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Rh As I watched, the face was changing shape. The bridge of the nose sank and the nose broadened. Lean cheeks became fat ones. Eyebrows wandered upwards.

Then other machines made a sallow complexion look fresh, and turned the black hair green. Green hair on Mars, while uncommon, is not remarkable, but usually goes with poor intelligence. Hektorum now looked like a well-fed but half-witted farmer.

"Ah!" he said. "It be a nuisance, but now I shall have to go to Kuspilad to arrange about that mortgage!"

"How did you do it?" I asked.

"Portable plastic surgery outfit," he explained. "Very useful in my profession. Causes nerve, skin and muscle cells to dry up and shrink, or to absorb moisture and swell, according to the way one turns the handle. Works by deep-heating infra-red rays. It has one drawback. After several days the face begins to return to its natural state. The other rays, which change the chemical composition of the pigments in skin and hair, are too well known in Mars for me to need to explain them. The effects of them, too, wears off in time. But aren't we wasting time?"

EIL HEKTORUM was at the Princess's suite in a few minutes. He made Wimp dress in men's clothes and us three in women's clothes. The plastic surgery outfit made some changes in our appearance, although I had some doubt as to whether it was much use trying to disguise the enormous Hudells. Though, I must say, Hektorum did not make such a bad job of it, considering.

His next move seemed to me to spoil it all. He televised the airport and booked reservations in an air-liner for Princess Wimpolo, Vans Holors and me for a journey to Novwollo in the country of Kuspilad.

"Why go under our own names?" I asked.

"We don't,' he said.

"Your schemes are too deep for me," I said. "The news that the royal party will be on the liner will be everywhere in an hour."

"Just a normal precaution," he said. "Only our luggage will be on the liner. At the last moment we teleview the Captain telling him to start without us. Will you kindly come with me?"

We slipped out of a back entrance of the palace to a small secret airport. Hektorum's badge got us a quick passage. Then he showed us the queer-looking secret aircraft we were to travel in.

It was as round as an egg, transparent, had a helicopter propeller on top and a small propeller in front, with three landing wheels on telescopic props. Queerest-looking thing I ever saw.

A trusted operative of Martian International Investigators, which was the official name of Usulor's Secret Service, put the message through to the air-liner. The great liner rose in the air out of a big crowd that had gathered to show their loyalty by waving flags and cheering and to whisper "Isn't she getting fat!" Always well-nourished, Wimp was now nearly eleven hundredweight.

The big liner really didn't go awfully fast. There were too many twisty caverns to go through. What we lost on the straight stretches we made up on the bends. So that we kept it pretty well in sight most of the time.

T WAS an ordinary, dull journey for most of the time. I thought Hek-


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THE IVORY TOWER moreover, as she now felt, the possibility of a sight of Graham Fielder might reward him. It was disagreeable to her that he should have such a sight while she denied it to her own eyes; but the sense of their common want of application for their faculties was a thing that repeatedly checked in her the expression of judgments. Their idleness was as mean and bare on her own side, she too much felt, as on his; and heaven knew that if he could sit with screwed-up eyes for hours the case was as flagrant in her aimless driftings, her incurable restless revolutions, as a pretence of "interests" could consort with.

She revolved and drifted then, out of his sight and in another quarter of the place, till four o'clock had passed; when on returning to him she found his chair empty and was sure of what had become of him. There was nothing else in fact for his Sunday, as he on that day denied himself the resource of driving, or rather of being driven, from which the claim of the mechanical car had not, in the Newport connection, won him, and which, deep in his barouche, behind his own admirable horses, could maintain him in meditation for meditation's sake quite as well as a poised rocking-chair. Left thus to herself, though conscious she well might have visitors, she circled slowly and repeatedly round the gallery, only pausing at last on sight of a gentleman who had come into view by a path from the cliff. He presented himself in a minute as Davey 19

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Page:Everywoman's World, Volume 7, Number 7.djvu/28

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social code, her smouldering resentment did not prevent her being entirely amiable and gracious toward Emily Edgerton. After the dinner, she contrived that Emily should pay her duty call without her father; no hard matter. Mrs. Shane lived on one of the streets of trees; her house, though small, had an inviting porch covered with vines. Within, the rooms, all on one floor, had the charm of comfort and taste in daily use. The three rooms stretching across the front were practically in one, and gave the needed setting for a grand piano at one end, a carved oak sideboard at the other, and deep soft chairs everywhere There were flowers, great pink roses, nodding to their own reflection on the polished surface of the piano top. A darning basket, filled with silk stockings, beside them, in some curious way added the last touch necessary to express the mistress of the house. To Emily it looked elegantly Bohemian.

Mrs. Shane rallied the child, not too obliquely, about Tony Yorke, pumped dry of all relevant and irrelevant information and filled up the vacancy with the pleasantest of impressions, and produced Tony, finally, as a conjuror brings a rabbit out of a hat. Tony himself had not at all expected to see Emily, but he supported the encounter with equanimity. Her quick blush at his entrance was not unflattering: naturally, he could not know what Cora had said no more than five minutes before. But they had had the pleasantest of rides, as Emily admitted by merely mentioning what a woman remembers is a good index to what she likes. On the whole that sapient observation is no less true of men.

The half-hour following amused all three very much; Emily had all the pleasure of the jeune fille in being almost shocked; Cora and Tony all the amusement of talking their own language over the head of an unconscious third party. And Tony told himself that, after all, Emily hardly deserved to be called a "nursery chit." Some day she would be a thorough woman of the world, and the reading of her unfulfilled promise was in its way as interesting as would be the contemplation of her final perfection. Bread and butter she might be as yet, but it was "the best butter." Besides, Tony had rather a liking for bread and butter, not unusual in a man who has sampled other and at times too pungent fare. It sharpens the palate, for one thing. Yes, Emily—Miss Edgerton, of course, in his audible address of her—had all the points, physical and mental. He found himself surveying with pleasure the fine, almost imperceptible curve in the line from under her arm to her slender hip; a rare beauty, which only the connoisseur observes. She had a well-turned wrist and ankle, too. She was quite aware of his scrutiny, but held her colour; only surprise had brought that first blush. Quite naturally her truly innocent, girlishly immature mind set it down to honest admiration, perhaps dawning love. There is a stage of awakening consciousness, still clean of passion and therefore unashamed in the wildest fights of imagination when youth perceives in every hew acquaintance a probable lover. The earthy substance in which love must root is ignored; Emily was saved the embarrassment of reading anything grosser into Tony's gaze. In fact, it was not there; he could take an almost impersonal pleasure in the sight of a pretty woman, as a work of art. And he was not preoccupied with Hope.

"I'll take you to the Falls next time." he told Emily, laughing. "It's only fifty miles.'

"Sir, you go too far," answered Emily. "But—I rather should like to see them. Are they pretty? I believe I'll ask Daddy to take us up in the car. That's where he’s going to built the power plant, isn't it?"

"Very pretty," assented Tony, exchanging a glance with Cora Shane. "So he is going too, is he?"

"Why, I suppose so," said Emily carelessly. "He's always doing something; I'm sure I heard him speak of it. Shall we consider it settled—going there, I mean?"

"Both, if you like," said Tony. "You evidently have a good deal of influence with your father, young lady."

"He spoils me horribly," agreed Emily. "I always tell him he has no right to ruin my character just to gratify his own selfish pleasure in giving me things—but he does it just the same. He'll be waiting for me now; he will dine at six o'clock. Good-bye, Mrs. Shane." She gave her hand to Tony last, and her eyes therewith. They watched her graceful progress to the front gate, where Allen Kirby waited with the motor. She sprang into it, smiled and spoke to Allen, turned and waved her hand, and was borne out of sight, a little princess of democracy.

the rare grace of inspiring others to talk well, because they were interested in what others said, and showed a disposition to he pleased as well as to please.

Happy memories of these far-off days are still fresh in the minds of the younger members of that group, who are spared to witness Canada's Jubilee, and many an interesting reminiscence of that period is given to-day, as we indulge in the pleasure of looking back.

Lady Tilley has been a Prominent member of the National Council of Women since its institution, and those who knew here best realize how beautifully the Confession of Faith of that great organization, which aims at making home life sweet and helpful, and national life free from all the injustice and impurity, which aims at making the Golden Rule the common law of life, is illustrated in her daily life. She lives for the good that she can do, and many a sufferer in the Victoria Cottage Hospital at Fredericton, and in the Chipman Memorial Hospital at St. Stephen, New Brunswick which Lady Tilley was largely instrumental in founding—the latter being her lovely old home overlooking the historic St. Croix River—has felt it easier to endure suffering through her loving ministrations; and many a sailor in the Seamen's Mission, St. John, in which Lady Tilley has always taken a deep interest, has carried away with him to sea a warm affection for the Blessed Mother, as she was known amongst them, who revived his faith in woman and in Heaven.

A sailor who had enjoyed the advantages of good training in his early days, but who had lived in such a way that the sweet constraints of home and mother had lost their grip on him, told that Lady Tilley had, by her interest to him, reawakened the old home feeling in his hear, and led him to write his mother, something he had not done for years, and to purpose to live the kind of life which he had promised her to live when she had kissed him good-bye.

When a mere boy Sir Leonard Tilley became a total abstainer from all intoxicants, at a time when a step of that kind exposed a young man to the taunt of being a temperance crank. Throughout is whole life he adhered so religiously to his early purpose that when he was Lieutenant-Governor of New Brunswick he and Lady Tilley decided that no intoxicants should ever be found on the table at Government House. In that day this required almost as much moral courage as the Hebrew boy Daniel manifested in Babylon in refusing the King's wine, We are living to-day in a new era. The old order changeth, and the evil custom which has done so much to corrupt the world has given place to something far better, till wine has been banished even from the King's table.

It is said that an intellectual woman should not marry an intellectual man, for two clever people in one house cannot get on well together. Tennyson evidently did not believe in this saying, for he condemns the woman in "Locksley Hall" in most unmeasured terms for mating with a clown instead of marrying himself. For a perfect union there must be intellectual sympathy as well as love. In this respect, as in every other, Lady Tilley was an ideal wife. She was a stately flower of perfect wifehood, like the poet's "Isabel."

Sit Leonard Tilley passed way in 1896. greatly beloved by every one, a man who stood four-square to all the winds that blew. Since that time Lady Tilley has given herself up largely to benevolent work. At the beginning of the present war she entered whole-heartedly into promoting Red Cross activities, as in ministering in many ways to the comfort of the soldiers whom she calls "my boys."

Lady Macdonald and Lady Tilley are singularly akin in the breadth of their sympathies. Like that interesting character, Piper Tom in Myrtle Reed's "A Spinner in the Sun," they rich and poor—into great brotherhood. Many a one has felt the kind, beautiful spirit which lightens the burdens of life and makes the days brighter, which these great lovable women, whom Canada delights to honour, have lavished so freely on others.

A poor old man, whom Lady Macdonald had befriended, used to say that the weather was never so fine at Ottawa when the Lady of Earnscliffe was away from home.

I have often seen Lady Tilley in the quaint old town of St. Andrews-by-the-Sea, where she has a beautiful summer home, going about in the most friendly way amongst the people, sharing their joys and sorrows.

Canada has good reason to be proud of her women, never more so than to-day. No country under the sun can show a more unselfish type. The two Confederation brides of fifty years ago, who are privileged to rejoice in what Canada has done, and is doing, are an embodiment of the noble spirit which animates all true Canadian women, whether high or low, rich or poor.


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THE IVORY TOWER Bradham, and on drawing nearer called across to her without other greeting: "Won't you walk back with me to tea? Gussy has sent me to bring you."

"Why yes, of course I will—that's nice of Gussy," she replied; adding moreover that she wanted a walk, and feeling in the prospect, though she didn't express this, a relief to her tension and a sanction for what she called to herself her tact. She might without the diversion not quite have trusted herself not to emulate, and even with the last crudity, her father's proceeding; which she knew she should afterwards be ashamed of. "Anyone that comes here," she said, "must come on to you—they'll know;" and when Davey had replied that there wasn't the least chance of anyone's not coming on she moved with him down the path, at the end of which they entered upon the charming cliff walk, a vast carpet of undivided lawns, kept in wondrous condition, with a meandering right-of-way for a seaward fringe and bristling wide-winged villas that spoke of a seated colony; many of these huge presences reducing to marginal meanness their strip of the carpet.

Davey was, like herself, richly and healthily replete, though with less of his substance in stature; a frankly fat gentleman, blooming still at eight-and-forty, with a large smooth shining face, void of a sign of moustache or whisker and crowned with dense dark hair cropped close to his head after the fashion of a French schoolboy or the 20


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158 worship of reason is the system on which, if we trust them, the deniers of guidance ground their plan of life. The following attempt at an experiment on this point is the best which I can make; and, so far as I know, the first that ever was made.

Say that my list of paradoxers divides in 1825: this of itself proves nothing, because so many of the earlier books are lost, or not likely to be come at. It would be a fearful rate of increase which would make the number of paradoxes since 1825 equal to the whole number before that date. Let us turn now to another collection of mine, arithmetical books, of which I have published a list. The two collections are similarly circumstanced as to new and old books; the paradoxes had no care given to the collection of either; the arithmetical books equal care to both. The list of arithmetical books, published in 1847, divides at 1735; the paradoxes, up to 1863, divide at 1825. If we take the process which is most against the distinction, and allow every year from 1847 to 1863 to add a year to 1735, we should say that the arithmetical writers divide at 1751. This rough process may serve, with sufficient certainty, to show that the proportion of paradoxes to books of sober demonstration is on the increase; and probably, quite as much as the proportion of heterodoxes to books of orthodox adherence. So that divinity and medicine may say to geometry, Don't you sneer: if rationalism, homœopathy, and their congeners are on the rise among us, your enemies are increasing quite as fast. But geometry replies—Dear friends, content yourselves with the rational inference that the rise of heterodoxy within your pales is not conclusive against you, taken alone; for it rises at the same time within mine. Store within your garners the precious argument that you are not proved wrong by increase of dissent; because there is increase of dissent against exact science. But do not therefore even yourselves to me: remember that you, Dame Divinity, have inflicted every kind of penalty, from the stake to the stocks, in aid of your reasoning; remember that you, Mother Medicine, have, not many years ago applied to Parliament for increase of forcible hindrance of antipharmacopœal drenches, pills, and powders. Who ever heard of my asking the legislature to fine blundering circle-squarers? Remember that the D in dogma is the D in decay; but the D in demonstration is the D in durability.

I have known a medical man—a young one—who was seriously of opinion that the country ought to be divided into medical parishes, with a practitioner appointed to each, and a penalty


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THE IVORY TOWER inmate of a jail. But for his half-a-dozen fixed wrinkles, as marked as the great rivers of a continent on a map, and his thick and arched and active eyebrows, which left almost nothing over for his forehead, he would have scarce exhibited features—in spite of the absence of which, however, he could look in alternation the most portentous things and the most ridiculous. He would hang up a meaning in his large empty face as if he had swung an awful example on a gibbet, or would let loose there a great grin that you somehow couldn't catch in the fact but that pervaded his expanses of cheek as poured wine pervades water. He differed certainly from Rosanna in that he enjoyed, visibly, all he carnally possessed—whereas you could see in a moment that she, poor young woman, would have been content with, would have been glad of, a scantier allowance. "You'll find Cissy Foy, to begin with," he said as they went; "she arrived last night and told me to tell you she'd have walked over with me but that Gussy wants her for something. However, as you know, Gussy always wants her for something—she wants everyone for something so much more than something for everyone—and there are none of us that are not worked hard, even though we mayn't bloom on it like Cissy, who, by the way, is looking a perfect vision."

"Awfully lovely?"—Rosanna clearly saw as she asked. 21


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THE IVORY TOWER "Prettier than at any time yet, and wanting tremendously to hear from you, you know, about your protégé—what's the fellow's name? Graham Fielder?—whose arrival we're all agog about."

Rosanna pulled up in the path; she somehow at once felt her possession of this interest clouded—shared as yet as it had been only with her father, whose share she could control. It then and there came to her in one of the waves of disproportionate despair in which she felt half the impressions of life break, that she wasn't going to be able to control at all the great participations. She had a moment of reaction against what she had done; she liked Gray to be called her protégé—forced upon her as endless numbers of such were, he would be the only one in the whole collection who hadn't himself pushed at her; but with the big bright picture of the villas, the palaces, the lawns and the luxuries in her eyes, and with something like the chink of money itself in the murmur of the breezy little waves at the foot of the cliff, she felt that, without her having thought of it enough in advance, she had handed him over to complications and relations. These things shimmered in the silver air of the wondrous perspective ahead, the region off there that awaited her present approach and where Gussy hovered like a bustling goddess in the enveloping cloud of her court. The man beside her was the massive Mercury of this urgent Juno; but—without mythological 22


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THE IVORY TOWER, which we make for her under no hint that she could herself have dreamed of one—she found herself glad just then that she liked Davey Bradham, and much less sorry than usual that she didn't respect him. An extraordinary thing happened, and all in the instant before she spoke again. It was very strange, and it made him look at her as if he wondered that his words should have had so great an effect as even her still face showed. There was absolutely no one, roundabout and far and wide, whom she positively wanted Graham to know; no not one creature of them all—"all" figuring for her, while she stood, the great collection at the Bradhams'. She hadn't thought of this before in the least as it came to her now; yet no more had she time to be sure that even with the sharper consciousness she would, as her father was apt to say, have acted different. So much was true, yet while she still a moment longer hung fire Davey rounded himself there like something she could comparatively rest on. "How in the world," she put to him then, "do you know anything away off there—? He has come to his uncle, but so quietly that I haven't yet seen him."

"Why, my dear thing, is it new to you that we're up and doing—bright and lively? We're the most intelligent community on all this great coast, and when precious knowledge is in the air we're not to be kept from it. We knew at breakfast that the New York boat had brought him, 23


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THE IVORY TOWER and Gussy of course wants him up to dinner to-night. Only Cissy claims, you see, that she has rights in him first—rights beyond Gussy's, I mean," Davey went on; "I don't know that she claims them beyond yours."

She looked abroad again, his companion, to earth and sea and sky; she wondered and felt threatened, yet knowing herself at the same time a long way off from the point at which menace roused her to passion. She had always to suffer so much before that, and was for the present in the phase of feeling but weak and a little sick. But there was always Davey. She started their walk again before saying more, while he himself said things that she didn't heed. "I can't for the life of me imagine," she nevertheless at last declared, "what Cissy has to do with him. When and where has she ever seen him?"

Davey did as always his best to oblige. "Somewhere abroad, some time back, when she was with her mother at some baths or some cure-place. Though when I think of it," he added, "it wasn't with the man himself—it was with some relation: hasn't he an uncle, or perhaps a stepfather? Cissy seems to know all about him, and he takes a great interest in her."

It again all but stopped Rosanna. "Gray Fielder an interest in Cissy?"

"Let me not," laughed Davey, "sow any seed of trouble or engage for more than I can stand to. 24


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THE IVORY TOWER She'll tell you all about it, she'll clothe it in every grace. Only I assure you I myself am as much interested as anyone," he added—"interested, I mean, in the question of whether the old man there has really brought him out at the last gasp this way to do some decent thing about him. An impression prevails," he further explained, "that you're in some wonderful way in the old wretch's confidence, and I therefore make no bones of telling you that your arrival on our scene there, since you're so good as to consent to come, has created an impatience beyond even what your appearances naturally everywhere create. I give you warning that there's no limit to what we want to know."

Rosanna took this in now as she so often took things—working it down in silence at first: it shared in the general weight of all direct contributions to her consciousness. It might then, when she spoke, have sunk deep. She looked about again, in her way, as if under her constant oppression, and seeing, a little off from their gravelled walk, a public bench to which a possible path branched down, she said, on a visibly grave decision: "Look here, I want to talk to you—you're one of the few people in all your crowd to whom I really can. So come and sit down."

Davey Bradham, arrested before her, had an air for his responsibilities that quite matched her own. "Then what becomes of them all there?" 25


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THE IVORY TOWER "I don't care a hang what becomes of them. But if you want to know," Rosanna said, "I do care what becomes of Mr. Fielder, and I trust you enough, being as you are the only one of your lot I do trust, to help me perhaps a little to do something about it."

"Oh, my dear lady, I'm not a bit discreet, you know," Mr. Bradham amusedly protested; "I'm perfectly unprincipled and utterly indelicate. How can a fellow not be who likes as much as I do at all times to make the kettle boil and the plot thicken? I've only got my beautiful intelligence, though, as I say, I don't in the least want to embroil you. Therefore if I can really help you as the biggest babbler alive!"

She waited again a little, but this time with her eyes on his good worn worldly face, superficially so smooth, but with the sense of it lined and scratched and hacked across much in the manner of the hard ice of a large pond at the end of a long day's skating. The amount of obstreperous exercise that had been taken on that recording field! The difference between our pair, thus confronted, might have been felt as the greater by the very fact of their outward likeness as creatures so materially weighted; it would have been written all over Rosanna for the considering eye that every grain of her load, from innermost soul to outermost sense, was that of reality and sincerity; whereas it might by the same token have been 26


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 one a fixed appointment. After he went away, Pandit Sastri said, “Last night’s lecture must have made him mad. I sometimes make men mad.” I said, “Yes, you have made many mad men sober also.” That is the complex nature of the messenger of God’s truth—to make mad people sober and calculating people mad. On another occasion, I observed that he promised to close a service and sermon in an hour and took two and a half hours ! And he said, “I am like the drunkards who began with drinking only one bottle and did not give up till they consumed many a bottle and raised such a hue and cry that people came and thrashed them into silence. So you must have silenced me!” Wonderful man, wonderful man, that received everything in the finest grace I This fund of stories in him amused the casual hearer, instructed the thoughtful and endeared him to kindred spirits. This man, they felt, was ever watchful, ever on the alert. There was not an incident in his life that did not leave an impression on his mind, not an occurrence that did not make its mark, not a


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 scene that did not have its own direct bearing on his life. Just as Shaik Sadi, the author of Gulistan, must have been ever awake to have stored up that inexhaustible treasure of anecdotes which is the attraction and value his work, so, a Sivanath Sastri or a Raj Narayan Bose or any of these story-tellers must have been watchful souls receiving impressions and storing them up. This is the difference between a conscious and an unconscious life. So many of us who think they are living conscious lives, lead unconscious lives. The little negro girl in ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’, when asked when she was born, replied, “Methinks, I growed.” That is unconscious tree-life, and we all lead it. In big forests, botanists tell us, there are huge trees which, when cut across, show rings in the wood of the trunk which are a chronicle of the life of the tree. As many rings, so many years. We find in big trees, when cut through, five or six hundred rings showing that they lived through five or six hundred years. Even thus in man, if the conscious soul is wide-awake, all these various experiences, focussed'


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357 and crystallised into vivid realities of remembered instance and example, make the life what it is, I’ich in principle and rich in practice.

Again, another characteristic of Pandit Sastri was that he was a man of invincible faith' — a man whose faith nothing could shake and subdue. Once he undertook a prolonged mission tour — starting from ■Calcutta, passing through Behar, old North- West Provinces, Lahore, Central India and tlie Bombay and Madras Presidencies and i-back again to Calcutta — all that taking three <nionths. And h(! began that great tour with the magnificent sum of six rupees in Ids pocket! He made his plans, he sketched out the details of the tour ; but he never asked him- self what money would be necessary. On his way to the Station, he goes along Cornwallis Street, calls at the Sadharan Samaj Office and asks the Secretary, “ I am going on a mission tour. Will you give me money ?” And the Secretary says, “ I have only six rupees.” "All right, give me that ; I will go as far as dhat can take me, and God will give me the


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358 rest.” And God provides the rest I He goes to the next station and delivers a lecture. The next day he makes up his mind to g-o and j)acks up his things to start ; and somebody comes up and says, “ I have listened to your lecture with great pleasure.” “ I am going today.” “ Yes, sir, I want to contribute three rupees to 'your travelling expcmses.” “ Yes.” He receives it. He steps out. Another gentleman gives three rupees. Then he goes to the next station and gets down. He knows nobody there and is strolling up and down the platform. A man falls jirostrate at his feet and says, “ I am blessed.” “ Who are you, please ?” ‘‘I am a compositoi- in a

Press. I did some little stealiirg and was handed over to the Police. You interceded,, you pleaded for me and got me excused. 'Then I felt what a departure it was, saw what it was to be good. 1 have changed, I have timned over a new leaf. Please come to my house and be my guest and delivcu’ some lectures here.” Next day, agdin, he. makes up his bundles and waits at the Station, 'I’he porter comes and says, ‘‘It is onljr


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359 10 minutes to the time. Please come on.'*’ “ Yes, my friend, but 1. have no ticket.’* “ f have already purchased a ticket for y<»u, sir. Please come in.” Thus lie went; on and on, till he reached Lahore, met Sirdar Dayal Singh, who gave - him an escort and some money. And Pandit Sastri told me, “ When we had to part, w^e counted all the money we had. It w^as just enough for his ticket and mine. Thus (lod helped mo.” And he added. “ How is it Fatlnn’ Huller had to pray for his w'ants and 1 never prayed?” I said, ‘‘Your mission is itself a prayer.” He laughed and said, “ Yes, it is true.” That w'as the man of faith! He came to Madras. We opened his jK>rtmanteau. We found only two ragged shirts. We put in new shirts and he said, “ God Mess you.’’ A man hands him Bs. 10. “ Did you know' that I I'equii’ed it?” “ No, sir.” “ I am in the habit of sending ten rupees every month to tny mother, and today is the due date. God has sent these ten rupees.”

Thus he lived on the bounty of God, according to His favour, as it came every day. And


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360 how scrupulous ! He goes back to Calcutta, goes to the Sadharan Samaj and says, ‘‘A watch and a silver plate have baen presented by my friends in Madras, I do not know whether they are for me or for the Sadharan Samaj. Anyhow, it is a very trying situation for me. What is spontaneous may become ’ customary, and yhat is customary may be- come compulsory. Thus the poor begging sanyasin in course of time becomes the J agud- guru Avith a crown of gold and a throne ot silver. You will decide who is to take it, I or the Samaj.” And the Sadharan Samaj says, ” Do accept it, it is meant for you-” Such was the scrupulous honesty of the man — no preseiits to be accepted except with the knowledge and assent of those whose mis- sionary he was ! Once finding he Avas not able to go out for one full month on account of ill- health, he said, “ I cannot receive the monthly allowance.’’ And they could not force him to take it. He spoke the truth as' he felt it, when he was here at Cocanada last in the year 1907—"Mind not money ; do your duty and God will send money.” That was the faith of the man.


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Translation talk:The Akkerman Steppes

Name
The page uses "The Akerman Steppe", the heading block "The Akkerman Steppes" and then a sub-heading "The Akerman Steppes" - which should it be ? -- Beardo (talk) 04:59, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

 * It should be Steppes...
 * Thank you for catching it.
 * Unfortunately, the typo is not something I can't correct, it was done by the admin who moved the translation to this heading...
 * I will try to bring it to their attention.
 * DJ LucDar (talk) 19:54, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
 * And one k or two ?

 * (The page this was moved from used Steppe, so the mistake was the original page creation.) -- Beardo (talk) 20:46, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
 * My understanding is that it was derived from Turkish Aq Kirmān so double k would be the closest transliteration, Akkerman it is.
 * Thank you,
 * DJ LucDar (talk) 21:47, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

title: Translation talk:The Akkerman Steppes


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Page:Operation Crossroads 1946.pdf/50

 RADIOLOGICAL SAFETY RESPONSIBILITY AND ORGANIZATION

Although the Manhattan Engineer District had taken responsibility for radiological safety at CROSSROADS, the District's role actually consisted of providing radsafe equipment and senior radsafe personnel. CJTF 1 was in command at Bikini and major radsafe orders were issued in his name. A Radiological Safety Section was established to advise CJTF 1 in this area and to implement his orders. Its chief was also CJTF 1's Radiological Safety Advisor. During test operations the section operated directly under the JTF 1 Assistant Chief of Staff for Operations. For the purposes of technical advice and instrumentation, the Radiological Safety Section reported to the Technical Director. This dual chain of command caused no difficulty during CROSSROADS (Reference C.9.206, p. VII-(C)-2).

The mission of the Radiological Safety Section was (Reference B.0.1, p. E-II-1):

 * ...to protect personnel from the hazards peculiar to the use of the atomic bomb during Operation CROSSROADS and to enable personnel to return safely to the target area at the earliest possible moment.

The task force operation plan specified the following elements for the Radiological Safety Section (Reference B.0.1, p. E-II-1):

 * 1. Radiological Safety Control Unit

 * 2. Radiological Safety Advisory Board

 * 3. Radiological Safety Reconnaissance Units

 * 4. Radiological Safety Monitor-Advisors

 * 5. Radiological Safety Technical Service Units.

Documents written during CROSSROADS provide additional details on the section's organization. Figure 12 gives a composite picture based on information from the available sources.

The section chief, his staff, and supporting personnel, such as clerks and radiomen, made up the Radiological Safety Control Unit, based aboard USS Mount McKinley (AGC-7), the task force flagship. They were to (1) receive, plot, and analyze radiological data from all sources, (2) control the radsafe reconnaissance units, and (3) advise CJTF 1 on the location and amount of radioactivity. They were also to predict the path of the radioactive cloud and the pool of radioactive water.

The Committee for Review of Radiological Safety Measures functioned during most of its existence at Bikini under the title of Medico-Legal Board. It was convened on 15 June 1946 by the chief of the Radsafe Section, after which it met irregularly at his call or when one or more of its members felt a matter required its attention. Initially, it served to evaluate the regulations and safety measures adopted to protect personnel from radiological hazards. Later the board initiated a number of investigations, believing itself warranted in defining its own field of action. A total of 14 men served on the board at one time or another. All were medical doctors, specializing in radiology or with

45

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Page:Peterson Magazine 1869B.pdf/493

 MARIE ANTOINETTE'S TALISMAN.

BY MRS. ANN S. STEPHENS.

[Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by Mrs. Ann S. Stephens, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for the Southern District of New York.]

CONCLUDED FROM PAGE 379.

CHAPTER XX.

The Count De Mirabeau had just come in from an exciting debate at the club. This man seemed to have changed places with his foster- brother; for while one had, to a certain extent, cast off the coarseness which made him a favorite of the people, the man of noble birth had been striving to brutalize himself down to a level with the lowest strata of civilized life. Marie Antoi- nette’s rejection of his advances had plunged him deeper and deeper into the abysses of popu- lar favor. But there was a natural revolt in all this; Mirabeau would much rather have been the saviour of monarchy than a leader of the mob, and his very power as a demagogue some- times filled him with disgust. That partialar night he was in a restive frame of mind; by bringing out the very coarsest powers of his; nature he had excited the crowd that day into the most clamorous homage—homage that never would have been given to the splendid genius and great powers that he knew himself to possess, unaided by the rudest and lowest passions. It is doubtful if ever his powerful intellect foresaw the terrible scenes that the eloquence of men like him was destined to fasten upon France. That night his better nature recoiled from the hideous work his genius was doing, and he flung himself down on a chair, weary and sickened by the clamorous homage of his followers.

Some one knocked at the door of his chamber while he was in this dissatisfied mood, and he called out roughly for the person to come in, thinking that, perhaps, it was some messenger from the printing-office.

A woman entered, elegantly dressed, and scattering a delicate perfume from her garments as she moved. She held a small mask before her face, such as ladies sometimes carried to protect their complexions from the sun; but when the door was closed, she dropped it, and moving softly across the room, bent over the chair on which Mirabeau was sitting.

He started up in surprise, stood a moment as if irresolute, and then broke forth,

‘Madame Du Barry, and here!”

"So you did know me," she said, with a gleam of pride and thankfulness that he had so readily recognized her features.

"Know you?" answered the count, reaching forth his hand to grasp hers heartily, as if she had been a man. "When will the time come when Mirabeau can forget The woman held up her finger.

"Ah, count! that was before the days of Ver seilles, when you were the gayest young scape grace about the court, and I one of the people. I wonder if either of us are the better for having changed places. "

"I was just asking myself that question, " said Mirabeau, gloomily. After all, the greatness that springs out of a false position must even be unsatisfactory ; but tell me of yourself, fair lady. It is years since I have known much of your good or evil fortune."

Du Barry shrugged her shoulders.

The last few years in England—that cold, cruel country, where the sun never shines fairly out as it does in France. Is not that enough of misfortune? But I must not stay to talk of my- self. Of course, I did not come here simply for the pleasure of seeing you. There is a man in whom you take interest—a person who calls himself Monsieur Jaque.”

“My foster-brother, and as true-hearted a man as ever drew breath; but how did he come to attract your notice, my friend?”

“No matter, it is a long story; besides, it is not the man that I am so much interested in, but a young woman whom he loves.”

“A young woman! You cannot mean Made- moiselle Gosner?”

“Yes, that is the young person, a fair girl, whose father I, in some sort, wronged in the days of my power, and to whom I wish to make atonement, and cannot—she rejects it; so, in the desperation of my good intent, I come to you. My belief is that these two persons love each other.”

“Love each other! What, the girl?” eried Mirabeau, starting to his feet. ‘Does he not know that Mirabeau has honored her with his admiration?”

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361 Yet, what was at the bottom of all this was ■ ihe sense of direct responsibility to God. He did not know' of any suffering he had borne for the sake of faith. He accepted everything as it came. He was even brought to the verge of death, when the Mother rescued him. “But for my ‘ scholarship Venkata Katnam, I should have starved with my wife and child ” — (now Mrs. Hemalatha Sarkar.) That resolute will, that stern unbending faith, was at the bottom of the man. He timsted in God, and God blessed him. When Pratap Chandra Muzoomdar was in England, at the close of an interview' w'ith John Bright, that great orator asked him, “ How do you, Brahmo missionaries, live ?” “ They have no fixed allowance, no definite fund. They only accept what comes to them.” “ Oh then, it is the apostolic spirit of dependence on the providence of God ! Yes, after all, f hat is the best.” Y'^es. On W'hom can man depend but on Him who caters to the ant in its hole and the nestling in its nest ? On Him alone, if we are wise and truly thoughtful, can we depend. Keshub found out that secret ; and


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362 they were happy all their days. Brahmic- history teems with ' instances of how Glod miraculously' caters to the needs and wants of His children. And of such faith and trust in the God of Providence Pandit Sastri is an. outstanding instance.

He bore the message of the Ih'ahnia Samaj alloverthe country'; and he was the first apostle of the Brahma Samaj to the Telugu Districts. In this town, he had wonderful experiences during his first visit. He W'as leceivod with X'omp and lodged comfortably in a big house. But, for having committed tin; grievous t)fience o^ receiving a tumbler of water from tlie hands of a Mahammadan servant, lie was soon sent out. The host could not understand how a Sastri holding conversations in the sacred language with Pandits could contaminate himself by accepting water from the- hands of a Mahammadan. Be was asked to find shelter elsewhere. Next day he was on a’i)ial. A meeting was held. The Collector came. The D. M. & S. O. canie. Various others came. They were all jdeased with the address and had a general talk with him on.


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363 religion. The host found out that he a fter alJ, Hn important man ; and so he struck the happy via media and gave him a banga*- low where he could safely indulge his social vagaries. Whether in the bungalow or on the piail, whether with Pandits or with a Mahammadan servant, he was the same. When, on the pial, the sun shone and the rain l>eat, some one brought a tatt}' and held it as an awning to protect Sastri Mahashai. A friend of mine who accompanied him to Madras and the South had said that I should 1>ecome a missionary, that I should become a Pandit Sastri. When they returned from Pangalore to Madras, the same friend said, “ P’^otber, for goodness’ sake, never Ixjcome a missionary. It is not only poverty but misery. Yet, Pandit Sastri bore all this and more with tlte hilarity of a man who was, as it were,, rising from power to power and expanding from glory to glory. Then he went to Rajahmundry before Mr. Veei'esalingam Pantulu was able to perform the first widow-marriage.^ He gave a lecture, many young men gathered and he put new life into them. What Mr^


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364 Veeresalingam, with his earnest soul and persuasive life, had been trying to elicit from the yoiing men was ripened and matured into action by Pandit Sastri’s lecture ; and shortly after, the hrst widow-marriage was celebrated. Thus this harbinger of divine truth and apostle of divine light, was the great supporter of the social reform cause which has made this part of the countiy, thank God, known aiid respected elsewhere as an advanced part of the land. What he did liere and at Rajahmundry he did elsewhere, lie came to Cocanada on three occasions — 1881, 1890 and 1907. He visited different places ; and w'henever he went, he carried wdth him his authoritative conviction. A friend at Masulipatam said, The peculiarity about Pandit Sastri is : he told us what you have told us several times ; and yet, as he spoke, people felt as if they listened to it for the first time.” No wonder. He spoke from the heart ; and I spoke from the lip. He said what emerged from his heart ; I gave out how I heard that gospel. Ho spoke as a man who expressed what


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365 felt in personal experience and witlr tlie authority and power of one who was- commissioned and with the elation of re- joicing in preaching to the world. Thanked" he God, in our part of the country his noble mission has been followed so worthily by f)ther workers — Babu Bix)in Chandra Pal, Mr. Shinde, Babus Mahendranath Bose, Amrita Jial Bose, Bra ja Gopal Neogi and Hem Chandra Harkar. Before all these, Pandit Sastri was the liarbinger. We owe unto God our grateful thanks for having vouchsafed to us a messenger of His trutli so eloquent, so inspiring, so informing as I’andit Sastri.

He was, in the palmy days of his eloquence, a most moving speaker ; ' in Bengali he was one of the greatest speakers. Colonel Olcott mentioned him among the great masters of logic and geligious philosophy. Sir Monier Williams, in his “Records of Religions Thought,” spoke of him as ‘ a man of unquestioned ability and eloquence.’ Ranade and others regai'ded him as a modefii rishi to whom all votaries of reform. .ought to make a pilgrimage. A


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366 unique soul altogether I If we catfeulate the strese and strain amidst which Hb' had to carry, on his work with faith, and' judge amidst whom he worked — on the one hand, very impulsive people, and on the. other, towering intellects — we realise the gresatness .of the man, which he owed entirely’ to his devotion to God.

To me personally how great, how deep, how profound have been his kindness and good- ness ! Though it is a fact that there had’ Ijeeji humble beginnings, inner throbbings, silent processes, yet wdien it came to the d^isive step of coming into the Brahma; Siimaj, htunanly speaking, it was due to Pandit Sastri. In 1881, when I was in the F. A. Class; Pfindit Sastri delivered a series of lectures, lim 1882 I sought out Mr. Buchiah Pantuiu ; awt: ever since, for weal or for woe, I have been cum- nected with the Brahma Samaj ; and it has been my ambition, though, it must' sadly be confessed with a sense of humiliation, an unrealised ambition, to do something- werthy of one whom 1 admired and revered^— Fandit .Sast*i Unto him I owe the inepiratien which


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367 said, * Slot through exalted position, not through cheap popularity, but by loyal adherence to the cause of ti’uth and faithful pursuit of the principle of life-giving love will a man attain the end of existence.’

I feel that he was one of those but for whom the Brahma Samaj could not be what it is. He dealt out his heart and parcelled out his spirit to a thousand souls which are re-incarnated, re-duplicated, multiplied selves of him, we find here and elsewhere in the Brahma Samaj. And yet how tolerant, how ax)- preciative of merit, with none of that fanaticism which comes of narrowness of conception ^ind unbalancied mental condition ! I remember, after a discussion of the merits of vegetarianism, over which people were sharply divided, one of the advocates of vegetarianism wanted to score a crowning victory over his -opponents because Pandit Sastri was a vegetarian by prindide ; and he said, “ Is it not by being a vegetarian that you liave attained .this fine spiritual progress ?” Pandit Sastri relied , “ 1 do not know ; with the great exampie of Maharshi on. the other side, it wemid be


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368 presumptuous on my part to say so. Vegetarianism is more a matter of individual tasto and sentiment than a factor in the spiritual growth of man.” Such was the constant desire and propensity of the man to hold th&, - halance evenly between rival claimants for recognition. If, as some think, in the narration of certain events and incidents he allowed his personal proclivities to prevail, I am satisfied that his intention was not to shovr off his own cause or to show up the opposite^ cause. It was simjdy his sincere, apostolio eagerness to present facts in the dry light of truth ; for Pandit Sixstri was a person to whom justice and righteousness were always- dear.

He was a man who abhoj red all violence in any propaganda, whether social or any other. And God forbid that the Brahmfi. Samaj should ever make itself noted and notorious as countenancing any violence in social, political or religious propaganda ! Yet the spiritual ministrations of this chosen. servant of. God were not witheld even from thertrorst;, When some unfortunate young^


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MARIE ANTOINETTE'S TALISMAN. 451 Du Barry flung herself into the chair from which the count had risen, and burst into a fit of laughter.

"An excellent reason why no honest man should think of her for himself," she said, wiping away the quick tears of merriment that flashed down her painted cheeks. “ Oh! but you are droll as ever, my friend."

"But the girl is beautiful !"

"So much the more reason that your foster-brother should be desperately in love with her, as he certainly is-that is what brings me here. "

"But I tell you that he will not presume

"My dear friend, he has presumed ; and what is more, the girl loves him!”

"What, after I had condescended to be pleased with her? Du Barry, you have ceased to be discriminating. "

"Come, come, be pacified . She is only one, and Paris has so many ; let the poor fellow have his love unmolested-I ask it of you."

"Now I remember," said the count, "it is weeks since I called ; in fact, I neglected her after the first impression. Of course, it was my own fault, and, as you say, Mirabeau can afford to be magnanimous. Besides, I really think it is the fellow's first love. Nay, do not go off into another fit of laughter-such things do happen. Then again, I remember he asked my forbearance, and I almost promised it . Well, the best thing I can do for him is not to go near the demoiselle that might unsettle things."

" If you would be so good," said the countess, with a droll look of humor in her eyes, " it was a part of the favor I was about to ask. This man is, I believe, poor- he possibly cannot afford to marry."

Mirabeau thought of the little estate, whose income had been so generously given up to his extravagance, and had the grace to hesitate in answering. Was the countess going to suggest that he should relinquish that income ? Had that, indeed, been the truth, she might have found more difficulty than had accompanied his renunciation of the girl ; but she promptly set his mind at rest.

"I take it for granted that he cannot afford to marry," she said, " and in this I want your help. Be my banker; let me leave money enough for their comfortable independence in your hands!"

"In my hands!" exclaimed Mirabeau, laughing. "My dear friend, you should know better. It would melt away while the priest was giving his blessing. If you have any sharp notary who will arrange it so that it may be a trust ; in short, that will insure it to him, and save it from me, I should not mind undertaking the business- I dare say that can be done."

"But it must seem to come from you. They would not touch it else," said Du Barry.

" He will never believe it ; but we can manage that ; it can be done in my father's name. Now, fair dame, as your conscience is at rest, tell me-

"Not yet not yet ! I have another thing to ask. "

"Of the same kind ? I warn you now, do not lead a reckless man too far. Money is a sad temptation, when one needs it so much. " Du Barry hesitated, the color came and went under her rouge. She had lost all decency years before; but there was something in what she wished to propose that taxed all her ingenuity. At last she spoke out.

" Mirabeau, you are the enemy of royalty."

"Well!"

"You hate the queen."

" And if I do?"

" This cannot be real, there is something personal under it all."

"What makes you think so ?"

"You are the idol of a people you despise!"

"Go on."

" And might be the saviour of France ; should be a close friend to the queen."

Mirabeau laughed again; but there was angry fire in his eyes, and a curve of scorn on his lips.

"How long is it since the Countess Du Barry became the advocate of Marie Antoinette?" he demanded.

"Ever since she was too generous for the persecution of a fallen enemy ; ever since she has been cruelly unfortunate, and most unjustly reviled . Of all the people in France, I have most cause to love the woman for whose overthrow you are toiling."

"Nay, let me tell you a secret. You are a woman of sense, and can comprehend the situation - Marie Antoinette rejects the friendship of Mirabeau.”

"Has it been offered her?"

"Twice, indirectly."

“But the time may come when that friendship will be implored. Then, Mirabeau, be generous, be noble, wheel your great power to the defence of the throne. Earn the queen's gratitude, force her to acknowledge the power of your genius, the grandeur of your magnanimity-promise this, my Mirabeau."

"When Marie Antoinette seeks my aid it will be time enough to promise. "

"But if she does seek it- if she asks your

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 men who took to bomb-throwing were incarcerated and were about to be dealt with by the extreme penalty of law, he, without subscribing to their methods, yet had the necessary insight to know the needs of the souls of these young men. Pandit Sastri went up to the bai’S of the jail-cage and affectionately blessed them—not the unworthy acts, but the souls that, amidst all vicissitudes and fluctuations, continued to be dear to God. That was the true minister of Grod, not seeking popularity through assuming a taking cry, not shrinking from the discharge of unpopular but virtuous duty if, in the muae of God, it had to be done. That was tlie minister of religion, never a faddist, never a fanatic, never pusillanimous. Blessed be the name of the Brahma Samaj that has produced this great and good man, this worthy messenger of God, this noble expression of truth, this worthy example of righteousness ! Blessed be the name of God now and for ever!


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CHAPTER I 5 were seminaries of Sanskrit learning at Nadia and other places, but the knowledge of Vedic literature was unknown to them, and they confined themselves chiefly to teaching a few elementary branches of grammar, rhetoric, belles-lettres, law and logic.

The blessings of a good English education, which have produced such marvellous results in subse- quent times, were unknown. The necessities of the new struggle for existence pressing upon men had taught them that a partial knowledge of the English language was essential for their worldly prospects. Accordingly, there was at that time, an ever-increasing demand for English education j but it formed no part of the policy of the Indian Government to impart to the people such educa- tion. The lakh of rupees set apart by the Directors of the East India Company in 1813 for the encouragement of learning was being exclusive- ly used, for many years, for the re-printing of old Sanskrit and Arabic books. Lord William Bentinck, one of the most benevolent governors-general India has ever known, had just taken in hand the reins of government. Lord Macaulay whose famous minute on English education finally decided a long-standing controversy that had raged for upwards of twenty years, had not yet arrived. Lord William Bentinck's celebrated Education Decree of the 7th March, 1835, was still, in the


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6 HISTORY OF THE BRAHMO SAMAJ womb of the future, In the absence of govern- ment support a large number of English-teaching schools, very defective in their management and mode of training, had sprung up in different parts of Calcutta and its neighbourhood to meet the popular demand. All that most of them aimed at was to teach a number of English words and phrases without any regard for grammar or syntax. The only effort in the direction of a good English education consisted in the opening of the Hindu College in 1817. But the first effects of impart- ing high English education to the youth of Bengal were far from being encouraging. Many of those who were the first fruits of that education openly professed atheism at that time and, to the great dismay of their Hindu relations, were imbibing many of the vices of modern civiliza- tion. In fact at the time of the opening of Ram Mohun Roy's church, the Hindu College was a seething cauldron of a new revolutionary spirit, There was in its staff of teachers a remarkable young man, named H. V, Derozio, a Eurasian by birth, who, though a youth of nineteen or twenty himself, was influencing the thoughts and aspira- tions of the students of the College in a manner the like of which has seldom been witnessed in the case of any other teacher. He was their guide, philosopher, and friend. Together with the senior


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Rh for calling in any but the incumbent curer. How should people know how to choose? The hair-dressers once petitioned Parliament for an act to compel people to wear wigs. My own opinion is of the opposite extreme, as in the following letter (Examiner, April 5, 1856); which, to my surprise, I saw reprinted in a medical journal, as a plan not absolutely to be rejected. I am perfectly satisfied that it would greatly promote true medical orthodoxy, the predominance of well educated thinkers, and the development of their desirable differences.

The Medical Bill and the medical question generally is one on which experience would teach, if people would be taught.

The great soul question took three hundred years to settle: the little body question might be settled in thirty years, if the decisions in the former question were studied.

Time was when the State believed, as honestly as ever it believed anything, that it might, could, and should find out true doctrine for the poor ignorant community; to which, like a worthy honest state, it added would. Accordingly, by the assistance of a Church, which undertook the physic, the surgery, and the pharmacy of sound doctrine all by itself, it sent forth its legally qualified teachers into every parish, and woe to the man who called in any other. They burnt that man, they whipped him, they imprisoned him, they did everything but what was Christian to him, all for his soul's health and the amendment of his excesses.

But men would not submit. To the argument that the State was a father to the ignorant, they replied that it was at best the ignorant father of an ignorant son, and that a blind man could find his way into a ditch without another blind man to help him. And when the State said—But here we have the Church, which knows all about it, the ignorant community declared that it had aright to judge that question, and that it would judge it. It also said that the Church was never one thing long, and that it progressed, on the whole, rather more slowly than the ignorant community.

The end of it was, in this country, that every one who chose taught all who chose to let him teach, on condition only of an open and true registration. The State was allowed to patronise one particular Church, so that no one need trouble himself to choose a pastor from the mere necessity of choosing. But every church is allowed its colleges, its studies, its diplomas; and every man is allowed his choice. There is no proof that our souls are


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160 worse off than in the sixteenth century; and, judging by fruits, there is much reason to hope they are better off.

Now the little body question is a perfect parallel to the great soul question in all its circumstances. The only things in which the parallel fails are the following: Every one who believes in a future state sees that the soul question is incomparably more important than the body question, and every one can try the body question by experiment to a larger extent than the soul question. The proverb, which always has a spark of truth at the bottom, says that every man of forty is either a fool or a physician; but did even the proverb maker ever dare to say that every man is at any age either a fool or a fit teacher of religion?

Common sense points out the following settlement of the medical question: and to this it will come sooner or later.

Let every man who chooses—subject to one common law of manslaughter for all the crass cases—doctor the bodies of all who choose to trust him, and recover payment according to agreement in the courts of law. Provided always that every person practising should be registered at a moderate fee in a register to be republished every six months.

Let the register give the name, address, and asserted qualification of each candidate—as licentiate, or doctor, or what not, of this or that college, hall, university, &c., home or foreign. Let it be competent to any man to describe himself as qualified by study in public schools without a diploma, or by private study, or even by intuition or divine inspiration, if he please. But whatever he holds his qualification to be, that let him declare. Let all qualification which of its own nature admits of proof be proved, as by the diploma or certificate, &c., leaving things which cannot be proved, as asserted private study, intuition, inspiration, &c., to work their own way.

Let it be highly penal to assert to the patient any qualification which is not in the register, and let the register be sold very cheap. Let the registrar give each registered practitioner a copy of the register in his own case; let any patient have power to demand a sight of this copy; and let no money for attendance be recoverable in any case in which there has been false representation.

Let any party in any suit have a right to produce what medical testimony he pleases. Let the medical witness produce his register, and let his evidence he for the jury, as is that of an engineer or a practitioner of any art which is not attested by diplomas.


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CHAPTER I 7 students he had established in the year 1829 a society called the Academic Association, where the utmost freedom of discussion was allowed on all subjects, sacred or profane ; as a consequence, a new and fervent spirit which aimed at revolutionising society had been evolved. Once roused it went beyond all bounds of moderation intended by its progenitor, Mr. Derozio had received his education under one Mr. David Drummond, a Scotch adventurer, who had drunk deep the spirit of the French Revolution, and had left his country and his kith and kin on account of theological differences. The teachings of Mr. Drummond had made a deep and lasting impression on the mind of his gifted pupil, who carried the same fire into the Hindu College. The influence of his teachings on his pupil-friends was highly moral in its character. He taught them above all to be honest in their speech and conduct, laying great stress on the value of independence and moral courage; but the contagion of free-thinking extended over a far larger area than the sphere of personal influence of the teacher ; and many who had never seen or heard him professed his views. With this thoughtless portion of young Bengal, independence meant open defiance of the authority of their elders and moral courage meant contemptuous reviling of the ancient faith, together with


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8 HISTORY OP THE BRARMO SAMAJT the undisguised profession of infidelity. "The junior students," writes the biographer of David Hare, " caught from the senior- students the infection of ridiculing the Hindu religion and where they were required to utter mantras or prayers, they repeated lines from the Iliad." The committee of the college, where the Hindu element preponderated, passed repeated resolutions during the years 1829-183010 warn the students as well as the teachers, but to no purpose ; till at last towards the beginning of 1831, the whole orthodox Hindu community of Calcutta were so much alarmed, that they rose as one man and under the leadership of Babu Ram Kamal Sen, the grandfather of Keshub Chunder Sen, brought such pressure to bear on the committee of the college that they were obliged to secure the resignation of Mr. Derozio.

Whilst the efforts for imparting higher education to the higher classes were attended by such unpleasant results, the state of popular education was at its lowest ebb. The majority of the male population of the province, together with its whole womanhood, were living in the darkness of ignorance. The little education that wa3 imparted to those who carried on the ordinary business of the nation was of the most rudimentary kind. It was accounted no shame even by a Brahmin to be unlettered. There was no literature of the people,


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CHAPTER I 9 so to say, and its absence was supplied by a number of poetical works, composed during the previous two or three centuries, many of which, however, were highly demoralising in their teachings. The inner life of society was still more deplorable. With the decay of national life, frightful social evils, that pressed hard on the life of almost all classes, had sprung up ; the rules of caste, though partly slackened by the influence of Mahomedan education and also by the altered circumstances of social life, consequent upon the establishment of British rule, were still very stringent. Almost all the agencies that in subsequent times have so largely contributed to partially break down the barriers of ages, such agencies, for instance, as a common western education, which has opened up a new channel of communication, the uniformity of circumstances of political life that is drawing closer the bonds of sympathy between different parts of the country, cheap postage, which carries with wonderful rapidity and regularity the thoughts of one province to another, a net-work of railways, that takes no account of caste, but rather helps in breaking it down by promoting the intercourse of the races, were not then in existence. Men were exclusive, unsympathetic and jealous of their class privileges, so much so that it was seriously argued by the orthodox


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io HISTORY OF THE BRAHMO SAMAJ adversaries of Ram Mohun Roy that it was an unpardonable breach of social decorum on the part of the most virtuous of Sudras to sit on the same bench or carpet with a Brahmin. The conventional usages of society paid an external homage, almost bordering on worship, to the repre- sentatives of the priestly class who were ignorant and unspiritual to a degree. There was living in Calcutta in those days a Sudra spice-seller who had collected the dust from the feet of a hundred thousand Brahmins to wear it as a remedy for an attack of leprosy, and he was a type of his people. The rules of caste made it sinful for the different castes to inter-marry or dine with one another. The weight of social opinion pressed heavily on the lower classes, who aspired to nothing higher or nobler than common menial service or brutalis- ing labour unredeemed by a single ray of intellec- tual light. The poverty and degradation of the masses were frightful. Centuries of ignorance and political slavery had reduced them to the condition of children, and, like children, they revelled in childish things. Even in religion, they believed in and practised puerile things that were unworthy of rational beings.

But no class were greater sufferers from the social evils of the time than the women of Bengal. A few centuries ago a certain Hindu ruler of


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CHAPTER r II Eastern Bengal, which was the principal seat of Brahminism at that time, had divided all the Brahmins of the province into certain orders of social prestige, according to their merits and attainments, calling the highest of them Kulins. The system of Kulinism gave rise in course of time to extensive polygamy. In as much as the privileges of these orders were made hereditary and as an alliance with a Kulin was looked upon as a means of obtaining social honour for a family, such an alliance was naturally sought after by the fathers of all marriageable girls. Thus the custom came to be generally adopted of a Kulin man marrying a number of wives. Under this horrid custom there were in Bengal, at the time under review, thousands of young women who were living a life of practical widowhood, nominally wedded to husbands who owned in many cases scores of other wives. But far more miserable was the lot of the Hindu widows of the higher castes, many of whom were burnt alive, sometimes by their own choice, but oftener by compulsion, on the funeral pyres of their husbands. And those of them who shrank back from self-immolation were doomed to perpetual widowhood and were subjected to such austerities as made their lives a burden to them. Indeed, the death of a husband brought a sudden change in the life of


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THE IVORY TOWER felt of Davey that in the temperature of life as he knew it his personal identity had been, save for perhaps some small tough lurking residuum, long since puffed away in pleasant spirals of vapour. Our young woman was at this moment, however, less interested in quantities than in qualities of candour; she could get what passed for it by the bushel, by the ton, whenever, right or left, she chose to chink her pocket. Her requirement for actual use was such a glimmer from the candle of truth as a mere poor woman might have managed to kindle. What was left of precious in Davey might thus have figured but as a candle-end; yet for the lack of it she should perhaps move in darkness. And her brief intensity of watch was in a moment rewarded; her companion's candle-end was his not quite burnt-out value as a gentleman. This was enough for her, and she seemed to see her way. "If I don't trust you there's nobody else in all the wide world I can. So you've got to know, and you've got to be good to me."

"Then what awful thing have you done?" he was saying to her three minutes after they had taken their place temporarily on the bench.

"Well, I got at Mr. Betterman," she said, "in spite of all the difficulty. Father and he hadn't spoken for years—had had long ago the blackest, ugliest difference; believing apparently the horridest things of each other. Nevertheless it was as father's daughter that I went to him— 27


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THE IVORY TOWER though after a little, I think, it was simply for the worth itself of what I had to tell him that he listened to me."

"And what you had to tell him," Davey asked while she kept her eyes on the far horizon, "was then that you take this tender interest in Mr. Fielder?"

"You may make my interest as ridiculous as you like!"

"Ah my dear thing," Davey pleadingly protested, "don't deprive me, please, of anything nice there is to know!"

"There was something that had happened years ago—a wrong I perhaps had done him, though in perfect good faith. I thought I saw my way to make up for it, and I seem to have succeeded beyond even what I hoped."

"Then what have you to worry about?" said Davey.

"Just my success," she answered simply. "Here he is and I've done it."

"Made his rich uncle want him—who hadn't wanted him before? Is that it?"

"Yes, interfered afresh in his behalf—as I had interfered long ago. When one has interfered one can't help wondering," she gravely explained.

"But dear lady, ever for his benefit of course," Davey extemporised.

"Yes—except for the uncertainty of what is for a person's benefit. It's hard enough to know," said Rosanna, "what's for one's own." 28


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THE IVORY TOWER "Oh, as to that," Davey joked, "I don't think that where mine's concerned I've ever a doubt! But is the point that the old man had quarrelled with him and that you've brought about a reconciliation?"

She considered again with her far-wandering eyes; as if both moved by her impulse to confidence and weighted with the sense of how much of it there all was. "Well, in as few words as possible, it was like this. He's the son but of a half-sister, the daughter of Mr. Betterman's father by a second marriage which he in his youth hadn't at all liked, and who made her case worse with him, as time went on, by marrying a man, Graham's father, whom he had also some strong objection to. Yes," she summarized, "he seems to have been difficult to please, but he's making up for it now. His brother-in-law didn't live long to suffer from the objection, and the sister, Mrs. Fielder, left a widow badly provided for, went off with her boy, then very young, to Europe. There, later on, during a couple of years that I spent abroad with my mother, we met them and for the time saw much of them; she and my dear mother greatly took to each other, they formed the friendliest relation, and we had in common that my father's business association with Mr. Betterman still at that time subsisted, though the terrible man—as he then was—hadn't at all made it up with our friend. It was while we were with her 29


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THE IVORY TOWER in Dresden, however, that something happened which brought about, by correspondence, some renewal of intercourse. This was a matter on which we were in her confidence and in which we took the greatest interest, for we liked also the other person concerned in it. An opportunity had come up for her to marry again, she had practically decided to embrace it, and of this, though everything between them had broken off so short, her unforgiving brother had heard, indirectly, in New York."

Davey Bradham, lighting cigarettes, and having originally placed his case, in a manner promptly appreciated, at his companion's disposal, crowned this now adjusted relation with a pertinence of comment. "And only again of course to be as horrid as possible about it! He hated husbands in general."

"Well, he himself, it was to be said, had been but little of one. He had lost his own wife early and hadn't married again—though he was to lose early also the two children born to him. The second of these deaths was recent at the time I speak of, and had had to do, I imagine, with his sudden overture to his absent relations. He let his sister know that he had learnt her intention and thought very ill of it, but also that if she would get rid of her low foreigner and come back with the boy he would be happy to see what could be done for them." 30


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THE IVORY TOWER "What a jolly situation!"—Davey exhaled fine puffs. "Her second choice then—at Dresden—was a German adventurer?"

"No, an English one, Mr. Northover; an adventurer only as a man in love is always one, I suppose, and who was there for us to see and extremely to approve. He had nothing to do with Dresden beyond having come on to join her; they had met elsewhere, in Switzerland or the Tyrol, and he had shown an interest in her, and had made his own impression, from the first. She answered her brother that his demand of her was excessive in the absence of anything she could recognise that she owed him. To this he replied that she might marry then whom she liked, but that if she would give up her boy and send him home, where he would take charge of him and bring him up to prospects she would be a fool not to appreciate, there need be no more talk and she could lead her life as she perversely preferred. This crisis came up during our winter with her—it was a very cruel one, and my mother, as I have said, was all in her confidence."

"Of course"—Davey Bradham abounded; "and you were all in your mother's!"

Rosanna leaned back on the bench, her cigarette between her strong and rounded fingers; she sat at her ease now, this chapter of history filling, under her view, the soft lap of space and the comfort of having it well out, and yet of keeping it, as her 31


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THE IVORY TOWER friend somehow helped her to do, well within her control, more and more operative. "Well, I was sixteen years old, and Gray at that time fourteen. I was huge and hideous and began then to enjoy the advantage—if advantage it was—of its seeming so ridiculous to treat the monster I had grown as negligible that I had to be treated as important. I wasn't a bit stupider than I am now—in fact I saw things much more sharply and simply and knew ever so much better what I wanted and didn't. Gray and I had become excellent friends—if you want to think of him as my 'first passion' you are welcome to, unless you want to think of him rather as my fifth! He was a charming little boy, much nicer than any I had ever seen; he didn't come up higher than my shoulder, and, to tell you all, I remember how once, in some game with a party of English and American children whom my mother had got together for Christmas, I tried to be amusing by carrying half-a-dozen of them successively on my back—all in order to have the pleasure of carrying him, whom I felt, I remember, but as a feather-weight compared with most of the others. Such a romp was I—as you can of course see I must have been, and at the same time so horridly artful; which is doubtless now not so easy for you to believe of me. But the point," Rosanna developed, "is that I entered all the way into our friends' situation and that when I was with my 32


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THE IVORY TOWER mother alone we talked for the time of nothing else. The strange, or at least the certain, thing was that though we should have liked so to have them over here, we hated to see them hustled even by a rich relative: we were rich ourselves, though we rather hated that too, and there was no romance for us in being so stuffed up. We liked Mr. Northover, their so devoted friend, we saw how they cared for him, how even Graham did, and what an interest he took in the boy, for whom we felt that a happy association with him, each of them so open to it, would be a great thing; we threw ourselves in short, and I dare say to extravagance, into the idea of the success of Mr. Northover's suit. She was the charmingest little woman, very pretty, very lonely, very vague, but very sympathetic, and we perfectly understood that the pleasant Englishman, of great taste and thoroughly a gentleman, should have felt encouraged. We didn't in the least adore Mr. Betterman, between whom and my father the differences that afterwards became so bad were already threatening, and when I saw for myself how the life that might thus be opened to him where they were, with his mother's marriage and a further good influence crowning it, would compare with the awful game of grab, to express it mildly, for which I was sure his uncle proposed to train him, I took upon myself to get more roused and wound-up than I had doubtless any real right to, and 33


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THE IVORY TOWER to wonder what I might really do to promote the benefit that struck me as the greater and defeat the one against which my prejudice was strong."

She had drawn up a moment as if what was to come required her to gather herself, while her companion seemed to assure her by the backward set of his head, that of a man drinking at a cool spout, how little his attention had lapsed. "I see at once, you dear grand creature, that you were from that moment at the bottom of everything that was to happen; and without knowing yet what these things were I back you for it now up to the hilt."

"Well," she said, "I'm much obliged, and you're never for an instant, mind, to fail me; but I needed no backing then—I didn't even need my mother's: I took on myself so much from the moment my chance turned up."

"You just walked in and settled the whole question, of course." He quite flaunted the luxury of his interest. "Clearly what moved you was one of those crowning passions of infancy."

"Then why didn't I want, on the contrary, to have him, poor boy, where his presence would feed my flame?" Rosanna at once inquired. "Why didn't I obtain of my mother to say to his—for she would have said anything in the world I wanted: 'You just quietly get married, don't disappoint this delightful man; while we take Gray back to 34


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THE IVORY TOWER his uncle, which will be awfully good for him, and let him learn to make his fortune, the decent women that we are fondly befriending him and you and your husband coming over whenever you like, to see how beautifully it answers.' Why if I was so infatuated didn't I do that?" she repeated.

He kept her waiting not a moment. "Just because you were so infatuated. Just because when you're infatuated you're sublime." She had turned her eyes on him, facing his gorgeous hospitality, but facing it with a visible flush. "Rosanna Gaw"—he took undisguised advantage of her—"you're sublime now, just as sublime as you can be, and it's what you want to be. You liked you young man so much that you were really capable!"

He let it go at that, for even with his drop she had not completed his sense. But the next thing, practically, she did so. "I've been capable ever since—that's the point: of feeling that I did act upon him, that, young and accessible as I found him, I gave a turn to his life."

"Well," Davey continued to comment, "he's not so young now, and no more, naturally, are you; but I guess, all the same, you'll give many another." And then, as facing him altogether more now, she seemed to ask how he could be so sure: "Why, if I'm so accessible, through my tough old hide, how is the exquisite creature formed to all the sensibilities for which you sought to 35


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THE IVORY TOWER provide going in the least to hold out? He owes you clearly everything he has become, and how can he decently not want you should know he feels it? All's well that ends well: that at least I foresee I shall want to say when I've had more of the beginning. You were going to tell me how it was in particular that you got your pull."

She puffed and puffed again, letting her eyes once more wander and rest; after which, through her smoke, she recovered the sense of the past. "One Sunday morning we went together to the great Gallery—it had been between us for weeks that he was some day to take me and show me the things he most admired: that wasn't at all what would have been my line with him. The extent to which he was 'cleverer' than I and knew about the things I didn't, and don't know even now!" Greatly she made this point. "And yet the beauty was that I felt there were ways I could help him, all the same—I knew that even with all the things I didn't know, so that they remained ignorances of which I think I wasn't a bit ashamed: any more in fact than I am now, there being too many things else to be ashamed of. Never so much as that day, at any rate, had I felt ready for my part—yes, it came to me there as my part; for after he had called for me at our hotel and we had started together I knew something particular was the matter and that he of a sudden didn't care for what we were doing, though we 36


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THE IVORY TOWER had planned it as a great occasion much before; that in short his thoughts were elsewhere and that I could have made out the trouble in his face if I hadn't wished not to seem to look for it. I hated that he should have it, whatever it was—just how I hated it comes back to me as if from yesterday; and also how at the same time I pretended not to notice, and he attempted not to show he did, but to introduce me, in the rooms, to what we had come for instead—which gave us half-an-hour that I recover vividly, recover, I assure you, quite painfully still, as a conscious, solemn little farce. What put an end to it was that we at last wandered away from the great things, the famous Madonna, the Correggio, the Paul Veroneses, which he had quavered out the properest remarks about, and got off into a small room of little Dutch and other later masters, things that didn't matter and that we couldn't pretend to go into, but where the German sunshine of a bright winter day came down through some upper light and played on all the rich little old colour and old gilding after a fashion that of a sudden decided me. 'I don't care a hang for anything!' I stood before him and boldly spoke out: 'I haven't cared a hang since we came in, if you want to know—I care only for what you're worried about, and what must be pretty bad, since I can see, if you don't mind my saying it, that it has made you cry at home.'" 37


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THE IVORY TOWER "He can hardly have thanked you for that!" Davey's competence threw off.

"No, he didn't pretend to, and I had known he wouldn't; he hadn't to tell me how a boy feels in taking such a charge from a girl. But there he was on a small divan, swinging his legs a little and with his head—he had taken his hat off—back against the top of the seat and the queerest look in his flushed face. For a moment he stared hard, and then at least, I said to myself, his tears were coming up. They didn't come, however—he only kept glaring as in fever; from which I presently saw that I had said not a bit the wrong thing, but exactly the very best. 'Oh if I were some good to you!' I went on—and with the sense the next moment, ever so happily, that that was really what I was being. 'She has put it upon me to choose for myself—to think, to decide and to settle it that way for both of us. She has put it all upon me,' he said—'and how can I choose, in such a difficulty,' he asked, 'when she tells me, and when I believe, that she'll do exactly as I say?' 'You mean your mother will marry Mr. Northover or give him up according as you prefer?'—but of course I knew what he meant. It was a joy to me to feel it clear up—with the good I had already done him, at a touch, by making him speak. I saw how this relieved him even when he practically spoke of his question as too frightful for his young intelligence, his young conscience 38


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THE IVORY TOWER —literally his young nerves. It was as if he had appealed to me to pronounce it positively cruel while I had felt at the first word that I really but blessed it. It wasn't too much for my young nerves—extraordinary as it may seem to you." Rosanna pursued, "that I should but have wished to undertake at a jump such a very large order. I wonder now from where my lucidity came, but just as I stood there I saw some things in a light in which, even with still better opportunities, I've never so much seen them since. It was as if I took everything in—and what everything meant; and, flopped there on his seat and always staring up at me, he understood that I was somehow inspired for him."

"My dear child, you're inspired at this moment!"—Davey Bradham rendered the tribute. "It's too splendid to hear of amid our greedy wants, our timid ideas and our fishy passions. You ring out like Brünnhilde at the opera. How jolly to have pronounced his doom!"

"Yes," she gravely said, "and you see how jolly I now find it. I settled it. I was fate," Rosanna puffed. "He recognised fate—all the more that he really wanted to; and you see therefore," she went on, "how it was to be in every single thing that has happened since."

"You stuck him fast there"—Mr. Bradham filled in the picture. "Yet not so fast after all," he understandingly added, "but that you've been 39


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THE IVORY TOWER able to handle him again as you like. He does in other words whatever you prescribe."

"If he did it then I don't know what I should have done had he refused to do it now. For now everything's changed. Everyone's dead or dying. And I believe," she wound up, "that I was quite right then, that he has led his life and been happy."

"I see. If he hadn't been!" Her companion's free glance ranged.

"He would have had me to thank, yes. And at the best I should have cost him much!"

"Everything, you mean, that the old man had more or less from the first in mind?"

Davey had taken her up; but the next moment, without direct reply, she was on her feet. "At any rate you see!" she said to finish with it.

"Oh I see a lot! And if there's more in it than meets the eye I think I see that too," her friend declared. "I want to see it all at any rate—and just as you've started it. But what I want most naturally is to see your little darling himself."

"Well, if I had been afraid of you I wouldn't have spoken. You won't hurt him," Rosanna said as they got back to the cliff walk.

"Hurt him? Why I shall be his great warning light—or at least I shall be yours, which is better still." To this, however, always pondering, she answered nothing, but stood as if spent by her effort and half disposed in consequence to retrace her steps; against which possibility he at once 40


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THE IVORY TOWER protested. "You don't mean you're not coming on?"

She thought another instant; then her eyes overreached the long smooth interval beyond which the nondescript excrescences of Gussy's "cottage," vast and florid, and in a kindred company of hunches and gables and pinnacles confessed, even if in confused accents, to its monstrous identity. The sight itself seemed after all to give her resolution. "Yes, now for Cissy!" she said and braved the prospect.

 III

later, however, she still had this young lady before her in extended perspective and as a satisfaction, if not as an embarrassment, to come; thanks to the fact that Mrs. Bradham had forty persons, or something like it, though all casually turning up, at tea, and that she herself had perhaps never been so struck with the activity of the charming girl's response to the considerations familiar alike to all of them as Gussy's ideas about her. Gussy's ideas about her, as about everything in the world, could on occasion do more to fill the air of any scene over which Gussy presided than no matter what vociferation of any massed crowd surrounding that lady: exactly which truth might have been notable now to Rosanna in the light of Cissy's occasional clear 41


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