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THE IVORY TOWER at once," his companion had announced; and he felt it on the spot as scarce less than delicious that this element too should play, and with such fineness, into that harmony of the amusingly exotic which was, under his benediction, working its will on him. "Oh yes," she rejoined in answer to his exhibition of the degree in which what was before him did stir again to sweetness a chord of memory, "oh yes, food's a great tie, it's like language—you can always understand your own, whereas in Europe I had to learn about six others."

Miss Mumby had been to Europe, and he saw soon enough how there was nowhere one could say she hadn't gone and nothing one could say she hadn't done—one's perception could bear only on what she hadn't become; so that, as he thus perceived, though she might have affected Europe even as she was now affecting him, she was a pure negation of its having affected herself, unless perhaps by adding to her power to make him feel how little he could impose on her. She knew all about his references while he only missed hers, and that gave her a tremendous advantage—or would have done so hadn't she been too much his cousin to take it. He at any rate recognised in a moment that the so many things she had had to learn to understand over there were not forms of speech but alimentary systems—as to which view he quite agreed with her that the element of the native was equally 79


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Rh together, I insert here a summary which was printed in the Irish Prayer-book of the Ecclesiastical Society. If the amusement given by paradoxers should prevent a useless discussion some years hence, I and the paradoxers shall have done a little good between us—at any rate, I have done my best to keep the heavy weight afloat by tying bladders to it. I think the next occurrence will be in 1875.

In the years 1818 and 1845, Easter Day, as given by the rules in 24 Geo. II. cap. 23. (known as the act for the change of style) contradicted the precept given in the preliminary explanations. The precept is as follows:—

'Easter Day, on which the rest' of the moveable feasts 'depend, is always the First Sunday after the Full Moon, which happens upon or next after the Twenty-first Day of March; and if the Full Moon happens upon a Sunday, Easter Day is the Sunday after.'

But in 1818 and 1845, the full moon fell on a Sunday, and yet the rules gave that same Sunday for Easter Day. Much discussion was produced by this circumstance in 1818: but a repetition of it in 1845 was nearly altogether prevented by a timely reference to the intention of those who conducted the Gregorian reformation of the Calendar. Nevertheless, seeing that the apparent error of the Calendar is due to the precept in the Act of Parliament, which is both erroneous and insufficient, and that the difficulty will recur so often as Easter Day falls on the day of full moon, it may be advisable to select from the two articles cited in the note such of their conclusions and rules, without proof or controversy, as will enable the reader to understand the main points of the Easter question, and, should he desire it, to calculate for himself the Easter of the old or new style, for any given year.

1. In the very earliest age of Christianity, a controversy arose as to the mode of keeping Easter, some desiring to perpetuate the Passover, others to keep the festival of the Resurrection. The first afterwards obtained the name of Quartadecimans, from their Easter being always kept on the fourteenth day of the moon (Exod. xii. 18, Levit. xxiii. 5.), But though it is unquestionable that a Judaizing party existed, it is also likely that many dissented on chronological grounds. It is clear that no perfect anniversary can take place, except when the fourteenth

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220 of the moon, and with it the passover, falls on a Friday. Suppose, for instance, it falls on a Tuesday: one of three things must be done. Either (which seems never to have been proposed) the crucifixion and resurrection must be celebrated on Tuesday and Sunday, with a wrong interval; or the former on Tuesday, the latter on Thursday, abandoning the first day of the week; or the former on Friday, and the latter on Sunday, abandoning the paschal commemoration of the crucifixion.

The last mode has been, as every one knows, finally adopted. The disputes of the first three centuries did not turn on any calendar questions. The Easter question was merely the symbol of the struggle between what we may call the Jewish and Gentile sects of Christians: and it nearly divided the Christian world, the Easterns, for the most part, being Quartadecimans. It is very important to note that there is no recorded dispute about a method of predicting the new moon, that is, no general dispute leading to formation of sects: there may have been difficulties, and discussions about them. The Metonic cycle, presently mentioned, must have been used by many, perhaps most, churches.

2. The question came before the Nicene Council ( 325) not as an astronomical, but as a doctrinal, question: it was, in fact, this, Shall the passover be treated as a part of Christianity? The Council resolved this question in the negative, and the only information on its premises and conclusion, or either, which comes from itself, is contained in the following sentence of the synodical epistle, which epistle is preserved by Socrates and Theodoret. 'We also send you the good news concerning the unanimous consent of all in reference to the celebration of the most solemn feast of Easter, for this difference also has been made up by the assistance of your prayers: so that all the brethren in the East, who formerly celebrated this festival at the same time as the Jews, will in future conform to the Romans and to us, and to all who have of old observed our manner of celebrating Easter.' This is all that can be found on the subject: none of the stories about the Council ordaining the astronomical mode of finding Easter, and introducing the Metonic cycle into ecclesiastical reckoning, have any contemporary evidence: the canons which purport to be those of the Nicene Council do not contain a word about Easter; and this is evidence, whether we suppose those canons to be genuine or spurious.

3. The astronomical dispute about a lunar cycle for the prediction of Easter either commenced, or became prominent, by the extinction of greater ones, soon after the time of the Nicene Council. Pope Innocent I. met with difficulty in 414. 8. Leo, in 454, ordained that Easter of 455 should be April 24; which is right. It is useless to


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Rh middle age, when the clergy had already become very much degenerated, and form the transition to the satires of the age of the reformation.

The popular poetry, which we have now sketched, is not, as above stated, especially a product of Denmark, though we have centred our attention on this country, but it belongs to the entire group of Teutonic nationalities. A poetry of precisely the same kind is found not only in all the Northern countries, but also in Germany, England, and Scotland, while the Icelandic and Faroese rimas must also be embraced in the same category. Many ballads have been transplanted from the country in which they originated into another and there become naturalized, a fact peculiarly true of the three northern countries, in which during the age of the greatest bloom of this poetry there was a strong reciprocal influence, so that it is now often almost impossible to determine to which country a given ballad originally belonged. It is, of course, most easy to determine the locality of the historical ballads, but these, too, were frequently scattered over the whole North.

This phenomenon is, in a large measure, explained by the fact that these ballads were invariably intended to be sung, and as a rule are an accompaniment to the dance, just as this is still practised in the Fareys. The melodies composed simultaneously with the words which are characterized by a charming simplicity, easily carried the songs from one country to another, and only such changes would be made in the text as were made necessary by the slight differences of language, and thenceforth the imported songs would go hand in hand with the native ones.

Like the poetry of antiquity the most splendid remnants of which have been preserved in the Elder Edda, the northern poetry of the middle age must be characterized. This term being ambiguous requires a more exact definition. We do not know the authors of the ballads, all of which have come down to us anonymously; but they owe their origin to


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122 real and exceptionally gifted poets. Of any direct share on the part of the people in the authorship of these ballads we can only speak in a relative sense, inasmuch as they in their transmission by oral tradition suffered various more or less radical changes, being now remodelled, now enlarged, and now shortened; of all which facts the copies now extant give sufficient proof. These changes were certainly in the most instances rather corruptions than improvements, so that the remains that have come down to us of this poetry are both in extent and form—and that not merely the rough, purely external or linguistic form—must be considered simply as fragments and ruins of this poetry. When we, therefore, speak of them as popular ballads it is not because the people have a share in corrupting them, but because their authors were popular poets in the true sense, imbued with the spirit of the people, and endowed with a talent for expressing the feelings and sentiments of the masses in such a manner that the people at once accepted them as their own. This was the first and most necessary condition for the development of a tradition which should be able to transmit the ballads from race to race. But it was not necessary that the popular poets should spring directly from the common people. On the contrary, when we consider the whole character of this poetry, it is evident that it owed its origin to men who moved in the higher circles. The burgher never appears in the ballads, and when the peasant occasionally puts in his appearance, it is only the poor wretched boor, whose lot was a sad one, one not apt to supply the conditions for the production of poetry of this sort. The entire scenery, all the images revealed to us in the ballads, are borrowed from the life of the knights; they display the nobles in all their splendor and magnificence, and to this social order they must accordingly owe their origin. Whether there were in the North as in other lands minstrels who wandered from castle to castle or remained at the court of a single master, and whether the origin of the ballads is to be ascribed to those or even to


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Rh gifted poets among the nobles themselves, so that the poetry may be said to have sprung from the very flower of the nation, are questions that cannot be satisfactorily answered. The latter hypothesis seems the most plausible; at all events the castles were the true homes of the ballads. For a long time they were also limited exclusively to these until they in the beginning of the fifteenth century gradually went out of fashion, and were crowded out by romances of chivalry, erotic poetry, and popular tales. In this manner they made their way to the lower strata of the population, where they also, on account of their popular character, became the property of the people, since they expressed feelings and sentiments in a manner intelligible and pleasing to all, sentiments that could be felt and appreciated by the great and the lowly, by nobleman and peasant alike. By the common people they were faithfully preserved until the second half of the sixteenth century, when an interest for them again revived among the nobility, and when it especially became the custom of the noble women to collect and put in writing old songs from the lips of the people. The printed collection of ballads, of which that of Vedel of 1592 is the oldest, constituted for centuries a favorite reading, and at the same time oral tradition has continued even down to the present. Many a ballad that has never been taken down in writing has thus been preserved until the interest awakened in modern times for the monuments of the past made it a matter of duty to collect everything of this kind that could be found. Certain localities of the North are particularly rich in old ballads, and the Hammerum Harde in northwestern Jutland is a striking example of this. In this desolate heath-region, where the popular life assumed a peculiar character created by the "Bindestuer" (rooms in which people get together for the purpose of knitting; they are now fast disappearing), the conditions were most favorable for the preservation of the old ballads and legends. In the long winter evenings old and young would assemble at the larger farms, each provided with his


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THE IVORY TOWER rooted in both supports of life. This gave her of course her opportunity of remarking that she had indeed made for the assimilation of "his" cookery—whichever of the varieties his had most been—scarce less an effort than she must confess now to making for that of his terms of utterance; where she had at once again the triumph that he was nowhere, by his own reasoning, if he pretended to an affinity with the nice things they were now eating and yet stood off from the other ground. "Oh I understand you, which appears to be so much more than you do me!" he laughed; "but am I really committed to everything because I'm committed, in the degree you see me, oh yes, to waffles and maple syrup, followed, and on such a scale, by melons and ice-cream? You see in the one case I have but to take in, and in the other have to give out: so can't I have, in a quiet way the American palate without emitting the American sounds?" Thus was he on the straightest flattest level with Miss Mumby—it stretched, to his imagination, without a break, a rise or a fall, à perte de vue; and thus was it already attested that the Miss Mumbys (for it was evident there would be thousands of them) were in society, or were, at any rate, not out of it, society thereby becoming clearly colossal. What was it, moreover, but the best society—as who should say anywhere—when his companion made the bright point that if anything had to do with sounds the palate did? 80


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THE IVORY TOWER returning with it also to the one already made, her due warning that she wasn't going to have him not like everything. "But I do, I do, I do," he declared, with his mouth full of a seasoned and sweetened, a soft, substantial coldness and richness that were at once the revelation of a world and the consecration of a fate; "I revel in everything, I already wallow, behold: I move as in a dream, I assure you, and I only fear to wake up."

"Well, I don't know as I want you to wallow, and I certainly don't want you to fear—though you'll wake up soon enough, I guess," his entertainer continued, "whatever you do. You'll wake up to some of our realities, and—well, we won't want anything better for you: will we, Doctor?" Miss Mumby freely proceeded on their being joined for a moment by the friendly physician who had greeted our young man, on his uncle's behalf, at his hour of arrival, and who, having been again for awhile with their interesting host, had left the second nurse in charge and was about to be off to other cares. "I'm saying to Mr. Fielder that he's got to wake up to some pretty big things," she explained to Doctor Hatch, whom it struck Gray she addressed rather as he had heard doctors address nurses than nurses doctors; a fact contributing offhand to his awareness, already definite, that everyone addressed everyone as he had nowhere yet heard the address perpetrated, and that so, evidently, there were questions connected with 81


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THE IVORY TOWER it that must yet wait over. It was pertinently to be felt furthermore that Doctor Hatch's own freedom, which also had quite its own rare freshness of note, shared in the general property of the whole appeal to him, the appeal of the very form of the great sideboard, the very "school," though yet unrecognised by him, of the pictures hung about, the very look and dress, the apparently odd identity, of the selected and arrayed volumes in a bookcase charged with ornament and occupying the place of highest dignity in the room, to take his situation for guaranteed as it was surely not common for earthly situations to be. This he could feel, however, without knowing, to any great purpose, what it really meant; and he was afterwards even scarce to know what had further taken place, under Doctor Hatch's blessing, before he passed out of the house to the verandah and the grounds, as their limitations of reach didn't prevent their being called, and gave himself up to inquiries now permittedly direct.

Doctor Hatch's message or momentary act of quaint bright presence came to him thus, on the verandah, while shining expanses opened, as an invitation to some extraordinary confidence, some flight of optimism without a precedent, as a positive hint in fine that it depended on himself alone to step straight into the chariot of the sun, which on his mere nod would conveniently descend there to the edge of the piazza, and whirl away 82


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124 woollen stocking, and there the old traditions were related by persons who excelled in knowledge of them. Here therefore the harvest of ballads handed down from generation to generation was particularly abundant. In Thelemark, in Norway, there is also to be found a large store of popular songs.

In reference to the of the ballads we have the historical ballads as our only safe guide. It would not be safe to assume that a song, describing an event, was composed immediately after the event, and that it then received its present form; but still the composition must have taken place before the persons and circumstances described had faded from the memory of the poet. If we keep this principle in mind, we will arrive at the result that the golden period of the historical ballads, the age of which extends from the beginning of the twelfth century to the Reformation, must have been the latter half of the twelfth and the whole of the thirteenth century; for from this period, confining ourselves to Denmark alone, we have of purely Danish ballads about thirty to each century, while from the remaining three hundred years there is not that number of ballads. This result is perfectly natural, for the period which produced the greatest number of ballads was also the richest in events and in all respects the best period of the Danish middle age. Its stirring times and its high degree of culture necessarily gave this period the conditions for the production of this kind of poetry. In the ballads of Marshal Stig with their tragic descriptions of the guilt of the king (Erik Glipping) and of his marshal, as well as of the calamities which it brought upon the whole land, this poetry reaches its climax. Full of energy it bursts forth again in the ballad about Niels Ebbesen, and then it gradually vanishes, though it still now and then sends forth a vigorous bud, as it did, for the last time, in the beautiful allegorical poem about Christian II and the nobility.

Thus, while we can not place the first historical ballads


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THE IVORY TOWER for increase of acquaintance with the time, as it was obviously going to be, of his life. This was but his reading indeed of the funny terms in which the delightful man put it to him that he seemed by his happy advent to have brought on for his uncle a prospect, a rise of pitch, not dissimilar from that sort of vision; by so high a tide of ease had the sick room above been flooded, and such a lot of good would clearly await the patient from seeing him after a little and at the perfect proper moment. It was to be that of Mr. Betterman's competent choice: he lay there as just for the foretaste of it, which was wholly tranquillising, and could be trusted—what else did doctor and nurse engage for?—to know the psychological hour on its striking and then, to complete felicity, have his visitor introduced. His present mere assurance of the visitor was in short so agreeable to him, and by the same token to Doctor Hatch himself—which was above all what the latter had conveyed—that the implication of the agreeable to Graham in return might fairly have been some imponderable yet ever so sensible tissue, voluminous interwoven gold and silver, flung as a mantle over his shoulders while he went. Gray had never felt around him any like envelope whatever; so that on his looking forth at all the candid clearness—which struck him too, ever so amusingly, as even more candid when occasionally and aggressively, that is residentially, obstructed than when not— 83


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THE IVORY TOWER what he inwardly and fantastically compared it to was some presented quarto page, vast and fair, ever so distinctly printed and ever so unexpectedly vignetted, of a volume of which the leaves would be turned for him one by one and with no more trouble on his own part than when a friendly service beside him at the piano, where he so often sat, relieved him, from sheet to sheet, of touching his score.

Wasn't he thus now again "playing," as it had been a lifelong resource to him to play in that other posture?—a question promoted by the way the composition suddenly broke into the vividest illustrational figure, that of a little man encountered on one of his turns of the verandah and who, affecting him at first as a small waiting and watching, an almost crouching gnome, the neat domestic goblin of some old Germanic, some harmonised, familiarised legend, sat and stared at him from the depths of an arrested rocking-chair after a fashion nothing up to then had led him to preconceive. This was a different note from any yet, a queer, sharp, hard particle in all the softness; and it was sensible too, oddly enough, that the small force of their concussion but grew with its coming over him the next moment that he simply had before him Rosanna Gaw's prodigious parent. Of course it was Mr. Gaw, whom he had never seen, and of whom Rosanna in the old time had so little talked; her mother alone had talked 84


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THE IVORY TOWER of him in those days, and to his own mother only—with whom Gray had indeed himself afterwards talked not a little; but the intensity of the certitude came not so much by any plain as by quite the most roundabout presumption, the fact of his always having felt that she required some strange accounting for, and that here was the requirement met by just the ripest revelation. She had been involved in something, produced by something, intimately pressing upon her and yet as different as possible from herself; and here was the concentrated difference—which showed him too, with each lapsing second, its quality of pressure. Abel Gaw struck him in this light as very finely blanched, as somehow squeezed together by the operation of an inward energy or necessity, and as animated at the same time by the conviction that, should he sit there long enough and still enough, the young man from Europe, known to be on the premises, might finally reward his curiosity. Mr. Gaw was curiosity embodied—Gray was by the end of the minute entirely assured of that; it in fact quite seemed to him that he had never yet in all his life caught the prying passion so shamelessly in the act. Shamelessly, he was afterwards to remember having explained to himself, because his sense of the reach of the sharp eyes in the small white face, and of their not giving way for a moment before his own, suggested to him, even if he could scarce have said why to that extent, the act of listening at 85


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THE IVORY TOWER the door, at the very keyhole, of a room, combined with the attempt to make it good under sudden detection.

So it was, at any rate, that our speculative friend, the impression of the next turn of the case aiding, figured the extension, without forms, without the shade of a form, of their unmitigated mutual glare. The initiation of this exchange by the little old gentleman in the chair, who gave for so long no sign of moving or speaking, couldn't but practically determine in Graham's own face some resistance to the purpose exhibited and for which it was clear no apology impended. By the time he had recognised that his presence was in question for Mr. Gaw with such an intensity as it had never otherwise, he felt, had the benefit of, however briefly, save under some offered gage or bribe, he had also made out that no "form" would survive for twenty seconds in any close relation with the personage, and that if ever he had himself known curiosity as to what might happen when manners were consistently enough ignored it was a point on which he should at once be enlightened. His fellow-visitor, of whose being there Doctor Hatch and Miss Mumby were presumably unaware, continued to ignore everything but the opportunity he enjoyed and the certainty that Graham would contribute to it—which certainty made in fact his profit. The profit, that is, couldn't possibly fail unless Gray should turn his back and walk off; which was 86


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THE IVORY TOWER of course possible, but would then saddle Gray himself with the repudiation of forms: so that—yes, infallibly—in proportion as the young man had to be commonly civil would Mr. Gaw's perhaps unholy satisfaction of it be able to prevail. The young man had taken it home that he couldn't simply stare long enough for successful defence by the time that, presently moving nearer, he uttered his adversary's name with no intimation of a doubt. Mr Gaw failed, Gray was afterwards to inform Rosanna, "to so much as take this up"; he was left with everything on his hands but the character of his identity, the indications of his face, the betrayals he should so much less succeed in suppressing than his adversary would succeed in reading them. The figure presented hadn't stirred from his posture otherwise than by a motion of eye just perceptible as Graham moved; it was drinking him in, our hero felt, and by this treatment of the full cup, continuously applied to the lips, stillness was of course imposed. It didn't again so much as recognise, by any sign given, Graham's remark that an acquaintance with Miss Gaw from of old involved naturally their acquaintance: there was no question of Miss Gaw, her friend found himself after another minute divining, as there was none of objects or appearances immediately there about them; the question was of something a thousand times more relevant and present, of something the interloper's silence, far 87


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THE IVORY TOWER more than breathed words could have done, represented the fond hope of mastering.

Graham thus held already, by the old man's conviction, a secret of high value, yet which, with the occasion stretched a little, would practically be at his service—so much as that at least, with the passage of another moment, he had concluded to; and all the while, in the absurdest way, without his guessing, without his at all measuring, his secret himself. Mr. Gaw fairly made him want to—want, that is, as a preliminary or a stopgap, to guess what it had best, most desirably and most effectively, become; for shouldn't he positively like to have something of the sort in order just to disoblige this gentleman? Strange enough how it came to him at once as a result of the father's refusal of attention to any connection he might have glanced at with the daughter, strange enough how it came to him, under the first flush of heat he had known since his arrival, that two could play at such a game and that if Rosanna's interests were to be so slighted her relative himself should miss even the minimum of application as one of them. "He must have wanted to know, he must have wanted to know!" this young woman was on a later day to have begun to explain; without going on, however, since by that time Gray had rather made out, the still greater rush of his impressions helping, the truth of Mr. Gaw's desire. It bore, that appetite, upon a single point and, daughter or no 88


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THE IVORY TOWER daughter, on nothing else in the world—the question of what Gray's "interest," in the light of his uncle's intentions, might size up to; those intentions having, to the Gaw imagination, been of course apprehensible on the spot, and within the few hours that had lapsed, by a nephew even of but rudimentary mind. At the present hour meanwhile, short of the miracle which our friend's counter-scrutiny alone could have brought about, there worked for this young intelligence, and with no small sharpness, the fact itself of such a revealed relation to the ebb of their host's life—upon which was thrust the appearance of its being, watch in hand, all impatiently, or in other words all offensively, timed. The very air at this instant tasted to Gray, quite as if something under his tongue had suddenly turned from the sweet to the appreciably sour, of an assumption diffused through it in respect to the rudiments of mind. He was afterwards to date the breaking-in upon him of the general measure of the smallest vision of business a young man might self-respectingly confess to from Mr. Gaw's extraordinary tacit "Oh come, you can't fool me: don't I know you know what I want to know—don't I know what it must mean for you to have been here since six o'clock this morning with nothing whatever else to do than just to take it in?"

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Rh earlier than the twelfth century, still the popular poetry, considered as a whole, must be much older. The mythic ballads and the songs kindred to them, which, as we have seen, are in many ways connected with the ancient poetry, and which in part are mere corruptions of older songs, must of needs belong to a time when the poetry and the ideas on which they are based were still fresh in the memory of the people. The transition from the older to the younger form can hardly be placed later than the eleventh century, and at about this time occurred the change of the ideas handed down from antiquity into the new form, until the time became ripe for a poetry in every respect independent, that is to say, for the historical ballads.

That this is correct can also be inferred from the circumstance that in the first half of the twelfth century there was a large influx of German ballads into Denmark; for it is scarcely probable that the transformation of old songs into heroic ballads was contemporaneous with the introduction of foreign poetry. Nor is it possible to assume that the transformation took place after that period. Every circumstance favors the theory by which we refer the beginning of ballad literature to the eleventh century, and this may be done the more safely since we have immutable and incontrovertable proof that the peculiar form of the heroic ballad existed in the time of Knud the Great (1014-1035). For in an old English conventual chronicle from the eleventh century we read that when the king with his queen and followers once happened to be rowing in a boat toward the convent of Ely he gave vent to his joy in a ballad, which he composed on the spur of the moment, and in which he requested his followers to join him in singing. A few lines of this ballad have been preserved, and they leave no room for doubt that it is the heroic ballad fully developed, and it is not to be confounded with the skaldic lay. King Knud's ballad was sung in the English tongue. It is, however, very difficult to determine where the new form was first developed, whether


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THE IVORY TOWER his uncle's supposedly near extinction, and was to be capable, if not of expressing it on the spot in the only terms in which a value of any sort could exist for this worthy, yet still at least of liability to such a betrayal as would yield him something to conclude upon. It was only afterwards, once more, that our young man was to master the logic of the conclusive as it prevailed for Mr. Gaw; what concerned his curiosity was to settle whether or no they were in presence together of a really big fact—distinguishing as the Gaw mind did among such dimensions and addressed as it essentially was to a special question—a question as yet unrecognised by Gray. He was subsequently to have his friend's word to go upon when, in the extraordinary light of Rosanna's explication, he read clear what he had been able on the verandah but half to glimmer out: the queer truth of Mr. Gaw's hunger to learn to what extent he had anciently, to what degree he had irremediably, ruined his whilom associate. He didn't know—so strange was it, at the time and since, that, thanks to the way Mr. Betterman had himself fixed things, he couldn't be sure; but what he wanted, and what he hung about so displeasingly to sniff up the least stray sign of, was a confirmation of his belief that Doctor Hatch's and Miss Mumby's patient had never really recovered from the wound of years before. They were nursing him now for another complaint 90


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THE IVORY TOWER altogether, this one admittedly such as must, with but the scantest further reprieve, dispose of him; whereas doubts were deep, as Mr. Gaw at least entertained them, as to whether the damage he supposed his own just resentment to have inflicted when propriety and opportunity combined to inspire him was amenable even to nursing the most expert or to medication the most subtle. These mysteries of calculation were of course impenetrable to Gray during the moments at which we see him so almost indescribably exposed at once and reinforced; but the effect of the sharper and sharper sense as of a spring pressed by his companion was that a whole consciousness suddenly welled up in him and that within a few more seconds he had become aware of a need absolutely adverse to any trap that might be laid for his candour. He could as little have then said why as he could vividly have phrased it under the knowledge to come, but that his mute interlocutor desired somehow their association in a judgment of what his uncle was "worth," a judgment from which a comparatively conceited nephew might receive an incidental lesson, played through him as a certitude and produced quite another inclination. That recognition of the pleasant on which he had been floating affirmed itself as in the very face of so embodied a pretension to affirm the direct opposite, to thrust up at him in fine a horrid contradiction—a 91


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THE IVORY TOWER contradiction which he next heard himself take, after the happiest fashion, the straightest way to rebut.

"I'm sure you'll be glad to know that I seem to be doing my uncle a tremendous lot of good. They tell me I'm really bringing him round"—and Graham smiled down at little blanched Mr. Gaw. "I don't despair at all of his getting much better."

It was on this that for the first time Mr. Gaw became articulate. "Better?" he strangely quavered, and as if his very eyes questioned such conscious flippancy.

"Why yes—through cheering him up. He takes, I gather," Gray went on, "as much pleasure as I do!" His assurance, however, had within the minute dropped a little—the effect of it might really reach, he apprehended, beyond his idea. The old man had been odd enough, but now of a sudden he looked sick, and that one couldn't desire.

"'Pleasure'?" he was nevertheless able to echo; while it struck Gray that no sound so weak had ever been so sharp, or none so sharp ever so weak. "Pleasure in dying?" Mr. Gaw asked in this flatness of doubt.

"But my dear sir," said Gray, his impulse to be jaunty still nevertheless holding out a little, "but, my dear sir, if, as it strikes me, he isn't dying?" 92


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THE IVORY TOWER "Oh twaddle!" snapped Mr. Gaw with the emphasis of his glare—shifted a moment, Gray next saw, to a new object in range. Gray felt himself even before turning for it rejoined by Miss Mumby, who, rounding the corner of the house, had paused as in presence of an odd conjunction; not made the less odd moreover by Mr. Gaw's instant appeal to her. "You think he ain't then going to?"

He had to leave it at that, but Miss Mumby supplied, with the loudest confidence, what appeared to be wanted. "He ain't going to get better? Oh we hope so!" she declared to Graham's delight.

It helped him to contribute in his own way. "Mr. Gaw's surprise seems for his holding out!"

"Oh I guess he'll hold out," Miss Mumby was pleased to say.

"Then if he ain't dying what's the fuss about?" Mr. Gaw wanted to know.

"Why there ain't any fuss—but what you seem to make," Miss Mumby could quite assure him.

"Oh well, if you answer for it!" He got up on this, though with an alertness that, to Gray's sense, didn't work quite truly, and stood an instant looking from one of his companions to the other, while our young man's eyes, for their part, put a question to Miss Mumby's—a question which, articulated, would have had the sense of 93


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THE IVORY TOWER "What on earth's the matter with him?" There seemed no knowing how Mr. Gaw would take things—as Miss Mumby, for that matter, appeared also at once to reflect.

"We're sure enough not to want to have you sick too," she declared indeed with more cheer than apprehension; to which she added, however, to cover all the ground, "You just leave Mr. Betterman to us and take care of yourself. We never say die and we won't have you say it—either about him or anyone else, Mr. Gaw."

This gentleman, so addressed, straightened and cleared himself in such a manner as to show that he saw, for the moment, Miss Mumby's point; which he then, a wondrous small concentration of studied blankness—studied, that is, his companions were afterwards both to show they had felt—commemorated his appreciation of in a tiny, yet triumphant, "Well, that's all right!"

"It ain't so right but what I'm going to see you home," Miss Mumby returned with authority; adding, however, for Graham's benefit, that she had come down to tell him his uncle was now ready. "You just go right up—you'll find Miss Goodenough there. And you'll see for yourself," she said, "how fresh he is!"

"Thanks—that will be beautiful!" Gray brightly responded; but with his eyes on Mr. Gaw, whom of a sudden, somehow, he didn't like to leave. 94


text:
Internal Security Act

 * Suppression of Communism Act, 1950 (No. 44 of 1950), an Apartheid South African Act that was later renamed as the Internal Security Act, 1950.
 * Internal Security Act 1960 (Act 18 of 1960), an Act enacted by the Parliament of Malaya that provided for the internal security of later Malaysia, most notably authorizing preventive detention without trial.
 * Revised as [Act 82] and repealed by the Security Offences (Special Measures) Act 2012 [Act 747] in Malaysia, but remains current legislation in Singapore.
 * Internal Security Act, 1982 (No. 74 of 1982), an Apartheid South African Act that replaced the Suppression of Communism Act, 1950. Repealed by the Protection of Constitutional Democracy against Terrorist and Related Activities Act, 2004 (No. 33 of 2004).

title: Internal Security Act


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THE IVORY TOWER It at any rate determined on the little man's part a surprised inquiry. "Then you haven't seen him yet—with your grand account of him?"

"No—but the account," Gray smiled, "has an authority beyond mine. Besides," he kept on after this gallant reference, "I feel what I shall do for him."

"Oh they'll have great times!"—Miss Mumby, with an arm at the old man's service, bravely guaranteed it. But she also admonished Graham: "Don't keep him waiting, and mind what Miss Goodenough tells you! So now, Mr. Gaw—you're to mind me!" she concluded; while this subject of her more extemporised attention so far complied as slowly to face with her in the direction of the other house. Gray wondered about him, but immensely trusted Miss Mumby, and only watched till he saw them step off together to the lawn, Mr. Gaw independent of support, with something in his consciously stiffened even if not painfully assumed little air, as noted thus from behind, that quite warranted his protectress. Seen that way, yes, he was a tremendous little person; and Gray, excited, immensely readvised and turning accordingly to his own business, felt the assault of impressions fairly shake him as he went—shake him though it apparently seemed most capable of doing but to the effect of hilarity. 95


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126 in England, Germany or the North, but it cannot have been long before it was universally adopted.

The popular ballads furnish a strong and cheering proof of the poetical activity in Denmark throughout the middle age. The grand age of the Waldemars, the golden age of Denmark, and then the deep humiliation, when the country, thoroughly subjugated by German princes, was brought to the verge of ruin, all this is powerfully and distinctly mirrored in the ballads, which in the most touching strains express the joy and sorrow of the people. But this natural poetry welling forth from the inmost recesses of the people's soul is, in connection with the chronicles of Saxo and Svend Aagesen, all the middle age literature of any importance of which Denmark can boast.

Of secular poetry of art there are no traces whatever except what was borrowed from foreign literatures. Toward the close of the middle age and in the beginning of the reformation period a number of romances and tales of chivalry from the circle of stories of Charlemagne, King Artus and his knights, etc., made their way, in versified and prose translations and adaptations, into Denmark from the rest of Europe, where they had already long been read with great delight. In Denmark they shared the fate of the ballads; they were first received in the higher circles, where they


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THE IVORY TOWER II

or no by its so different appearance from that of Mr. Gaw, the figure propped on pillows in the vast cool room and lighted in such a way that the clear deepening west seemed to flush toward it, through a wide high window, in the interest of its full effect, impressed our young man as massive and expansive, as of a beautiful bland dignity indeed—though emulating Rosanna's relative, he was at first to gather, by a perfect readiness to stare rather than speak. Miss Goodenough had hovered a little, for full assurance, but then had thrown off with a timbre of voice never yet used for Gray's own ear in any sick room, "Well, I guess you won't come to blows!" and had left them face to face—besides leaving the air quickened by the freedom of her humour. They were face to face for the time across an interval which, to do her justice, she had not taken upon herself to deal with directly; this in spite of Gray's apprehension at the end of a minute that she might, by the touch of her hand or the pitch of her spirit, push him further forward than he had immediately judged decent to advance. He had stopped at a certain distance from the great grave bed, stopped really for consideration and deference, or through the instinct of submitting himself first of all to approval, or at least to encouragement; the space, not great enough for 96


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THE IVORY TOWER reluctance and not small enough for presumption, showed him ready to obey any sign his uncle should make. Mr. Betterman struck him, in this high quietude of contemplation, much less as formidable than as mildly and touchingly august; he had not supposed him, he became suddenly aware, so great a person—a presence like that of some weary veteran of affairs, one of the admittedly eminent whose last words would be expected to figure in history. The large fair face, rather square than heavy, was neither clouded nor ravaged, but finely serene; the silver-coloured hair seemed to bind the broad high brow as with a band of splendid silk, while the eyes rested on Gray with an air of acceptance beyond attestation by the mere play of cheer or the comparative gloom of relief.

"Ah le beau type, le beau type!" was during these instants the visitor's inward comment breaking into one of the strange tongues that experience had appointed him privately to use, in many a case, for the appropriation of aspects and appearances. It was not till afterwards that he happened to learn how his uncle had been capable, two or three hours before seeing him, of offering cheek and chin to the deft ministration of a barber, a fact highly illuminating, though by that time the gathered lights were thick. What the patient owed on the spot to the sacrifice, he easily made out, was that look as of the last 97


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THE IVORY TOWER refinement of preparation, that positive splendour of the immaculate, which was really, on one's taking it all in, but part of an earnest recognition of his guest's own dignity. The grave beauty of the personal presence, the vague anticipation as of something that might go on to be commemorated for its example, the great pure fragrant room, bathed in the tempered glow of the afternoon's end, the general lucidity and tranquillity and security of the whole presented case, begot in fine, on our young friend's part, an extraordinary sense that as he himself was important enough to be on show, so these peculiar perfections that met him were but so many virtual honours rendered and signs of the high level to which he had mounted. On show, yes—that was it, and more wonderfully than could be said: Gray was sure after a little of how right he was to stand off as yet in any interest of his own significance that might be involved. There was clearly something his uncle so wanted him to be that he should run no possible danger of being it to excess, and that if he might only there and then grasp it he would ask but to proceed, for decency's sake, according to his lights: just as so short a time before a like force of suggestion had played upon him from Mr. Gaw—each of these appeals clothing him in its own way with such an oddity of pertinence, such a bristling set of attributes. This wait of the parties to the present one for articulate 98


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THE IVORY TOWER expression, on either side, of whatever it was that might most concern them together, promised also to last as the tension had lasted down on the verandah, and would perhaps indeed have drawn itself further out if Gray hadn't broken where he stood into a cry of admiration—since it could scarcely be called less—that blew to the winds every fear of overstepping.

"It's really worth one's coming so far, uncle, if you don't mind my saying so—it's really worth a great pilgrimage to see anything so splendid."

The old man heard, clearly, as by some process that was still deeply active; and then after a pause that represented, Gray was sure, no failure at all of perception, but only the wide embrace of a possibility of pleasure, sounded bravely back: "Does it come up to what you've seen?"

It was Gray rather who was for a moment mystified though only to further spontaneity when he had caught the sense of the question. "Oh, you come up to everything—by which I mean, if I may, that nothing comes up to you! I mean, if I may," he smiled, "that you yourself, uncle, affect me as the biggest and most native American impression that I can possibly be exposed to."

"Well," said Mr. Betterman, and again as with a fond deliberation, "what I'm going to like, I see, is to listen to the way you talk. That," he added with his soft distinctness, a singleness of 99


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THE IVORY TOWER note somehow for the many things meant, "that, I guess, is about what I most wanted you to come for. Unless it be to look at you too. I like to look right at you."

"Well," Gray harmoniously laughed again, "if even that can give you pleasure!" He stood as for inspection, easily awkward, pleasantly loose, holding up his head as to make the most of no great stature. "I've never been so sorry that there isn't more of me."

The fine old eyes on the pillow kept steadily taking him in; he could quite see that he happened to be, as he might have called it, right; and though he had never felt himself, within his years, extraordinarily or excitingly wrong, so that this felicity might have turned rather flat for him, there was still matter for emotion, for the immediate throb and thrill, in finding success so crown him. He had been spared, thank goodness, any positive shame, but had never known his brow brushed or so much as tickled by the laurel or the bay. "Does it mean," he might have murmured to himself, "the strangest shift of standards?"—but his uncle had meanwhile spoken. "Well, there's all of you I'm going to want. And there must be more of you than I see. Because you are different," Mr. Betterman considered.

"But different from what?" Truly was Gray interested to know.

It took Mr. Betterman a moment to say, but 100


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title: A Bayard From Bengal


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Rh soon gained such a foothold that they banished the ballads. This could scarcely have happened had there not been a marked decline in poetic taste; for whatever merit many of the imported productions may have possessed in their original form, still in the form in which they reached the North, that is, in second or third-hand translations, they had unquestionably lost much of their poetic spirit. When the art of printing was introduced, they spread rapidly into wider circles and finally reached the lowest classes of the people. Many of them, and among these the chronicle of the Emperor Charlemagne and the story of Griseldis, have continued to this day as books for the people.

Of the rhymed compositions of this class are the, which owe their name to the fact that the Norwegian queen Euphemia, the wife of Hakon Magnusson, introduced them in Norway about the year 1300. From the Norwegian they were probably translated into Swedish, and we know with certainty that they were translated from Swedish into Danish. Two of the poems, Iwein the lion-knight and Duke Frederick of Normandy, with their glowing descriptions of the life of chivalry, with their deeds of heroism and adventures of love, belong to the circle of Artus legends, while a third is the celebrated love romance of Flores and Blanseflor. They came originally from France, but probably reached the North in German versions. The Norse Euphemia rhymes are doubtless not translations, but rather versified adaptations of works originally written in prose. Not one among them can be regarded as original, at least none such has yet been found. The same is probably true of three poems in the Danish language. These are: the dwarf-king Lavrin, who is here connected with the legend circle of Dietrich of Bern; Persenober and Konstantionobis, an adaptation of the French romance of Patronopseus; and finally the chaste queen. The last treats of a queen who, during the absence of her husband, has to endure the importunities of a faithless courtier, and on the king's return is slandered


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title: A Bayard From Bengal/Chapter 1


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128 by the courtier. The king thereupon repudiates his queen, but the latter is rescued by a strange knight — a plot often used in both rhymed and unrhymed songs and romances. The only prose story of any magnitude in the Danish language from this time is the history of Charlemagne. The manuscript written in 1480 is probably a retelling from memory (and in a very much abridged form) of the Norwegian "Karlamagnussaga," while the latter is itself an adaptation of the numerous poems belonging to the Charlemagne circle of legends as they were developed in the course of the middle age, continually getting further and further away from the historical background. The history of Charlemagne was printed in 1501 by Gotfred von Ghemen, and together with Flores and Blanseflor was one of the first books printed in Denmark. For a long time the book was a favorite with readers, to which fact the circumstance doubtless contributed that the work, despite its fabulous contents, was regarded as authentic history.

Among the rhymed poems of purely Danish origin from the close of the middle age the most important is the, which describes the career of the Danish kings from Humble to Christian I. Each king is introduced to relate his own story, and tells not only of his life but also of his death and burial. It has no historical value. It follows Saxo's chronicle as far as that goes, and after that depends wholly on dry conventual annals. Its contents are correspondingly meagre, and yet the work is in some passages marked by a peculiar and rather attractive directness and originality. In regard to the origin of the Rhyme Chronicle opinions are greatly divided. Molbech, the first editor of the work in modern times, relying on a remark in a Low-German manuscript translation of the Rhyme Chronicle attributes the compilation of the work to the monk of Sorö, Neils (died 1481). On the other hand, the celebrated


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Rh Grundtvig has expressed the opinion that the Chronicle is the joint work of the monks in Sorö convent, who, as above stated, were requested by Archbishop Absalon to write a national chronicle. "Every monk," says Grundtvig, "who could rhyme did his best for the king or kings whose turn it was to be rhymed," and in support of this opinion he points to the striking difference between the different parts of the work in respect to intellectual effort and historical knowledge. This supposition is overruled by the circumstance that in style and language the work unmistakably belongs to the close of the middle age. A third authority in this field of inquiry, the historian of literature, Professor Petersen, leaves the question of the origin of the Rhyme Chronicle undecided for the reason that all reliable information on that point is wanting, and the work itself furnishes no safe clue. The good and the bad are thoroughly intermingled, and the whole is too monotonous to be allowed to serve as a faithful mirror of the changes of popular life through a long period of time. This opinion is doubtless the correct one.

About the time of the reformation, the national vernacular begins, upon the whole, to assert itself with more success, and at this time it is especially employed in the field of religious literature, where, hitherto, the Latin has reigned supreme. Heretofore, men had taken pride in being able to express themselves elegantly and fluently in the Latin tongue, but it gradually became corrupted, and the monks, whose taste for scientific investigations was rapidly declining, did their share towards accomplishing its utter ruin. But in the same degree as the Latin was banished, the vernacular made progress, not only in the conventual Latin, which continued to incorporate into itself an increasing number of Danish words and phrases, but also in the literature and the church service. From the middle of the fifteenth century, Danish


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title: A Bayard From Bengal/Chapter 2


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130 was also heard from the pulpit, legends and prayer-books were translated, and in several convents attempts were made at translating the Bible. An old fragment from the time of Christian I embraces the first eight books of the old Testament, according to the Vulgata, and there are translations of the psalms of David dating from the same time. Also the well known work found in every European country, the half theological popular book called "Lucidarius," appeared in the Danish language.

In this period occur the first efforts in religious poetry in the Danish tongue, the forerunners of the psalms of the reformation period. The hymns in honor of the Virgin Mary are a peculiar product of these efforts. In their religious-erotic sentimentality they give the impression of being love songs rather than hymns for edification. The rhymed poems of Michael, priest of St. Alban's church in Odense, are the only ones whose value rises above being merely of use to the historians of civilization and literature. Priest Michael wrote them in 1496, at the request of Queen Christine, the wife of King Johan. After his death in 1515, they were published, and they consist of three songs, one of the rosary of the Virgin Mary, one of the creation, and one of human life. The first and longest is a free, and in its form, perfectly independent poetical extract from a Latin work of the Dominican monk, Alanus de Rupe (Alain de Roch), who lived in the fifteenth century, and who was very zealous in spreading the worship of the Virgin Mary, by means of the rosary and of the prayers therewith connected. Both the other poems are also free adaptations of Latin originals. But all his works are marked by a deep, tender, not only religious, but also poetical sentiment—by a taste strikingly delicate for his time in the choice of words, and by a generally good style. In all these particulars he not only surpasses his contemporaries, but it was long before there appeared another Danish poet who could boast the same command of language. In conse-


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title: A Bayard From Bengal/Chapter 3


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Rh quence of the Reformation, the rhymed poems of Michael were put aside as being too intimately connected with Catholicism; but a few fragments of "Virgin Mary's Rosary" were retained and were inserted, partly changed and partly without alteration, in the Lutheran psalm-book. Even at the present time several of them are found in the evangelical psalm-books of the Danish church. The poem on human life was in 1571 again brought to light by Anders Vedel and edited by him.

The collection of proverbs by is a work in which poetry and prose, Latin and Danish, are mingled together in strange fashion. Of the author nothing definite can be said, but we may assume him to have been a learned clergyman who occupied himself with the instruction of the youth. His work at least seems to show this, for it was manifestly not compiled for the purpose of preserving the proverbs, but rather of serving as a text-book in learning the Latin. The Latin verses are the chief thing, and the proverbs are simply introduced in elucidation of the former. Apparently the original compilation of the work was made in the fifteenth century, but it has doubtless received various later additions. It is of course of great interest, not only linguistically, but also to the history of civilization, being as it is the oldest collection of the kind in the Danish language, and because it contains many pithy proverbs which belong to a much earlier date. But its value as a school-book cannot be rated high, for the Latin of its leonine verses is far from being classical, and the whole character of the book, and particularly the many French words with which it teems, clearly betray the fact that France must have been the original home of the book. Still, it has been extensively used as a school text-book. In 1506 it was edited by "the scholars of the Copenhagen University," and two years later a fresh edition was called for. When Christiern Pedersen edited the book in Paris, in 1515, he complained of the barbaric Latin in which


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title: A Bayard From Bengal/Chapter 4


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132 it was written, and in the school ordinance of Christian II it is enumerated among the books to be burned. No one took notice of the proverbs which it contained, and a whole century elapsed before Peder Laale was again rescued from oblivion, and it was then done in honor of the old pithy proverbs, which the book contained.

The Danish literature of the middle age offers no pleasing picture for our consideration. At the very outset the national element was excluded, and was tolerated only in the popular ballads, while the entire literature proper was not only written in Latin, but also, in respect to contents, entered a field where the people were unable to follow, and the result was that it became exclusively the property of the learned class. This was, however, the condition of things not only in Denmark, but also in all the rest of Europe. But while strenuous efforts were made in other lands to throw off the Latin yoke in order to give more room to the national and popular element, such efforts were almost wholly wanting in Denmark, and when the vernacular at length began to claim some of the place that belonged to it, the reason for this was not that any strong national impulse stirred the people, but chiefly that the representatives of the foreign culture were no longer equal to the performance of their task. The Danish clergy won no laurels as guardians of the spiritual culture of the middle age. Only in the first centuries after the introduction and establishment of Christianity was the conduct of the clergy such as to exempt them from this blame, and during the most flourishing period of Denmark their relation to European culture in general is deserving of great praise, but it was not long before genuine culture (so far as there was any real culture in those days) degenerated into the semblance of culture, and even the latter gradually disappeared. The convents had at first been the seats of diligent and successful intellectual activity, though they produced no very marked results; but they gradually became


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Rh the gathering places of indolent and ignorant monks whose sole aim it was to make themselves as comfortable as they could with the least possible trouble and to monopolize the direction of affairs. Though a few exceptions might be cited, still the learned profession, taken as a whole, kept sinking deeper and deeper from the position it had occupied in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, as we gradually approach the period of the Reformation. The schools became perfectly demoralized, and but few efficient teachers could be found. (1446-1526) therefore deserves special mention. He was rector of the Aarhus academy and distinguished himself in many ways. Many of the prominent men of the reformation period were indebted to him for their education.

The former earnest desire for higher culture also diminished more and more. The ardor, which had impelled so many Danes to visit the celebrated foreign university, was damped. There were but few who had any ambition to acquire fame by their learning, and these few endeavored to obtain their knowledge with as little effort and sacrifice as possible. They contented themselves with visiting the German universities, and men of real learning were exceedingly rare exceptions. The establishment of a university in Copenhagen on the 1st of June, 1479, did not produce any marked change in this respect. The want of a Danish university had long been felt, and Erik of Pomerania had already in 1419 secured the pope's consent to found one, but had been compelled to abandon the project. The university of Cologne was taken as a model for the Copenhagen university, and from the former came the first faculty of teachers and the first class of students.

Meanwhile this institution did not at first accomplish what was expected from it. The chief reason was that the age no longer favored the catholic principles on which the


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title: A Bayard From Bengal/Chapter 5


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134 institution was based. Its curriculum was made out according to the old scholastic system, and could not therefore have any attraction for the Danish youths, who continued to resort to German universities, so that King Johan found it necessary to publish an ordinance forbidding anybody to visit a foreign university before he had attended the University of Copenhagen at least three years. The latter institution did not therefore from the very outset have any great measure of success, and when the stirring times of the Reformation began, bringing in their wake disorder and uncertainty in all ecclesiastical matters, the university languished, and in the last years of the reign of Fredrik I it can hardly be said to have existed.

Many circumstances coöperated in smothering the incipient germs of an intellectual development which might have been of great importance to the whole people. The disturbances and misfortunes which Denmark had to endure during the last two centuries of the middle age were particularly detrimental to her prosperity. Among these are the parcelling out of the country among foreign conquerors, pestilence, the dissensions between the spiritual and civil powers, etc. The worst of all was perhaps the increasing influence of Germany on Danish affairs. The latter was an inevitable result of the whole historical situation, but that influence necessarily obstructed the development of an independent intellectual life and the creation of Danish literature on a national basis. The German language and German customs monopolized everything, and contributed much to the destruction of national sentiment and self-reliance among the people. The Hanseatic cities had by degrees monopolized the commerce of the whole North; German craftsmen had immigrated in vast numbers; the Danish kings were of German extraction; the whole culture of the country, so far as it was not already Latin, became Germanized, or, in other words, foreign influence prevailed everywhere. The national ascendancy which raised the country to an ephemeral


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Rh greatness during the reign of Valdemar III (called Atterdag) and Queen Morgarethe, had but little influence on the popular life of the day and none at all on the national literature. Immediately after the death of the great queen the national element again collapsed. The times were not favorable for the realization of her bold idea, the consolidation of the three northern kingdoms, and instead of being a blessing the Calmar union became a source of strife and discord among the nations of the North. The chasm between them grew wider and wider, and in the same proportion they became defenceless against their foreign foes. At the close of the middle age German ruled supreme in the church, in the schools, in the state and in society, and it was destined to retain its hold for a long time to come.


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——— Norway: its people, products, and institutions. 12°. London, Chapman & Hall, 1867.

(Robert). Black's guide to Norway. Edited by R. Bowden, 1 map. 12° Edinburgh, A. & C: Black, 1867.

(G., illustrator). See (Horace W:) Sporting sketches. [186-.]

(J:) Boydell's picturesque scenery of Norway; with the principal towns from the Naze, by the route of Christiania, to the magnificent pass of the Swinesund; from original drawings made on the spot, and engraved by J: W: Edy. With remarks and observations made in a tour through the country, and revised and corrected by W: Tooke. 80 col'd pl. fol. London, Hurst, Robinson & co., 1820.

(Hjalmar Hjorth). Kristofer Janson and the reform of the Norwegian language. In "The North American review." v. 115. 8° Boston, J. B. Osgood & co., no. 237, Oct. 1872, pp. 379-401.

——— Norway and the Norsemen. In "Scribner's monthly." v. 13. 8°. New York, Scribner & co., no. 3, Jan. 1877, pp. 291-305, illustrated.

(C: Loring). The Norse-folk; or, a visit to the homes of Norway and Sweden. 4 pl. 12° New York, C: Scribner, 1857.

——— The same. 12°. London, R. Bentley, 1857.

(J:) Norway: its fjords, fjelds, and fosses: how to see them for sixteen guineas. New ed. 12° London, Simpkin, Marshall & co., 1873.

(H. L., translator). See Asbjörnsen (Peter Christian). Round the Yule log. [1882.]

(Fredrika). An easter offering. Translated from the unpublished Swedish manuscript, by M. Howitt. 16° London, H: Colburn, 1850.

Contains: Life in the north. [Journal of a visit to Denmark in 1849-50], pp. 85-223.

——— Life in Dalecarlia: The parsonage of Mora. Translated by W: Howitt. 16°. London, Chapman & Hall, [1845.]

——— Life, letters, and posthumous works of Fredrika Bremer, edited by her sister, C. Bremer [Mrs. Quiding.] Translated from the Swedish by F: Milow. The poetry translated by Emily Nonnen. 12°. New York, Hurd & Houghton, 1868.

(Robert). Excursions in Denmark, Norway and Sweden; including notices of the state of public opinion in those countries, and anecdotes of their courts. 2 v. 2 port. 8° London, H: Colburn, 1840.


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Author talk:Arthur Kelvin Barnes

PD
This page is marked with PD/US. In ISFDB, the earliest work that I can see is dated 1931. Did he publish earlier than that ? -- Beardo (talk) 15:23, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

title: Author talk:Arthur Kelvin Barnes


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Page:History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North.djvu/442

424

(W: H:) Skandinavian sketches; or a tour in Norway. Eng. tit. 17 pl. 1 map. 8° London, J. Bohn, [1835.]

(W:) Several years travels through Portugal, Spain, Italy, Germany, Prussia, Sweden, Denmark and the United Provinces. [Anon.] 12° London, A. Roper, 1702.

(Sir Arthur de Capell). Travels through Sweden, Norway, and Finmark, to the North Cape, in the summer of 1820. 11 vign. on india pap. 22 pl. 4°. London, for Rodwell & Martin, 1823.

——— A winter in Lapland and Sweden, with various observations relating to Finmark and its inhabitants; made during a residence at Hammerfest, near the North Cape. 21 pl. 2 maps. 4°. London, J: Murray, 1826.

(H:, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux). The life and times of H: lord Brougham, written by himself. 3 v. 8°. Edinburgh & London, W: Blackwood & sons, 1871.

Contains: Visit to Denmark and Scandinavia, v. 1, pp. 113-222.

——— The same. 3 v. 12° New York, Harper & brothers, 187l.

Contains: Visit to Denmark and Scandinavia, v. 1, pp. 88-160.

(J:) The northern courts; containing original memoirs of the sovereigns of Sweden and Denmark, since 1766; including the extraordinary vicissitudes in the lives of the grand-children of George the second. 2 v. 1 port. 8°. London, printed for A. Constable & co., Edinburgh; and M. Fenner, London, 1818.

(Marie A.) See of Sweden and Finland. [1876.]

(Robert). The religion and mythology of the Aryans of northern Europe. In (The) institute; or, philosophical society of Great Britain. Journal of transactions, v. 14. 8° London, 1881, pp. 301-359.

——— See (Henrik Johannes). Danish Greenland. 1877.

(J: Ross). The land of Thor. Illustrated by the author. 12° New York, Harper & brothers, 1867.

(Gustavus). An introduction to Swedish grammar, adapted for the use of Englishmen, with exercises. Revised, and with considerable additions, by J. P. Wåhlin. 12°. London, printed for Boosey & sons, 1825.

(James). Impressions of Iceland. In "The Cornhill magazine." v. 29. 8°. London, Smith, Elder, & co., no. 173, May, 1874, pp. 553-570.

(Christian Leopold, freiherr von). Travels through Norway and Lapland, during the years 1806, 1807, and 1808. Translated from the original German by J: Black. With notes and illustrations, chiefly mineralogical, and some account of the author, by


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number of traffic offenses caused by drunkenness increased by 41% between 1967 and 1972—leading to a more stringent enforcement of the law against drinking before driving—and two-thirds of the convictions for public disorders in 1970 were attributed to drunkenness. From 1955 to 1970 the incidence of fatal cases of cirrhosis increased by 306% among men and 200% among women. In response to the negative influence of alcoholism on family life and its relationship to juvenile delinquency, the Novotny regime in 1964 made it a criminal offense to supply minors with liquor. The state now makes it a common practice to remove the child rather than the alcoholic from an unbearable family situation. It has also waged an extensive propaganda campaign against alcoholism, stressing both the preventive and curative aspects, and has approved the establishment of several agencies to deal with the problem.

Czechoslovak authorities believe that sexual problems are primarily responsible for the growing number of divorces and suicides, and the increasing incidence of venereal disease. Since 1965 the regime has established institutes and clinics for research psychiatry, psychology, and sexology, and has encouraged improved sex education among the population. To reduce the high number of divorces, which reached 28,000 in 1971, the government has also operated marriage counseling offices. Newspapers have also taken to printing articles on various social problems, such as prostitution, which were taboo in the past. The striptease shows, nudie magazines, and other forms of "softcore" pornography that appeared in the larger cities in the 1960's have been denounced as reflecting vestiges of "bourgeois morality." The illegal use of narcotics has been a relatively minor problem.

1. Health and sanitation

a. Medical problems

Diseases characteristic of an aging population—disorders of the heart, cerebrovascular maladies, malignant neoplasms—constitute the major health threats to the people of Czechoslovakia and are the principal causes of death. In 1970, these maladies accounted for more than half of all deaths. Obesity, which is common because of an excessive amount of carbohydrates in the diet, is associated with many cardiovascular disorders. An effective public health program has resulted in the decreased incidence of most communicable diseases. Immunization campaigns have enabled authorities to sharply reduce or eliminate such diseases as diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, dengue fever, poliomyelitis, smallpox, plague, and typhus fever. Czechoslovakia has also made great strides in reducing infant mortality. Shortly after World War II, one out of every seven infants died before reaching 1 year of age; at present only one in 50 succumb.

In 1971, the leading contagious diseases were measles, scarlet fever, shigellosis, infectious hepatitis, gonorrhea, pulmonary tuberculosis, and salmonellosis. Enteric infections are common; there were over 30,000 cases of shigellosis and salmonellosis in 1971. Enteric disorders are most prevent in the western part of Czechoslovakia were sewage contamination of water supplies or food contamination are frequently a source of infection. Water pollution has also caused infectious hepatitis; in 1971, an outbreak of this disease in Bratislava was traced to an oil seepage into the city's water supply.

Diseases of the respiratory system are common causes of morbidity and mortality. In 1970 approximately 16,000 died of respiratory infections, including influenza, pneumonia, acute bronchitis, and tuberculosis. Influenza epidemics occur each year or every other year; the incidence is highest among children and young adults, but mortality is highest among the elderly. A severe epidemic of "Hong Kong" flu raged through Bohemia and eastern Slovakia during the winter of 1971-72 causing a large number of hospitalizations and considerable disruption in the economy. The indigence of venereal disease, particularly gonorrhea, has been increasing. Official commentary blames the increase, more marked in the Czech Lands than in Slovakia, on prostitution and declining moral standards.

Improved living conditions and better personal hygiene are responsible for low levels of insect-borne diseases. Encephalitis has been on the decrease, and malaria is limited to a few imported cases. Q-fever is the most common rickettsial infection, affecting both animals and humans. Diseases affecting the animal population include foot-and-mouth disease, Teschen disease, Newcastle disease, fowl plague, swine erysipelas, and parasitic infections.

b. Medical care

The Czech Socialist Republic and the Slovak Socialist Republic each has its own ministry of health. Each ministry is responsible for regulating the training of medical personnel and setting medical standards, overseeing medical research facilities, governing the production and distribution of pharmaceuticals, and supervising all public health activities at regional, district, and local medical facilities. Coordination of

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text: Page:Poems Allen.djvu/111

title: Page:Poems Allen.djvu/111


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The Father of His Son

HE little school-teacher had a sense of humor so keen that when William Fayne made an important announcement in regard to Pat O'Quinn's father, she was able to see the matter from his point of view. She realized that his unfeigned joy in the tidings he bore was only the exudation of a boy's instinctive delight in a row, not a malicious pleasure in her coming downfall. That announcement was the following, delivered in a breathless voice, the words, because of his haste, slightly run together:

“Say, teacher, Pat O'Quinn's father's comin' up to school this mornin' with Pat. He's dead mad with you. He says he's going to break your slats.”

The little school-teacher stared blankly for a second down into William's irradiated face, and William stared with guileless glee back into hers. But it was evident that under her absorption, she was thinking hard.

“All right, William,” she said, after a long pause, “you may clean all the front blackboards and water the plants.”

William set to work on the boards with a zest that threatened to dislocate all the bones in his body, and soon covered everything in sight with a fine white chalk-dust. The teacher, with less ado, went about the work of arranging her desk and getting out the materials for the day's lessons. It was perceptible, however, that her mind was not on what she was doing.

It was the first year of her teaching, and her lines had fallen in difficult places: in a congested Boston school. The district was a poor one, the population largely Irish Catholic. The other teachers in the building were old. Most of them had been teaching for periods running from twenty-five to thirty-five years. They had become the machines that such a routine, and years of it, is bound to make of the most ambitious mentalities. They had little sympathy for her youth, and even less with the new ideas of teaching and discipline that she was gradually introducing into her work. She had not had much trouble with the children themselves, with the exception of Pat O'Quinn, but he had become a veritable thorn in her flesh. He was idle, disorderly, insolent, and maliciously so, it seemed to her. She had tried all the tricks and devices of her slender experience to bring him into line with the rest of her well-disciplined little class, but as yet she had not succeeded. In fact, she had very definitely failed. Pat's surly insubordination had culminated yesterday, when he had refused to obey her, and she had sent him home with the admonition not to return until his mother came with him.

Pat's father was one of the local heroes. He had been a good average working-man until the unlucky day dawned when in a bar-room scrap he had had the felicity to knock John L. Sullivan down. From that time onward he lived in the fame of his great blow. He gave up his work and lived a furtive saloon existence, sinking gradually into deeper and deeper strata of idleness, unnoticed except when a sudden visit to town of the famous pugilist revived memories of his great moment and brought him into prominence again. He was, it happened, and rather unaccountably, a favorite with the famous man. During the pugilist's brief stay he lived a splendid life, moving grandly from saloon to saloon, in one day's-long protracted spree.

The little teacher thought all this over, and it is not surprising that her face sobered. For a moment she wondered if she had better ask the advice of some of the older teachers in regard to the matter. But her pride came to her rescue, urging her to meet the difficulty unaided. Finally her sense of humor got the upper hand, and she smiled.

Simultaneously, a line of dimples, that lived a subsidiary existence about her mouth, flashed into prominence. She went to the closet-door and looked at herself in the mirror hanging there. She was a little round person, curly and dimply, with a dewy mouth, and soft brown eyes that seemed to grow vivid when she laughed. She had no features to speak of, but to make up, her complexion was fresh, and her expression changeable. She was glad, as she surveyed herself in the scrap of looking-glass, that she did not happen to be wearing her regular school uniform, that she had dressed thus early for the tea she expected to attend late that afternoon. Her brow lightened as she turned away, the little figure was so dainty in the soft pearly-gray gown with the globe of fluffy white chiffon at its neck.

The children came into the room when the quarter-of bell rang, in the orderly way in which she had trained them, but there was an air of subdued excitement about them. They glanced eagerly at her where she stood at the hall-door, watching the filing, and their sense of the importance of the things they knew was only rivalled by their recognition of the fact that teacher was wearing some pretty new clothes. They examined her curiously before they exchanged the knowing looks of their secret delight.

The nine o'clock bell rang. The class come to position, each pair of hands folded on the desk, every back as straight as if a ramrod had, without warning, been run into it. The teacher closed the door, walked deliberately to her desk, took from the row of books there her Bible, opened it and sat down. And then suddenly there reverberated through the room the tattoo of a stern and commanding knock. Every child in the class jumped, although each one of them had been secretly anticipating this summons, and their unalloyed joy in the prospective row ran out over every face.

The teacher went to the door and opened it.

Mr. O'Quinn was short and thick-set. He had a burly figure and burly battered-looking features. A nose, several times broken, had destroyed all his pretences to a classic profile; and linen which it is a kindly euphemism to call soiled, a skin that might be charitably described as swarthy if it had not had to accommodate itself to blond coloring, a pervading odor of whiskey and cheap tobacco put him, at once, out of the category of the well-groomed. But to her surprise, the teacher discovered at the back of all this, and in a sense apologizing for it, a pair of blue eyes that looked, if their expression had not been angry, as if they might be bluff and jovial. He was holding Pat by the shoulder, and the little teacher, translating the boy's face by means of the father's, found to her surprise that his eyes might be jolly too if they had not happened, as at the present moment, to be openly impudent in expression. He had red hair and so many freckles that further discovery in regard to his features was virtually a work of excavation. She recognized vaguely, however, that the expression that Pat's mother had once used in her presence was fairly descriptive. She had said that Pat was “the spit of his father.” At the time the teacher had gathered that the similarity was not confined to physique. She had, in consequence, not until yesterday bothered the mother again.

“Oi'd like Miss Perry,” Mr. O'Quinn commanded grandly. His utterance was a little thick, but his manner was that of one descended from kings, as indeed they were, according to Mrs. O'Quinn.

“I am Miss Perry,” that lady announced composedly.

Mr. O'Quinn stared. “Shure, Oi t'ought youse was one of the little gurls in the fuist class,” he muttered. “I t'ought Miss Perry was another wan of thim old maids that's been here since God knows whin.”

“I have only been here a year,” Miss Perry conceded graciously; “you've come to see me about Pat, haven't you? I'm glad of that. Won't you come in and sit down? I shall have to open school first, and give the children something to do. Then I shall have plenty of time to talk with you.”

Mr. O'Quinn's brow had darkened at the suggestion. His lower jaw was protruding in imitation of that of the most correct type of bull-dog. Miss Perry's heart sank. She wondered if the “slats” episode was about to come off.

“Shall I send Pat to his seat?” she insinuated gently; “it was good of you to come.” She looked straight into his eyes, dimpling brightly.

Mr. O'Quinn's brow cleared a little. He dropped his hand—it looked like a bunch of sausages, imperfectly separated and a mottled yellow-blue in color—from his son's shoulder. The released Pat, taking this apparently as a command, slouched into the dressing-room and out to his seat, his expression that conventionally assigned to the cock of the walk. He threw himself into his chair and sank down into it, his legs sprawling out in the aisle, his hands in his pockets.

Miss Perry took no notice of this. “Won't you have a seat?” she begged her visitor, prettily.

Mr. O'Quinn assented with a grunt, and she followed in the wake of his lordly stride to the platform. He compressed his bulk into the visitor's chair. From this altitude he surveyed the class haughtily.

Miss Perry took her seat at the desk. She opened the Bible and read in her soft young-girl voice, “The Lord is my shepherd.” Then she said: “Take out your singing books, children. One! Two! Three!”

The fifty-six statues that were her class came to life. The one hundred and twelve hands unfolded. In a flash fifty-six blue-bound books flew into the right-hand corners of the desks, and the one hundred and twelve hands folded themselves again.

“Page 86,” Miss Perry commanded.

The fifty-six books and the one hundred and twelve hands formed an instant's combination. There was a rapid flutter of leaves. The little girl in the front seat tiptoed up to Mr. O'Quinn and handed him her book, print painstakingly toward him. Then she tiptoed to an empty seat at the back of the room and took the book from it. She passed Pat on the way and he, with no pretence of concealment, tripped her so adroitly that she fell in a blushing heap against little, correct, pompadoured Michael Vincent. The latter virtuously ignored the incident.

“Take out your book, Pat,” Miss Perry commanded sweetly, ignoring it also.

Pat looked at his father and, extracting encouragement from his haughty mien, drew his book with a jerk from his desk, pulling onto the floor in indiscriminate chaos pencils, pens, and papers. He slammed it onto his desk, and then with an air superbly dégagé he collected the scattered articles and put them back one at a time. After this he leisurely found the page and the position he considered most comfortable. This brought his body across the width of his desk and the upper corner of his book into the neck of the little girl in front of him. She turned and frowned on him. Then indignantly she craned forward out of his reach. Miss Perry waited carefully. Mr. O'Quinn contemplated his son.

The children sang the song through in their earnest, sweet voices, their little faces sobered to suit the occasion. Pat kept up a droning monotone through it all, trailing in the rear of his mates by an exact two beats. Miss Perry said nothing, but she waited ostentatiously at the end of each verse for Pat to finish. Mr. O'Quinn contemplated his son.

The hymn sung, the song-books disappeared again. The little girl who had given Mr. O'Quinn her book, making this time a wide detour that put her out of Pat's reach, tiptoed up to him and whisperingly relieved him of it. Miss Perry took up a volume of poems that lay on her desk.

It was one of her new-fangled notions to read a poem to the children every day, and afterward they talked it over. They had taken Longfellow and Whittier in this way. They were on Lowell, end Miss Perry hoped to complete Bryant and Emerson before the year was out. She liked poetry-work particularly. She was convinced that it was bound to have on the children of poverty an uplifting influence. The children liked it, too. They knew nothing about uplifting influences, but they knew it was “easy,” and that they did not have to take examinations in it.

Miss Perry read the poem on the dandelion, but first she told the children that each one of them must remember and quote from it some line that he liked.

When she began to read, Pat with an elaborate air of unconcern put his head on his desk and appeared to fail into a swift and unnatural torpor. Miss Perry stopped. “Come to position, Pat,” she said tranquilly.

Pat lifted his head. He gave one glance at his father, scowling in lordly possession of the platform. The glance encouraged him. “I don't like poitry,” he announced loudly.

“I think you'll like this,” Miss Perry informed him politely; “come to position.” Pat dragged himself slowly to a spineless reproduction of the attitude of the other children. He dropped his under jaw, half-closed his eyes, and listened to the poem with an excruciating expression of ennui. Mr. O'Quinn contemplated his son.

After she had finished her reading Miss Perry called for questions, for comments, for favorite lines. Inspired, perhaps, by the presence of a stranger, the children responded generally, and with considerable animation. Even Michael Vincent's enigmatic choice, “nor wrinkled the lean brow,” cast no perceptible gloom on the occasion. In return. Miss Perry told the class the lines she liked and why she liked them. She made many references to the bunch of dandelions in the squatty ginger-jar on her desk.

“Now, Pat,” Miss Perry concluded pleasantly, “what did you think of it?”

Pat stole another glance at the lowering visage on the platform. “I think it was r-r-rotten,” he promulgated calmly.

The silence of the instant that followed was death-like, Then Mr. O'Quinn turned to the teacher. “Youse haven't anny such t'ing as a club laying round here loose-like, have youse, miss?” he asked briskly.

There was no thickness in his utterance now. His tones were as clear as a bell.

“I haven't a rattan in the school-room at present,” she explained. “I don't keep one because I have no use for one. I don't believe in corporal punishment.” She paused and her voice sank a little. “I can borrow one though,” she added gently.

“Oi'd be that obliged to youse for the lend of wan,” Mr. O'Quinn pronounced inflexibly.

“Dottie,” Miss Perry requested in her most dulcet tones, “go in Miss Hall's room and ask her if she will kindly lend Miss Perry her rattan.” Still tiptoeing, her face very serious, Dottie went.

There was dead silence. The class sat so still that the clock's ticking could be plainly heard. Miss Perry looked politely non-committal. Mr. O'Quinn looked grimly determined. Pat looked puzzled, but gradually and noiselessly he pulled his feet out of the aisle, put them together, and conjured from somewhere a ramrod for his back. Dottie returned apace. She started toward Miss Perry with the rattan, a sinewy-looking wand about a yard in length.

“Give it to Mr. O'Quinn,” the latter said blandly.

Mr. O'Quinn examined the temper of his blade. It bent sinuously under the urge of his thick fingers.

“It's a young club,” he muttered, “but it'ull do, Oi'm dunkin'. Come on out of there, ye young divule,” he called louder, waving a hand in Pat's direction.

Pat's face had been rapidly losing its look of bravado. He burst suddenly into tears. “I won't do it again, father,” he promised futilely.

“Come on out of this,” Mr. O'Quinn thundered. And Pat came slowly “out.” In fact, he may be said to have crept as he came down the aisle, and he snivelled as he moved.

His father seized him by the shoulder and looked inquiringly about him.

“In the dressing-room,” Miss Perry assisted him. She added a directing motion of her hand.

Mr. O'Quinn dragged his son into the dressing-room and shut the door. An amateur pandemonium ensued. Miss Perry said nothing. The class listened in silence. There was the steady sound of blows: some that whistled through the air and apparently missed Pat's writhing figure, and others that found with neatness and despatch the spot where they would do the most good. These last were in the majority. Howls, screams, and sobs, in Pat's familiar accents, reached them in a continuous stream; but O'Quinn senior was grimly silent.

After a while Miss Perry talked to her awed little flock. She pointed out to them that the way of the transgressor is hard, and that punishment is bound, sooner or later, to come. She called their attention to the fact that Mr. O'Quinn had come to school that morning feeling that Pat's teacher had been unjust to Pat, but he had had only to stay a little while to see what a naughty boy Pat really was, and how wickedly he was wasting all his time in play. And like all good parents, he realized that the best thing for Pat was to be punished, and punished in the presence of those who had seen how naughty he had been.

Once she was interrupted. The master of the school came in, raising inquiring eyebrows in the direction of the howls. Miss Perry explained the situation. He made no comment, but left immediately. The children observed that his shoulders were shaking. A theory gained ground, when they discussed the matter at recess that day, that he was too afraid of Mr. O'Quinn to stay and see him.

That gentleman emerged from the dressing-room after a while, his blue eyes no longer lowering, but jovial in expression. In one powerful hand he clutched the limp remnant of the cocksure Pat, and in the other the collection of splinters that had been the rattan. The former displayed to the class, when at his father's command and dictation he faced it and apologized in much detail for the way he had treated his teacher, a tear-stained and dirt-grimed face. The children listened breathlessly, and the effect of the episode was not destroyed when, with a resumption of his grand manner, Mr. O'Quinn harangued the class in regard to their duties as pupils of Miss Perry, as future voters of Precinct 14, and as embryo aldermen of the city of Boston. Miss Perry was not confused when he alluded to her as “the purtiest young jool of a teacher in the length and breadth of the whole war-r-rd.”

“And as fer whalin',” he concluded, “if there's anny whalin' to be done here sure O'im her man and glad to do it, son or no son.” That last phrase seemed to please him. “Son or no son,” he repeated, glowering fiercely at the class. But he did not glower when he turned to Miss Perry. His blue eyes twinkled, and suddenly one of them screwed up into an elephantine wink.

title: The Father of His Son


text: Talk:The Father of His Son

title: Talk:The Father of His Son