up or to last, I want you to know that you're wholly mistaken. It has kept him up," she went on, "and the effect may continue a day or two more—it will, in fact, till certain things are done. But then the flicker will have dropped—for he won't want it not to. He'll feel all right. The extraordinary inspiration, the borrowed force, will have spent itself—it will die down and go out, but with no pain. There has been at no time much of that," she said, "and now I'm positively assured there's none. It can't come back—nothing can but the weakness. It's 131


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THE IVORY TOWER too lovely," she remarkably added—"so there indeed and indeed we are."

To take in these words was to be, after a fashion he couldn't have expressed, on a basis of reality with her the very rarest and queerest; so that, bristling as it did with penetrative points, her speech left him scarce knowing for the instant which penetrated furthest. That she made no more of anything he himself said than if she had just sniffed it as a pale pink rose and then tossed it into the heap of his other sweet futilities, such another heap as had seemed to grow up for him in his uncle's room, this might have pressed sharpest hadn't something else, not wholly overscored by what followed, perhaps pricked his consciousness most. "'It,' you say, has kept him up? May I ask you what 'it' then may so wonderfully have been?"

She had no more objection to say than she apparently had difficulty. "Why, his having let me get at him. That was to make the whole difference."

It was somehow as much in the note of their reality as anything could well be; which was perhaps why he could but respond with "Oh I see!" and remain lolling a little with a sense of flatness—a flatness moreover exclusively his own.

So without flatness of her own she didn't even mind his; something in her brushed quite above 132


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THE IVORY TOWER it while she observed next, as if it were the most important thing that now occurred to her: "That of course was my poor father's mistake." And then as Gray but stared: "I mean the idea that he can pick up."

"It's your father's mistake that he can?"

She met it as if really a shade bewildered at his own misconception; she was literally so far off from any vision of her parent in himself, a philosopher might have said, that it took her an instant to do the question justice. "Oh no—I mean that your uncle can. It was your own report of that to him, with Miss Mumby backing you, that put things in the bad light to him."

"So bad a light that Mr. Gaw is in danger by it?" This was catching on of a truth to realities—and most of all to the one he had most to face. "I've been then at the bottom of that?"

He was to wonder afterwards if she had very actually gone so far as to let slip a dim smile for the intensity of his candour on this point, or whether her so striking freedom from intensity in the general connection had but suggested to him one of the images that were most in opposition. Her answer at any rate couldn't have had more of the eminence of her plainness. "That you yourself, after your uncertainties, should have found Mr. Betterman surprising was perfectly natural—and how indeed could you have dreamed that father so wanted him to die?" And then 133


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THE IVORY TOWER as Gray, affected by the extreme salience of this link in the chain of her logic, threw up his head a little for the catching of his breath, her supreme lucidity, and which was lucidity all in his interest, further shone out. "Father is indeed ill. He has had these bad times before, but nothing quite of the present gravity. He has been in a critical state for months, but one thing has kept him alive—the wish to see your uncle so far on his way that there could be no doubt. It was the appearance of doubt so suddenly this afternoon that gave him the shock." She continued to explain the case without prejudice. "To take it there from you for possible that Mr. Betterman might revive and that he should have in his own so unsteady condition to wait was simply what father couldn't stand."

"So that I just dealt the blow?"

But it was as if she cared too little even to try to make that right. "He doesn't want, you see, to live after."

"After having found he is mistaken?"

She had a faint impatience. "He isn't of course really—since what I told you of your uncle is true. And he knows that now, having my word for it."

Gray couldn't be clear enough about her clearness. "Your word for it that my uncle has revived but for the moment?"

"Absolutely. Wasn't my giving him that," Rosanna asked, "a charming filial touch?" 134


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2,406 district health centers, and 2,291 medical stations, with a combined total of 19,325 medical and dental staff positions.

Medical care is offered at each of three administrative levels. Local health services produce public health care at the lowest level; each serves a population of 5,000 to 7,000. This service emphasizes preventive medicine through the administration of routine inoculations and the reporting of health statistics. District health services provide treatment for a population of 150,000-200,000, offering a range of facilities which vary with the particular health problems of the area and the population served. The highest level of health care is offered by the 11 regional institutes of health each of which serve approximately 1 million inhabitants. These institutes offer the country's most advanced medical technology, diagnostic procedures, therapy, and opportunities for specialized medical training.

c. Environmental sanitation

Despite plentiful precipitation in the mountain areas, parts of Bohemia in particular are relatively dry (annual participation in the Prague area is under 25 inches), and the water supply is occasionally inadequate for the needs of the people. As a rule, untreated water is not potable; most urban areas have filtration and chlorination treatment plants. Construction of piped water networks is a continuing project, and a larger proportion of the population is being served by such systems each year. By 1971, nearly 60% of the total population was receiving water from public mains, and nearly all of the cities and towns of over 10,000 inhabitants have a piped water system. Communities without piped water rely on private or communal wells, or rivers and streams. In 1969 the government reported that seven-tenths of the private wells, serving a significant portion of the population, failed to meet the required standards for purity. Also, many of the water distribution systems in existence are more than 40 years old, and because of their age and poor condition wastage and spoilage occur. Approximately one-fifth of the water distributed in Czechoslovakia is lose in this manner. Seepage of sewage and industrial wastes into water supplies is also a potential threat to health.

Sewage disposal methods in much of Czechoslovakia are inadequate. Approximately 47% of the population in 1971 was served by waterborne sewage systems, but these systems generally were concentrated in the urban areas. In order to meet increased loads, new sewage treatment plants are under construction and older facilities are being expanded. In 1967, a new sewage treatment plant was constructed in Prague and expansion of the system has been in progress in recent years. New construction, however, has failed to keep pace with the increase in sewage loads, and as a consequence there has been increased contamination of water supplies. An additional problem in many areas is that sanitary and storm drainage often flow through the same piped systems creating a potential hazard during periods of heavy rain and flooding. Outside urban areas, cesspools, septic tanks, and pit privies are used for the disposal of human wastes. Utilization of an open ditch type of sewage system in some rural locales leads to pollution of surface water supplies.

In the major cities, solid waste materials are regularly collected by municipal trucks and either burned in incinerators or buried. Trash in the rural areas is either buried or burned in the open.

Czechoslovakia faces a serious air and water pollution problem, and concern is reflected in the growing attention given the subject by government spokesmen and the communications media. Air pollution is most serious in West and North Bohemia, which have a heavy concentration of industry, in the coal and steel center of Ostrava, and in Prague. Damage caused by air pollution has been estimated at 3.5 billion korunas per annum. Most serious has been the loss of equipment through corrosion, forestry and crop damage, and losses in human health. According to government sources, the primary contributors of noxious smoke and gases are the power, smelting, and construction materials industries, home furnaces, and automobiles and buses. In an effort to combat industrial pollution, air purifying equipment is being installed in industrial plants to reduce the emissions of sulfur and iron oxides. Czech experts predict, however, that air pollution in the 1980's will be worse than in the 1970's. Water pollution is caused by the discharge of effluents into the country's surface water supplies by industrial plants, and inadequate sewage disposal facilities.

The problem of environmental pollution was discussed at the 14th Party Congress in 1971. A resolution adopted by the Congress specified that future economic development "should be conducted in a way which produces a balance between economic requirements and the living environment." To implement this decision, a council for environmental problems was established in each of the two republics with authority to monitor processes resulting in the changing of the environment and to direct activities which would protect and improve the environment. Working through the United Nations, Czechoslovakia

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THE IVORY TOWER This was tremendously much again to take in, but Gray's capacity grew. "Promising him, you mean, for his benefit, that my uncle shan't last?"

The size of it on his lips might fairly, during the instant she looked at him, have been giving her pleasure. "Yes, making it a bribe to father's patience."

"Then why doesn't the bribe act?"

"Because it comes too late. It was amazing," she pursued, "that, feeling as he did, he could take that drive to the Bradhams'—and Miss Mumby was right in perfectly understanding that. The harm was already done—and there it is."

She had truly for the whole reference the most astounding tones. "You literally mean then," said Gray, "that while you sit here with me he's dying—dying of my want of sense?"

"You've no want of sense"—she spoke as if this were the point really involved. "You've a sense the most exquisite—and surely you had best take in soon rather than late," she went on, "how you'll never be free not to have on every occasion of life to reckon with it and pay for it."

"Oh I say!" was all the wit with which he could at once meet this charge; but she had risen as she spoke and, with a remark about there being another matter, had moved off to a piece of furniture at a distance where she appeared to take something from a drawer unlocked with a sharp snap for the purpose. When she returned to him 135


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THE IVORY TOWER she had this object in her hand, and Gray recognised in it an oblong envelope, addressed, largely sealed in black, and seeming to contain a voluminous letter. She kept it while he noted that the seal was intact, and she then reverted not to the discomfiture she had last produced in him but to his rueful reference of a minute before that.

"He's not dying of anything you said or did, or of anyone's act or words. He's just dying of twenty millions."

"Twenty millions?" There was a kind of enormity in her very absence of pomp, and Gray felt as if he had dropped of a sudden, from his height of simplicity, far down into a familiar relation to quantities inconceivable—out of which depths he fairly blew and splashed to emerge, the familiar relation, of all things in the world, being so strange a one. "That's what you mean here when you talk of money?"

"That's what we mean," said Rosanna, "when we talk of anything at all—for of what else but money do we ever talk? He's dying, at any rate," she explained, "of his having wished to have to do with it on that sort of scale. Having to do with it consists, you know, of the things you do for it—which are mostly very awful; and there are all kinds of consequences that they eventually have. You pay by these consequences for what you have done, and my father has been for a long time paying." Then she added as if of a sudden 136


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THE IVORY TOWER to summarise and dismiss the whole ugly truth: "The effect has been to dry up his life." Her eyes, with this, reached away for the first time as in search of something not at all before her, and it was on the perfunctory note that she had the next instant concluded. "There's nothing at last left for him to pay with."

For Gray at least, whatever initiations he had missed, she couldn't keep down the interest. "Mr. Gaw then will leave twenty millions?"

"He has already left them—in the sense of having made his will; as your uncle, equally to my knowledge, has already made his." Something visibly had occurred to her, and in connection, it might seem, with the packet she had taken from her drawer. She looked about—there being within the scene, which was somehow at once blank and replete, sundry small scattered objects of an expensive negligibility; not one of which, till now, he could guess, had struck her as a thing of human application. Human application had sprung up, the idea of selection at once following, and she unmistakeably but wondered what would be best for her use while she completed the statement on which she had so strikingly embarked. "He has left me his whole fortune." Then holding up an article of which she had immediately afterwards, with decision, proceeded to possess herself, "Is that a thing you could at all bear?" she irrelevantly asked. She had caught sight, in her 137


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Figure 12. Organization of the Radiological Safety Section, CROSSROADS (sources: References C.9.206, B.0.2, B.0.4, and B.0.7).

radiation safety experience. The board held 14 meetings and considered such topics as the plutonium hazard, permissible beta exposure, fission products in the air, decontamination of personnel, control of overdoses, urinalyses, blood counts, monitoring procedures, and removal of equipment from target vessels (References B.0.7, C.0.5, C.0.7, C.0.8, and C.0.9b).

Planning called for each radsafe reconnaissance unit to consist of a monitor and one or more assistants. Initially, units were assigned as follows: two for PBMs, two for MSO-1 helicopters, nine for destroyers, six for PGMs on lagoon patrol, twenty for LCPLs on lagoon patrol, six for cloud-tracking aircraft, and two for drone boat operations (Reference B.0.1, p. E-II-1). However, as ABLE shot approached it became clear that many more monitors would be needed; in fact, over 225 monitors were used for each of the two shots (Reference C.9.206, p. VII-C-5).

Radsafe monitor-advisors were assigned to commands and aircraft likely to encounter radioactivity. The major function of these monitors was to advise their commands and pilots on radiological safety. In addition, they had a reconnaissance function. Thus, they could quickly communicate with the radsafe control unit to report radiation levels and receive advise on safety measures (Reference B.0.1, p. E-II-8).

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THE IVORY TOWER embarrassed way, of something apparently adapted to her unexplained end, and had left him afresh to assure herself of its identity, taking up from a table at first, however, a box in Japanese lacquer only to lay it down unsatisfied. She had circled thus at a distance for a time, allowing him now his free contemplation; she had tried in succession, holding them close to her eyes, several embossed or embroidered superfluities, a blotting-book covered with knobs of malachite, a silver box, flat, largely circular and finely fretted, a gold cigar case of absurd dimensions, of which she played for a moment the hinged lid. Such was the object on which she puzzlingly challenged him.

"I could bear it perhaps better if I ever used cigars."

"You don't smoke?" she almost wailed.

"Never cigars. Sometimes pipes—but mostly, thank goodness, cigarettes."

"Thank the powers then indeed!"—and, the golden case restored to the table, where she had also a moment before laid her prepared missive, she went straight to a corner of the mantel-shelf, hesitations dropping from her, and, opening there a plainer receptacle than any she had yet touched, turned the next instant with a brace of cigarettes picked out and an accent she had not yet used. "You are a blessing, Gray—I'm nowhere without one!" There were matches at hand, and she had struck a light and applied it, at his lips, to the 138


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THE IVORY TOWER cigarette passively received by him, afterwards touching her own with it, almost before he could wonder again at the oddity of their transition. Their light smoke curled while she went back to her table; it quickened for him with each puff the marvel of a domestic altar graced at such a moment by the play of that particular flame. Almost, to his fine vision, it made Rosanna different—for wasn't there at once a gained ease in the tone with which, her sealed letter still left lying on the table, she returned to that convenience for the pocket of the rich person of which she had clicked and re-clicked the cover? What strange things, Gray thought, rich persons had!—and what strange things they did, he might mentally even have added, when she developed in a way that mystified him but the more: "I don't mean for your cigars, since you don't use them; but I want you to have from my hand something in which to keep, with all due consideration, a form of tribute that has been these last forty-eight hours awaiting you here, and which, it occurs to me, would just slide into this preposterous piece of furniture and nestle there till you may seem to feel you want it." She proceeded to recover the packet and slide it into the case, the shape of which, on a larger scale, just corresponded with its own, and then, once more making the lid catch, shook container and contents as sharply as she might have shaken a bottle of medicine. "So—there 139


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 perial rescripts, as a general rule, were forwarded to the prefect and published in Alexandria. In a few cases they were sent direct to a local magistrate, although it is probable that a copy was also sent to the prefect. Imperial were sent to private citizens of Greek or Roman birth. Copies of these documents are comparatively rare. The prefect also issued edicts in Greek. They were published in Alexandria and usually forwarded with an to the  with instructions to post them in an appropriate public place. In one instance local magistrates append their signatures to indicate their cognizance of the document, which seems to have been circulated for this purpose. In another case the magistrate takes oath that the document had been published by him as directed. It is evident that edicts of the emperor and of the prefects and their rescripts were widely known to the public, since copies are found throughout Egyptian nomes and they are frequently cited by the natives. The minor officials of the bureaucracy also issued their instructions in writing, usually in the form of or.

Since the bureaucracy in Egypt was highly developed and the number of secretaries very large, the task of caring for the official records must have been very serious. That the archives were not always properly handled is evident, and very little can be learned about the method of providing for the municipal or village records. Noone of numerous buildings or offices recorded in the papyri can with certainty be ascribed to purely municipal purposes. Possibly, since the relation of state and municipality was so close, the records of both may have been combined.


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THE IVORY TOWER quite rather, and the duration of him determined to end of Book 2. After Book 2 he is no more. Scene 3 of Book 2 then can only be, for Gray, with Rosanna; that scene having functions to be exercised with no more delay at all, by what I make out, and being put in, straight, then and there, that we may have the support of it. I by the same token see Book 3 now as functional entirely for the encounter of Gray with the two other women and, for the first time, with Davey; and also as preparing the appearance of Horton Vint, though not producing it. I see him, in fact, I think, as introduced independently of his first appearance to Gray, see it as a matter of his relation with Cissy, and as lighting up what I immediately want of their situation. In fact don't I see this as Horton's "Act" altogether, as I shall have seen and treated Book 1 as Rosanna's, and Book 2 as Gray's. By the blest operation this time of my Dramatic principle, my law of successive Aspects, each treated from its own centre, as, though with qualifications, The Awkward Age, I have the great help of flexibility and variety; my persons in turn, or at least the three or four foremost, having control, as it were, of the Act and Aspect, and so making it his or making it hers. This of course with the great inevitable and desirable preponderance, in the Series, of Gray's particular weight. But I seem to make out, to a certainty, at least another "Act" for 268


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THE GHOST OF LEMON LANE.. 463 Lemon’s love, just as everything was going right, suddenly turned and went all wrong. And the ghost did the mischief at last.

The day after the day on which he had proposed, the squire walked down, in a state of  blissful beatitude, to call upon his fascinator; and, to his unutterable consternation, he found her huddled all in a heap in a corner of the parlor, with a wild and horrified face.

“Go! go! go!” shrieked Mrs. Seaton, deliriously. “Oh! for pity’s sake, never come near me again!”

The squire stood aghast.

“Oh! don’t come in! Don’t look at me! Don't speak to me!” wildly adjured the widow. “Only let me fly from this dreadful place, never to return!”

“Good Lord!” gasped the squire, “what in thunder’s the matter?”

“The ghost! the ghost” exclaimed the widow, frantically. “Oh, Squire Lemon! I saw the ghost last night, and it spoke tome. Oh, Squire Lemon! it spoke to me!” shrieked Mrs. Seaton.

“And what the deuce did it say?” gasped the squire, in utter consternation.

“It spoke of you! Oh, Squire Lemon! it was awful! All in white, and its throat cut, and streaming blood. “I don’t know how it is, I am not mad!”

“I don’t think you’re far from it,” said the squire. “What did it say of me?”

“It said you were a cruel tyrant; that you were breaking the heart of your only child— that a man who would tyrannize over an only daughter would tyrannize over his wife! And i’s true! I will obey its warning! All is at an end between us!’

“You’re sure you saw the ghost?” said the squire, at last, rather staggered.

“Sure as sure!”

“And it spoke them words?”

“It spoke those words.”

“And you won’t marry me unless—unless I  let Nelly marry the drygoods man?”

“Exactly, Squire Lemon.”

“Well, then, look here now! I'd a good deal rather lose Nelly than lose you; so, sup posing I promise to let her heave herself away, you'll stick to your bargain?”

“On this condition, Squire Lemon, that you let your daughter marry the man of her choice first. I dare not otherwise. Once let me see her married, and I will be your wife, whenever you wish it.” “It’s a go!” cried Squire Lemon. “I'll tele- graph to the city this very hour, and marry the two young noodles out of hand!” “Dearest Peter,’ murmured the widow, in melting tones, ‘how good you are! I shall be the happiest of women when your wife. I will have to go to Boston to purchase my wedding- dress. The young man will be here by Saturday night, 1 ware say—why not let the wedding take place the ensuing Monday? I will return home Monday evening; let them be miny married and out of the way before I return.’

Squire Lemon listened, as to the voice of Destiny, and promised. What would he not have promised, with that lovely hand on his shoulder, that musical voice in his ear.

Mrs. Seaton departed for the city; and the following evening Mr. George Lyon, a handsome, dashing young fellow, with, the squire thought, an oddly familiar look in his face, arrived. He had no words to thank the father of his Eleanor, who, thinking perpetually of his absent widow, cut him short, and told him to go and palaver to Nelly, he didn’t want any of it.

Monday came—the wedding day. Early in the morning, Squire Lemon drove his daughter and two bridemaids, all impromptu, to the church, and duly gave her away to be married to the blissful Mr. George Lyon. The squire was in very bad temper on that auspicious morning, for no news had arrived from Mrs. Seaton.

The bridal-party drove from the church home, where breakfast awaited them; where a surprise awaited Squire Lemon, too, in the shape of a cockade note, which read:

“Come to the cottage in half an hour. I will be true. Georgey SEATON.”

Sunshine flooded the soul of the squire. He drank his son-in-law’s health, and shook him cordially by the hand, and kissed Nelly, and blessed her, and made himself generally delightful, and then set out for the cottage.

Just as he was leaving the house, a delay occurred; the clergyman took him by the button- hole, and solicited a contribution for a new sounding-board. Ten precious minutes were thus wasted; then the squire broke away.

Stately and handsome as ever, in the parlor of the haunted house, stood Mrs. Seaton, still  in her traveling-dress, a long, tweed cloak. She had a look in her face the squire had never  seen there before, however. She waved him  back, before he could speak. “Wait one moment, Squire Lemon! I have been playing you a practical joke—a pardon- able one, I hope, and all because I loved your  daughter so desperately. There is but brief time to explain, since I start with my bride in  fifteen minutes. Behold!” �

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THE IVORY TOWER Rosanna and probably another for Horton; though perhaps not more than one, all to herself, for Cissy. I say at least another for Horton on account of my desire to give Gray as affecting Horton, only less than I want to give Horton as affecting Gray. It is true that I get Gray as affecting Horton more or less in Book 3, but as the situation developes it will make new needs, determinations and possibilities. All this for feeling my way and making things come, more and more come. I want an Aspect under control of Davey, at all events—this I seem pretty definitely to feel; but things will only come too much. At all events, to retreat, remount, a little there are my 3 first Books sufficiently started without my having as yet exactly noted the absolutely fundamental antecedents. But before I do this, even, I memorise that Gray's Scene with Rosanna for 3 of Book 2 shall be by her coming over to Mr. Betterman's house herself that evening, all frankly and directly, to see him there; not by his going over to her. And I seem to want it evening; the summer night outside, with their moving about on the Terrace and above the sea etc. Withal, by the same token, I want such interesting things between them from immediately after the promulgation of Mr. Betterman's Will; I want that, but of course can easily get it, so far as anything is easy, in Book 4, the function of which is to present Gray as face to face with the situation 269


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THE IVORY TOWER it is; I somehow don't want just to thrust at you the letter itself."

"But may I be told what the letter itself is?" asked Gray, who had followed these movements with interest.

"Why of course—didn't I mention? Here are safely stowed," she said, her gesture causing the smooth protective surfaces to twinkle more brightly before him, "the very last lines (and many there appear to be of them!) that, if I am not mistaken, my father's hand will have traced. He wrote them, in your interest, as he considers, when he heard of your arrival in New York, and, having sealed and directed them, gave them to me yesterday to take care of and deliver to you. I put them away for the purpose, and an hour ago, during our drive back from Mrs. Bradham's, he reminded me of my charge. Before asking Miss Mumby to tell you I should like to see you I transferred the letter from its place of safety in my room to the cabinet from which, for your benefit, I a moment ago took it. I carefully comply, as you see, with my father's request. I know nothing whatever of what he has written you, and only want you to have his words. But I want also," she pursued, "to make just this little affair of them. I want"—and she bent her eyes on the queer costliness, rubbing it with her pockethandkerchief—"to do what the Lord Mayor of London does, doesn't he? when he offers the Freedom 140


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THE IVORY TOWER of the City; present them in a precious casket in which they may always abide. I want in short," she wound up, "to put them, for your use, beautifully away."

Gray went from wonder to wonder. "It isn't then a thing you judge I should open at once?"

"I don't care whether you never open it in your life. But you don't, I can see, like that vulgar thing!" With which having opened her receptacle and drawn forth from it the subject of her attention she tossed back to its place on the spread of brocade the former of these trifles. The big black seal, under this discrimination, seemed to fix our young man with a sombre eye.

"Is there any objection to my just looking at the letter now?" And then when he had taken it and yet was on the instant and as by the mere feel and the nearer sight, rather less than more conscious of a free connection with it, "Is it going to be bad for me?" he said.

"Find out for yourself!"

"Break the seal?"

"Isn't it meant to break?" she asked with a shade of impatience.

He noted the impatience, sounding her nervousness, but saw at the same time that her interest in the communication, whatever it might be, was of the scantest, and that she suffered from having to defer to his own. "If I needn't answer to-night!" 141


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THE IVORY TOWER "You needn't answer ever."

"Oh well then it can wait. But you're right—it mustn't just wait in my pocket."

This pleased her. "As I say, it must have a place of its own."

He considered of that. "You mean that when I have read it I may still want to treasure it?"

She had in hand again the great fan that hung by a long fine chain from her girdle, and, flaring it open, she rapidly closed it again, the motion seeming to relieve her. "I mean that my father has written you at this end of his days and that that's all I know about it."

"You asked him no question?"

"As to why he should write? I wouldn't," said Rosanna, "have asked him for the world. It's many a day since we've done that, either he or I—at least when a question could have a sense."

"Thank you then," Gray smiled, "for answering mine." He looked about him for whatever might still help them, and of a sudden had a light. "Why the ivory tower!" And while her eyes followed: "That beautiful old thing on the top of the secretary—happy thought if it is old!" He had seen at a glance that this object was what they wanted, and, a nearer view confirming the thought, had reached for it and taken it down. "There it was waiting for you. Isn't it an ivory tower, and doesn't living in an ivory tower just mean the most distinguished retirement? I don't 142


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THE IVORY TOWER want yet awhile to settle in one myself—though I've always thought it a thing I should like to come to; but till I do make acquaintance with what you have for me a retreat for the mystery is pleasant to think of." Such was the fancy he developed while he delicately placed his happy find on the closed and polished lid of the grand piano, where the rare surface reflected the pale rich ivory and his companion could have it well before her. The subject of this attention might indeed pass, by a fond conceit, on its very reduced scale, for a builded white-walled thing, very tall in proportion to the rest of its size and rearing its head from its rounded height as if a miniature flag might have flown there. It was a remarkable product of some eastern, probably some Indian, patience, and of some period as well when patience in such causes was at the greatest—thanks to which Gray, loving ancient artistry and having all his life seen much of it, had recognised at a glance the one piece in the room that presented an interest. It consisted really of a cabinet, of easily moveable size, seated in a circular socket of its own material and equipped with a bowed door, which dividing in the middle, after a minute gold key had been turned, showed a superposition of small drawers that went upwards diminishing in depth, so that the topmost was of least capacity. The high curiosity of the thing was in the fine work required for making and keeping it perfectly circular; 143


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THE IVORY TOWER an effect arrived at by the fitting together, apparently by tiny golden rivets, of numerous small curved plates of the rare substance, each of these, including those of the two wings of the exquisitely convex door, contributing to the artful, the total rotundity. The series of encased drawers worked to and fro of course with straight sides, but also with small bowed fronts, these made up of the same adjusted plates. The whole, its infinite neatness exhibited, proved a wonder of wasted ingenuity, and Rosanna, pronouncing herself stupid not to have anticipated him, rendered all justice, under her friend's admiring emphasis, to this choicest of her resources. Of how they had come by it, either she or her sparing parent, she couldn't at once bethink herself: on their taking the Newport house for the few weeks her direction had been general that an assortment of odds and ends from New York should disperse itself, for mitigation of bleakness, in as many of the rooms as possible; and with quite different matters to occupy her since she had taken the desired effect for granted. Her father's condition had precluded temporary inmates, and with Gray's arrival also in mind she had been scarce aware of minor importances. "Of course you know—I knew you would!" were the words in which she assented to his preference for the ivory tower and which settled for him, while he made it beautifully slide, the fact that the shallowest of the drawers would 144


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THE IVORY TOWER exactly serve for his putting his document to sleep. So then he slipped it in, rejoicing in the tight fit of the drawer, carefully making the two divisions of the protective door meet, turning the little gold key in its lock and finally, with his friend's permission, attaching the key to a small silver ring carried in his pocket and serving for a cluster of others. With this question at rest it seemed at once, and as with an effect out of proportion to the cause, that a great space before them had been cleared: they looked at each other over it as if they had become more intimate, and as if now, in the free air, the enormities already named loomed up again. All of which was expressed in Gray's next words.

"May I ask you, in reference to something you just now said, whether my uncle took action for leaving me money before our meeting could be in question? Because if he did, you know, I understand less than ever. That he should want to see me if he was thinking of me, that of course I can conceive; but that he shouldn't wait till he had seen me is what I find extraordinary."

If she gave him the impression of keeping her answer back a little, it wasn't, he was next to see, that she was not fully sure of it. "He had seen you."

"You mean as a small boy?"

"No—at this distance of time that didn't count." She had another wait, but also another assurance. "He had seen you in the great fact about you." 145


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THE IVORY TOWER "And what in the world do you call that?"

"Why, that you are more out of it all, out of the air he has breathed all his life and that in these last years has more and more sickened him, than anyone else in the least belonging to him, that he could possibly put his hand on."

He stood before her with his hands in his pockets—he could study her now quite as she had studied himself. "The extent, Rosanna, to which you must have answered for me!"

She met his scrutiny from between more narrowed lids. "I did put it all to him—I spoke for you as earnestly as one can ever speak for another. But you're not to gather from it," she thus a trifle awkwardly smiled, "that I have let you in for twenty millions, or for anything approaching. He will have left you, by my conviction, all he has; but he has nothing at all like that. That's all I'm sure of—of no details whatever. Even my father doesn't know," she added; "in spite of its having been for a long time the thing he has most wanted to, most sat here, these weeks, on some chance of his learning. The truth, I mean, of Mr. Betterman's affairs."

Gray felt a degree of relief at the restrictive note on his expectations which might fairly have been taken, by its signs, for a betrayed joy in their extent. The air had really, under Rosanna's touch, darkened itself with numbers; but what she had just admitted was a rift of light. In this 146


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THE IVORY TOWER light, which was at the same time that of her allusion to Mr. Gaw's unappeased appetite, his vision of that gentleman at the other house came back to him, and he said in a moment: "I see, I see. He tried to get some notion out of me."

"Poor father!" she answered to this—but without time for more questions, as at the moment she spoke the door of the room opened and Doctor Hatch appeared. He paused, softly portentous, where he stood, and so he met Rosanna's eyes. He held them a few seconds, and the effect was to press in her, to all appearance, the same spring our young man had just touched. "Poor, poor, poor father!" she repeated, but as if brought back to him from far away. She took in what had happened, but not at once nor without an effort what it called on her for; so that "Won't you come up?" her informant had next to ask.

To this, while Gray watched her, she rallied—"If you'll stay here." With which, looking at neither of them again, as the Doctor kept the door open, she passed out, he then closing it on her and transferring his eyes to Gray—who hadn't to put a question, so sharply did the raised and dropped hands signify that all was over. The fact, in spite of everything, startled our young man, who had with his companion a moment's mute exchange.

"He has died while I've kept her here?" 147


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THE IVORY TOWER Doctor Hatch just demurred. "You kept her through her having sent for you to talk to you."

"Yes, I know. But it's very extraordinary!"

"You seem to make people extraordinary. You've made your uncle, you know!"

"Yes indeed—but haven't I made him better?" Gray asked.

The Doctor again for a moment hesitated. "Yes—in the sense that he must be now at last really resting. But I go back to him."

"I'll go with you of course," said Gray, looking about for his hat. As he found it he oddly remembered. "Why she asked me to dinner!"

It all but amused the Doctor. "You inspire remarkable efforts."

"Well, I'm incapable of making them." It seemed now queer enough. "I can't stay to dinner."

"Then we'll go." With which however, Doctor Hatch was not too preoccupied to have had his attention, within the minute, otherwise taken. "What a splendid piece!" he exclaimed in presence of the ivory tower.

"It is splendid," said Gray, feeling its beauty again the brightest note in the strangeness; but with a pang of responsibility to it taking him too. "Miss Gaw has made me a present of it."

"Already? You do work them!"—and the good physician fairly grazed again the act of mirth. "So you'll take it away?" 148


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THE IVORY TOWER Gray paused a moment before his acquisition, which seemed to have begun to guard, within the very minute, a secret of greater weight. Then "No, I'll come back to it," he said as they departed by the long window that opened to the grounds and through which Miss Mumby had brought him in. 149


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 * Chapter 2
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 * Chapter 3
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 * Chapter 4
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28 in the solid intervening bulkhead. Still, to a delicate stomach even imaginary smoke can convey damage.

The captain, with his gentle nature, his polish, his sweetness, his moral and verbal purity, seemed pathetically out of place in his rude and autocratic vocation. It seemed another instance of the irony of fate.

He was going home under a cloud. The passengers knew about his trouble, and were sorry for him. Approaching Vancouver through a narrow and difficult passage densely befogged with smoke from the forest fires, he had had the ill-luck to lose his bearings and get his ship on the rocks. A matter like this would rank merely as an error with you and me; it ranks as a crime with the directors of steamship companies. The captain had been tried by the Admiralty Court at Vancouver, and its verdict had acquitted him of blame. But that was insufficient comfort. A sterner court would examine the case in Sydney—the Court of Directors, the lords of a company in whose ships the captain had served as mate a number of years. This was his first voyage as captain.

The officers of our ship were hearty and companionable young men, and they entered into the general amusements and helped the passengers pass the time. Voyages in the Pacific and Indian Oceans are but pleasure excursions for all hands. Our purser was a young Scotchman who was equipped with a grit that was remarkable. He was an invalid, and looked it, as far as his body was concerned, but illness could not subdue his spirit. He was full of life, and had a gay and capable tongue. To all appearances he was a sick man without being aware of it, for he did not talk about his ailments, and his bearing and conduct were those of a person in robust health; yet he was the prey, at intervals, of ghastly sieges of pain in his heart. These lasted many hours, and while the attack continued he could neither sit nor lie. In one instance he stood


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30 drinking, and leaving the desire in full force, is unintelligent war tactics, it seems to me.

I used to take pledges—and soon violate them. My will was not strong, and I could not help it. And then, to be tied in any way naturally irks an otherwise free person and makes him chafe in his bonds and want to get his liberty. But when I finally ceased from taking definite pledges, and merely resolved that I would kill an injurious desire, but leave myself free to resume the desire and the habit whenever I should choose to do so, I had no more trouble. In five days I drove out the desire to smoke and was not obliged to keep watch after that; and I never experienced any strong desire to smoke again. At the end of a year and a quarter of idleness I began to write a book, and presently found that the pen was strangely reluctant to go. I tried a smoke to see if that would help me out of the difficulty. It did. I smoked eight or ten cigars and as many pipes a day for five months; finished the book, and did not smoke again until a year had gone by and another book had to be begun.

I can quit any of my nineteen injurious habits at any time, and without discomfort or inconvenience. I think that the Dr. Tanners and those others who go forty days without eating do it by resolutely keeping out the desire to eat, in the beginning; and that after a few hours the desire is discouraged and comes no more.

Once I tried my scheme in a large medical way. I had been confined to my bed several days with lumbago. My case refused to improve. Finally the doctor said,—

"My remedies have no fair chance. Consider what they have to fight, besides the lumbago. You smoke extravagantly, don’t you?"

"Yes."

"You take coffee immoderately?"


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32

right again. And it would have happened just so, I know it; but she said she could not stop swearing, and smoking, and drinking, because she had never done those things. So there it was. She had neglected her habits, and hadn't any. Now that they would have come good, there were none in stock. She had nothing to fall back on. She was a sinking vessel, with no freight in her to throw overboard and lighten ship withal. Why, even one or two little bad habits could have saved her, but she was just a moral pauper. When she could have acquired them she was dissuaded by her parents, who were ignorant people though reared in the best society, and it was too late to begin now. It seemed such a pity; but there was no help for it. These things ought to be attended to while a person is young; otherwise, when age and disease come, there is nothing effectual to fight them with.


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upon a time there was a king who had three daughters; they were all beautiful, but the youngest was the fairest of the three. Now it happened that one day their father had to set out for a tour in a distant part of his kingdom. Before he left, his youngest daughter made him promise to bring her back a wreath of wild flowers. When the king was ready to return to his palace, he bethought himself that he would like to take home presents to each of his three daughters; so he went into a jeweller’s shop and bought a beautiful necklace for the eldest princess; then he went to a rich merchant’s and bought a dress embroidered in gold and silver thread for the second princess, but in none of the flower shops nor in the market could he find the wreath of wild flowers that his youngest daughter had set her heart on. So he had to set out on his homeward way without it. Now his journey led him through a thick forest. While he was still about four miles distant from his palace, he noticed a white wolf squatting on the roadside, and, behold! on the head of the wolf, there was a wreath of wild flowers.

Then the king called to the coachman, and ordered him to get down from his seat and fetch him the wreath from the wolf’s head. But the wolf heard the order and said: ‘My lord and king, I will let you have the wreath, but I must have something in return.’

‘What do you want?’ answered the king. ‘I will gladly give you rich treasure in exchange for it.’

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title: A Hundred Verses from Old Japan/Poem 70


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 ‘I do not want rich treasure,’ replied the wolf. ‘Only promise to give me the first thing that meets you on your way to your castle. In three days I shall come and fetch it.’

And the king thought to himself: ‘I am still a good long way from home, I am sure to meet a wild animal or a bird on the road, it will be quite safe to promise.’ So he consented, and carried the wreath away with him. But all along the road he met no living creature till he turned into the palace gates, where his youngest daughter was waiting to welcome him home.

That evening the king was very sad, remembering his promise; and when he told the queen what had happened, she too shed bitter tears. And the youngest princess asked them why they both looked so sad, and why they wept. Then her father told her what a price he would have to pay for the wreath of wild flowers he had brought home to her, for in three days a white wolf would come and claim her and carry her away, and they would never see her again. But the queen thought and thought, and at last she hit upon a plan.

There was in the palace a servant maid the same age and the same height as the princess, and the queen dressed her up in a beautiful dress belonging to her daughter, and determined to give her to the white wolf, who would never know the difference.

On the third day the wolf strode into the palace yard and up the great stairs, to the room where the king and queen were seated.

‘I have come to claim your promise,’ he said. ‘Give me your youngest daughter.’

Then they led the servant maid up to him, and he said to her: ‘You must mount on my back, and I will take you to my castle.’ And with these words he swung her on to his back and left the palace.

When they reached the place where he had met the king and given him the wreath of wild flowers, he

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 CHAPTER II.

BOUT four days out from Victoria we plunged into hot weather, and all the male passengers put on white linen clothes. One or two days later we crossed the 25th parallel of north latitude, and then, by order, the officers of the ship laid away their blue uniforms and came out in white linen ones. All the ladies were in white by this time. This prevalence of snowy costumes gave the promenade deck an invitingly cool, and cheerful and picnicky aspect.

From my diary:

There are several sorts of ills in the world from which a person can never escape altogether, let him journey as far as he will. One escapes from one breed of an ill only to encounter another breed of it. We have come far from the snake liar and the fish liar, and there was rest and peace in the thought; but now we have reached the realm of the boomerang liar, and sorrow is with us once more. The first officer has seen a man try to escape from his enemy by getting behind a tree; but the enemy sent his boomerang sailing into the sky far above and beyond the tree; then it turned, descended, and killed the man. The Australian passenger has seen this thing done to two men, behind two trees—and by the one arrow. This being received with a large silence that suggested doubt, he buttressed it with the statement that his brother once saw the boomerang kill a bird away off a hundred yards and bring it to the thrower. But these are ills which must be borne. There is no other way. (35)


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36 The talk passed from the boomerang to dreams—usually a fruitful subject, afloat or ashore—but this time the output was poor. Then it passed to instances of extraordinary memory—with better results. Blind Tom, the negro pianist, was spoken of, and it was said that he could accurately play any piece of music, howsoever long and difficult, after hearing it once; and that six months later he could accurately play it again, without having touched it in the interval. One of the most striking of the stories told was furnished by a gentleman who had served on the staff of the Viceroy of India. He read the details from his note-book, and explained that he had written them down, right after the consummation of the incident which they described, because he thought that if he did not put them down in black and white he might presently come to think he had dreamed them or invented them.

The Viceroy was making a progress, and among the shows offered by the Maharajah of Mysore for his entertainment was a memory-exhibition. The Viceroy and thirty gentlemen of his suite sat in a row, and the memory-expert, a high-caste Brahmin, was brought in and seated on the floor in front of them. He said he knew but two languages, the English and his own, but would not exclude any foreign tongue from the tests to be applied to his memory. Then he laid before the assemblage his program—a sufficiently extraordinary one. He proposed that one gentleman should give him one word of a foreign sentence, and tell him its place in the sentence. He was furnished with the French word est, and was told it was second in a sentence of three words. The next gentleman gave him the German word verloren and said it was the third in a sentence of four words. He asked the next gentleman for one detail in a sum in addition; another for one detail in a sum of subtraction; others for single details in mathematical problems of various kinds; he got them. Intermediates gave


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Rh him single words from sentences in Greek, Latin, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and other languages, and told him their places in the sentences. When at last everybody had furnished him a single rag from a foreign sentence or a figure from a problem, he went over the ground again, and got a second word and a second figure and was told their places in the sentences and the sums; and so on and so on. He went over the ground again and again until he had collected all the parts of the sums and all the parts of the sentences—and all in disorder, of course, not in their proper rotation. This had occupied two hours.

The Brahmin now sat silent and thinking, a while, then began and repeated all the sentences, placing the words in their proper order, and untangled the disordered arithmetical problems and gave accurate answers to them all.

In the beginning he had asked the company to throw almonds at him during the two hours, he to remember how many each gentleman had thrown; but none were thrown, for the Viceroy said that the test would be a sufficiently severe strain without adding that burden to it.

General had a fine memory for all kinds of things, including even names and faces, and I could have furnished an instance of it if I had thought of it. The first time I ever saw him was early in his first term as President. I had just arrived in Washington from the Pacific coast, a stranger and wholly unknown to the public, and was passing the White House one morning when I met a friend, a Senator from Nevada. He asked me if I would like to see the President. I said I should be very glad; so we entered. I supposed that the President would be in the midst of a crowd, and that I could look at him in peace and security from a distance, as another stray cat might look at another king. But it was in the morning, and the Senator was using a privilege of his office


text:
Author:George Macilwain

Works

 * A treatise on stricture of the urethra (1824)
 * Medicine and surgery one inductive science (1838)
 * The general nature and treatment of tumours (1845)
 * Memoirs of John Abernethy F. R. S., with a view of his lectures, writings, and character (1854): Volume 1 and Volume 2

Works about the author

 * Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Macilwain, George

title: Author:George Macilwain


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38 which I had not heard of—the privilege of intruding upon the Chief Magistrate's working hours. Before I knew it, the Senator and I were in the presence, and there was none there but we three. General Grant got slowly up from his table, put his pen down, and stood before me with the iron expression of a man who had not smiled for seven years, and was not intending to smile for another seven. He looked me steadily in the eyes—mine lost confidence and fell. I had never confronted a great man before, and was in a miserable state of funk and inefficiency. The Senator said:—

"Mr. President, may I have the privilege of introducing Mr. Clemens?"

The President gave my hand an unsympathetic wag and dropped it. He did not say a word but just stood. In my trouble I could not think of anything to say, I merely wanted to resign. There was an awkward pause, a dreary pause, a horrible pause. Then I thought of something, and looked up into that unyielding face, and said timidly:—

"Mr. President, I—I am embarrassed. Are you?"

His face broke—just a little—a wee glimmer, the momentary flicker of a summer-lightning smile, seven years ahead of time—and I was out and gone as soon as it was.

Ten years passed away before I saw him the second time. Meantime I was become better known; and was one of the people appointed to respond to toasts at the banquet given to General Grant in Chicago—by the Army of the Tennessee when he came back from his tour around the world. I arrived late at night and got up late in the morning. All the corridors of the hotel were crowded with people waiting to get a glimpse of General Grant when he should pass to the place whence he was to review the great procession. I worked my way by the suite of packed drawing-rooms, and at the corner of the house I found a window open where there was a roomy


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Rh platform decorated with flags, and carpeted. I stepped out on it, and saw below me millions of people blocking all the streets, and other millions caked together in all the windows and on all the house-tops around. These masses took me for General Grant, and broke into volcanic explosions and cheers; but it was a good place to see the procession, an I stayed. Presently I heard the distant blare of military music, and far up the street I saw the procession come in sight, cleaving its way through the huzzaing multitudes, with Sheridan, the most martial figure of the War, riding at its head in the dress uniform of a Lieutenant-General.

And now General Grant, arm-in-arm with Major Carter Harrison, stepped out on the platform, followed two and two by the badged and uniformed reception committee. General Grant was looking exactly as he had looked upon that trying occasion of ten years before—all iron and bronze self-possession. Mr. Harrison came over and led me to the General and formally introduced me. Before I could put together the proper remark, General Grant said—

"Mr. Clemens, I am not embarrassed. Are you?"—and that little seven-year smile twinkled across his face again.

Seventeen years have gone by since then, and to-day, in New York, the streets are a crush of people who are there to honor the remains of the great soldier as they pass to their final resting-place under the monument; and the air is heavy with dirges and the boom of artillery, and all the millions of America are thinking of the man who restored the Union and the flag, and gave to democratic government a new lease of life, and, as we may hope and do believe, a permanent place among the beneficent institutions of men.

We had one game in the ship which was a good time-passer—at least it was at night in the smoking-room when the men were getting freshened up from the day's monotonies


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42 and dullnesses. It was the completing of non-complete stories. That is to say, a man would tell all of a story except the finish, then the others would try to supply the ending out of their own invention. When every one who wanted a chance had had it, the man who had introduced the story would give it its original ending—then you could take your choice. Sometimes the new endings turned out to be better than the old one. But the story which called out the most persistent and determined and ambitious effort was one which had no ending, and so there was nothing to compare the new-made endings with. The man who told it said he could furnish the particulars up to a certain point only, because that was as much of the tale as he knew. He had read it in a volume of sketches twenty-five years ago, and was interrupted before the end was reached. He would give any one fifty dollars who would finish the story to the satisfaction of a jury to be appointed by ourselves. We appointed a jury and wrestled with the tale. We invented plenty of endings, but the jury voted them all down. The jury was right. It was a tale which the author of it may possibly have completed satisfactorily, and if he really had that good fortune I would like to know what the ending was. Any ordinary man will find that the story's strength is in its middle, and that there is apparently no way to transfer it to the close, where of course it ought to be. In substance the storiette was as follows:

John Brown, aged thirty-one, good, gentle, bashful, timid, lived in a quiet village in Missouri. He was superintendent of the Presbyterian Sunday-school. It was but a humble distinction; still, it was his only official one, and he was modestly proud of it and was devoted to its work and its interests. The extreme kindliness of his nature was recognized by all; in fact, people said that he was made entirely out of good impulses and bashfulness; that he could always be counted upon for help when it was needed, and for bashfulness both when it was needed and when it wasn't.

Mary Taylor, twenty-three, modest, sweet, winning, and in character and person beautiful, was all in all to him. And he was very nearly all in all to her. She was wavering, his hopes were high. Her mother had been in


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 stopped, and told her to dismount that they might rest a little.

So they sat down by the roadside.

‘I wonder,’ said the wolf, ‘what your father would do if this forest belonged to him?’

And the girl answered: ‘My father is a poor man, so he would cut down the trees, and saw them into planks, and he would sell the planks, and we should never be poor again; but would always have enough to eat.’

Then the wolf knew that he had not got the real princess, and he swung the servant-maid on to his back and carried her to the castle. And he strode angrily into the king’s chamber, and spoke.

‘Give me the real princess at once. If you deceive me again I will cause such a storm to burst over your palace that the walls will fall in, and you will all be buried in the ruins.’

Then the king and the queen wept, but they saw there was no escape. So they sent for their youngest daughter, and the king said to her: ‘Dearest child, you must go with the white wolf, for I promised you to him, and I must keep my word.’

So the princess got ready to leave her home; but first she went to her room to fetch her wreath of wild flowers, which she took with her. Then the white wolf swung her on his back and bore her away. But when they came to the place where he had rested with the servant-maid, he told her to dismount that they might rest for a little at the roadside. Then he turned to her and said: ‘I wonder what your father would do if this forest belonged to him?’

And the princess answered: ‘My father would cut down the trees and turn it into a beautiful park and gardens, and he and his courtiers would come and wander among the glades in the summer time.’

‘This is the real princess,’ said the wolf to himself.

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Rh opposition from the first. But she was wavering, too; he could see it. She was being touched by his warm interest in her two charity-protegés and by his contributions toward their support. These were two forlorn and aged sisters who lived in a log hut in a lonely place up a cross road four miles from Mrs. Taylor's farm. One of the sisters was crazy, and sometimes a little violent, but not often.

At last the time seemed ripe for a final advance, and Brown gathered his courage together and resolved to make it. He would take along a contribution of double the usual size, and win the mother over; with her opposition annulled, the rest of the conquest would be sure and prompt.

He took to the road in the middle of a placid Sunday afternoon in the soft Missourian summer, and he was equipped properly for his mission. He was clothed all in white linen, with a blue ribbon for a necktie, and he had on dressy tight boots. His horse and buggy were the finest that the livery stable could furnish. The lap robe was of white linen, it was new, and it had a hand-worked border that could not be rivaled in that region for beauty and elaboration.

When he was four miles out on the lonely road and was walking his horse over a wooden bridge, his straw hat blew off and fell in the creek, and floated down and lodged against a bar. He did not quite know what to do. He must have the hat, that was manifest; but how was he to get it?

Then he had an idea. The roads were empty, nobody was stirring. Yes, he would risk it. He led the horse to the roadside and set it to cropping the grass; then he undressed and put his clothes in the buggy, petted the horse a moment to secure its compassion and its loyalty, then hurried to the stream. He swam out and soon had the hat. When he got to the top of the bank the horse was gone!

His legs almost gave way under him. The horse was walking leisurely along the road. Brown trotted after it, saying, "Whoa, whoa, there's a good fellow;" but whenever he got near enough to chance a jump for the buggy, the horse quickened its pace a little and defeated him. And so this went on, the naked man perishing with anxiety, and expecting every moment to see people come in sight. He tagged on and on, imploring the horse, beseeching the horse, till he had left a mile behind him, and was closing up on the Taylor premises; then at last he was successful, and got into the buggy. He flung on his shirt, his necktie, and his coat; then reached for—but he was too late; he sat suddenly down and pulled up the lap-robe, for he saw some one coming out of the


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44 gate—a woman, he thought. He wheeled the horse to the left, and struck briskly up the cross-road. It was perfectly straight, and exposed on both sides; but there were woods and a sharp turn three miles ahead, and he was very grateful when he got there. As he passed around the turn he slowed down to a walk, and reached for his tr— too late again.

He had come upon Mrs. Enderby, Mrs. Glossop, Mrs. Taylor, and Mary. They were on foot, and seemed tired and excited. They came at once to the buggy and shook hands, and all spoke at once, and said eagerly and earnestly, how glad they were that he was come, and how fortunate it was. And Mrs. Enderby said, impressively:

"It looks like an accident, his coming at such a time; but let no one profane it with such a name; he was sent—sent from on high."

They were all moved, and Mrs. Glossop said in an awed voice:

"Sarah Enderby, you never said a truer word in your life. This is no accident, it is a special Providence. He was sent. He is an angel—an angel as truly as ever angel was—an angel of deliverance. I say angel, Sarah Enderby, and will have no other word. Don't let any one ever say to me again, that there's no such thing as special Providences; for if this isn't one, let them account for it that can."

"I know it's so," said Mrs. Taylor, fervently. "John Brown, I could worship you; I could go down on my knees to you. Didn't something tell you?—didn't you feel that you were sent? I could kiss the hem of your lap-robe."

He was not able to speak; he was helpless with shame and fright. Mrs. Taylor went on:

"Why, just look at it all around, Julia Glossop. Any person can see the hand of Providence in it. Here at noon what do we see? We see the smoke rising. I speak up and say, 'That's the Old People's cabin afire.' Didn't I, Julia Glossop?"

"The very words you said, Nancy Taylor. I was as close to you as I am now, and I heard them. You may have said hut instead of cabin, but in substance it's the same. And you were looking pale, too."

"Pale? I was that pale that if—why, you just compare it with this lap-robe. Then the next thing I said was, 'Mary Taylor, tell the hired man to rig up the team—we'll go to the rescue.' And she said, 'Mother, don't you know you told him he could drive to see his people, and stay over Sunday?' And it was just so. I declare for it, I had forgotten it. 'Then,' said I, 'we'll go afoot.' And go we did. And found Sarah Enderby on the road."

"And we all went together," said Mrs. Enderby. "And found the cabin set fire to and burnt down by the crazy one, and the poor old things so old and feeble that they couldn't go afoot. And we got them to a shady place and made them as comfortable as we could, and began to wonder which way to turn to find some way to get them conveyed to Nancy Taylor's house. And I spoke up and said—now what did I say?  Didn't I say, 'Providence will provide'?"

"Why sure as you live, so you did! I had forgotten it."

"So had I," said Mrs. Glossop and Mrs. Taylor; "but you certainly said it. Now wasn't that remarkable?"


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Rh "Yes, I said it. And then we went to Mr. Moseley's, two miles, and all of them were gone to the camp meeting over on Stony Fork; and then we came all the way back, two miles, and then here, another mile—and Providence has provided. You see it yourselves."

They gazed at each other awe-struck, and lifted their hands and said in unison:

"It's per-fectly wonderful."

"And then," said Mrs. Glossop, "what do you think we had better do—let Mr. Brown drive the Old People to Nancy Taylor's one at a time, or put both of them in the buggy, and him lead the horse?"

Brown gasped.

"Now, then, that's a question," said Mrs. Enderby. "You see, we are all tired out, and any way we fix it it's going to be difficult. For if Mr. Brown takes both of them, at least one of us must, go back to help him, for he can't load them into the buggy by himself, and they so helpless."

"That is so," said Mrs. Taylor. "It doesn't look—oh, how would this do?—one of us drive there with Mr. Brown, and the rest of you go along to my house and get things ready. I'll go with him. He and I together can lift one of the Old People into the buggy; then drive her to my house and—

"But who will take care of the other one?" said Mrs. Enderby. "We musn't leave her there in the woods alone, you know—especially the crazy one. There and back is eight miles, you see."

They had all been sitting on the grass beside the buggy for a while, now, trying to rest their weary bodies. They fell silent a moment or two, and struggled in thought over the baffling situation; then Mrs. Enderby brightened and said:

"I think I've got the idea, now. You see, we can't walk any more. Think what we've done: four miles there, two to Moseley's, is six, then back to here—nine miles since noon, and not a bite to eat; I declare I don't see how we've done it; and as for me, I am just famishing. Now, somebody's got to go back, to help Mr. Brown—there's no getting around that; but whoever goes has got to ride, not walk. So my idea is this: one of us to ride back with Mr. Brown, then ride to Nancy Taylor's house with one of the Old People, leaving Mr. Brown to keep the other old one company, you all to go now to Nancy's and rest and wait; then one of you drive back and get the other one and drive her to Nancy's, and Mr. Brown walk."

"Splendid!" they all cried. "Oh, that will do—that will answer perfectly." And they all said that Mrs. Enderby had the best head for planning, in the company; and they said that they wondered that they hadn't thought of this simple plan themselves. They hadn't meant to take back the compliment, good simple souls, and didn't know they had done it. After a consultation it was decided that Mrs. Enderby should drive back with Brown, she being entitled to the distinction because she had invented the plan. Everything now being satisfactorily arranged and settled, the ladies rose, relieved and happy, and brushed down their gowns, and three of them started homeward; Mrs. Enderby set her foot on the buggy-step and was about to climb in, when Brown found a remnant of his voice and gasped out—


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 BOOK THIRD

I

" I haven't so much as seen him yet," Cissy perforce confessed to her friend, Mrs. Bradham's friend, everybody's friend, even, already and so coincidentally, Graham Fielder's; this recipient of her avowal having motored that day from Boston, after detention there under a necessity of business and the stress of intolerable heat, but having reached Newport in time for tea, a bath, a quick "change" and a still quicker impression of blest refreshment from the fine air and from various other matters. He had come forth again, during the time left him between these performed rites and the more formal dressing-hour, in undisguised quest of our young lady, who had so disposed certain signs of her whereabouts that he was to waste but few steps in selection of a short path over the longest stretch of lawn and the mass of seaward rocks forming its limit. Arriving to spend with the Bradhams as many or as few days as the conditions to be recognised 150


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46 "Please Mrs. Enderby, call them back—I am very weak; I can't walk, I can't, indeed."

"Why, dear Mr. Brown! You do look pale; I am ashamed of myself that I didn't notice it sooner. Come back—all of you! Mr. Brown is not well. Is there anything I can do for you, Mr. Brown?—I'm real sorry. Are you in pain?"

"No, madam, only weak; I am not sick, but only just weak—lately; not long, but just lately."

The others came back, and poured out their sympathies and commiserations, and were full of self-reproaches for not having noticed how pale he was. And they at once struck out a new plan, and soon agreed that it was by far the best of all. They would all go to Nancy Taylor's house and see to Brown's needs first. He could lie on the sofa in the parlor, and while Mrs. Taylor and Mary took care of him the other two ladies would take the buggy and go and get one of the Old People, and leave one of themselves with the other one, and—

By this time, without any solicitation, they were at the horse's head and were beginning to turn him around. The danger was imminent, but Brown found his voice again and saved himself. He said—

"But ladies, you are overlooking something which makes the plan impracticable. You see, if you bring one of them home, and one remains behind with the other, there will be three persons there when one of you comes back for that other, for some one must drive the buggy back, and three can't come home in it."

They all exclaimed, "Why, sure-ly, that is so!" and they were, all perplexed again.

"Dear, dear, what can we do?" said Mrs. Glossop; "it is the most mixed-up thing that ever was. The fox and the goose and the corn and things—Oh, dear, they are nothing to it."

They sat wearily down once more, to further torture their tormented heads for a plan that would work. Presently Mary offered a plan; it was her first effort. She said:

"I am young and strong, and am refreshed, now. Take Mr. Brown to our house, and give him help—you see how plainly he needs it. I will go back and take care of the Old People; I can be there in twenty minutes. You can go on and do what you first started to do—wait on the main road at our house until somebody comes along with a wagon; then send and bring away the three of us. You won't have to wait long; the farmers will soon be coming back from town, now. I will keep old Polly patient and cheered up—the crazy one doesn't need it."

This plan was discussed and accepted; it seemed the best that could be done, in the circumstances, and the Old People must be getting discouraged by this time.

Brown felt relieved, and was deeply thankful. Let him once get to the main road and he would find a way to escape.

Then Mrs. Taylor said:

"The evening chill will be coming on, pretty soon, and those poor old


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Rh burnt-out things will need some kind of covering. Take the lap-robe with you, dear."

"Very well, Mother, I will."

She stepped to the buggy and put out her hand to take it—

That was the end of the tale. The passenger who told it said that when he read the story twenty-five years ago in a train he was interrupted at that point—the train jumped off a bridge.

At first we thought we could finish the story quite easily, and we set to work with confidence; but it soon began to appear that it was not a simple thing, but difficult and baffling. This was on account of Brown's character—great generosity and kindliness, but complicated with unusual shyness and diffidence, particularly in the presence of ladies. There was his love for Mary, in a hopeful state but not yet secure—just in a condition, indeed, where its affair must be handled with great tact, and no mistakes made, no offense given. And there was the mother—wavering, half willing—by adroit and flawless diplomacy to be won over, now, or perhaps never at all. Also, there were the helpless Old People yonder in the woods waiting—their fate and Brown's happiness to be determined by what Brown should do within the next two seconds. Mary was reaching for the lap-robe; Brown must decide—there was no time to be lost.

Of course none but a happy ending of the story would be accepted by the jury; the finish must find Brown in high credit with the ladies, his behavior without blemish, his modesty unwounded, his character for self sacrifice maintained, the Old People rescued through him, their benefactor, all the party proud of him, happy in him, his praises on all their tongues.

We tried to arrange this, but it was beset with persistent and irreconcilable difficulties. We saw that Brown's shyness would not allow him to give up the lap-robe. This would offend Mary and her mother; and it would surprise the other ladies, partly because this stinginess toward the suffering Old People would be out of character with Brown, and partly because he was a special Providence and could not properly act so. If asked to explain his conduct, his shyness would not allow him to tell the truth, and lack of invention and practice would find him incapable of contriving a lie that would wash. We worked at the troublesome problem until three in the morning.

Meantime Mary was still reaching for the lap-robe. We gave it up, and decided to let her continue to reach. It is the reader's privilege to determine for himself how the thing came out.