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368

Yet still they urged him straitly, the king and eke his wife.

Thence came it many a warrior ere long must lose his life

By Rüdeger’s achieving; till eke that hero fell.

Now of his direful doing I must the story tell.

He knew how this must evil and fearful sorrow bring,

And liefer would he therefore denial to the king,

And eke the queen, have given: full sorely fear’d he that

If e’er a guest he slaughter’d, the world would bear him hate.

Unto the king then spake he— that man of spirit bold:

“Lord king, take back whatever from thee I have and hold,

Both land and burghs: with neither will I have aught to do,

But on my feet departing, will into exile go.”

Then spake the royal Etzel: “Who then will succour me?

The land as well as castles all will I give to thee,

If thou upon my foemen avenge me, Rüdeger.

Thou’lt be a mighty sovran, of Etzel nigh the peer.”

But Rüdeger made answer: “How could I this essay?

At home within my dwelling I bade them come and stay;

Of drink and meat I offer’d to them in kindly wise,

And gave them gifts: how can I now death for them devise?

“The folk belike are thinking that I am cowardly!

My services in nothing to them did I deny—

Or to the noble princes, or any of their men—

That we are knit in friendship repenteth me amain.


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27 continued. Curtis, no doubt, was right. The discharge from the mouth of the Amazon is enormously large, but we had probably drifted into the only spot in the Atlantic where we could find fresh water so far from land. Yet land undoubtedly was there, and the breeze was carrying us onward slowly but surely to our deliverance.

Miss Herbey's voice was heard pouring out fervent praise to Heaven, and we were all glad to unite our thanksgivings with hers. Then the whole of us (with the exception of Andre and his father, who remained by themselves together at the stern) clustered in a group, and kept our expectant gaze upon the horizon.

We had not long to wait. Before an hour had passed, Curtis leaped in ecstasy and raised the joyous shout of "Land ahoy!"

My journal has come to a close.

I have only to relate, as briefly as possible, the circumstances that finally brought us to our destination.

A few hours after we first sighted land the raft was off Cape Magoari, on the island of Marajo, and was observed by some fishermen, who, with kind-hearted alacrity picked us up and tended us most carefully. They conveyed us to Para, where we became the objects of unbounded sympathy.

The raft was brought to land in latitude 0° 12' north, so that since we abandoned the Chancellor we had drifted at least fifteen degrees to the southwest. Except for the influence of the Gulf Stream we must have been carried far, far to the south, and in that case we should never have reached the mouth of the Amazon, and must inevitably have been lost.

Of the thirty-two souls nine passengers and twenty-three seamen—who left Charleston on board the ship, only five passengers and six seamen remain. Eleven of us alone survive.

An official account of our rescue was drawn up by the Brazilian authorities. Those who signed were Miss Herbey, J. R. Kazallon, M. Letourneur, Andre Letourneur,

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XXXVII.]

“I gave away my daughter to Giselher the thane,

In all the world she could not have look’d for better gain

In honour or good breeding, in truth or worldly gear;

I ne’er saw prince so youthful in virtuous mind his peer.”

But yet again spake Kriemhild: “Right noble Rüdeger,

Now let our grievous trouble for both your pity stir,

For me and the king also; and bear ye well in mind

That never host was fated such baleful guests to find.”

Then to the noble lady the margrave answer made:

“To-day, with life, must ransom by Rüdeger be paid

For what to me of kindness thou and my lord have shown:

For that cause I must perish,— and it must now be done.

“This very day, well know I, my castles and my land

Must, ownerless, fall to you, through what ye now command.

My wife and child commend I unto your gracious care,

And eke the hapless people that at Bechlaren are.”

“Now Rüdeger, God bless thee!” the king in answer said;

He and the queen together exceeding glad were made:

“Right well unto thy people our care we both will give,

Though if good luck be with me I trust thou yet mayst live.”

And so upon the venture body and soul he cast;

Whereon the wife of Etzel began to weep at last.

Said he: “What I have promised I must to you fulfil;—

Woe for my friends, whose foeman I am against my will.”


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 extensive hydraulic works in South Carolina, and is now on his way to Europe to obtain some improved apparatus, and more especially to visit the mines worked by centrifugal force, belonging to the firm of Messrs. Cail. He is forty-five years of age, with all his interests so entirely absorbed by his machinery that he seems to have neither a thought nor a care beyond his mechanical calculations. Once let him engage you in conversation, and there is no chance of escape; you have no help for it but to listen as patiently as you can until he has completed the explanation of his designs.

The last of our fellow-passengers, Mr. Ruby, is the type of a vulgar tradesman. Without any originality or magnanimity in his composition, he has spent twenty years of his life in mere buying and selling, and as he has generally contrived to do business at a profit, he has realized a considerable fortune. What he is going to do with the money, he does not seem able to say: his ideas do not go beyond retail trade, his mind having been so long closed to all other impressions that it appears incapable of thought or reflection on any subject besides. Pascal says, "L'homme est visiblement fait pour penser. C'est toute sa dignite et tout son merite;" but to Mr. Ruby the phrase seems altogether inapplicable.

7.—This is the tenth day since we left Charleston, and I should think our progress has been very rapid. Robert Curtis, the mate, with whom I continue to have many a friendly chat, informed me that we could not be far off the Bermudas; the ship's bearings, he said, were lat. 32° 20' N. and long. 64° 50' W., so that he had every reason to believe that we should sight St. George's Island before night.

"The Bermudas!" I exclaimed. "But how is it we are off the Bermudas? I should have thought that a vessel sailing from Charleston to Liverpool, would have kept northward, and have followed the track of the Gulf Stream."

"Yes, indeed, sir," replied Curtis, "that is the usual


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 course; but you see that this time the captain hasn't chosen to take it."

"But why not?" I persisted.

"That's not for me to say, sir; he ordered us eastward, and eastward we go."

"Haven't you called his attention to it?" I inquired.

Curtis acknowledged that he had already pointed out what an unusual route they were taking, but that the captain had said that he was quite aware what he was about. The mate made no further remark; but the knit of his brow, as he passed his hand mechanically across his forehead, made me fancy that he was inclined to speak out more strongly.

"All very well, Curtis," I said, "but I don't know what to think about trying new routes. Here we are at the 7th of October, and if we are to reach Europe before the bad weather sets in, I should suppose there is not a day to be lost."

"Right, sir, quite right; there is not a day to be lost."

Struck by his manner, I ventured to add, "Do you mind, Curtis, giving me your honest opinion of Captain Huntly?"

He hesitated a moment, and then replied shortly, "He is my captain, sir."

This evasive answer of course put an end to any further interrogation on my part.

Curtis was not mistaken. At about three o'clock the look-out man sung out that there was land to windward, and descried what seemed as if it might be a line of smoke in the northeast horizon. At six, I went on deck with M. Letourneur and his son, and we could then distinctly make out the low group of the Bermudas, encircled by their formidable chain of breakers.

"There," said Andre Letourneur to me, as we stood gazing at the distant land, "there lies the enchanted archipelago, sung by your poet Moore. The exile Waller, too, as long ago as 1643, wrote an enthusiastic panegyric on the islands, and I have been told that at one time English ladies would wear no other bonnets than such as were made of the leaves of the Bermuda palm."

"Yes," I replied, "the Bermudas were all the rage in the seventeenth century, although latterly they have fallen into comparative oblivion."


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 "But let me tell you, M. Andre," interposed Curtis, who had as usual joined our party, "that although poets may rave, and be as enthusiastic as they like about these islands, sailors will tell a different tale. The hidden reefs that lie in a semicircle about two or three leagues from shore make the attempt to land a very dangerous piece of business.  And another thing, I know. Let the natives boast as they will about their splendid climate, they are visited by the most frightful hurricanes. They get the fag-end of the storms that rage over the Antilles; and the fag-end of a storm is like the tail of a whale; it's just the strongest bit of it. I don't think you'll find a sailor listening much to your poets—your Moores, and your Wallers."

"No doubt you are right, Mr. Curtis," said Andre, smiling, "but poets are like proverbs; you can always find one to contradict another. Although Waller and Moore have chosen to sing the praises of the Bermudas, it has been supposed that Shakspeare was depicting them in the terrible scenes that are found in 'The Tempest.'"

I may mention that there was not another of our fellow-passengers who took the trouble to come on deck and give a glance at this strange cluster of islands. Miss Herbey, it is true, was making an attempt to join us, but she had barely reached the poop, when Mrs. Kear's languid voice was heard recalling her for some trifling service to her side.

8 to October 13.—The wind is blowing hard from the northeast, and the Chancellor, under low-reefed top-sail and fore-sail, and laboring against a heavy sea, has been obliged to be brought ahull. The joists and girders all creak again until one's teeth are set on edge. I am the only passenger not remaining below; but I prefer being on deck notwithstanding the driving rain, fine as dust, which penetrates to the very skin. We have been driven along in this fashion for the best part of two days; the "stiffish breeze" has gradually freshened into "a gale"; the top-gallants have been lowered, and, as I write, the wind is blowing with a velocity of fifty or sixty miles an hour.


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370

Then from the king one saw him depart in mournful mood.

And to his warriors turning, who close beside him stood,

He spake: “To don your armour ’tis time, my liegemen all,

On yonder brave Burgundians, alas! I needs must fall.”

They bade their folk then hasten to where their arms were found,—

Haply it were a helmet, or else a buckler round,—

Whate’er it was they wanted, their servants brought the same

Ere long the baleful tidings to the proud exiles came.

So Rüdeger in armour with men five hundred went,

Besides a dozen warriors who help unto him lent.

These would the meed of valour win in the stormy fray;—

They had but little warning that death so near them lay.

Then Rüdeger in helmet one saw march on before;

Keen-edged were all the weapons the margrave’s liegemen bore

And broad the shining bucklers upon their arms as well.

’Twas all seen by the fiddler: sore ruth upon him fell.

Young Giselher beheld, too, the father of his bride

With fast-bound helmet marching. That this could aught betide

Save what was good and friendly, how could he then forbode

The noble prince was therefore exceeding glad of mood.

“Now suchlike friends be welcome,” said Giselher the thane

“Which we upon our journey have had the luck to gain.

Of my betrothéd lady we’ll profit here right well:

I’m glad, upon my honour, this plighting e’er befell.”


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 the Chancellor has many good points, her drift is considerable, and we have been carried far to the south; we can only guess at our precise position, as the cloudy atmosphere entirely precludes us from taking the sun's altitude.

All along, throughout this period, my fellow-passengers are totally ignorant of the extraordinary course that we are taking. England lies to the northeast, yet we are sailing directly southeast, and Robert Curtis owns that he is quite bewildered; he cannot comprehend why the captain, ever since this northeasterly gale has been blowing, should persist in allowing the ship to drive to the south, instead of tacking to the northwest until she gets into better quarters.

I was alone with Robert Curtis to-day upon the poop, and could not help saying to him, "Curtis, is your captain mad?"

"Perhaps, sir, I might be allowed to ask what you think upon that matter," was his cautious reply.

"Well, to say the truth," I answered, "I can hardly tell; but I confess there is every now and then a wandering in his eye, and an odd look on his face that I do not like. Have you ever sailed with him before?"

"No; this is our first voyage together. Again last night I spoke to him about the route we were taking, but he only said he knew all about it, and that it was all right."

"What do Lieutenant Walter and your boatswain think of it all?" I inquired.

"Think; why, they think just the same as I do," replied the mate; "but if the captain chooses to take the ship to China we should obey his orders."

"But surely," I exclaimed, "there must be some limit to your obedience! Suppose the man is actually mad, what then?"

"If he should be mad enough, Mr. Kazallon, to bring the vessel into any real danger, I shall know what to do."

With this assurance I am forced to be content. Matters, however, have taken a different turn to what I bargained for when I took my passage on board the Chancellor. The weather has become worse and worse. As I have already said, the ship under her large low-reefed top-sail and fore stay-sail has been brought ahull, that is to say, she copes directly with the wind, by presenting her broad bows to the


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27 continued.—A change came over me as if by miracle. No longer had I any wish to die, and already Curtis, who had heard my cries, was throwing me a rope. I seized it eagerly, and was hauled up on to the raft.

"Fresh water!" were the first words I uttered.

"Fresh water?" cried Curtis; "why then, my friends, we are not far from land!"

It was not too late: the blow had not been struck, and so the victim had not yet fallen. Curtis and Andre (who had regained his liberty) had fought with the cannibals, and it was just as they were yielding to over-powering numbers that my voice had made itself heard.

The struggle came to an end. As soon as the words "fresh water" had escaped my lips, I leaned over the side of the raft and swallowed the life-giving liquid in greedy draughts. Miss Herbey was the first to follow my example, but soon Curtis, Falsten, and all the rest were on their knees and drinking eagerly. The rough sailors seemed as if by a magic touch transformed back from ravenous beasts to human beings, and I saw several of them raise their hands to heaven in silent gratitude. Andre and his father were the last to drink.

"But where are we?" I asked at length.

"The land is there," said Curtis, pointing toward the west.

We all stared at the captain as though he were mocking us: no land was in sight, and the raft, just as ever, was the center of a watery waste. Yet our senses had not deceived us; the water we had been drinking was perfectly fresh.

"Yes," repeated the captain, "land is certainly there, not more than twenty miles to leeward."

"What land?" inquired the boatswain.

"South America," answered Curtis, "and near the Amazon; no other river has a current strong enough to freshen the ocean twenty miles from shore!"


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The Flowers of the Forest

Songs

 * "The Flowers of the Forest", song with lyrics by Alison Cockburn
 * "The Flowers of the Forest", song with lyrics by Jean Elliot
 * "The Flowers of the Forest", poem by Anne Hunter

Chapbooks

 * "Flowers of the Forest" (1804-1812), printed by G. Miller
 * "The Flowers of the Forest" (1812-1820), printed in Greenock by W. Scott
 * "The Flowers of the Forest" (1816-1820), printed in Stirling by J. Fraser
 * "The Flowers of the Forest" (1825), printed in Glasgow, printer not specified

title: The Flowers of the Forest


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 THE TWO INTERNATIONALS.

By R. PALME DUTT

(Secretory of the International Section of The Labour Research Department).

1s. 6d., paper; 2s. 6d. cloth; postage 3d. extra.

THE CAPITALIST PRESS.

2d., post free 2½d.

EGYPT.

6d., post free 7d.

2d., post free 2½d.


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 prince, and mi of me-gimi, female prince, but nothing can be safely asserted on this point. With respect to the statement that these three gods ‘concealed their bodies,’ Motoöri’s suggestion that it signifies their incorporeality is not to 0 be admitted, for Taka-mi-Musubi no kami is represented as saying that Sukunabikona no kami “passed between his fingers,” and if he had a hand, he must have had a body, so that the tradition must be accepted in all its literal meaning.

Diagram 2 in both works represents space bounded by a circle, with three blacks spots as in diagram 1, and underneath them a smaller circle inscribed ‘ichi-motsu,’ or Thing. Hatori supports this by the following quotations from the Nihongi; “In the beginning of heaven and earth, there was a Thing in the great sky, whose shape cannot be described.” “Before heaven and earth had originated a thing originated in the midst, like as it were a floating cloud on the sea, without any point of attachment.” “In the beginning of heaven and earth, a thing like the sprout of a rush originated in the great sky”; again “a thing like floating fat originated in the great sky.” Hirata quotes from his own compilation a similar passage, without any reference to the rush-sprout. Hatori ascribes the origin of this Thing to the creator and creatrix, who gradually formed the sun, earth and moon out of it, and brought various gods into existence at different stages. The fact of these creative acts being performed by the two deities named is known from a revelation made by the god of the moon, who in the year 487 entered into the body of a man, and declared to one Abe no Omi Kotoshire that “his ancestor Takami-musubi no kami created heaven and earth. People and lands must consequently be presented to him.” And in the same year the sun goddess made a similar revelation to the same Abe no Omi, in which she declared that Takami-musubi no kami was her progenitor. The comparison of the Thing to floating fat and floating cloud simply refers to its indefinite position, and involves no statement as to

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 its composition, which was probably a mixture of the natures of the sun, earth and noon.

In diagram 3 the Thing is presented in the form of a dumb-bell, with the smaller end upper-moat. In Hatori’s diagram there is a small projection depending from the bottom of the Thing, probably intended to indicate the budding-out of the moon. The ancient books quoted here say that ‘from the thing which floated in space something sprouted up like the shoot of a rush, in which there originated two gods named Umashi-ashi-kabi-hiko-ji no kami and Ame-no-toko-tachi no kami, both of whom, like the previous three, were single gods, and hid their Bodies.’

From the name of the second god who is here mentioned it is inferred that thing which sprouted up afterwards became Ame, or the sun, according to Hatori and Hirata, and according to Motoöri, heaven. This is nowhere explicitly stated, either in the Kojiki or in the Nihongi, but is inferred from the name of the second god, toko being the same as soko, bottom, and tachi, to stand. Hatori supposes the nature of ame to have been of the essence of fire, but Hirata repudiates this as a Chinese notion, and conjectures that it was clear and bright, like crystal. The name of the first god is derived from umashi, pleasant, ashi-kabi, rush-sprout, hiko, an honorific term applied to males and ji another honorific, seen in the word woji, old man. He is identified by Hirata with Sukunabikona, a diminutive god who afterwards sided Oho-kuni-nushi to civilize the country. The five deities who have now been named are entitled the Amatsu-kami, or ‘Celestial gods.’

Diagram 4 in the Tama no Mi-hashira, represents three globes of gradually diminishing sizes, connected by short necks, the largest being uppermost, and labelled Ame. The five celestial gods are represented therein by the same number of black spots. How the three earliest of them found their way into this particular portion of space is not explained, and their being here somewhat favours the original explanation that Ame is heaven. It was

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 in order to get of this difficulty that Hirata suggested in the Koshi-Den, that they are located in the pole-star. The central globe, which is of medium size, is marked ‘earth,’ and contains five small circles arranged in pairs. Underneath is the third globe, marked Yomi, and containing two black spots to represent a pair of invisible deities; Yomi is shaded with black, to express the fact that it is in darkness, owing to the interception of the sun’s light by the earth. In the Sandaikô the diagram is similar, but the globes are not perfectly round, and the two black spots placed by Hirata in Yomi, are placed above the five pairs of circles in the earth.

Hatori acknowledges that neither the Kojiki nor the Nihongi contain any tradition as to the formation of Yomi, but that probably something grew downwards from the underside of the Thing, which developed into Yomi, just as from its upper surface something had sprouted up which became Ame.

Hirata, however, finding in one of the parallel passages quoted in the Nihongi, the sentence “Next there was a Thing like floating fat, which came into existence in the sky, from which a god originated named Kuni-no-toko-tachi no kami,” converts this in to “Next, [from the root of the Thing which was drifting about like a floating cloud], a Thing came into existence. The name of the god who originated from this thing was Kuni-no-soko-tachi no kami.” It may be observed that the original text does not connect the second Thing with the first, from which the Ame is supposed to have been formed, and in the Koshi-seibun he afterwards omitted the sentence enclosed between square brackets. To this he added part of a passage from the Kojiki, which speaks of Toyo-kumu-nu no kami. These two gods were single gods, and were invisible, for which reason they are represented in the diagram by black spots. They were succeeded by four pairs of deities, Uhi-jini and Suhi-jini, Tsunu-guhi and Iku-guhi, Oho-to-no-ji and Oho-to-no-be, Omo-daru and Aya-kashiko-ne, Izanagi and Izanami. The word imo, which means either sister or wife, is

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 prefixed to the name of the second of each of these pairs, and each pair counts as one generation, making, with the two single gods previously named, the seven Generations of the Divine period (kami-yo nana-yo). The title kami is given to each, but I have omitted it to save space, as I shall continue to do henceforth in the case of all other gods. Uhi-jini signifies ‘first mud,’ Su-hiji, ‘sand and mud.’ The names of the next pair are said to be derived from tsumu, a germ in which the hands and feet, head and tail are yet undistinguishable, guhi, the same as kumu, to integrate, and Iku which signifies the commencement of life, and is the same as ikiru, to breathe. The names of the next pair are interpreted to mean ‘man and woman of the great place,’ pointing to the fact that solid land was formed. Omo-daru is ‘complete perfection,’ and Aya-kashiko-ne is ‘awful one,’ aya being an ejaculation of awe (from which come ayashi, strange and ayaushi, perilous), and kashiko, an adjectival root meaning awful. The name of the female is said to express the sentiment which filled her when she looked at the male. Iza in the names of the last pair is supposed to be the radical of izanau, to invite, and to allude to their invitation to each other to join in begetting the earth; gi and mi are the same as in Kamurogi and Kamuromi, the titles already mentioned as being given to the creator and creatrix. It appears from these etymologies that a gradual progress in development is here indicated, and Hirata suggests that the first four pairs are not distinct deities, but merely names descriptive of the various stages through which Izanagi and Izanami passed before arriving at the perfection of existence. As it seems certain that they were never worshipped in any known period history, this theory is accepted by many Shintôists of the present day.

The globe called Yomi is identified by both Hatori and Hirata with Yomotsu-kuni or Yomi no kuni, the region whither Izanami betakes herself after the birth of Ho-musubi, the god of fire. Other names for it are

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 180 THUS FADING ON. THE SPIRIT OF AUTUMN.

"Thank you so much, Harry, for taking me, " said Mrs. Morton, on coming out. " I will confess, now, that, at first, I didn't care to go. I was very tired : quite worn- out, in fact. But you are always so kind that I thought it would be ungenerous not to do as you asked me. I am glad I came. It has rested me, strange to say, more even than sitting idle at home would have done. It has acted like a tonic. I think it has been the change. One does get dreadfully stupid, if one never hears music or sees other people. But here we are at home. I hope baby has been good."

Baby had been good. Sarah was watching, by his crib when his mother came in.

A few days after, as Mr. Morton was leaving, in the morning, he said,

"What would you like to read, my dear. You must often be lonely, kept in all day, as you frequently are."

"But books cost so much now," answered his wife.

The husband answered,

"Doctors cost more. Out of spirits, out of health, you know, is one of my mottoes. Tell me what you would like, and I will buy it for you. I don't intend to ruin myself on books you, as you know, " he continued, stooping to kiss her; "but while I indulge myself in segars, I think you ought to be indulged in books, at least to a moderate degree.

Mrs. Morton mentioned a new book which had just appeared.

"I will stop and get it as I go down town, so as to be sure and not forget it ; otherwise some business matter might drive it out of my head before night."

"Ah! you men are so often worried with business. I wish we women could help you."

"You do help us, darling. The cheerful smile, the cozy room, the nice supper that await us on our return at night, soon dissipate the worries of the day. It's like coming into a Paradise to get back at evening. "

"But, sometimes, you know, we have been worried also: and then the smile, perhaps, is not quite so bright; though we don't mean to make it a bit less so, for all that."

"We know you don't, darling. No true husband ever visits his business disappointments on his wife; no true wife ever wishes to make her husband suffer because her servants have vexed her."

If all husbands were like Mr. Morton, and all wives like Mrs. Morton, how happy thousands and thousands of families would be!

THUS FADING ON.

BY MARIE S. LADD. THROUGH childhood's opening hours we glide, With radiant brow and tender feet; With love we look on all we meet, And hope is high whate'er betide.

A passing cloud may bring us pain; But youthful hearts beat quick and light To break the gloom that dims the sight, And hope and joy is ours again.

And youth builds high its palace walls, And decks them o'er with nice caprice; To fate, then, signs an armistice For low the treacherous fabric falls.

And thus we weave a magic spell, Wrought fair with hopes too bright to wear; And when the years bring grief and care, The heart beats dumbly, like a knell.

So, fading on, our bright dreams go, And o'er our way the shadows fall, Till o'er the heart a dreary pull Glooms all that once had charmed us so.

THE SPIRIT OF AUTUMN.

BY ZELIA GERTRUDE GREY.

SLOWLY the Spirit of Autumn Was passing everywhere, Caressing with cold, damp fingers Everything sweet and fair.

Softly the Spirit of Autumn Was borne on the North wind's breath, Kissing each beautiful blossom-- Alas! the cold kiss was death!

Beneath my window were growing Flowers, scarlet, blue and gold; I plead with the restless spirit To pass by my little fold.

One night, when the moon was shining Brightly on vine and flower, The wandering Spirit of Autumn Came with its subtle power.

Pale lips tonched the yielding blossoms, And bowed each beautiful head; The morning showed me my treasures, Blighted, and faded, and dead!

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 , literally the ‘root-region,’ because of its being at the root of the earth, Soko no kuni, or the ‘bottom region,’ Shita-tsu-kuni, or the ‘under region,’ and Ne-no-katasu-kuni, from kata-sumi, one corner, used in the sense of lowermost or most distant. Yomi is explained to mean darkness. The reasons for identifying Yomi ne kuni with the moon are several. In the first place the element Yomi in the name Tsukuyomi no mikoto is evidently the same as Yomi, ‘the kingdom of darkness,’ whither Susanowo no mikoto finally proceeded. Secondly, although in the KokijiKojiki [sic] the rule of the sea is given to the latter god, one of the parallel passages of the Nihongi speaks of Tsukuyomi no mikoto as being appointed ruler over the multitudinous salt-waters. The murder of the goddess of food is attributed to the former by the Kojiki, to the latter by the Nihongi. The fact that the tides of the sea actually follow the moon’s movements is another reason for assuming these two gods to have been one. As the whole region pervaded by the light of the sun was called hiru, or day, the expression yoru no wosu kuni, ‘the realm of night,’ over which the Kojiki says Tsukuyomi was appointed to rule, would be extremely appropriate to yomi, from which the sun’s light would be intercepted by the earth. Hirata further points out that the notion of yomi being the abode of the dead is comparatively modern, and that the few gods who are spoken of in the ancient records as having gone thither, were still in the body when they did so.

Diagram 5 exhibits a marked difference between the two writers in their theories as to the subsequent development of the system of the three bodies. In Hatori’s diagrams the sun continues to be attached to the earth until after the descent of Ninigi no mikoto, while Hirata places the separation at some time antecedent to the descent of Izanagi and Izanami. This divergence is owing to the diferent explanations given by them of the ama-no-ukihashi (literally, heaven’s floating bridge) which Hatori represents

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 as an axis connecting the sun with the earth, which is ever growing longer and consequently thinner, while Hirata interprets it to mean some kind of huge boat, in which the gods went backwards and forwards between the two bodies. He argues that the phrase “this floating region” used of the earth by the celestial gods in commanding Izanagi and Izanami to form and harden it, can only be interpreted on this theory, for if the separation had not taken place the term “floating” could not have been applied to the earth alone. He consequently represents the sun detached, and to the right of the earth above it. The spear (nuboko) which was given to this pair for the purpose of forming the earth is supposed by him to have been of iron in the form of the lingam, and nu, which is interpreted to signify tama, a ball, has a profound signification if this view be adopted. The passage quoted here by Hirata from the Koshi says that “The two gods, setting forth on the ama-no-uki-hashi, pushed down the spear and stirred the plain of the green sea. When they drew it up after stirring it round and round, the drops which fell from its end, spontaneously consolidated and became an island. This was Ono-goro-jima.” This name was given to it on account of its ‘spontaneous consolidation,’ and to distinguish it from the other islands of Japan, which were begotten by Izanagi and Izanami in the ordinary manner. They descended on to this island, and planting the nuboko in the ground point downwards, built a palace round it, taking it for the central pillar which was to support their roof. The point of the spear became the axis of the earth. Onogorojima is identified by the author of the Jindai Kuketsu with a small island at the north-west corner of Awaji in the eastern part of the inland sea, called Ye-shima. Close by is another island called Sekirei shima, (Wagtail island,) and

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202 weary of the world, founded by a famous poet of the Tang dynasty. It is this outlook that strikes the Westerner as barbaric.

The Chinese, from the highest to the lowest, have an imperturbable quiet dignity, which is usually not destroyed even by a European education. They are not self-assertive, either individually or nationally; their pride is too profound for self-assertion. They admit China's military weakness in comparison with foreign Powers, but they do not consider efficiency in homicide the most important quality in a man or a nation. I think that, at bottom, they almost all believe that China is the greatest nation in the world, and has the finest civilization. A Westerner cannot be expected to accept this view, because it is based on traditions utterly different from his own. But gradually one comes to feel that it is, at any rate, not an absurd view; that it is, in fact, the logical outcome of a self-consistent standard of values. The typical Westerner wishes to be the cause of as many changes as possible in his environment; the typical Chinaman wishes to enjoy as much and as delicately as possible. This difference is at the bottom of most of the contrast between China and the English-speaking world.

We in the West make a fetish of "progress," which is the ethical camouflage of the desire to be the cause of changes. If we are asked, for instance, whether machinery has really improved the world, the question strikes us as foolish: it has brought great changes and therefore great " progress." What we believe to be a love of progress is really, in nine cases out of ten, a love of power, an enjoyment of the feeling that by our fiat we can make things different. For the sake of this pleasure, a young


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212 in ordinary life, when they appear as men of active and sceptical intelligence, but of somewhat sluggish passions. There is, however, another side to them: they are capable of wild excitement, often of a collective kind. I saw little of this myself, but there can be no doubt of the fact. The Boxer rising was a case in point, and one which particularly affected Europeans. But their history is full of more or less analogous disturbances. It is this element in their character that makes them incalculable, and makes it impossible even to guess at their future. One can imagine a section of them becoming fanatically Bolshevist, or anti-Japanese, or Christian, or devoted to some leader who would ultimately declare himself Emperor. I suppose it is this element in their character that makes them, in spite of their habitual caution, the most reckless gamblers in the world. And many emperors have lost their thrones through the force of romantic love, although romantic love is far more despised than it is in the West.

To sum up the Chinese character is not easy. Much of what strikes the foreigner is due merely to the fact that they have preserved an ancient civilization which is not industrial. All this is likely to pass away, under the pressure of the Japanese, and of European and American financiers. Their art is already perishing, and being replaced by crude imitations of second-rate European pictures. Most of the Chinese who have had a European education are quite incapable of seeing any beauty in native painting, and merely observe contemptuously that it does not obey the laws of perspective.

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 there are many other traces of the ancient tradition in the neighbourhood. The motion imparted to the fluid mass of the earth by the stirring with the nuboko was the origin of its daily revolutions. Onogorojima was thus originally at the north pole, but subsequently removed to its present position. In what manner this happened we are not told. Nevertheless, Japan continues to be on the summit of the terrestrial globe. It appears that someone having objected that if Japan were on the top of the world, and opposite to the sun, the sun world be in the zenith at the equinoxes, Hatori was puzzled and referred the point to Motoöri, who replied that as the sun and moon move round from East to West, and not from North to South, it is evident that the globe, in spite of its being round, may be said to have sides, that is, top, bottom, right, left, back and front. Just as the face of a man is hot on the top of his head, but on the front, so Japan, being in the middle of the top has the sun and moon on its south, which is therefore the front; the north is consequently behind, the east is the left side and the west the right side. From which it is perfectly clear that Japan is on the summit of the terrestrial globe. The objector replied that all countries which have the sun on their south would have an equal right to claim the same position. The answer to this that is the position of Japan is not determined by the fact of the sum and moon being in front of her, but the manner in which they appear to her is owing to her position at the top of the earth. Hirata strengthens the argument by pointing out that Japan altogether escaped the deluge which took place in China in the reign of Yaou, and also the Noachian flood which drowned occidental countries, solely through her elevated situation. China suffered less than the west, and Corea less again, on account of their proximity to Japan.

The only mention made of the stars in the ancient

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204 Powers—especially Japan—the harm would be much less than is done by our own "efficient" Governments. Nine-tenths of the activities of a modern Government are harmful; therefore the worse they are performed, the better. In China, where the Government is lazy, corrupt, and stupid, there is a degree of individual liberty which has been wholly lost in the rest of the world.

The laws are just as bad as elsewhere; occasionally, under foreign pressure, a man is imprisoned for Bolshevist propaganda, just as he might be in England or America. But this is quite exceptional as a rule, in practice, there is very little interference with free speech and a free Press. The individual does not feel obliged to follow the herd, as he has in Europe since 1914, and in America since 1917. Men still think for themselves, and are not afraid to announce the conclusions at which they arrive. Individualism has perished in the West, but in China it survives, for good as well as for evil. Self-respect and personal dignity are possible for every coolie in China, to a degree which is, among ourselves, possible only for a few leading financiers.

The business of "saving face," which often strikes foreigners in China as ludicrous, is only the carrying-out of respect for personal dignity in the sphere of social manners. Everybody has "face," even the humblest beggar; there are humiliations that you must not inflict upon him, if you are not to outrage the Chinese ethical code. If you speak to a Chinaman in a way that transgresses the code, he will laugh, because your words must be taken as spoken in jest if they are not to constitute an offence.


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 writings is in the Nihongi, where the star-god Kagase-wo-no-mimi is spoken of as being at first unwilling to submit to the fore-runners of Ninigi no mikoto, but nothing is said of the manner in which the stars came into existence. According to a theory proposed by one Satô Nobufuchi, which is quoted by Hirata with approval, when the two gods lowered the spear and stirred round the chaotic mass out of which the earth was to be formed, the muck which was unfit to enter into the composition of the earth was removed by the action of the spear point, and scattered lump-wise in all directions throughout space, taking up positions more or less remote. The five planets, the twenty-eight constellations and the host of common stars being thus formed, revolve round the sun together with the earth. Hirata has another view of his own, which is, that as the Thing which formed in space, and afterwards developed into the sun and the earth, is said to have resembled a hen’s egg in shape, when the Thing separated, its shell must have burst, and the fragments flying off on all sides, would begin to revolve round the sun, being attracted by the powerful rotatory motion of that body. It is customary to suppose that the stars have no practical purpose, bat it is evident that they are intended to guide the course of those barbarian mariners, who, if they knew their duty, would bring ships laden with tribute to the Emperor of Japan.

Diagram 6 in the Tama no Mi-hashira represents the sun as in the last, with the five black spots which stand for Celestial gods, and the earth is now marked off into Japan, foreign countries variously situated below it, and the sea. The passage from the Koshi on which this diagram is based narrates what may be euphemistically termed the courtship of Izanagi and Izanami, which resulted in a

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Rh at last, impelled by terrors largely of their own creation, challenged the whole world, and fell; it is very much to be feared that Japan may do likewise. The pros and cons are so familiar in the case of Germany that I need not elaborate them further, since the whole argument can be transferred bodily to the case of Japan. There is, however, this difference, that, while Germany aimed at hegemony of the whole world, the Japanese only aim at hegemony in Eastern Asia.

The conflict between America and Japan is superficially economic, but, as often happens, the economic rivalry is really a cloak for deeper passions. Japan still believes in the divine right of kings; America believes in the divine right of commerce. I have sometimes tried to persuade Americans that there may be nations which will not gain by an extension of their foreign commerce, but I have always found the attempt futile. The Americans believe also that their religion and morality and culture are far superior to those of the Far East. I regard this as a delusion, though one shared by almost all Europeans. The Japanese, profoundly and with all the strength of their being, long to preserve their own culture and to avoid becoming like Europeans or Americans; and in this I think we ought to sympathize with them. The colour prejudice is even more intense among Americans than among Europeans; the Japanese are determined to prove that the yellow man may be the equal of the white man. In this, also, justice and humanity are on the side of Japan. Thus on the deeper issues, which underlie the economic and diplomatic conflict, my feelings go with the Japanese rather than with the Americans.


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Rh passing through." These are wise words, with which every true friend of China must agree. In the same issue of the Japan Weekly Chronicle—which, by the way, I consider the best weekly paper in the world I find the following (p. 728):—

Sagacious people will be inclined to conclude that so much anger must be due to being touched on the raw, and that Mr. Lamont, if he had had nothing to conceal, would not have spoken of a distinguished writer and one of China's best friends as "this man Simpson."

I do not pretend that the evidence against the consortium is conclusive, and I have not space here to set it all forth. But to any European radical Mr. Lamont's statement that the consortium does not want control reads like a contradiction in terms. Those who wish to lend to a Government which is on the verge of bankruptcy, must aim at control, for, even if there were not the incident of the Chicago Bank, it would be impossible to believe that Messrs. Morgan are so purely philanthropic as not to care


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174 Unfortunately, the Japanese are always putting themselves in the wrong through impatience and contempt. They ought to have claimed for China the same consideration that they have extorted towards themselves; then they could have become, what they constantly profess to be, the champions of Asia against Europe. The Chinese are prone to gratitude, and would have helped Japan loyally if Japan had been a true friend to them. But the Japanese despise the Chinese more than the Europeans do; they do not want to destroy the belief in Eastern inferiority, but only to be regarded as themselves belonging to the West. They have therefore behaved so as to cause a well-deserved hatred of them in China. And this same behaviour has made the best Americans as hostile to them as the worst. If America had had none but base reasons for hostility to them, they would have found many champions in the United States; as it is, they have practically none. It is not yet too late; it is still possible for them to win the affection of China and the respect of the best Americans. To achieve this, they would have to change their Chinese policy end adopt a more democratic constitution; but if they do not achieve it, they will fall as Germany fell. And their fall will be a great misfortune for mankind.

A war between America and Japan would be a very terrible thing in itself, and a still more terrible thing in its consequences. It would destroy Japanese civilization, ensure the subjugation of China to Western culture, and launch America upon a career of world-wide militaristic imperialism. It is therefore, at all costs, to be avoided. If it is to be avoided, Japan must become more liberal; and Japan will


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168 morals copied from the whole lot. Everybody except the British was horrified, and called the Japanese "yellow monkeys." However, they began to be respected when they defeated Russia, and after they had captured Tsing-tao and half-enslaved China they were admitted to equality with the other Great Powers at Versailles. The consideration shown to them by the West is due to their armaments alone; none of their other good qualities would have saved them from being regarded as "niggers."

People who have never been outside Europe can hardly imagine the intensity of the colour prejudice that white men develop when brought into contact with any different pigmentation. I have seen Chinese of the highest education, men as cultured as (say) Dean Inge, treated by greasy white men as if they were dirt, in a way in which, at home, no Duke would venture to treat a crossing-sweeper. The Japanese are not treated in this way, because they have a powerful army and navy. The fact that white men, as individuals, no longer dare to bully individual Japanese, is important as a beginning of better relations towards the coloured races in general. If the Japanese, by defeat in war, are prevented from retaining the status of a Great Power, the coloured races in general will suffer, and the tottering insolence of the white man will be re-established. Also the world will have lost the last chance of the survival of civilizations of a different type from that of the industrial West.

The civilization of Japan, in its material aspect, is similar to that of the West, though industrialism, as yet, is not very developed. But in its mental aspect it is utterly unlike the West, particularly the Anglo-Saxon West. Worship of the Mikado,


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Rh superior to ours in all that makes for human happiness. They have a vigorous movement of young reformers, who, if they are allowed a little time, will revivify China and produce something immeasurably better than the worn-out grinding mechanism that we call civilization. When Young China has done its work, Americans will be able to make money by trading with China, without destroying the soul of the country. China needs a period of anarchy in order to work out her salvation; all great nations need such a period, from time to time. When America went through such a period, in 1861–5, England thought of intervening to insist on "good government," but fortunately abstained. Now-a-days, in China, all the Powers want to intervene. Americans recognize this in the case of the wicked Old World, but are smitten with blindness when it comes to their own consortium. All I ask of them is that they should admit that they are as other men, and cease to thank God that they are not as this publican.

So much by way of criticism by America; we come now to the defence of Japan.

Japan's relations with the Powers are not of her own seeking; all that Japan asked of the world was to be let alone. This, however, did not suit the white nations, among whom America led the way, It was a United States squadron under Commodore Perry that first made Japan aware of Western aggressiveness. Very soon it became evident that there were only two ways of dealing with the white man, either to submit to him, or to fight him with his own weapons. Japan adopted the latter course, and developed a modern army trained by the Germans, a modern navy modelled on the British, modern machinery derived from America, and modern


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164 offer to save China from themselves as it were, if the Chinese Government would only enter into relations with the consortium, and thus prepare the way for the eventual establishment of an American financial protectorate.

It should be added that the Peking Government, after repeated negotiations, had decided not to accept loans from the consortium on the terms on which they were offered. In my opinion, there were very adequate grounds for this decision. As the same article in the Freeman concludes—

There is some reason to think that, at the beginning of the Washington Conference, an attempt was made by the consortium banks, with the connivance of the British but not of the American Government, to establish, by means of the Conference, some measure of international control over China. In the Japan Weekly Chronicle for November 17, 1921 (p. 725), in a telegram headed "International Control of China," I find it reported that America is thought to be seeking to establish international control, and that Mr. Wellington Koo told the Philadelphia Public Ledger: "We suspect the motives which led to the suggestion and we thoroughly doubt its feasibility. China will bitterly oppose any Conference plan to offer China international aid." He adds: "International control will not do. China must be given time and opportunity to find herself. The world should not misinterpret or exaggerate the meaning of the convulsion which China is now


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I am in doubt, I talk with Cornelia; and while I am with her, my uncertainties disappear. But this subject she herself broached, at her home in one of those paradises of wood and water where Americans of her class have learned to hide their lives—for the summer.

She is a young woman of forty-five, with what Hazlitt somewhere calls a "coronet face," finely cut and proudly borne, and it gives one a feeling of distinction merely to be in her presence. My memory holds like a piece of radiant sculpture the image that she left there at her wedding, twenty years ago, when she turned at the altar after the episcopal benediction and paced down the aisle, clear-eyed and fearless, to the thunder of organ music: it seemed to me then that the young chevalier of the diplomatic service on whose arm her hand had alighted was leading the Samothracian Victory into the holy state of matrimony. It was an excellent alliance, with high sanctions and distinguished witnesses, auspiciously

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 begun and with a constantly felicitous continuation. She has walked ever since, so her friends declare, between purple ribbons: her ways have gone smoothly and well in delectable regions far above the level of the rank-scented multitude.

When one talks with her, her hands lie still in her lap. She does not think with her hands, nor does any other emphasis of her body intrude its comment upon the serene and assured movements of her intelligence. So remote she seems from the ignominious and infamous aspects of existence, that one wonders how she becomes aware of them. Yet such unpleasant things, verminous or reptilian, as creep within range of her vision she inspects sharply and with intrepidity; for she knows precisely how to deal with them.

As I sat there, blissfully receiving a sense of the security and perfection which emanate from her, it just flickered into my consciousness that, if a mouse could have entered that impeccably ordered room, she would not for a moment have been at a loss. She would quietly have summoned a maid. Then she would have said: "There is a mouse in the room. Take it out." She likes everything to be right; and she knows so absolutely what is right, that any shade of uncertainty in conversa-

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 tion with her seems a kind of baseness and disloyalty. Yet, as much as a superior being can be troubled, she was troubled about the state of current fiction. She was troubled in that high and spirited sense of responsibility which certain fine women feel for the tone of the Republic.

"You have shown," she said, "some understanding of the immense influence exerted by literature upon the minds of our young people. But your discussion of 'unprintable' books is up in the air. You must meet peril definitely, perilously, or your readers won't even believe that it exists. In a prairie fire, you must fight with fire; water, the flames snuff up like a perfume, and sweep on. You don't come to grips with the facts. You asperse them with rosewater."

"You mean," I replied, fencing feebly, "that I did not furnish a guide to those new books which no young person should read? I had thought that would rather please you. The suppressive societies will supply the information which I omitted. I am not specially interested in the circulation of any questionable books—except my own."

"Your innuendo is nasty and your tone is flippant," she said. I bowed in acknowledgment of my entire agreement. "But the subject," she

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 continued, "is grave. It is very grave to those of us who have boys and girls of eighteen and twenty. We wish them in these formative years to be subject only to the finest influences. How can they be, when they read such books? How can any one who is interested in moulding the characters of the younger generation not desire to keep such books as you know they are reading out of their hands? When I think of my son or my daughter, with their clean sweet young minds, wading into the filth of our popular fiction, I repeat to myself those lines of Heine—you remember:—

"Try it," I suggested with studious brutality. "Call in the children. Lay your hands on their heads, and pray that God may keep them in their beauty and purity and sweetness. How will they take it? Demurely, I fancy—while they are in your presence. But when they meet in the garden afterward, they will exclaim, 'Isn't mother an old dear!' And then they will laugh softly, and think of—all sorts of things. Heine's prayer, you know, doesn't hit off the aspirations of contem-

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 porary youth. Beauty is still 'all right.' But the quality of 'sweetness,' though it is not yet wholly unmarketable, is held in greatly diminished esteem. And as for purity—'What is purity?' asks the jesting younger generation, and will not stay for an answer."

"Young people ask many foolish questions," said Cornelia dismissively. "What troubles me is rather the changing attitude of so many parents and teachers. Have they lost that beautiful desire to shield the years of innocence? Have they quite lost their sense of responsibility?"

"No," I conjectured, "they haven't altogether lost their sense of responsibility. But they haven't known quite what to do with it; and just now it seems temporarily to have slipped from their hands. They didn't know how to use it when they had it; or they were afraid to use it, and cast the responsibility for the innocence of their children upon God; and now the children, sick of that evasion, are acting for themselves. And I am afraid that we have rather lost contact with the younger generation. It has experienced so much, it has read so much, it is so accustomed to the free discussion of all sorts of topics which we thought ominous even to mention—that I often suspect

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 we have more to learn from it than it has to learn from us."

"That is a false and vicious humility."

"No, I assure you, very genuine, however vicious. It came over me in the spring several years ago in a vision. I happened one day to observe in my garden a large white cat stalking with soft experienced tread under the lilacs, on the lookout for young robins making their trial flight. Being of a somewhat analogical turn of mind, and having then a high conceit of the wisdom of our generation, I said to myself: 'The garden is a symbol of the world. The wise cat is the old professor. The fledgling robin is the young student.' As I murmured the last word, the white cat made a flying leap for the nestling. It proved to be, however, an adult wren, pert and elusive, which hopped just one spray higher and twittered derision. The cat walked off crestfallen, muttering: 'Such wise birds! I have never known a season when birds were wise so young.

"Well?"

"Well, I really trust these 'wise birds' nowadays much further than you do."

"Won't you explain why?" said Cornelia.

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 hood party recently, where there was dancing, and the very youngest generation was present, I was greatly flattered by receiving from Adelaide, a young lady of five years, marked attentions which on previous occasions had been directed to Bertram, a far more plausible person than I in all respects, and, moreover, only thrice the age of Adelaide. I said, 'I thought you were devoted to Bertram.' Instantly she replied: 'I was. But I am not interested in Bertram any longer. I know all about him.' At the age of five, don't you see, she has already begun to 'sip the foam of many lives.' I happened to be, shall I say, the coca-cola of the evening. But I know that I shall be sipped and discarded. Already Adelaide has become critical, fastidious, wary; she will not for long be taken in."

"Well?" again from Cornelia, with a hint of irritation.

"I mean to insist," I explained cautiously, "that such sentimentalists as you and I seldom do justice to the hard, clear-eyed maturity—of a sort—which our young people have attained by pooh-poohing our sentimentality and subjectivity and adopting what Santayana calls a simple 'animal faith' in the material surfaces of things."

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 "Just what do you mean?" Cornelia inquired,—sharply and scornfully,—"by 'hard, clear-eyed maturity'? I have no such feeling about my own children. My own son and daughter are being brought up as I was brought up. Well-bred young people to-day differ in no essential respect from well-bred people twenty years ago. What some idiots try to make us believe is a change of standards is not a change of standards. It is merely a horrid confusion, due to the fact that a great many ill-bred people are expressing themselves."

"That in itself," I said, "implies a change in conditions, if not in standards. There is, as you say, a 'horrid confusion.' The confusion is due to the fact that the well-bred young people are now applauding the ill-bred old people. That is really significant. When the well-bred young people begin to desert, it is all up with the Old Guard. That indicates either a revolt or a revolution. You must remember, Cornelia, that one half of history is an account of the struggle made by your class to keep the rest out; and the other half of history is an account of how the rest are getting in. If you are now in the presence of a revolt by a weak body of outsiders, you may still effectively oppose it. But if it is a revolution

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 including your own household, you had better prepare to support the best elements in the de facto government—in the literary no less than in the political republic."

"There are no best elements," Cornelia retorted, "in what you call the de facto government. There are no good elements. There are no decent elements. It is an insurrection of hoodlum and bedlam. It is all vile. The situation," she continued, with the clear precision of a cookie-cutter, "demands drastic action. You, instead of strengthening the hands of those who attempt to act, amuse yourself with philosophical futilities, and virtually throw the weight of your levity against all action."

"Suppose I desire an antecedent action of the mind?"

"But you are so ambiguous that you have no force. One can't really tell on which side you are."

"I should like," I hurriedly replied, "to be on the side of the angels. You know that I should like to be on your side. If I am ever driven from your side, it will be by the fine high-bred incuriosity of angels. It will be by the applause of angels, accompanied by some fresh demonstration of their immitigable hostility to thought."

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 "You are rude."

"And you—just faintly provoking. I am not sure, Cornelia, that you quite understand the limits of a writer's power. I have a friend, long experienced in a public library, who assures me that critical articles have no real effect. Readers either agree with them from the outset and are pleased, or disagree with them from the outset and are displeased. This, she tells me, is especially true of lawyers, clergymen, professors, and all nice people. Perhaps that is so. Let us suppose that it is. Suppose also that I were returning to the discussion of 'unprintable' books. What treatment of the subject would please you? You are a 'conservative' of definite convictions, and you demand drastic action. Exactly what is the situation and what the appropriate action? Are you prepared to say?"

"Certainly," she replied. "And I will tell you also the stand which I believe should be taken by a critic who professes to have the public welfare at heart."

"Before you do that," I interposed, "you must pardon me one more flippancy. Isn't it true that people often 'take a stand' to watch something that is going on and that will continue to go on

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 whether they remain in their 'stand' or not?"

"If you mean to ask whether I am a moral futilitarian, I am not. People of character take a stand in order to prevent obnoxious things from going on. If the obnoxious things continue to go on in spite of them, people of character are glad to be left behind, or even to be trampled underfoot, when that is the only way to make their protest effective."

"You speak like yourself, Cornelia," I said, "and no higher compliment is possible. Your image interests me. I seem to see an invading army with leveled spears, and you dauntlessly flinging yourself upon them. Opposition interests me as long as it is effective—as long as the opposing breast checks the leveled spears. Sniping from the housetop at the postman, after the revolution has actually taken place—in that, there is a kind of unpalatable futility. But how do you apply your figure to the duty of the critic in the face of current fiction?"

"I apply it in this way. You yourself have admitted that it would be very easy to make a list of popular writers who, however varied their art and method, have running through their work an insistent preoccupation with sex of quite a

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 different character from its occasional romantic treatment in the novels that you and I were brought up on. The heart of the matter is this: the minds of young people are being gravely affected by a group of writers who, in their several ways, definitely challenge the idea of chastity. Now, what a really serious critic should do is to call a halt in the production and reading of that sort of literature."

"My dear Cornelia," I exclaimed,—I always exclaim "My dear" when I am about to express impatience; it introduces the note of suavity,—"My dear Cornelia, do you read the magazines? Do you attend church? Do you see the newspapers? Did you not observe that the form, 'It is time to call a halt,' was first employed on the tenth of August, 1914, by an editor in Oshkosh with reference to the German advance on Paris? In the following week it was applied by a clergyman of Tulsa, Oklahoma, with reference to the consumption of chewing-gum in the United States. Since that time, it has been in continuous employment by all serious critics, lay and clerical, with reference to the output of the leading English and American novelists."

"Well," she replied, "what if it has? So much

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 the worse for the leading English and American novelists. If they are all running amuck, is that any reason why the rest of us should lose our heads? If the novelists are going definitely wrong at the point which I have indicated, a critic could not be better employed than in standing at that point and calling a halt."

"You assign to criticism," I said, "a task which appeals but faintly to the critic—a task like that of a traffic policeman without authority or power. If I had all the authority in the world, I would not cry 'stop' to the novelists, even to those that I have criticized most harshly."

"And why not?"

"Because I learn too much from what they are doing to desire to dam the stream of information. The realistic novelists to-day are extraordinarily copious, candid, and illuminating confessors of private morals. I have, to be sure, been troubled by the fact that the lives of respectable people are so seldom revealed in these confessions. I have even allowed myself to wonder faintly at times whether unwillingness to confess may not be, as our direful Mid-Western school contends, the chief distinction between respectable people and the other sort. It is a horrid doubt, concerning

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 which no one but the novelist betrays much curiosity or provides much light. And so, for novelists, I wish freedom to confess, and, for myself, freedom to comment on their confessions—though, since they have become so desperately confessive, it seems frequently indelicate to do so. If they are, as you assert, definitely challenging the idea of chastity, the matter is indeed of more than merely literary interest. I should like to know whether our standards are undergoing revolutionary change. Won't you please go out and 'call a halt,' while I go home and inquire in my own fashion whether anything is going on; whether the idea of chastity has actually been challenged; if so, what idea of chastity, why, where, when, in what manner, and with what results?"

"You are hopeless," said Cornelia, rising. "I shall ask the Bishop to make this the subject of one of his Lenten discourses."

"That will be just the thing," I rejoined, "to induce profound reflection in our novelists."

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COMFORTABLE railway journey of seventeen and a half hours brought us to the capital of India, which is likewise the capital of Bengal—Calcutta. Like Bombay, it has a population of nearly a million natives and a small gathering of white people. It is a huge city and fine, and is called the City of Palaces. It is rich in historical memories; rich in British achievement—military, political, commercial; rich in the results of the miracles done by that brace of mighty magicians, and. And has a cloud-kissing monument to one.

It is a fluted candlestick 250 feet high. This lingam is the only large monument in Calcutta, I believe. It is a fine ornament, and will keep Ochterlony in mind.

Wherever you are, in Calcutta, and for miles around, you can see it; and always when you see it you think of Ochterlony. And so there is not an hour in the day that you do not think of Ochterlony and wonder who he was. It is good that Clive cannot come back, for he would think it was for Plassey; and then that great spirit would be wounded when the revelation came that it was not. Clive would find out that it was for Ochterlony; and he would think Ochterlony was a battle. And he would think it was a great one, too, and he would say, "With three thousand I whipped sixty thousand and founded the Empire—and there is no monument; this other soldier must have whipped a billion with a dozen and saved the world." (517)


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I returned to my study, I dropped into a chair which frequently invites meditation, before a case containing current fiction. My eyes glanced swiftly along the rows of Wells, Galsworthy, Bennett, Beresford, and Walpole, lingering an extra moment on Ann Veronica, The Dark Flower, and The Pretty Lady; visited with slow interrogative scrutiny the "colorful" assemblage of Hergesheimer, D. H. Lawrence, Rebecca West, May Sinclair, W. L. George, James Joyce, Cabell, Sinclair Lewis, Sherwood Anderson, Charles G. Norris, Ben Hecht, and Waldo Franck; then fluttered to rest upon a half-dozen miscellaneous recent arrivals—Meredith Nicholson's Broken Barriers, Mrs. Gerould's Conquistador, Maxwell's Spinster of This Parish, Willa Cather's The Lost Lady, G. F. Hummel's After All, and West of the Water Tower.

Here, I said to myself, is material enough to prove Cornelia's case, if she has a case. Among

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 this company I shall find the challengers, if there is a challenge. What are they calling in question? The idea of chastity—whose idea of chastity? Cornelia's idea, the idea of all nice people—What is the idea of all nice people regarding chastity? Look in the Dictionary, the record of good usage—Here it is: "Innocence of unlawful sexual intercourse." As a history of usage, the Dictionary should add in parenthesis: "This is a virtue assumed to be present in all members of the female sex in good and regular standing."

Here we have a simple and definite idea to work upon: Chastity is a virtue assumed to be present in all members of the female sex in good and regular standing. Who first gave currency to that idea? Our friends the Victorians? Oh, no! It is astonishing how many so-called Victorian ideas, delicate and fragile, can be found thriving in manlier ages, in old robust books like Don Juan and Tom Jones, and in the drama of that "den of lions," the Renaissance. How they valued this virtue—those "lions" of the Renaissance! How they valued this virtue in their wives! What praise they had for its possessors—"chaste as the icicle that's curded by the frost from purest snow and hangs on Dian's temple"! Shakespeare valiantly

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 assumed the presence of that virtue in all members of the female sex in good and regular standing—except Cleopatra.

But we must not be too historical. The idea of chastity exists full-blown in Goldsmith, in those two famous stanzas which inquire what happens when lovely woman stoops to "folly" and learns too late that men "betray," that is, fail to legalize the "folly." We remember what follows, for the lines were in every anthology employed in our formative period to give to our young minds a relish for virtue and a lively apprehension of the consequences of departing from it. Cornelia still thinks we should prescribe Goldsmith rather than Mr. Galsworthy for the collateral reading of her daughter. Goldsmith declares very firmly that when lovely woman stoops to folly, no art can wash her guilt away.

Several distinct elements appear in our fully developed idea: first, chastity is the virtue of a legal status; second, women are naturally law-abiding; third, if they lose their status, it is by

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 the natural perfidy of predatory man; fourth, the disaster is irretrievable. There is no salvation for the woman but death, the cloister, exile, or, occasionally, a shamefaced return to "chastity" under the horsewhip or at point of the pistol.

This idea flourished in the "good old" novels of Sir Walter Scott; it is fairly well illustrated in the case of Effie Deans in The Heart of Midlothian. Scott was a romancer. His contemporary, Jane Austen, was a realist. She was far less chivalrously certain than he that lovely women who are neglectful of legal status are by nature virtuous. She looked at them hard; she inclined strongly to believe that such women are by nature vain, sentimental, and ignorant—like Lydia Bennett in Pride and Prejudice. But Jane Austen is at one with Scott in treating unlawful passion austerely. In the fiction of both these worthies the erring woman is unmistakably a "victim"; the man, however plausible his manners, is a profligate and unprincipled, if not a designing, villain; the consequences of departure from legal status are depicted in strongly deterrent colors. Our idea of chastity is fortified by them.

Now let us advance a generation or so and question our friends the Victorians: do they accept

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 our idea and loyally enforce it? Yes—now and then. Familiar cases? There is the case of little Em'ly in David Copperfield. She is the typical victim of the typical seducer; and Dickens punishes them both in approved traditional fashion. He drowns the wicked lover—which is, of course, a logical consequence of departure from legal status. He sends the victim with her "soft sorrowful blue eyes" to Australia, where she attempts to expiate her guilt by a life of self-sacrifice. She has many a good offer of marriage; But, uncle,' she says to me, 'that's gone for ever. Here we have the doctrine of the irretrievable. That doctrine is sternly proclaimed by George Eliot in the graver case of Hetty Sorrel in Adam Bede. The repentant lover tries to do something for Hetty. His last words are that it is no use: "You told me the truth when you said to me once, 'There's a sort of wrong that can never be made up for. Neither Scott nor Jane Austen could have handled these elementary cases in a more strictly orthodox fashion. Our idea is again fortified.

But the great Victorian novelists pushed their speculations beyond the elementary problems raised by the victim-villain situation. They had,

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22 several of them, personal reasons for reflecting thoughtfully upon the social utility of the stout bulwarks with which the English law attempted to fortify the idea of chastity and the related doctrine of the irretrievable. Dickens is said to have fallen in love with all the Hogarth daughters and to have married the wrong one. Thackeray married at twenty-five a woman who half a dozen years later became insane and who outlived him. Bulwer-Lytton was legally separated at twenty-three from a woman who outlived him. Meredith's Modern Love discusses an incompatibility of temper from which a death divorced him. And George Eliot, high priestess of Victorian morality, was actually living in a kind of solemn and almost officious virtue with another woman's husband. These were circumstances arranged to liberate speculation and to set it playing a little skeptically about the one way out—the sole dark exit which Goldsmith had so glibly offered to lovely women who are unfortunate in love.

In a novel of the mid-nineteenth century, which used to be thought very dangerous reading,—Jane Eyre,—Charlotte Brontë considered one of these more difficult cases, and almost presented it. Jane, an eager, self-reliant, self-supporting, and

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 fairly hard-headed young woman, first of our modern heroines, is loved with a grand passion by Rochester, who is enchained by marriage to a hopeless lunatic. Now the novelist permits Jane to fall deeply in love with Rochester, thus perilously illustrating the possibility that a truly great and two-sided passion may come into existence outside legal status. Charlotte Brontë, however, intervened twice to save the situation. She wasn't fastidious about the chastity of Rochester: chastity is a female virtue. But she was fastidious about the chastity of Jane. And so, of course, she makes Jane ignorant at first of the fact that Rochester is married; and she makes Jane tell him that it is all up, when she learns that he is married. That was the perfectly correct thing for Jane to do.

But it created a dilemma. Charlotte Brontë knew that it created a dilemma—a dilemma with unchastity for one horn and the frustration of a grand passion for the other. (It should perhaps be explained that a grand passion, in those illiberal days, was thought of as an experience that befell a girl but once in a lifetime.) Charlotte Brontë did not quite dare to treat this dilemma. She faced it for a moment. She let her readers face

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Rh shipping. Even if the President ultimately vetoes it, its present position shows that at least two-thirds of the House of Representatives share Bethmann-Hollweg's view of treaty obligations. And as for trade with Russia, England led the way, while American hostility to the Bolsheviks remained implacable, and to this day Gompers, in the name of American labour, thunders against "shaking hands with murder." It cannot therefore be said that America is always honourable or humanitarian or liberal. The evidence is that America adopts these virtues when they suit national or rather financial interests, but fails to perceive their applicability in other cases.

I could of course have given many other instances, but I content myself with one, because it especially concerns China. I quote from an American weekly, The Freeman (November 23, 1921, p. 244):—

On November 1st, the Chinese Government failed to meet an obligation of $5,500,000, due and payable to a large banking-house in Chicago. The State Department had facilitated the negotiation of this loan in the first instance; and now, in fulfilment of the promise of Governmental support in an emergency, an official cablegram was launched upon Peking, with intimations that continued defalcation might have a most serious effect upon the financial and political rating of the Chinese Republic. In the meantime, the American bankers of the new international consortium had offered to advance to the Chinese Government an amount which would cover the loan in default, together with other obligations already in arrears, and still others which will fall due on December 1st; and this proposal had also received the full and energetic support of the Department of State. That is to say, American financiers and politicians were at one and the same time the heroes and villains of the piece; having co-operated in the creation of a dangerous situation, they came forward handsomely in the hour of trial with an


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 it for a moment. Then she intervened again: she destroyed the dilemma. She made it all come right. She restored both hero and heroine to chastity by pitching the lunatic wife headlong into the flames of the house of Rochester.

A happy thought—so it must have seemed to the author. Yet, as one reflects upon it, this solution appears a little dangerous. To pitch a superfluous wife into the flames—well, it would not quite serve as a Kantian basis for the solution of all such problems. Under the English law, the dilemma reasserted its actuality. Jane Eyre stands there early in the Victorian Age as a challenge, rather evasively presented, to the idea of chastity. In W. B. Maxwell's Spinster of This Parish, 1923, a modern heroine is placed in almost precisely Jane's situation, except that her lover does not think it necessary to lie to her about his lunatic wife. Without a moment's hesitation, she accepts the grand passion. Since she accepts it with all the fortitude and fidelity of an old-fashioned wife, she seems to-day a quite safe, old-fashioned character; and it is hard to conceive of any one's thinking of her as "unchaste."

Other Victorians, usually with much circumspection, returned to the dilemma; and they

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 returned to it in such numbers that to challenge the idea of chastity as a legal creation may be regarded as a rather distinctively Victorian contribution. From the question what to do when you are united to an undivorceable insane wife, the Victorians proceeded cautiously to consider the demands of virtue in analogous sets of circumstances. What is the point at which the maintenance of legal chastity involves the loss of ethical integrity? What is right conduct for a young girl whose parents or relatives have united her in a "suitable marriage" to a repellent brute of means and good family? That is a question which interested Thackeray in The Newcomes; and it will be remembered that the wife of Barnes Newcome answers the question in her own case by giving her husband occasion for divorce under the English law. It is not always observed that to Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter right conduct, to the last page of the book, consists in fidelity to her lover, not to her fanatical husband; and Hawthorne, perhaps indecently, places the lovers in adjacent graves of a Boston burying-ground. Isabel Archer, in Henry James's Portrait of a Lady, is begged by her lover to desert her husband and come to him, and to disregard the "bottomless

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 idiocy" of what other people will think or say about them. Though, on the last page, Isabel is still clinging to legality, one is left in some doubt whether she will cling indefinitely. Meredith's Diana is a standing challenge to the doctrine of irretrievable marriage. Hardy's Tess is a defiance to the idea of chastity entertained by the Angel Clares; and the obscene relation in Jude the Obscure is obviously that between him and his wife, not that between him and Sue, except as it is smirched by his return to his wife and by her return to her husband.

But why multiply instances? Here are enough to show that the good Victorians repeatedly solicited our sympathy and our support for heroines whose ethical integrity was afflicted by their legal chastity. The idea of illicit love as an affair of victim and villain, has been largely jettisoned or given over to melodrama, as of an interest too primitive or too banal for extended consideration. To their successors, the Victorian realists bequeath, as matter of far higher artistic and general human concern, their rather cautious essays upon the evaded dilemma of Jane Eyre.

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us now enter fearfully upon the burning ground of contemporary fiction. The territory is immense, and unexplorable here in detail. All that one can do is to stand upon the smoky borderland, and comment briefly upon some conspicuous spots in the conflagrant area and upon the general direction of the wind.

One cannot, on every occasion for mentioning him, reread the entire works of Mr. Wells. I retain a strong impression that most of his novels of contemporary life challenge the idea of indissoluble marriage. In this respect Mr. Wells is no innovator. I retain also the impression that one tends to derive from these novels a conviction that everyone's first marriage is a mistake. This indicates the direction of the wind. Now Mr. Wells is a long way from accepting Goldsmith's idea that death is the only way out of a bad situation. He has no patience with the doctrine of irretrievability. But as long as unlawful relations furnish the only available alternative way out, his

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 works naturally disquiet Cornelia, and challenge her idea of chastity.

His works disquiet me, because I think the defect which his heroes and heroines find in their first marriage they will find also in their second, and their third, and their fourth; they will find that neither the second nor the third nor the fourth marriage is capable of sustaining indefinitely the sense of ecstasy which the tired business man experiences the first time he notices how pretty his stenographer is. Tedium is three fourths of life. Sensible men settle quietly down to endure it, sustained by their fortitude and their twenty-five per cent of creature comforts and incidentals. The others imagine that by Babbittian adventures they can change the proportions and get something better than tedium. There is nothing that is even "just as good." Thackeray knew this and admitted it. Mr. Wells hasn't admitted it. That constitutes one distinction between the author of The Newcomes and the author of The New Machiavelli.

Mr. Galsworthy told us in The Dark Flower about the quest of ecstasy, and in Saint's Progress he confessed something of the extraordinary disregard of legality in sexual relations on the

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 part of well-bred young people, occasioned in part by the stresses of the war. Mr. Galsworthy, like Mr. Wells, inclines to make ecstasy rather than legality the test of right relations between men and women, though I think most of his heroes and heroines are somewhat less incorrigibly expectant than those of Mr. Wells. In The Forsyte Saga, his prime achievement and a rich and various and notable work, he makes his most significant study of that Victorian dilemma upon which Jane Eyre was so nearly impaled. In the case of Soames Forsyte and Irene and Jolyon, he brings, with great circumstantiality and seriousness, a fine woman face to face with the choice of illegal status or the substantial frustration of life; and Irene unequivocally accepts the illegal status. The entire treatment of the theme indicates, I think, Mr. Galsworthy's belief that she was ethically justified, as she was also justified by the general consequences, in her union with Jolyon. The one high crime in the book, as Mr. Galsworthy conceives it, is Soames Forsyte's exaction of marital rights from a wife who is in love with another man.

I wonder whether Cornelia has read The Forsyte Saga. I wonder whether, if she should enter

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 imaginatively into the circumstances, she would not consider Soames's act a crime. If so, she would challenge the idea of chastity. Perhaps she would call the act "a heinous unchastity"; but that would be to abandon our definition.

I was a bit shocked last spring when someone remarked that May Sinclair had joined the ranks of those who are writing primarily to engage the attention of Mr. Sumner; and that Ann Severn and the Fieldings is an "immoral book." I recalled her Divine Fire as one of the keen delights of twenty years ago, and I remembered her recently published Mr. Waddington of Wyck as the most exhilarating and remorseless flaying alive of the philanderer that I had ever witnessed.

I read Ann Severn and the Fieldings, and I found it, especially in its last two or three chapters, a love story of poignant and thrilling beauty. Compared with many of the physiologically and pathologically introspective novels of the day it is, despite its exhibition of a neurosis resulting in false angina pectoris, almost an old-fashioned love story. It is almost old-fashioned in presenting, in the case of Ann, a passion as straight, as single, as unswerving, as unflinching as that of Shakespeare's Juliet. Ann, brought up with the three

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 Fielding brothers, loves one of them, Jerrold, from childhood till the end, with the "divine fire." Jerrold, on leave from the front, intends to ask Ann to be his wife; but by the connivance of circumstances with the lying of interested persons, he is persuaded that Ann is living with his shell-shocked brother. Jerrold, thereupon, in the recklessness of the hour, expecting to be killed in the next attack, abruptly marries Maisie. When the conspiracy of lying and ambiguous circumstances is dispelled, Ann claims Jerrold as her own, and he gives himself to her "without a scruple."

Now the ethical points, as exhibited by the author, are these: first, Jerrold has shown male recklessness regarding his virtue, by marrying one woman when he loved another; second, he displays an awakened ethical sensitiveness when he rejoices at the termination of his intimate relations with his wife; third, Ann has never for an instant swerved from her virtue; Maisie proves her virtue in the beautiful, if impossible, scene in which she surrenders her husband to Ann, saying: "I can't think of anything more disgusting than to keep a man tied to you when he cares for somebody else. I should feel as if I were living in sin." Of course the major contention is, that Ann,

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 though without legal status, was "chaste"; but that is a paradox and a challenge to our idea.

Let us take one more case in this group: Mr. J. D. Beresford with the Jacob Stahl trilogy. In this rather drab yet impressive work, one finds the "emancipative" ideas of Mr. Wells assimilated by a much less buoyant nature. Jacob muddles into a bad marriage with an unquestionably unsuitable person, from whom he separates, though he is not divorced. He falls in love with one of the keepers of his lodging-house and asks her to live with him without legal sanction till his wife shall die. After months of consideration she freely and resolutely joins him. From that point, Mr. Beresford exerts himself to prove that their relation is just as grave and permanent and full of labor and anxiety and humdrum and gray days as marriage itself. I suspect there is a kind of grim truthfulness in the relation of this adventure. It reminds one, in the third volume, of George Eliot and of accounts given by sundry visitors of the slightly dreary decorum of her ménage. There is no expectation of ecstasy on the part of either of the adventurers. They merely look, outside marriage, for the alleviations of the ultimate human solitude afforded by a satisfac-

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 tory marriage. They are tolerably successful. But when the death of Stahl's wife clears the way, they return, for various reasons of expediency, to a legal status.

Mr. Wells, Mr. Galsworthy, May Sinclair, and Mr. Beresford are all, I think, seriously interested in morality. On the whole, their work does not contemptuously and explicitly challenge the idea of monogamous marriage. At least, it does not flout the possibility of arriving, by freedom of readjustment, at some reasonably satisfactory and permanent relationship between one man and one woman. And so, in a sense, their point of view begins to appear relatively conservative. If they could be questioned regarding their moral purposes or tendencies, they would profess sincere respect for virtue. But they would add that they are concerned, as novelists, with reflecting the revision which the idea of virtue is undergoing in our time. They are generally willing to admit that society and the state are related in necessary and vital ways to the customary form of sexual alliance. But they repudiate the notion that mere legality can set the seal of virtue upon any such alliance. Less firmly, yet pretty clearly, they repudiate the notion that mere illegality can

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 remove the seal of virtue which individual adventurers may set upon their alliance. Because chastity has been traditionally identified with legality, they hold the word in some contempt; they incline to discard it as the name of any recognizable virtue. The important ideas which it has obscured are these: to maintain permanent relations with one who is thoroughly agreeable to you is virtue; to maintain permanent relations with one who is thoroughly disagreeable to you is vice.

There is quite a bit of ground between.

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text:
Page:My Dear Cornelia (1924).pdf/47

the novelists who have arrived within the last ten years, it is more difficult to discover any community in constructive ethical intention or tendency. One can no longer feel sure that marriage is regarded as the normal condition, for which fidelity in illegal relations is a substitute. One recalls numerous heroines who collect erotic adventures like female Don Juans, and others who stoutly and "conscientiously" refuse marriage to lovers to whom they refuse nothing else. And here is George F. Hummel's After All, advertised as follows: "Its analysis of the inherent self-destructiveness of marriage is carried to a conclusion which, however opposed to accepted standards of morality, has in it the logic and compelling force of a thinking man's profoundest conviction." Here are D. H. Lawrence's Lost Girl and Arnold Bennett's Pretty Lady, and W. L. George's Ursula Trent, and Willa Cather's Lost Lady, and Joseph Hergesheimer's Cytherea, and the heroine of Mr. Masters's Domesday Book—a

title: Page:My Dear Cornelia (1924).pdf/47