FACILITIES FOR TEACHING.

406

Such then, are a few out of the many problems which have been experimented upon in the Harvard Laboratory during the last year—problems in perception, association, attention, “reaction times,” psycho-physic law, kinesthetics, esthetics, memory, will, and so on, covering nearly the whole range of mental phenomena. I have selected these few for presentation here, not for their importance over others, but because they could be simply described in these pages. The general aim of all the work is, however, very simple. As in the other sciences, it seeks to establish fact after fact, in orderly manner, along the whole line of mental nature; and by unifying these to work ever to a larger knowledge of the whole.

WAX SPECIMENS IN THE MUSEUM.

But the university laboratory is for teaching as well as for discovering. It is equipped for the undergraduate, as well as for the advanced investigator. The elementary or demonstrational courses are designed to impress upon the student the facts, the methods, and the spirit of his science. There is now furnished for these, at Harvard, nearly every kind of apparatus commonly used in physical and physiological laboratories, for the study of neurology, optics, acoustics, kinesthetics, esthetics, anthropology, and so on. The electrical department is a miniature laboratory in itself. And the various models in wax, wire, and plaster—of eyes, ears, brains, fishes, reptiles, monkeys, children, adults, idiots, insane people, and people of genius—is a veritable museum.[3]

[3]How interesting these things are to a thoughtful man may be told to the readers ofMcClure’s Magazinein an anecdote which they have a peculiar right to hear. Its founder, a few months ago, stood before a shelf full of the very pedagogic images which his illustrations now present to you. I pointed out a series of dainty models, showing, comparatively, the various evolutionary stages of brain development in the animal kingdom. His eyes fastened on them and—there they stayed.The same part of each brain was tinted in the same color. I showed him the olfactory lobes; in man, two little insignificant yellow streaks; in the shark, two big bulbs larger than all the rest of the brain together. I thus made visible to him how small a sphere “smell” plays in our mental life, while pretty nearly the whole life of the shark must be a world of smells. I showed him the optic lobes in the brain of a blind mole, and then in that of a carrier pigeon, which sees its way over dizzy leagues to familiar places. I showed him the cerebellum of the rabbit that hops, the fish that swims, and the alligator that crawls. I say, he stood still, almost. I could get him to look at nothing else. He seemed to see, projecting down future volumes ofMcClure’s Magazine, pages after pages of comparative mental menageries—pink infundibula swimming in blue Gulf Streams; green cerebra flying through gorgeous sunsets; oceans of terrific shark-smells diagrammatically printed in blood red; and Kipling poems of adventure sent to press in surprising variegations of color, the more scientifically to express their psychological emotions. He stood till he murmured, “We must have an article on this,” and rushed to the train or to the telegraph office, and secured, I suspect, from Professor Drummond, his now famous article, “Where Man Got His Ears.”—H. N.

How interesting these things are to a thoughtful man may be told to the readers ofMcClure’s Magazinein an anecdote which they have a peculiar right to hear. Its founder, a few months ago, stood before a shelf full of the very pedagogic images which his illustrations now present to you. I pointed out a series of dainty models, showing, comparatively, the various evolutionary stages of brain development in the animal kingdom. His eyes fastened on them and—there they stayed.

The same part of each brain was tinted in the same color. I showed him the olfactory lobes; in man, two little insignificant yellow streaks; in the shark, two big bulbs larger than all the rest of the brain together. I thus made visible to him how small a sphere “smell” plays in our mental life, while pretty nearly the whole life of the shark must be a world of smells. I showed him the optic lobes in the brain of a blind mole, and then in that of a carrier pigeon, which sees its way over dizzy leagues to familiar places. I showed him the cerebellum of the rabbit that hops, the fish that swims, and the alligator that crawls. I say, he stood still, almost. I could get him to look at nothing else. He seemed to see, projecting down future volumes ofMcClure’s Magazine, pages after pages of comparative mental menageries—pink infundibula swimming in blue Gulf Streams; green cerebra flying through gorgeous sunsets; oceans of terrific shark-smells diagrammatically printed in blood red; and Kipling poems of adventure sent to press in surprising variegations of color, the more scientifically to express their psychological emotions. He stood till he murmured, “We must have an article on this,” and rushed to the train or to the telegraph office, and secured, I suspect, from Professor Drummond, his now famous article, “Where Man Got His Ears.”—H. N.

GUSTAVE THEODORE FECHNER.

The laboratory workshop is provided with the common implements and facilities required for working in wood, glass, and metal. Both for original research and for demonstration, this laboratory is the most unique, the richest, and the most complete in any country; and in witness of the fame and genius of its present director, and of the rapidly spreading interest in experimental psychology, particularly in America, there are already gathered here, under Professor Münsterberg’s administration, a larger number of students specially devoted to mental science than ever previously studied together in any one place.

So much for the place and what is done there. Now, what is expected to come from this new psychology? “Do you fellows expect to invent patent ways of thinking?” was once asked me. Who can tell? Who, before Galileo, would have prophesied that man should weigh the stars or know their chemistry? Yet there is much ground for comparison between the position of physical science then and that of mental science now. The popular opinion of to-day is perhaps even less awake to the fact that the world of mental phenomena is a world of laws, susceptible to scientific experimentation, than was the day of Galileo to the similar conception regarding physical phenomena. Have the physical sciences changed aught for man since the sixteenth century? Then we must not forget how slow was the growth, and how long it took to arrive at the laws of gravity and of conservation,407not to mention those of evolution. Experimental psychology, as a systematic science, is almost younger than its youngest students. The mental laws are as fixed and as determinable as the laws of physics. Who then shall say what man shall come to know of mental composition, of the great mental universe, and of ourselves, its wandering planets, since mindsmaybe known as well as stars!

PROFESSOR WILHELM WUNDT, OF LEIPSIC, FOUNDER OF FIRST PSYCHOLOGICAL LABORATORY (1878).

But psychology will not have to wait till its greater laws shall be wholly established before she becomes of practical influence in common affairs. He who reads most thoughtfully to-day will most appreciate this truth. He who reads at all, reads of “individualism” as opposed to “socialism.” The Pope of Rome has declared that the “preoccupying” problem for active Christianity must now be the industrial problem. Every important treatise on the subject, appearing at present, admits that the crucial question of the industrial problem is an ethical problem, and every ethical treatise, that every ethical problem is a psychological problem. Two years ago the Roman Catholic Church established a psychological laboratory in its leading American college.

The Presbyterians the coming year will follow with a laboratory at Princeton. Psychology is no longer feared by religion, but is accepted, though in places yet too timidly, as a source of its further and unending revelation.

PRESIDENT G. STANLEY HALL, FOUNDER OF FIRST PSYCHOLOGICAL LABORATORY IN AMERICA.

But psychology is coming close to affairs of church and state in more than one way. One of the greatest crimes of modern society is its conception of criminal jurisprudence. Between the fœtal period and adult life man passes through, in abridged series, all the degrees of evolution that have led up through the lower animal stages to his own. In early infancy, and even in childhood, he is not yet wholly man; not yet safely over the brute period of his lineal development. If the domestic calf and chicken spend their first days wild in the woods, this pre-domestic environment will seize upon and develop their pre-domestic traits; and these once set, no amount of domestic training will, thereafter, make calf or chicken anything else than a wild, untamable creature. The early instinctive periods of man’s progeny are more prolonged, more delicate, and more susceptible than those of lower animals, yet are of the same nature. If left to evil environment in early years the latent brute within him will surely lay hold of its own, and ripen the yet innocent child to a creature bearing the same relation to the moral and civilized man that the wild wolf does to the house-dog.

On the other hand, the wolf whose first lair is the hunter’s hearth, grows to share it lovingly with the hunter’s children. The government that ignores the hordes of children which crowd to-day the criminal quarters of its great cities, and abandons them to ripen their pre-civilized propensities under such evil influences, becomes itself the foster-father of its own crimes; nurses its own children to fill its poorhouses, and raises its own youths to fill its prisons. Psychology, if on mere ground of financial economy alone, will yet force criminal jurisprudence to begin its work before, rather than after, this early period of “unalterable penalty.”

PROFESSOR WILLIAM JAMES, HARVARD UNIVERSITY.

The benefits of a psychological training to the medical man are now so obvious as to make a knowledge of psychology imperative for every first-class408physician. The nervous activities are the regulating activities of every part of the body; and the brain embodies an ever-meddling three-fourths of the body’s whole neural energy. The mind is a play-house wherein the skilful physician now looks to observe the condition of the general system, and with growing precision even to read the working of such specific organs as the heart, the stomach, the bladder, and the liver.

The relation of our science to modern education has long passed from novelty to a recognized principle. A chair of psychology and a chair of pedagogy, side by side and hand in hand, is now the requisite of every institution of advanced learning. “To get up more ‘fads’? More patent methods?” It is only the ignorant now who ask these questions. Galton has shown that some men do their thinking in visual pictures—in memories of what they see; others, in memories of what they hear; others, in the memories of their own speaking. There is reason to suspect that the lightning-calculator’s speed is largely due to peculiar “image processes” used in his thinking, and that these could be taught if science could but catch his unconscious secrets. This in time will be done, and is but an instance of innumerable things that are sure to be accomplished. In the face of all present pedagogical fads and blunders we may yet say with confidence, of the mind, the instincts, the emotions, the conduct of man, individual and social, all is lawful; and the laws may be discovered. They are difficult—more difficult than all the physical laws achieved from Ptolemy to Darwin. But they can be scientifically determined and mastered, and modern methods, swift with gathering impetus, shall make of this no lingering matter.

PROFESSOR HUGO MÜNSTERBERG, HARVARD UNIVERSITY.

The psychological laboratory sprang first from no single mind; not wholly from science nor yet from philosophy, but from an age. In 1860 Gustave Theodore Fechner, the godfather of experimental psychology, published his famous Law. Fechner was as much a mystic as a scientist. His Law was, perhaps, the first great impetus to active psycho-physical experimentation. The prospects now are, however, that this Law will stand, a halfway truth, beside Newton’s erroneous theory of409light, rather than, as was at first claimed for it, beside the Law of Gravity, a great primary law of nature.

The spirit of Fechner, of evolution, and of our times joined to fall upon Wilhelm Wundt, who founded at Leipsic, in 1878, the first laboratory in the world for regular scientific mental experimentation. Professor Wundt is the greatest psychologist now living in Europe, and a majority of the noted psychological experts, both of Germany and of America, have been his pupils.

One of these pupils, G. Stanley Hall, now President of Clark University, opened the first American laboratory at Johns Hopkins in 1883, and the larger laboratory at Worcester in 1889. To him must be credited the founding of experimental psychology in this country, and an eminent share of its present successful growth.

A foremost figure in modern psychology is Professor William James, of Harvard, whose great text-book, the product of twelve years of labor, appeared in 1890. In 1891 he opened the present Harvard Laboratory, or, at least, expanded a previously slow growth to important dimensions.

In 1892 Harvard established a new chair of Experimental Psychology, and elected to the same, and to direct its new laboratory, Professor Hugo Münsterberg, previously Professor of Philosophy at Freyburg, Germany. Professor Münsterberg was at one time a pupil of Wundt, but is much more a man of original inspiration; and in his genius the hopes and destiny of experimental psychology at Harvard are now centred.

Some twenty laboratories are now actively at work in America, and about half that number in Europe. The twentieth century will be to mental what the sixteenth century was to physical science, and the central field of its development is likely to be America.

Harvard University,July, 1893.

410THE SPIRE OF ST. STEPHEN’S.By Emma W. Demeritt.

“It needs but a steady head and a clear conscience and the thing is done.” Those were old Jacob’s words.

“The clear conscience is not lacking, thank God! but all these weeks of watching by a sick bed, and the scanty meals, have made the head anything but steady. If it were but three months ago, my courage would not fail me, but now——”

The boy broke off abruptly, and, stepping back several feet, stood looking up at the stately spire that towered above him. Fair and shapely it rose, with gradually receding buttress and arch, until it terminated at a point over four hundred feet from the pavement.

All day long little groups of men had straggled across the Platz and gathered in front of the great cathedral, elbowing one another, and stretching upon tiptoe to read the notice nailed to the massive door. Many were the jests passed around.

“Does the old sexton think men are flies, to creep along yonder dizzy height?” asked one.

“The prize is indeed worth winning,” said another, “but”—he turned away with an expressive shrug of the shoulder—“life is sweet.”

“When I try to reach heaven ’twill be by some less steep and dangerous way,” laughed a third, with an upward glance at the spire.

“It makes a strong man feel a bit queer to go up inside as far as the great bell and look up at the network of crossing ladders; but to standoutsideand wave a flag!—why, the mere thought of it is enough to make one’s head swim,” said the first speaker.

“Jacob Wirtig is the only man in all Vienna who has the nerve for such a part.”

“But he served a good apprenticeship! He learned the knack of keeping a steady head during his early days of chamois-hunting in the Tyrol. But why does he seek to draw others into danger? For so much gold many a man would risk his life.”

“I can understand it, Caspar. Twice before, on some grand occasion, has old Jacob stood on the spire and waved a flag as the emperor passed in the streets below. And now, after all the fighting and the victory, when there is to be a triumphal entry into the city and a grand review, and such rejoicing as was never known before, he feels in honor bound to supply the customary salute from the cathedral. And since this miserable fever, which has stricken down so many in the city, has left him too weak to attempt it, he is trying, as you see by this notice, to get some one to take his place. He offers all the money which the emperor never fails to send as a reward, to say nothing of the glory. I’ll wager a florin that he’ll offer in vain! But come, let us be going. There’s too much work to be done, to be loitering here.”

Twice before on that day, once in the early morning, and again at noon, had the boy stood as if spellbound, with his eyes riveted on the beautiful spire. And now the setting of the sun had found him a third time at his post. The Platz was deserted, but the streets beyond were thronged with people hurrying to their homes. Was it fear, or the chill of the night air, that sent a shiver over the slender figure of the boy as he stood, letting his eyes slowly wander from the top of the spire to the base of the tower beneath, as if measuring the frightful distance? But as he411turned away with a little gesture of despair, there rose before him the vision of a wan and weary face, as white as the pillow against which it rested, and he heard the physician’s voice as he gently replaced the wasted hand on the coverlet: “The fever has gone, my boy, and all that your mother needs now to make her well and strong is good care and plenty of nourishing food.” The money offered by old Jacob would do all that, and much more. It would mean comfort for two or three years for both mother and son, with their simple way of living.

When the lad again faced the cathedral it was with an involuntary straightening of the shrinking figure. “With God’s help I will try,” he said aloud, with a determined ring to his voice, “and I must go at once to let Master Wirtig know. Now that I have finally decided, it is strange how the fear has flown. It is the hesitating that takes the courage out of one. After all”—he paced back, back, back, until he was far enough from the cathedral to get a good view of the noble structure—“who knows? It may look more difficult than it really is. ’Tis but a foothold of a few inches, but ’tis enough. If it were near the ground I should feel as safe as if I were on the floor of the great hall in the Stadt Haus. Why, then, should I fear up yonder?”

The flush in the western sky suddenly deepened to a vivid crimson. The clouds above the horizon, which a moment before had shone like waves of gold, became a sea of flame. The ruddy glow illumined the old cathedral, touching rich carving and lace-like tracery with a new splendor, while far over sculptured dome and stately tower rose the lofty spire, bathed from finial to base in the radiant light.

The boy made a step forward, and, slipping back the little cap from his locks, stretched out his clasped hands toward the sky. “O Mary, tender mother!” he cried, “plead thou for me in my time of need to-morrow! O Jesu! be near to help and save!”

He replaced the cap, and hurried across the Platz to the crowded thoroughfare beyond. At the end of three blocks he turned into a narrow street, and stopped in front of a high house with steep, tiled roof. The lamp in the swinging iron bracket above the door gave such a feeble light that he was obliged to grope his way through the hall to the stairs.

At the second landing he paused for a moment, fancying that he heard a light footfall behind him, but all was still, and he hastened on to the next floor. Again he stopped, thinking that he caught the sound of a stealthy, cat-like tread on the steps below. “Who’s there?” he called out boldly, but the lingering412echo of his own voice was the only answer.

“How foolish I am!” he exclaimed. “It is but the clatter of my shoes on the stone stairs.” Up another flight and down the long, narrow entry he went, and still he could not shake off the feeling that he was being followed.

At that moment a door opened and a woman peered out, holding a candle high above her head. “Is that you, Franz?” she said. “My brother has been expecting you this half hour.” By the flickering light of the candle Franz could see that there was no one in the entry. He turned, impelled by a strong desire to search the tall cupboard near the stairs and see if any one had concealed himself within, but the dread of being laughed at kept him back, and he followed the woman into a room where a gray-haired man sat, leaning wearily against the back of his chair.

“You may go now, Katrina,” said the man, motioning to an adjoining room; and when the door closed he turned to Franz, trembling with eagerness. “Well, have you decided?”

“I will try, Master Wirtig.”

The old sexton wrung his thin hands nervously. “But if you should fail?”

“In God is my trust,” answered the boy, calmly. “But one ‘if’ is as good as another. Why not say, if you succeed? It sounds more cheery.”

“God grant it!” answered the man, sinking back in his chair. “I had thought that it would be some hardy young sprig who should accept my offer—some sailor or stone-mason, whose calling had taught him to carry a steady head. I never dreamed that it would be a mere lad like thyself, and worn out, too, with the care of thy sick mother! Even now I feel I do thee a grievous wrong to listen to thy entreaties.”

“Think not ofme, Master Wirtig; think rather of my mother. Shall we let her die, when a few moments on yonder spire would furnish the means to make her well? The kind physician who would have helped me was smitten with the fever yesterday, and there is no one to whom I can go.”

“Had I been as prudent as I ought, I could have aided thee. But this lingering illness has used up what I had put aside. Here is a little for thy present need—some broth for thy mother, and a bite for thyself, for thy cheeks look as pinched as if thou hadst not eaten a good meal for a fortnight.” He pulled out a covered basket from under the table, and continued: “I shall arrange with Nicholas—for he has worked with me so long that he is as familiar with the ladders as myself—to go with thee up to the little sliding window, and pass out the flag. Thou must let thyself downoutsidethe window until thy toes touch the ledge below. Then thou must creep cautiously around to the opposite side of the spire, and wave the flag. Look always straight before thee or up at the sky.Thy safety lies in not glancing below.I believe in my heart thou wilt succeed. How I wish that this graceless Nicholas, this unruly nephew of mine, were such an one as thou! Then should I have some comfort. But with his evil companions and bad ways, he brings me naught but sorrow. Listen, Franz; if all goes well, thou shalt have his place in helping me with the care of the cathedral. There is no longer any dependence to be placed on him.”

In his excitement old Jacob’s voice rang through the room. “What is it?” he asked, as he saw Franz start and look toward the door.

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“I thought I heard a rattling of the latch—as if some one were outside.”

“It’s nothing but the wind drawing through the entry.”

Franz took up his basket and bade the old sexton good-night. After he had passed into the street a figure crept out from the cupboard, and stole softly down stairs. The light by the door showed a boy about seventeen years old, with an evil scowl on his face. “And so thou art to take my place, Franz Halle,” he sneered. “That is nothing new. Twice this year has our master, the goldsmith, preferred thy work to mine, and has set thee over me. Truly, I wish thou mayst fall to-morrow and break thy neck.”

When Franz reached home the kind neighbor who was watching by his mother’s bed motioned for him to be quiet. “The sick one is sleeping well,” she said. “If I had but some good broth to give her when she wakes.” Franz pointed to the basket, and the delighted woman began the preparations for the evening meal. When the invalid awoke they gave her a few spoonfuls of the broth, and had the satisfaction of seeing a faint color come into the white cheeks as she sank into a peaceful slumber.

“Do thou go to bed, Franz! I will stay with thy mother to-night, and to-morrow too, for that matter, so that thou canst have the whole day to thyself. Thou needest it after all thy care and watching. I like not these parades and these marches of triumph. They remind me too much of my boy, whose young life helped to purchase the victory,” and the good frau wiped away a tear.

The morning dawned with a bright blue sky and a crisp breeze, which shook out the folds of the triumphal banners floating from every tower and turret. The city was one blaze of color. The gorgeous festoons on column and arch and façade were matched by the rich tints of the splendid costumes in the streets below. On every side the black eagles of Austria stood out distinctly from their gleaming orange background. The procession was due at the cathedral by the middle of the afternoon, but owing to some delay it was nearly sunset when the salute from the “Fort” told of the approach of the troops. To Franz, the hours had dragged wearily on, and he sprang up joyfully when Nicholas finally appeared in the little room in the tower, with the furled flag under his arm. “Come,” he said gruffly, “you have just time to climb up and take your stand on the spire.” Up the boys went, as far as the great bell, Franz close behind Nicholas. Thus far the ascent had been easy, but from this point the steps dwindled to long, frail ladders terminating in small platforms, and steadied by iron bars.

Still they toiled upward, more slowly and cautiously now, for the danger increased with every turn. At last they halted, side by side, on the little platform under the sliding window. To Nicholas’s surprise Franz stood there, surveying it all without flinching. The younger boy turned to his burly companion: “Somehow, we’ve never been very good friends. I don’t think the fault was all on my side, because you wouldn’t let me be your friend. And we have had a good many quarrels. Won’t you shake hands with me now and wish me good luck? If—if”—and there was just the suspicion of a tremor in the winning voice—“I should never see you again, I should like to feel that we were friends at the last. You’re very good to come up here with me.”

414

To his dying day Nicholas never forgot the slight, almost girlish, figure, standing there, with the wistful little smile, and the pleading tenderness shining in the blue eyes. He touched the slender outstretched hand with his own, but dropped it suddenly, as if he had received an electric shock. He tried to say “Good luck,” but his tongue seemed glued to the roof of his mouth.

“Look you, Franz,” he murmured hoarsely, “when you are safe outside I’ll hand out the flag. I’ll wait till you reach the opposite side of the spire and call out, ‘All’s well,’ and then I’ll go down and leave you to make your way back. And glad I shall be to leave this miserable trap in mid air.”

Franz’s face was deathly pale, but his eyes shone like two stars. He climbed up nimbly through the opening, let himself carefully down to the stone ledge outside, and reached up for the flag. A few moments passed, which seemed like ages to the waiting Nicholas. Then a cheery “All’s well” rang out, without a quiver in the steady voice. The older boy’s face grew black with rage. “What nerve the pale, sickly little thing has!” he muttered between his set teeth. “I believe he’ll do it after all! And so this baby gets not only the prizes at the goldsmith’s, but the money and the glory of this thing, to say nothing of his taking my place in the cathedral.”

He raised his hand to the window, and stood in front of it for a moment. Then he began the descent as if some demon were after him. The frail ladders vibrated and swayed with the dangerous strain, but down he went, with reckless haste, until he reached the second platform, when he raised his hands with an agonized gesture to his ears as if he was trying to shut out the voice of conscience, that kept calling to him, “Back! back! before it is too late! Stain not thy young soul with such a crime!”

Still he hurried down with flying step to the landing near the great bell, where he paused, and stood leaning breathless against one of the cross-beams of the tower. Into the fierce, turbulent passions of the troubled face stole a softened expression, lighting up the swarthy lineaments like a gleam of sunshine. “I will go back and undo the horrid deed,” he cried, as if in answer to the good angel pleading within his breast. “I am coming, Franz! God forgive me!”

415

He had turned to make the ascent, and his hand was stretched out to grasp the side of the ladder, when his toe caught in a coil of rope on the platform, and, missing his hold, he plunged down, down, into the space beneath.

In the meantime Franz had made his way safely around the spire, and stood quietly, with the end of the flagstaff on the ledge beneath, waiting for the signal. It came in a few moments; the thunder of the great gun on the Platz, and, bracing his feet firmly, he unfurled the flag and slowly waved it back and forth. From the answering roar of artillery, and the cheer upon cheer that floated up through the air, he knew that his salute had been seen.

With a light heart he began to retrace his steps, edging himself cautiously, inch by inch, to the window. To his surprise, the sliding wooden panel was closed! With one hand he grasped the iron ring fastened to the wall beneath the window, and with the other pushed, first gently, and then with all his might, but the panel remained fast. He tried to batter it with the flagstaff, but soon found that, in his cramped position, it only increased his danger. Again and again he endeavored to force it open, breaking his nails and bruising his finger-tips in his frenzy, but to no purpose. Suddenly the conviction dawned upon him that the window was bolted from the inside. With a despairing sob he tottered backward, but his grasp on the ring held, and with a supreme effort he pulled himself up close to the wall, and tried to collect his scattered wits.

“It is no use to shout,” he said aloud. “It is more than folly to attempt to make myself heard from this height, I might as well save my strength. All that remains for me to do is to wait patiently. Some one will be sure to miss me and come to my relief. In God is my trust!” and his courage rose with the words.

The troops disbanded, and the people hurried off to the brilliantly lighted cafés and theatres, all unconscious of the pale, silent boy clinging with desperate grip to the spire, with but a narrow shelf of stone between him and a horrible death.

The sunset faded into the twilight, and with a sudden wave darkness drifted over the earth. The noise in the streets grew fainter and fainter. The minutes lengthened into hours, and still the boy stood there, as the night wore on, occasionally shifting his position to ease his cramped and aching limbs. The night wind pierced his thin clothing, and his hands were benumbed with the cold. One by one the bright constellations rose and glittered and dipped in the sky, and the boy still managed to keep his foothold, as rigid as the stone statues on the dome below.

“Two, three, four,” pealed the bells in their hoarse, deep tones, and when the first glimmer of dawn tinged the eastern horizon with pale yellow, the haggard face lighted with expectancy, and from the ashen lips, which had been moving all night in prayer, came the words, “In God is my trust.”

“What is the meaning of yonder crowd?” asked one of two artisans, who had met while hurrying across the Platz to their work.

“What! have you not heard? All Vienna is ringing with the news! It was young Franz, the goldsmith’s apprentice, who climbed out on the spire416yesterday and waved the flag. In some way, the little window near the top was fastened on the inside, and the poor boy was forced to stay out all night clinging to the spire. It is only a short time ago that he was discovered and brought fainting down the ladders. After working over him a little while he seemed all right, and was carried to his home. And there’s another strange thing. Nicholas, old Jacob Wirtig’s nephew, was picked up, mangled and bleeding, at the foot of the tower stairs this morning. He has just been taken to the hospital.”

The next day Franz received a summons from the emperor. As he followed the officer who had been sent to conduct him to the palace, to his surprise the marble steps and the corridor beyond were lined on either sides with the soldiers of the Imperial Guard, and as the slender, boyish figure, with its crown of golden hair, passed between the files, each mailed and bearded warrior reverently saluted.

On he went, through another chamber, and into a spacious hall with marble floors and hangings of rich tapestry. On both sides were rows of courtiers and officers, the rich costumes and nodding plumes and splendid uniforms, with their jewelled orders, contrasting strangely with the lad’s plain, homespun garments. “It is the emperor,” whispered the guide as they drew near a canopied throne, and Franz dropped on one knee.

He felt the hand which was placed on his bowed head tremble, and a kind voice said, “Rise, my boy! kneel not to me! It is I, thy emperor, who should rather kneel to do thee homage for thy filial piety. My brave lad, I know thy story well! Ask of me a place near my person, aid for thy sick mother, what thou wilt, and it is granted thee! And remember that as long as the Emperor of Austria shall live he will feel himself honored in being known as thy friend!”

In a short time another summons came, this time from the hospital. At the end of a long row of beds lay Nicholas, with his arm bandaged and strips of plaster covering the gashes on his forehead.

“Oh, Franz!” he groaned, “if God has forgiven me, why cannot you? And you will believe that I speak the truth when I tell you that I was sorry for what I had done, and I had turned to go back and unbolt the door when I tripped and fell.”

Franz bent over him with a bright smile. “I forgive you everything, Nicholas,” he said, sweetly, “so please let us say no more about it. It wasn’t a bad exchange. I lost an enemy but I gained a friend,” and the hands of the two boys met in a firm, loving grasp.

417MOUNTAINEERING ADVENTURE.THE DANGERS OF AVALANCHE, GLACIER, CREVASSE, AND PRECIPICE.By Francis Gribble.

This is the season when the mountaineer once more takes down his Norfolk jacket, his nailed boots, and his ice-axe, and prepares to face the perils that may lurk for him above the snowline.

Strictly speaking—from the point of view of the expert who knows and does everything that an expert ought to know and do—mountaineering has two dangers only. There is the danger of bad weather, and there is the danger of the falling stone. But every climber is not an expert, and even of experts it may be said thatnemo horis omnibus sapit. So that there are all sorts of dangers to be reckoned with, and foremost among them is the avalanche.

Everybody knows—vaguely, if not precisely—what an avalanche is. Masses of snow accumulate in winter on the mountain slopes. In spring the warmth loosens their coherence, and they fall into the valleys, sweeping away or burying everything in their track. It is bad for the mountaineer, if he happens to be in the way of one.

Says the editor of the volume devoted to mountaineering, in the Badminton Library: “The simple rule with regard to all forms of avalanche is to avoid their track, and all that is necessary in the majority of instances is to recognize the marks on the snow surfaces that denote their cause, and to steer clear of them.”

Undoubtedly an admirable rule, if only it could be always carried out. But mistakes, unhappily, may be made even by experts, as witness this story of a thrilling adventure which befell F. F. Tuckett, twenty-two years ago.

The season had been exceptionally cold and wet. Snow lay thickly everywhere, even on the Faulhorn, the Scheinige Platte, and the Wengern Alp. But in the early days of July an improvement began to show itself, and Mr. Tuckett, who for a whole month had been able to make no big expedition, resolved to make an attempt upon the Eiger.

The members of the party were Mr. Tuckett, Mr. Whitwell, J. H. Fox, and the guides, Christian and Ulrich Lauener. They got off between 3 and 4A.M., and presently started to ascend the Eiger glacier. The surface of it was entirely concealed with snow, but, for some reason, they neglected to put on the rope. High up in front of them were the disordered pillars and buttresses of the ice-fall, and above the ice-fall rested an enormous weight of freshly fallen snow.

Instead of ascending the centre of the glacier, the party, fortunately for themselves, were keeping to the left, towards the rocks of the Rothstock. Of a sudden, a sort of crack was heard high up above their heads, and every eye was turned upon the hanging ice-cliff from which it came. A large mass of “sérac” was seen to break away, mingled with a still larger contingent of snow from the slopes above; and the whole mass slid down like a cataract, filling the “couloir” to its brim, and dashing in clouds of frozen spray over the rocky ridges in its path, towards the travellers.

418THE MAUVAIS PAS, MONT BLANC.

THE MAUVAIS PAS, MONT BLANC.

For a moment they did not realize that they were in its track. But then419the knowledge flashed upon them all, and they shouted to each other, “Run for your lives,” and struggled desperately through the deep, soft snow to reach the rocks of the Rothstock, yet with their faces turned to watch the swift oncoming of the foe.

Let Mr. Tuckett himself describe that thrilling race for life.

“I remember,” he writes, “being struck with the idea that it seemed as though, sure of its prey, it wished to play with us for a while, at one moment letting us imagine that we had gained upon it, and were getting beyond the line of its fire, and the next, with mere wantonness of vindictive power, suddenly rolling out on its right a vast volume of grinding blocks and whirling snow, as though to show that it could outflank us at any moment if it chose.

“Nearer and nearer it came, its front like a mighty wave about to break. Now it has traversed the whole width of the glacier above us, taking a somewhat diagonal direction; and now—run, oh! run, if ever you did, for here it comes straight at us, swift, deadly, and implacable! The next instant we saw no more; a wild confusion of whirling snow and fragments of ice—a frozen cloud—swept over us, entirely concealing us from one another, and still we were untouched—at least I knew that I was—and still we ran. Another half-second and the mist had passed, and there lay the body of the monster, whose head was still careering away at lightning speed far below us, motionless, rigid, and harmless.”

The danger was over, and the party examined the avalanche at their leisure. It had a length of three thousand three hundred feet, an average breadth of a thousand feet, and an average depth of five feet. This is to say, its bulk was six hundred and eleven thousand cubic yards, and its weight, on a moderate computation, about four hundred and fifty thousand tons.

Accidents of this sort, happily, are very rare, and the climber who is carried away by the avalanche has, as a rule, deliberately faced the risk out of bravado, and the desire to go home and boast that he had done hard things. But there is another sort of avalanche which is a much more frequent source of danger. It consists of a stratum of snow loosely adherent to a slope ofnévéor ice. The snow breaks away under the weight of the party, and carries them down with it, sometimes to a place of safety, sometimes to a crevasse.

Experience, of course, has laid down many rules for determining whether snow of this sort is safe, but the best men—guides as well as amateurs—may sometimes be misled. Professor Tyndall, for instance, was always a cautious as well as a brilliant mountaineer; yet there was a day when the professor’s snow craft failed him, and he came very near to paying for his blunder with his life.

The place was the Piz Morteratsch, in the Engadine, and the time the month of July, 1864. Professor Tyndall’s companions were Mr. Hutchinson and Lee Warner, and the guides Jenni and Walter. Jenni was at that time the dictator of Pontresina, and he seems to have set out with the deliberate intention of showing hisHerrenhow great and brave a man he was.

The ascent was accomplished without any incident of note. On the way down the party reached a broadcouloir, or gully, filled with snow, which had been melted and refrozen, so as to expose a steeply sloping wall of ice. The question arose whether it would be better to descend this wall of ice, or to keep to the steep rocks by the side of it. Professor Tyndall preferred the rocks; Jenni inclined towards the slope, and started to lead the way upon it.

THE NEEDLE OF THE GIANTS AND MONT BLANC.

There was a remonstrance from the professor:

“Jenni,” he said, “do you know where you are going? The slope is pure ice.”

“I know it,” the guide replied, “but the ice is quite bare for a few rods only. Across this exposed portion I will cut steps, and then the snow which covers the ice will give us a footing.”

420

So they started, roped together, Jenni in front, Mr. Tyndall next, followed by Mr. Hutchinson, Mr. Lee Warner, the one inexperienced member of the party, and, last of all, the guide Walter, ready to check on the instant any false step that Mr. Lee Warner might make.

After a few steps Jenni began to see that the slope was less safe than he had supposed. He stopped and turned round to speak a word of warning to the three men above him.

“Keep carefully in the steps, gentlemen,” he said; “a false step here might start an avalanche.”

And, even as he spoke, the false step was made. There was a sound of a fall and a rush, and Professor Tyndall saw his friends and their guide, all apparently entangled, whirled past him. He planted himself to resist the shock, but it was irresistible; he, too, was torn from his foothold, and Jenni followed him, and all five found themselves riding downwards, with uncontrollable speed, on the back of an avalanche, which a single slip had started.

“Turn on your face, and grind the point of your axe or baton through the moving snow into the ice”—that is the golden rule for cases of the kind, the only way in which the faller can do anything to arrest his speed. But it seldom avails much, and in this instance it availed nothing.

“No time,” writes Professor Tyndall, “was allowed for the break’s action; for I had held it firmly thus for a few seconds only, when I came into collision with some obstacle and was rudely tossed through the air, Jenni at the same time being shot down upon me. Both of us here lost our batons. We had been carried over a crevasse, had hit its lower edge, and, instead of dropping into it, were pitched by our great velocity beyond it. I was quite bewildered for a moment, but immediately righted myself, and could see the men421in front of me, half-buried in the snow, and jolted from side to side by the ruts among which we were passing.”

Presently a second crevasse was reached. Jenni knew that it was there, and did a brave thing. He deliberately threw himself into the chasm, thinking that the strain thus put upon the rope would stop the motion. But, though he was over a hundred and eighty pounds in weight, he was violently jerked out of the fissure, and almost squeezed to death by the pressure of the rope.

And so they continued to slide on. Below them was a long slope, leading directly downwards to a brow where the glacier fell precipitously; and at the base of the declivity the ice was cut by a series of profound chasms, where they must fall, and where the tail of the avalanche would cover them up forever.

The three foremost men rode upon the forehead of the avalanche, and were at times almost wholly hidden by the snow; but behind, the sliding layer was not so thick, and Jenni strove with desperate energy to arrest his progress.

“Halt! Herr Jesus! halt!” he shouted, as again and again he drove his heels into the firmer surface underneath.

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