Herbert Spencer holds that while the physical body is being developed, after birth, until puberty, the real and only education is that which comes from common experience through the senses. The mind, like the limbs, is reaching eagerly out to take in the wonders of the new existence, and the only parental care is that which protects the infant being from the abuse found in over-exertion. Now the greatest harm that can happen to the innocent creature is the attempt to hasten information through mental stimulants. If left to itself, the mind, like the body, will have a healthy growth. If, however, it is interfered with through any forcing process, there will be an abnormal growth of some faculties at the expense of others, and disease or deformity will result.
We note, with pleasure, how children race and play like kids or colts the day through, and we fail to perceive that the mind keeps pace with this active life. It is not only alive to its new existence, but enjoys what it finds in its open-air life. To interfere with this through the false system of training we are pleased to call education, is injurious, and often fatal.
All England—at least all the thinking part of the territory under government of Her Gracious Majesty—is in a high state of alarm over the stimulants administered through school examinations and the prizes given in consequence. Authors, scientists, and statesmen have joined in protesting against this abuse as a process that sickens the body and weakens the mind. It is a practice that is filling the hospitals, poor-houses, and asylums for the insane. We call thiscramming. It is a forced, hot-house system, productive of more evils than good. Man is the only animal that loses his young to an extent that makes life exceptional. A majority of infants die before reaching the age of five years. If we consider the matter carefully, we find that while the young of the brutes seldom have more than one enemy to contend with, an infant has three—the mother who pets it, thefather who neglects it, and the pedagogue who makes an idiot of it. Death indorses them all. How common it is to meet a slender, thin-limbed girl with sombre cheeks and lustreless eyes wending her way to school fairly loaded with books. She is being robbed of home, innocence, and health to satisfy the Moloch of education.
A most painful exhibit of—well, we will not say cruelty, but—ignorance or indifference, our dramatic critic calls attention to in the case of "Little Lord Fauntleroy." A child of tender years holds an audience for nearly three hours night after night, nearly all the time upon the stage, by the most extraordinary effort of memory and an instinctive turn for acting. This is a torture that discounts a Roman amphitheatre or the bull-fights of Spain. What is the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children about, that such an abuse should not only continue, but spread?—for the success of the piece is such that we shall have a hundred companies barn-storming over the land and torturing the brains of as many unhappy children. It is on this account that we rejoice with exceeding great joy over the death and final burying of Uncle Tom. This impossible old negro lived on little Eva, and that angelic child has at last been consigned to many asylums for idiots.
From this wanton cruelty it is a comfort to turn to the innocent and natural budding of the infant mind, and several specimens have floated in on us from various sources. Here is one from an indignant germ of a citizen:
"Mr. Editor"Deer Sir—Last nite we had a hie old time at our house next dore. Mr. ——, a alderman cam home and broke things and beet his wife—the nabors called the police, and they come and would not take him in the patrul waggon because he was a alderman, is that rite"Yours to command"Robert"
"Mr. Editor
"Deer Sir—Last nite we had a hie old time at our house next dore. Mr. ——, a alderman cam home and broke things and beet his wife—the nabors called the police, and they come and would not take him in the patrul waggon because he was a alderman, is that rite
"Yours to command
"Robert"
When our little friend Robert grows to man's estate he will know better the privileges and immunities granted the alderman. That privilege found in his right to beat his wife is not so well recognized and understood as his right to beat the public. When a fellow pays from five to ten thousand dollars for the position of city-father, it is expected that he will find a process through which to reimburse the private coffers of the municipal corporation called an alderman's pocket. There is nothing mean about the citizens of a great commercial centre. All that is asked is that the father aforesaid shall not be caught at it. As for the little luxury of getting drunk and beating his wife, that comes under the head of freedom to the private citizen and a constitutional opposition to sumptuary laws.
From this sunny side of aldermanic life we turn to some verse sent to us by a loving grandpa from the pen of Miss Elsie Rae. Our first and only regret at not being an illustrated magazine is that we cannot reproduce the drawings that accompanied the poem:
THE BROOK.
As I sat by the brook yesterday,I heard a voice by me say,"What are you doing here,My sweet little dear?Look around and see your mother,Also your sweet little brother:I brought him here because the air is so soft;It is so hot up in the loft."The child turned her headAnd very softly said,"Well, dear little brother,I am glad you brought him, mother.""Yes, dear, so am I;But it is hard to carry him from so high."
As I sat by the brook yesterday,I heard a voice by me say,"What are you doing here,My sweet little dear?Look around and see your mother,Also your sweet little brother:I brought him here because the air is so soft;
It is so hot up in the loft."The child turned her headAnd very softly said,"Well, dear little brother,I am glad you brought him, mother.""Yes, dear, so am I;But it is hard to carry him from so high."
The month has been made notable by a high moral monument in the Actors' Club, headed by Augustin Daly. We said moral; we mean theological, for that was the true aspect of the commotion. It seems that some friend of Robert Ingersoll proposed the name of that noted pagan for membership to the club that Edwin Booth has so handsomely housed. This came to the ears of the pious Daly, and immediately his theological soul animated his theatrical body to an indignant opposition. Daly polled the pious body of actors. "What!" he said, "shall we recognize and indorse this dreadful infidel, this unbelieving son of Illinois—have him among us as an associate, to distil his poison of unbelief in our midst? Perish the thought! Let us rally round our altars and our fires [of the Actors' Club], and die, if necessary, as martyrs."
The grotesque part of this lies in the fact that while the pulpit denounces the stage, the stage on the same ground assaults Bob Ingersoll. It reminds one of a comic scene perpetrated in Sheridan's "Rivals," where the master bangs the man, and the man, in turn, kicks the many-buttoned page.
Now, the Actors' Club is the same as any other social organization, and has the comforts and pleasures found in the intercourse of its members, its main purpose. In London and Washington, the only two places on earth where clubs flourish in perfect health, another and more important object is to get the good things of life at cost. These are clubs of a social sort. There are others that have political purposes for an end, but these combine such objects with the more important features of the mere social organizations. To secure the latter, wines, cigars, and viands at cost prices are what John Bull aims at, and persists in carrying out to the letter. Without this your club is a delusion and a snare.
Now, if in the formation of these social centres it is necessary to have a view to a man's respectability as well as his entertaining qualities, the first requisite of an applicant is to be a gentleman. A whole coat, a clean shirt, and gentlemanly views, if any, are necessary. What the member's views may be on any abstract proposition is of no import whatever. He may consider polygamy allowable; he may even believe in that governmental extortion miscalled "protection," or in mind-reading, and yet be acceptable as an associate. The most fascinating club-man we ever knew was a little gone onmorus multicaulus. Another had a way of getting up the Nile, and it was almost impossible for his friends to get him down again. When, in his talk, he sailed up that classic river, his hearers, like the Arabs on its banks, "stole silently away."
We have never heard that our modern pagan was anything but respectable, and we are told that socially—if he can be got away from Moses—he is rather entertaining. If the rule applied to Robert the heathen were the measure used by clubs generally, there would not be one left with a quorum in the country.
Nor will it do to apply to this noted person the rule recognized by Mr. Booth's orphan asylum, that the heathen is not connected with the stage. He has won fame and fortune from behind the footlights. We never enjoyed a comedy so much as that given us by the heathen in his lecture on "The Mistakes of Moses." We laughed an hour "by Shrewsbury clock," not so much at what the heathen said, as at seeing a corpulent gentleman in a dress suit prancing about the stage assailing Moses. Now Moses has been dead some years. He has no lineal descendants that we know of, unless Moses and Sons, dealers in antique raiment, can be so considered; and of the two thousand people packed in that theatre there probably were not six that had ever opened the Old Testament or that cared a straw for the dead lawgiver. And yet the heathen seemed animated by a personal feeling, as if Moses had, like Daly, on some occasion blackballed him.
He tore Moses all to pieces; he attacked his knowledge of astronomy; he doubted his correct knowledge of ark-building. He said Moses was defective as to ventilation. The fact is, that when this corpulent, unbelieving son of man got through there was not much left of the eminent Hebrew. But it was a stage performance all the same, and put Robert at the head of low comedians. Hence he is qualified for an association with brother-actors.
No better instance of patient good-nature, backed by a woful lack of culture, can be had than in the performances given at two New York theatres by a couple of society women—we beg pardon: we should say "ladies." Mrs. Potter kills Cleopatra in the first act of "Antony and Cleopatra," by Shakespeare, Bacon, or somebody else; and Mrs. Langtry does to Lady Macbeth what Don Cæsar de Bazan found so objectionable in hanging. "Hanging," cried the immortal Bohemian of aristocraticbirth, "is horrible. It not only kills a man, it makes him ridiculous." Mrs. Langtry'sLady Macbethshould be relegated to things which amuse. The audiences leave these burlesques with the query put in the mouth of an English sailor at an exhibition of pantomime and fireworks, who, being blown over the adjacent property, got up and asked, "What'll the cussed fool do next?"
These are the days when there is a dearth of real dramatic art; when a tarnished reputation, superb costumes—or lack of costume—are considered indispensable adjuncts to the star actress; when real water, miniature conflagrations that choke the audience with smoke, or startling electrical novelties, are relied upon as the chief attractions of a new play; when the stage panders to the lowest tastes; when the spectacular supplants art. The question no longer is, "What is the play? What are the lessons it teaches, the ideal thoughts it presents to us?"—but rather, "Who is the actress? What is the latest scandal concerning her? How far does she outstrip her rivals in exhibitions of nudity?" Hence we see such alterations of plan on the part of theatrical managers as the withdrawal of that witty play, "The Yeomen of the Guard," to make room at the Casino for the "leg-show" of "Nadjy."
Of course some of the blame for this state of things must rest on the small and noisy portion of the public who manage to control access to the ears of proprietors and playwrights, such as, in the instance mentioned, the dudes and dudelets of the "Casino crowd," who had grown weary of a play whose sparkling humor was above their comprehension. A greater measure of blame rests upon the professional critics, who, with a few very honorable exceptions, gauge praise or blame according to the length of the paid advertisements in their respective journals, or to the favors extended to them at the box-office. Not a score of years ago an actor of very moderate attainments actually bought his way into prominence by giving elaborate dinners to his critics, and keeping open house, with free-lunch counter and bar attachments, for the benefit of every reporter whom he could form acquaintance with. Such methods in a short time placed him on a pedestal of notoriety, and he no doubt hoped to stay there; but a new sensation came, and his star declined. This is a fair statement of the condition of theatrical art in America. We have lost the freshness of originality, and we have not yet attained to the depth of culture and breadth of criticism of the literary centres of England and the Continent. We are very much inclined to pay homage to a name, no matter by what means such a name has been acquired.
Mrs. Langtry's performance ofLady Macbethis an instance of this tendency to hero-worship. It is said in her favor that her characterization of the part shows deep study and hard work. But these are the very things that, were she possessed of real dramatic genius, would never be allowed to show. The height of art is in imitating, refining, and subliming nature. But if you allow all the secret wheels and springs to appear,it becomes no art at all. Mrs. Langtry's effort is a painstaking one, but the effort is too apparent. She attains no high ideal. When she appeared asLady Macbethat the Fifth Avenue Theatre, after weeks of preparation and puffery, it was expected that she would give us something new, but the result has been only her usual mediocrity.
The character is a combination of a great degree of unscrupulous ambition and a share of wifely devotion. Lady Macbeth's crime is partly due to a desire for her husband's advancement; but the chief motive clearly is, that through his advancement she may attain power. It is this determination to stop at nothing which may forward her ambitious schemes that makes the character one of the most terrible of Shakspere's creations. Charlotte Cushman probably came nearer to the great poet's ideal than any actress before or since. Ellen Terry makes the part ridiculous; Mrs. Langtry makes it commonplace. But there is one scene for which she deserves great credit—the sleep-walk, where she emerges from her room in a night-dress that looks like a shroud, her hair entirely concealed by a nightcap that is bound around her chin, her face pallid and expressionless. Then she begins her soliloquy, no longer Mrs. Langtry, no longerLady Macbeth, but a remorseful somnambulist, her words all delivered in the same dull monotone, without emphasis or expression, like the voice of a soulless corpse. It makes one shiver to hear her. But that is the only redeeming feature of her characterization.
The support is by no means good, but the scenery and costumes are well brought out and historically accurate. Mr. Charles Coghlan is a fair reader of his lines, but falls far short of the idealMacbeth. In fact, by far the best acting is that of Mr. Joseph Wheelock asMacduff. He plays the character with all the vim and enthusiasm that it demands, and he deservedly receives the largest share of applause from the audience.
While Mrs. Langtry has been reaching out her long, voluptuous arms in an utterly futile attempt to touch the hem ofLady Macbeth'sgarment, Mrs. Potter, arrayed like a queen of burlesque, and behaving like a tipsy grisette at a mask-ball, has been insulting the traditions of Egypt's queen. The performance of "Antony and Cleopatra" at Palmer's Theatre was, indeed, little better than a farce. It would be hard to say which was worse, Mrs. Potter'sCleopatraor Mr. Kyrle Bellew'sAntony. As Brutus was the noblest, so it may be said that Mr. Bellew'sAntonyis the most insignificant, Roman of them all. It would be a waste of time and space to attempt a serious criticism of either of the two impersonations. In a mere spectacular sense the production was pleasing to the eye; but, historically, the scenery and accessories were absurdly inaccurate. To import the archaic architecture of ancient Thebes in Upper Egypt into a city so purely Greek in its buildings, population, language, and customs as Alexandria was from its very foundation, is about as ignorant a blunder as it is possible for a scenic artist to make. And what business Hindoo nautch-girls had in the Alexandria of Cleopatra is a conundrum which only aNew York stage-manager can answer. We give it up. Mrs. Potter, too, seems to be unaware that Cleopatra was Greek, not Egyptian; otherwise she would hardly mispronounce the initial consonantal sound of the name of her Greek attendant,Charmian, as she invariably does mispronounce it. Possibly her attention is so deeply absorbed by the fascinations of Worth's millinery that she has no time to spare for such trivial matters as elocution and orthoepy.
Outside of Mrs. Langtry's and Mrs. Potter's characterizations there has been little of novelty. Nat Goodwin has dropped farce and buffoonery, and essays a higher style of comedy, appearing asGringoirein "A Royal Revenge," an adaptation of Theodore de Banville's play. The character has recently been made familiar by Coquelin. Mr. Goodwin becomes interesting as the starving poet, and his personation gives promise of better things. The Grand Opera House was filled with Nobles of the Mystic Shrine to welcome Mr. Goodwin's reappearance. At the Fifth Avenue Theatre, in March, he will produce a new three-act comedy called "A Gold Mine," by Brander Matthews and George H. Jessop. The latter author, in collaboration with Horace Townsend, has produced for W. J. Scanlan a new Irish play entitled "Myles Aroon," brought out at the Fourteenth Street Theatre. Lady Glover's head-gardener,Myles Aroon, is accused of stealing his mistress' bracelet. He falls in love with her daughter, proves his innocence, and exposes the thief, who happens to be his rival. This threadbare plot is treated with Scanlan's inimitable Irish humor, and the play receives the popular appreciation it deserves. Of a similar character is the play "Running Wild," which was brought out at the Star Theatre, and offers abundant opportunity to Mr. John Wild's versatile comic talents.
Farquhar's comedy, "The Inconstant," recently played at Daly's Theatre, is an excellent revival of a good old English comedy. Ada Rehan was at her best asOriana. At Daly's one is always sure of finding good plays, well acted. The company is a very even one, consisting not of one or two stars and all the rest sticks, but of fair actors well used to each other and to the plays they bring out. "The Runaway Wife," produced at Niblo's, is a play that is not wanting in dramatic merit, but it is somewhat spasmodic and jerky. Its authors, McKee Rankin and Fred G. Maeder, have aimed at creating a series of dramatic climaxes rather than a smoothly-running play. Daniel Bandmann has made a success as theComte de Mauriennein "Austerlitz," a revival of Tom Taylor's drama, "Dead or Alive." Marie Wainwright presented us with a very girlishRosalindat the Star Theatre, Mr. Louis James playingOrlandovery effectively. "Said Pacha," a three-act comic opera, composed by Richard Stahl of San Francisco, has met with success in the few cities where it has yet been played. The music at times is suggestive of Strauss and Offenbach. Herr August Junkermann, who has been delighting our German fellow-citizens at the Amberg Theatre, proved himself a character actor of quite a superior order, and has earneda reputation which will insure him crowded houses whenever he appears in New York.
The best all-round performance given at any theatre this season is Pinero's comedy of "Sweet Lavender" at the Lyceum. The play is as sweet and pure as a bunch of the fragrant old-fashioned flowers whose name it bears. The dialogue sparkles with wit and repartee of the most delightful sort, and the acting is as charming as the piece itself. Miss Georgie Cayvan may have acted more important characters, but never one in which she offered a more agreeable picture. There is a ring of sweet womanliness through her performance, which, like the delicate ferns and mosses that hide a violet, makes the fragrant blossom more precious. Miss Louise Dillon is so sweet that she is a little cloying. She clings about Mr. Henry Miller, who enacts her lover, in a limp and boneless fashion that is somewhat irritating to one who remembers that a spine and a few muscles go to make up the human anatomy, as well as a heart. Mrs. Whiffen's performance is most agreeable, being all the more admirable from the fact that in the earlier scenes she is, by the exigencies of the piece, somewhat acid and acrid. Now everybody knows that for Mrs. Whiffen to be either one or the other of these things must be clever acting. Mrs. Walcot is far less satisfactory; she does not dress to the level of her character, and she is artificial, mincing, and sour. Lemoyne's work is simply beyond praise. But little finer acting has ever been seen than his portrayal ofRichard Phenyl. Very good, too, is Mr. Kelcey's performance of a breezy young American; and of almost equal merit is the rendering of the manly young lover by Mr. Miller. A thoroughly disappointing performance is that of Mr. Walcot. His get-up of a prosperous, jovial English banker is admirable. But all cause for admiration began and ended there; his acting never for one moment reached his make-up. When the scene called for feeling, he had none—he was merely feeble and flaccid; in short, Mr. and Mrs. Walcot were the only blots upon an otherwise perfect performance.
When the long and prosperous run of "Little Lord Fauntleroy" is considered, the conclusion is inevitable that the theatre-going public of this city will bear anything. The three scenes that go to make up this fatiguing representation are utterly void of a single principle of dramatic construction, and are entirely without dramatic incident, if we except the appearance upon the scene of a very "scarlet woman." And that is not exactly the sort of dramatic element which is expected or desired. The feat of memory which the child Elsie Leslie performs is remarkable. But it is a very painful exhibition, for it will inevitably destroy the poor little creature, mentally and physically. To point out all the manifold inconsistencies and absurdities of this nondescript entertainment would take up too much space, and bestow upon it much more advertising than it is worth. To instance a few of them: An American, a middle-aged man, a prosperous grocer, himself brings to the house of a customer a basket ofgroceries. He is ushered into the sitting-room together with a bootblack, who also calls at the same time; they are received as guests and friends, and are entertained by the infant hero, aged seven years! Later, this same grocer and the bootblack, both being in correspondence with the infant hero, learn that he is threatened with the loss of his title, whereupon they each offer him a partnership in their business. Ultimately, these two go together to England, where they are received as guests by the haughty Earl who is the grandfather of the infant hero. And these things are offered to the public in a perfectly serious manner without any attempt at or any idea of humor. The mounting of the piece—to call it so, for want of a more fitting title—is as tawdry and shallow as the piece itself. The library at Dorincourt Castle is ornamented by cheap tin toys, fastened upon plaques and hung on the walls. These things are supposed to be the armor and trappings of the knights of old who were the ancestry of this great house. This library, which opens out onto a sort of terrace that overlooks a body of water of about the dimensions of Lake Michigan, is lighted by numbers of cheap gas-jets—a manner of illumination unknown in any English country-house, far less an old feudal castle. A number of good actors and actresses are brought on the stage from time to time, but they have nothing whatever to do, consequently they do nothing. They whirl and maunder through three hours of false sentiment and artificial virtue, ringing the changes on the statement that they are "bland, passionate, and deeply religious." They also paint in water-colors, and "of such is the kingdom of heaven." Silly women sit whimpering at it, servile men sympathize with them, newspapers earn their "ads" by their false and fulsome praise, and the box-office flourishes.
The season of opera at the Metropolitan Opera House has been one of the most successful ever known. A concerted attack has been made on German opera by those who prefer the ballet and the spectacular to the pleasures of music. It was suggested that Italian opera be substituted, and it was hinted that there was a company in Rome open to an engagement. The Wagnerites grew furious, and protested. A comparison of the box-office receipts in former seasons was instituted, and the preponderance of popular favor was shown to be always in favor of German opera, and especially of Wagner. That settled it for a time, but a minor dispute arose. During the production of Wagner's masterpieces, like "Rheingold" and "Die Meistersinger," in the scenes which are supposed to take place at night or in the dark, the stage-manager lowered the lights in the house so that the glare should not mar the appropriateness of the scene. This did not at all suit the young ladies who know nothing about music, but simply come to talk about Mrs. Millionaire's ball or to see each other's latest costumes. Their papas among the stockholders were coaxed into ordering the lights to be turned on. Again the Wagnerites protested, and after three nights the management returned to the old way, much to the satisfaction of real lovers of opera.
The production of Halévy's opera "La Juive" for the first time this season was coincident with the reappearance of Frau Lilli Lehmann, who acted and sang the part ofRachelwith vigor and precision. Herr Alvary, who consented to take the part ofPrince Leopold, with Herr Perotti asEleazar, and the excellent support of the other singers, made the production the best that has ever been given in New York, and one long to be remembered. Frau Schroeder-Hanfstaengl has returned after an absence of four years, making her reappearance in the modest part ofBerthain "Le Prophète."
Manager Frohman promises us a number of new American plays for next season, which, he says, will be as good as those now produced abroad. Mr. Louis Aldrich, by the way, has been restrained from using the name or the funds of the Actors' Order of Friendship in furtherance of his ungenerous attempt to exclude foreign actors. A sad scene was that of the sale of the late Lester Wallack's stage costumes. Scarcely a dozen of the actor's old friends were present, and the various garments were sold at ridiculously cheap prices, the greater part to dealers in old clothes!Sic transit gloria mundi.
The American Commonwealth, by James Bryce (Macmillan & Co.).—The thoughtful citizen of the United States who opens this book from any other motive than mere curiosity will be apt to close it again greatly disappointed. So far as information is concerned, one might as well read a debate of the Senate. If it is from curiosity as to what an Englishman of Professor Bryce's ability and culture may think and say of us that the work is read, then the work will be found of interest. It is so rare for one of Britain's citizens, cultured or uncultured, to care for us, that the novelty alone commands attention. It was surly old Sam Johnson who said to a feminine owner of a parrot, in reply to her query as to whether the loquacious bird did not talk well, "Madam, the wonder is, not that it talks well, but that it talks at all." This great American nation is an object of utter indifference to the people of Europe; and among the so-called upper classes we are under contempt, when noticed, from the rising of the sun to the setting thereof.
Professor Bryce writes of us in a flattering way, but without information. The maze of contradiction that besets him on all sides seems not to have even embarrassed, let alone discouraged, him. Like a locomotive threading its way along a network of rails into a depot, he has his own track and runs smoothly along, as if there were but one, and quite regardless of the many others crossing and recrossing at every rod of progress. Fixing one eye on the central government at Washington and the other on the State governments, he treats us as a people from these two points, and would doubtless be amazed to learn that these political structures notonly do not make our government, but are so widely separated from our associations and interests that they might be annihilated to-day without people being aware of their loss, save from the relief of taxation found in their destruction.
One can comprehend the consternation of foreigners at this bold assertion, when we recognize the fact that its avowal will bring forth not only denial, but an expression of disgust from about sixty-five millions of citizens born under and naturalized to this republic of ours. Yet it is truth; and to comprehend it we must remember that a constitution is an agreement or compact, entered into directly or indirectly by the citizens governed, whereby all legislation, executive control, and judicial decisions are to be under the control of, and bound and limited by, certain rules of a general nature clearly stated and set forth in said instrument. Now as the trouble attending constitutional law, as that of every other sort, is not in the law itself, but in its application, the constitution, to be at all available, has to be as simple, general, and limited as possible. The most perfect and practical is a mere declaration of principles that leaves all legislation to the wants, habits, and intelligence of the people. As statutory law is merely public opinion defined and promulgated by a legislature, it follows that the mere declaration of rights found in a charter is continually infringed upon by what may be called the unwritten constitution that grows imperceptibly about us, and is in the end the controlling constitution. Let us give a familiar illustration. There is nothing, for example, in our Constitution that prohibits the people from re-electing a President as often as the people see right to indulge in that process. Yet when ex-President Grant saw fit to demand a third term, he was treated as if he were violating the sacred charter given us by the fathers.
We believe in our Constitution—and go on violating its plainest provisions with utter indifference. We resemble that Southern gentleman who had the Lord's Prayer printed on the head-board of his bed, and who every night and morning rapped on it with his cane to call attention to the ceremony, and said solemnly, "O Lord, them's my sentiments."
We are a nation of phrase-eaters. As we have said before, all the fruit of the tree of knowledge has been canned—duly labelled and stowed away for winter use. There is no people on the face of the earth so given to a reliance on an abiding faith in dogmas. Our safety on earth and our salvation hereafter rest on a belief in dogmas. As a man may be guilty of every crime known to the criminal code and yet save his election through an avowal of belief in certain articles of faith, so we may consider ourselves safe if we abide by certain declarations of political principles. The theological and political avowals of faith may be violated with impunity in practice, yet there is a saving grace in words we fail to appreciate.
The origin of this strange condition is not difficult to find. Our continent was settled from Europe by two classes. One of these, the Puritans, fled from England to escape religious persecution. This persecution consistedin forbidding the theological rebels from openly expressing in prayer, hymn, or pulpit certain dogmas. They braved the perils of the seas and the privations of a howling wilderness that they might open their pious mouths and expand their pious lungs in a vociferous announcement of what they believed of abstract theology. The other class was made up of pirates who sought our continent, mainly south, in search of gold-mines and mythical riches in the hands of barbarians. And so between the two we became a race of phrase-eaters. As the theological dogma was considered good for the soul, a like political dogma was, and is, enough for the body politic. And how this is acted on we learn from the beginning. The Puritans, whose peculiar civilization dominated our nation, fled from persecution, not to establish toleration—for they went to hanging Quakers and Dissenters as soon as they landed in New England. Under this sort of government the lawless spirit of the pirates had full sway, and to-day, if we have a national characteristic, it is that we have more law and less order than any people on earth.
This condition makes us capable of the most extraordinary contradictions. We have, for example, a so-called republic at Washington that is practically a despotism. It is not the despotism of one man or of an oligarchy of men. It is a singularly contrived despotism of office—a bureaucracy that is not only of an irresponsible routine without brains, but enforced by fines, penalties, and heavy taxation. It is so removed from popular control that self-government terminates at the boundary-line of the District of Columbia. The people living under the very shadow of the Capitol are deprived of even the form of government; but practically they are in no worse condition than the citizens of the States. The so-called republic is a heavy, dull, cast-iron, unimpressive concern, slowly moved by public opinion, but utterly insensible to popular political control. We have a President elected every four years. After he is inaugurated he cannot be disturbed for four years except by office-seekers or assassination. We have a Senate representing States, where Delaware or Rhode Island has as much power as New York or Pennsylvania, and its members are returned every six years. The House of Representatives is the one popular body, but its members, returned every two years, are no match for the Senate and Executive, that hold the political patronage which makes and unmakes members of the House.
This, in brief, is our condition politically. There is another significant feature that escapes both native and foreign attention. It is the theory that underlies the foundation of all, and teaches that the sovereignty from which there is no appeal rests in the people. This is a very loose, uncertain, and really helpless affair. The old adage tells us that what is every man's affair is no man's business. We have so multiplied elections that they are almost continuous. This forms party organization, to which the business is intrusted, and again creates a class of professional politicians whose one business in life is politics. It is human nature that they shouldseek to make their vocation profitable. Here is where money enters; and we have seen the government pass from a mere political structure to a commercial machine dominated by money. The taxes for the support of the government have become enormous, but they make but a trifle to the indirect extortion, based on a pretence of encouraging home industries, which selects such certain unprofitable investments, and taxes the entire population for not only their support but their enrichment. The amount thus collected for the benefit of the few is enormous. It would support the standing armies of all Europe.
One searches in vain through the Constitution to find in letter or spirit any authority for such abuse.
This absurd system of government might work in a small, compact community where all the citizens were known to each other, their offices few, and their interests identical. But with sixty-odd millions scattered over a continent that reaches from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from the Lakes to the Gulf, and with these millions isolated from each other in agricultural pursuits, the system is impossible of practical operation.
This is the philosophy of American politics that Professor Bryce fails to grasp. He devotes his first volume to a consideration of the political structure as given us by its framers, as if such were in power and daily practice. He cannot see that it has gone out of existence as a constitutional government. We have in its stead a government of corporations, with the political machine as an annex and aid.
To understand this we must remember that a government is that active organization which directly affects the citizens' rights to life, liberty, and the uses and benefits of their labor, called property by some, and "the pursuit of happiness" by the Declaration of Independence. How the corporations have come to usurp this power a few statistical facts teach us. We have, for example, a hundred-and-sixty thousand miles of operating railroads. These network the entire land, and have the almost exclusive distribution of all our products. This vast instrument, possessed of sovereignty through the franchise, enters every man's business and pleasure. It is under the control and virtual ownership of less than sixty families.
We have the telegraph, which science gave us as the poor man's post-office, consisting as it does of a pole, a wire, a battery, and a boy, made a luxury for the rich in the monopoly that gives it to one man.
All that one eats, wears, and finds shelter under are, through this same process of corporation monopoly, enhanced in cost for the benefit of the few privileged men who grow rapidly into millionaires, while the masses suffer.
This is our government.
Our readers must not charge us with exaggeration. We have statistics, not to be disputed, as to the existence of the power, and we have high authority for the charge regarding the despotic use of the power. Speaking of the railroad corporations, Messrs. Conkling, Sherman, and Windomsaid, years since, in their celebrated report to the Senate: "They [the railroad companies] can tax our products at will in a way Congress never dare attempt." Now the fiscal agency found in the power to tax is the highest attribute of sovereignty. Because of the usurpation in a British parliament accomplished in the attempt to tax colonies of Americans without their consent we had the War of Independence. Our fathers marched shoeless, tentless, and in rags under muskets for seven years to vindicate a principle that we surrender to the corporations. "They rise above all control, and are a law unto themselves," said President Garfield. "They rob the producers on one side and the stockholders on the other," cried the late Jeremiah S. Black, "and sit on our highways of commerce as did the robber barons on the rivers of Europe. They make members of the House, purchase seats in the Senate, select for us candidates for the Presidency, and own our courts."
Another attribute of sovereignty, found in furnishing a currency for the people, has been seized on by something over two thousand corporations, called banks, and they can contract or expand to further their own selfish greed or that of their favorites and dependents. For thus favoring themselves they are paid a sum that would have supported the national government previous to the late war.
How this condition affects us every citizen can realize if he will reflect. The writer of this lives in a quiet valley of Ohio. He never would know that a political government exists except for the assessor and collector. His police consists of a revolver, a shot-gun, and four dogs. Wrong-doers may threaten his life, restrain his liberty, enter his stables at night, or his house at any hour, and, so far as government goes, he is his own police.
So much for our political structure. How is it with the corporations? They are with him at all hours. He cannot sell a grain of wheat nor an ounce of meat without their consent and toll. The fuel he burns has its toll, that is an extortion. The clothes he wears, the food he eats, the oil he burns by night, the glass that gives him light by day, the walls that shelter him, the shingles or slate upon the roof—in a word, all that he has to purchase or use, pays an uncalled-for tribute to extortion and monopoly.
The political structure could be annihilated, and the citizen would not know of its disappearance but for the absence of assessor and collector, and for the fact learned from the press.
This is the condition of the dweller in a rural district. The denizen of a town is not much better off. If he comes in contact with the political structure at any point, it is to his injury. He is taxed enormously to drain, pave, and light the streets. The draining is a source of peril to health, the pavements are infamous, while the light only makes darkness visible. So far as the police is concerned, it is a political body, organized and used to further the ends of professional politicians. The citizen is in more peril from the club-inclined police than he is from thieves and ruffians.
A most startling illustration of the subserviency of the political power to the moneyed combinations incorporated to ride, booted and spurred, over popular rights, as Jefferson expressed it, was given by the late tramway strikes at New York. When the conductors and drivers threw up their employment because of the starvation wages and overwork decreed by the combine, thereby putting a stop to all transportation, instead of arresting the presidents and directors, and fetching them into court to show cause why their charter should not be taken from them for a failure to fulfil their duty to the public, the entire police force was taken from duty to the public and put under control of these corporations. The rebellious laborers were clubbed into submission, while for a week New-Yorkers were forced either to walk or to trust their necks to those artfully constructed death-traps called the elevated roads.
We are not siding in this one way or the other. It may be that the laborers were all in the wrong and the corporations right, or the case may have been the reverse. To decide this is precisely what we want in a legal tribunal commanding the respect of the public. This is not to be had. The policeman's club is in the pay and under the control of the corporations, and it decides.
All these comments will be decried as unpatriotic. Patriotism with us is something akin to the love a mother has for a sick or crippled child. We are like beggars on the highways of the world, exhibiting our sores to excite, not pity, but—heaven save the mark!—admiration. Of course we cannot be expected to cure cancers that we boast of.
In the space allotted us for a review it is impossible to do justice to Professor Bryce's entertaining ignorance. His book is an amusing one, not only because the author is clever in his way of expressing himself, but because we take a strange delight in hearing opinions about ourselves and our institutions. In his first introductory sentences the author says: "'What do you think of our institutions?' is the question addressed to the European traveller in the United States by every chance acquaintance." The citizen who puts this question little notes that he is making confession of the melancholy fact that our so-called "institutions" are open to doubt. It is not complimentary to our national character that we hang with breathless interest upon the opinion and judgment of any chance foreigner regarding what we are wont to assert, among ourselves, is simply perfect.
Kady, by Patience Stapleton (Belford, Clarke & Co.).—The fetid realism of recent American fiction—the realism which, fortunately for the honor of human nature, is wholly unreal—has become fatally tiresome from persistent reiteration of one theme. Even the most morbid readers must in time weary of an endless sequence of immoralities, all of the same family, and all whitened with the scales of the same moral leprosy. When the Saxon mind descends to sensualism it becomes merely gross and brutish; for it lacks the airy sprightliness of Latin licentiousness whichturns evil to gayety and compels a smile at the corners of the mouth, even while the forehead corrugates into the frown of reprobation. American blood is essentially moral, and when overheated becomes clogged and thickened, producing the antic vagaries of delirium in the oppressed brain. An American cannot bejust a littlewicked, as a Frenchman can. He must be sound-hearted and clean-thoughted, or he must throw off all pretence to decency and descend into the sheer obscene. This is why American erotic fiction is hysterically immoral and not delicately suggestive, and why, instead of the filmydouble entendre, which you can innocently laugh at for its wit, or, with more hardihood, enjoy for its tingling spice, we have the bald, unclothed picture, whose fiery coloring and sharp outline leave no chance for doubt as to its meaning.
When this order of fiction was flung, naked and ogling, into the midst of an astonished public, there was a gasp of surprise and a general halt of indecision; while, like the monkey burned with hot molasses candy, the common countenance was petrified into a curious mixture of horror and delight. Like a hanging, a dissection, or the details of a murder, it has presented a fascination for a large number of minds; but if there were to be a man hanged every day in each of the city squares, it would not be long before people passing by would say to each other, "Pooh! only a hanging! revolting business anyway!" and walk on without so much as a second glance. And so it is, or is getting to be, with that class of fiction which has only the erotic for its cause of being. When volume after volume, issuing from the press, offers as a central point and motive a microscopic analysis of the animal side of human nature, taking for text that all men are libidinous and all women unchaste in various degrees, the ordinary reader, seeking merely for amusement, at length finds himself suffocated in the steam of moral turpitude, and craves for a breath of purer, cleaner air. Such an atmosphere, cold, fresh, and bracing as the winds which blow over the mountain region where its scene is chiefly laid, surrounds this sweetest and most delightful of recent novels, "Kady."
"Kady" is the work of a mind at once refined and vigorous. The author labors at the exposition of no trite moral. There is not a line of preaching in the book, and yet it would be a hardened nature which could rise from reading it, with his heart full of the simple nobility of Abner Clark, and commit a mean action. To recognize the reality of such a character as that of the old pioneer, simple, uneducated, and rude, yet, in the inborn impulses of his nature, nobly delicate, loftily honorable, good in the best and manliest sense—to recognize that such men have lived and do live, is to put aside into the limbo of the vacuous all philosophies of negation and sophistries of pessimism. Abner Clark is unquestionably one of the few grand creations of American fiction. He is religious, but his religion is such that an infidel might respect it. It is the broad and simple creed of love—love, with its concomitants of charity, forgiveness, and wide sympathy. The simple prayer which he offers up over the grave of the artistHarrison's mother is a masterpiece. "An' we who must keep on in the round of toil and trouble need not wish her back, who was so weary with work and pain. The hand that reared these mount'ins, that laid the lake, that colors the sunset sky, is reached down to human creeturs, to the weakest or the strongest, and takes them into His keepin'. There's a dreary life here and a happy life hereafter; ... and there's a home for us all beyond these mount'ins tall."
It is the religion of nature, the simple faith of the patriarchs of old, the belief that finds its strongest support in a noble pantheism, in the love of the Creator's handiwork, in a perception of the Omnipotent in the marvellous grandeur of material beauty. And yet this old man is neither superstitious nor weak. In order to save his young son from moral ruin and the clutches of card-sharpers, he can drink and gamble—aye, and play a game of poker like a bunco-steerer, and beat roguery before its very eyes. This game of poker, by the way, is one of the gems of the book. How the author, whose refinement of mind and heart is visible in every line of the whole story, has been able to study such scenes and such personages as this poker-party and these border roughs to such wonderful purpose, it is hard to understand. The whole incident stands out with the stern light and shadow of Salvator. It is almost brutal in its realism, but is touchingly relieved by the simple remorse of the misguided son and the rugged nobility of his father.
"I come here ternight ter save my boy an' teach him a lesson.... Now git in the boat," said Abner, "and I, a father of sixty, will row his son, a drunkard and a gambler, home."
"Oh, father," sobbed the miserable boy, "I—I never can forgive myself! I will never touch cards again!" At the shore his father laid his hand on Seeley's shoulder. "Seeley, I love ye too well to be mad with ye, but try to take the decent road, an' foller it straight."
The old man's death in the pursuit of his duty, the single word, "Forgive," to his weak and repentant son, the wild grief of his daughter Kady, touch the very centre of true pathos. Kady herself, poor, loving, wild little Kady, half savage and true woman, is a beautiful character. Greatly tempted, misunderstood, slandered, and neglected, she never, by one weak or wilful act, loses the entire sympathy of the reader. As truthful in her character of border heroine as M'liss, Kady is a much more touching and lovable creation, without the occasional repulsive traits of Bret Harte's portraiture. As her father is a true and noble gentleman, despite the accidents of birth and environment, so is his daughter, under her uncouth garb and rude speech, a true and noble woman.
Clopper, with his serene optimism, Leddy, his wife, Miss Pinkham and the cap-border, Levi Bean, Tilford Harrison the egotistical and self-persecuting artist with his miserable family, the Dennisons, Louisy and Emmeline, Madam Ferris, and Aunt Mary—a whole gallery of masterly portraits, are all instinct with life, all painted from evident sittings of originals.
If there be any marked defect in the book it is in the excess of dialect and the thinness of the background of more cultivated life. It is much to say that this book, whose style is chiefly dialect, rarely ceases to charm and never tires. The author, whose pen has so long run in the uncouth speech of this border district, occasionally forgets her own English and drops a rude construction of sentence, or a primitive term into her own lucid phrases. But these slips are rare, and it is almost hypercriticism to notice them.
On all accounts "Kady" is one of the most remarkable books of the time. Purely American, without one taint of animalism though dealing with the most primitive humanity, true, sweet, and yet masculine in its power, it is a work which will take its place in the literature of the country as a model which cannot be too closely studied or too much admired.
'Twixt Love and Law: A novel, by Annie Jenness Miller (Belford, Clarke & Co.).—Literature which neither refreshes, amuses, nor instructs has no proper place in the world of letters; and assuredly that class of literature which enervates the mind and beckons beyond the noon-mark of propriety has no rights which the critic or the moralist is bound to respect. It is a marked characteristic of that order of recent fiction which takes for text the more or less unlawful relations of the sexes, that the style should be punctuated with shrieks, and the movement be a series of hysterical writhings. A woman with keen feelings does not, at every small anticlimax of her existence, perform a hand-spring and somersault as a means of giving vent to her emotions. Neither does she go about with a nose reddened with weeping, exploding in vociferous adjectives as a means of expressing her grief. "To be always and everywhere starved! starved! starved!" wails Mrs. Miller's heroine, as a sort of footnote to a proposal of marriage which she has just declined. "Oh, how cruel it is!" Thereupon "she shivered in the clutch of her despair, and, moaning, threw herself face downward upon the bosom of Mother Earth," very much to the amaze of the rejected suitor, who promptly picks her up and "holds her against his breast." She is intense, superlatively intense. "Her white bosom tossed and rose and fell; the burnished masses of her hair escaped and rioted on the midnight air. 'Spare me! spare me! Alex! Alex! Alex!' Out of the unyielding density of the night a voice of ecstasy breathed her name." A meeting takes place in this "unyielding density" with "Alex," a married man. The heroine being in love with him and he with her, it follows as a necessary element in this class of fiction that the wife should be all that is mean, evil, shrewish, and generally detestable. In such a state of affairs a wife is a difficult problem, a nuisance, and yet very useful; for if there were no wife to interpose her uncomfortable personality between the lovers, there would be no reason for all these meetings in the "unyielding density," no exclamatory passages, no daring escapades along the very verge of the questionable, and, hence, no novel—which,all things considered, might not be so great a misfortune after all. In the course of this story, which includes much outcry, many combats with tempestuous passion, some sacrifices, a trial for attempted murder, and a divorce, the unpleasant marital impediment is comfortably put out of the way, and the lovers are safely married.
"'Twixt Love and Law" is one of those books, "not wicked, but unwise," which, whatever their ostensible moral may be, add to the perplexity and difficulty of social adjustment. Admitting that our marriage and divorce laws are unjust and ineffectual, still, to bring contempt, open or implied, upon the marriage relation, can only impede, not advance, a rational solution of the question. In nine cases out of ten vanity and loose morals are the primary causes of marital unfaithfulness in desire or act. In writing such a book as "'Twixt Love and Law," clever and often brilliant as it is, the author has not used her graceful pen and clear head to the best interests of her sex.