Rate of Int.Simple Interest.Compound Interest.Rate of Int.Simple Interest.Compound Interest.1%100 years.69 years and 245 days.5%20 years.14 years and 75 days.2%50 years.35 years.6%16 years and 243 days.11 years and 327 days.2½%40 years.28 years and 26 days.7%14 years and 104 days.10 years and 89 days.3%33 years and 4 months.23 years and 164 days.8%12 years and 183 days.9 years and 2 days.3½%28 years and 208 days.20 years and 54 days.9%11 years and 40 days.8 years and 16 days.4%25 years.17 years and 246 days.10%10 years.7 years and 100 days.4½%22 years and 81 days.15 years and 273 days.
BY LYDIA KINGSMILL COMMANDER.
An original article written forThe Scrap Book.
Nothing is more wonderful, in this age of wonders, than the progress of women in all the civilized countries of the world. Never before were the doors of opportunity so widely opened; never before were the barriers of sex so low.
The modern young woman does not face the one choice of her grandmother—marriage or the fate of the "old maid." Before her so many paths open that her only trouble is to choose.
Her grandmother's girlhood was spent at home. She was told that "the happy woman is the woman with no history"; and "a woman's name should be in the newspapers just three times—when she is born, when she marries, and when she dies."
This is dead doctrine to the girl who goes whirling across the continent or around the world, unchaperoned and alone, and returns to meet the admiration of her friends and the interest of the public.
As she sits on the deck of the incoming steamer, giving opinions on kings and countries, chatting of the book she is about to write and handing out her photographs to a group of reporters, she bears slight resemblance to the fainting Amandas and Clarissas who "raised their weeping eyes to heaven," or fell swooning every time a mysterious sound was heard or when even a stray cow crossed their path.
If our traveler is practical and depends upon her own pocketbook instead of papa's she adopts a specialty and makes her trips pay for themselves. She may be attached to some paper or magazine; for the blue-stocking is as fashionable to-day as once she was disgraced. Some women make capital of their travels in extraordinary ways. One breaks records climbing mountain peaks at the risk of her life and then lectures to thousands upon the perils and pleasures of her feats.
Another is with her husband on the Congo searching for traces of ancient African civilizations for the British Museum. In Mexico and South America several women archeologists are at work digging out relics of the Aztecs, Peruvians, and the original tribes of the Amazon River. A recent book on Egyptian hieroglyphics was partly the work of a woman.
Then there are the women who take parties abroad, arranging for steamers, trains, boats and hotels; buying tickets; looking after baggage, and keeping everybody interested, instructed, and satisfied.
Such women—and there are many of them—must know half a dozen languages, be familiar with the history, customs, and attractions of the countries visited, be quick in an emergency, full of tact so as to keep the party harmonious, and clever enough business women to give every one bargain rates and come out with handsome profits at the end of each trip.
But traveling for business takes other forms. In the United States there are nearly a thousand feminine commercial travelers, selling everything from perfumery to men's shoes and babies' soothing syrup. There are women factory inspectors who travel constantly from place to place. The United States government employs a woman as Superintendent of Indian schools. She covers thousands of miles every year and wields absolute power over the institutions under her care.
The woman who does not travel no longer need stay at home in the old sense. Indeed she has little to keep her there. The spinning, weaving, sewing, and knitting which formerly were thehome industries have been swept off into great factories. In consequence the woman who does not want to be idle follows the work outside of the home and down-town.
In 1834, when Harriet Martineau visited this country, she found only seven occupations open to women—housekeeping, keeping boarders, needlework, teaching, working in cotton factories, bookbinding, and typesetting.
Only the last four could really be counted as out-of-home occupations, for keeping boarders and sewing called for no new knowledge or skill apart from the training in housekeeping which all girls received.
It is safe to say that of those seven occupations, six at least were not overcrowded. The work of the world was done in the homes and housekeeping was the occupation of women. There were few spinning-mills, but the old-fashioned wheel was in every house. It was not kept in a drawing-room alcove to prove its long ancestry, but steadily, busily hummed all day long as the soft rolls of wool changed into skeins and balls of yarn or thread.
After the work of the spinning-wheel came the loom and the knitting-needles. Cloth and stockings, blankets, mittens, and mufflers were fashioned by the hands of the housewife and her daughters.
There were no factories for canned fruits, pickles, or preserves. All these had to be made and stored up for winter use.
Now the stores furnish everything from a handkerchief to a ball-gown, and from bread to canned roast beef. The washing and ironing can go to the laundry and the family supplies can be bought.
Since women had been working since work began, they could not consent to remain at home idle. The result is seen in the rush of the modern woman into business life.
The last census shows that in the United States women are following every trade and profession except the army and the navy. Even the army has a woman physician, Dr. Anita McGee, who wears a uniform. In Europe, the uniformed woman is by no means a rarity. Almost every royal woman wears military honors.
It will be remembered that Queen Victoria was carried to her grave on a gun-carriage like an officer, because as Queen of England and Empress of India she was head of the British army and of the greatest navy in the world.
To have an occupation is almost as natural to the American girl of to-day as to her brother. For a woman to go into business used to be like climbing a mountain; now it is almost like going down a toboggan slide. When she leaves school she expects to work.
Sometimes she finishes her education in a public school and goes into a shop, factory, or mill. She may become one of the 75,000 milliners, the 100,000 saleswomen, the 120,000 cotton workers, the 275,000 laundresses, or the 340,000 dressmakers.
If she can stay longer in school, she may become one of the 320,000 school teachers. Or she may go to a college, which sternly closed its doors in the face of her grandmother, and carry off the prizes and the honors from the men. She can enter a university, come out B.A., M.A., or Ph.D., and join the thousand women who are already college professors.
If she fancies law, medicine, or the church, her way is clear. All three professions number their women members by the thousand, though a generation ago the pioneers in each line were struggling against ridicule and opposition.
Painting and sculpture were once considered masculine accomplishments, but to-day 15,000 women have studios. The musicians are three times as numerous.
Even the more unusual occupations are well represented. There are 261 wholesale merchants, 1,271 officials in banks, 1,932 stock raisers, 378 butchers, and 193 blacksmiths. There are 200 women to mix cocktails or serve gin-fizzes behind the bar. If they sell after hours or to minors, there are 879 policemen and detectives to watch them.
The traveling public depends for itssafety and its accidents principally upon men. But women already claim 2 motor-men, 13 conductors, 4 station-agents, 2 pilots, 1 lighthouse keeper, 127 engineers, and 153 boatmen among their number.
Almost every paper one picks up tells of women's successes in some line of work. A dozen women in Chicago, and probably three times as many in New York, are making ten thousand dollars a year or more, either as salaries or profits from business.
The property owned by actresses and singers must pay a handsome sum in taxes. It is said that Hetty Green, the shrewdest business woman in the world, can stand in City Hall Square, New York, and see five million dollars' worth of her own property; and every one knows she owes her millions to her own cleverness, not to either husband or father.
A Woman's Building has been a feature of many of our great national expositions. They have been filled with the products of women's labor; but so far the structures, though designed by women, have been erected by men. This can be remedied at any time it is necessary.
There are women builders of every sort: 167 are masons, 545 carpenters, 45 plasterers, 126 plumbers, 1,750 painters and glaziers, and 241 paper-hangers. It is true the roofing would be a long job, for only two feminine roofers and slaters are to be found in the whole country. But the 1,775 tin-workers might help out. If a steel frame were called for, 3,370 iron and steel workers would stand ready; and the eight steam-boiler makers would put in the heating and power plant.
Not only have women conquered all the established callings, but they have invented some of their own. Professional shoppers were never heard of in the old days, though since the idea was started some men have adopted the business. The welfare secretary, who is "guide, philosopher, and friend" to the girls in factories or department stores, has recently come into existence. Then there is the shopping adviser, who pilots the uncertain Mrs. Newbride over one store or through many, helping her to furnish the new home harmoniously, fashionably, and for a given sum.
One woman owes her prosperity to her creation of the profession of "dramatists' agent." A Western woman raises animals for menageries and zoos. Another clears three thousand dollars a year by growing violets, while a third is getting rich out of the proceeds of her ostrich farm.
Altogether five and a quarter million American women—or one-fifth of all the workers in the country—are making their own money.
The women of the United States lead in this rush for education and for labor, but in other countries the same advance is being made, if more slowly.
Great Britain has thirty-five hundred university graduates. Fifteen hundred of these are from Girton, Newnham, and the Oxford Halls for Women, annexes of the historic universities, but with examinations just as stiff. It is a dozen years since Miss Fawcett carried off the highest mathematical honors an English university can bestow.
Germany looks askance at any education for woman that gives to her interests outside of the home. The Kaiser's four K's, which become C's in translation—Clothes, Cooking, Church, and Children—are popularly supposed to define the world of the German hausfrau. The American's joke about "woman's sphere" has long been obsolete; but that sphere is very real and very limited in most of the European countries.
Yet even in the more conservative lands women are progressing. The older dentists in Germany and Austria had to come to America for their diplomas. To-day professional schools, universities, and colleges can be found where a woman can follow any line of study and fit herself for the professions.
In Russia, although the struggle for democracy is barely begun, and representative government is as yet only a demand, the higher education of women has been an accomplished fact for a number of years. Russian women doctors, lawyers, and professors are not uncommon.
Norway and Sweden have experienced a feminine revolution in the last quarter-century. The laws have been overhauled and revised; the schools and colleges thrown open; the trades and professions have flung down their barriers; and work, once a disgrace, has become an honor to women. Sweden led in this movement, but Norway was quick to follow, and it is now a question as to which will first reach the goal of full equality between women and men.
In political rights English and Scandinavian women stand about on a level. Neither can vote for members of Parliament, but both have municipal and local suffrage, which gives them power to exercise their gifts for housekeeping and economical management in civic as well as home affairs.
This growing liberty of women has affected her position as wife and mother. In the days when she had no sphere but the home and no career but marriage, she was a very insignificant creature even within those limits.
She could not own her home, could not choose its location, or have anything at all to say about it. The home, the children, and she herself belonged to the husband, who was "lord and master" in the sense of owner and dictator.
Now, in those countries where women have gained financial, industrial, and political standing, they hold a more dignified position in the home. Formerly a widow could be left penniless and her children willed away from her.
The present English law gives to the widow one-third of the property, and half the guardianship of the children. In case of divorce, the children under sixteen belong to the mother, unless she is notoriously unfit to have them.
Very similar to these are the laws in the British colonies, the United States, and Scandinavia. In these countries, too, with the exception of certain of our States, a married woman can own property, earn money, and collect her own wages, sue or be sued, make a contract with others, and in some places with her own husband.
She is also entitled to support for herself and her children, and to a divorce for various causes, including infidelity, brutality, intoxication, desertion, failure to provide, and felony.
In Germany the wife is legally entitled to a certain proportion of her husband's income, a right which women have in no other country. Everywhere else the vague term "support" is used, and even that is not granted in seven of our States.
In Holland, Austria-Hungary, Belgium, and Denmark the woman's movement is recent and slow. The Dutch Queen is the only woman there who is not ruled; and the Dutchman wanted her called "king," so as to lessen their dislike of being subject to a woman's commands.
Switzerland, though it boasts of its democracy, excludes its women from influence and political power. It does not deny them work, but like the German, French, and Russian peasants, the Swiss women carry the heavy burdens of field work and street-cleaning without any reason to believe that there is dignity in labor.
In Italy, Spain, and Portugal the upward movement of women has come mainly from the masses, not, as in Russia, from the aristocrats, or, as among the English-speaking races, from the middle class.
In Greece the educated women are leading the crusade. The principal of a girls' college in Athens said recently: "It is true and beyond dispute that the Greece of to-day owes its rapid progress to its women."
While Greek women cannot vote, they take an active part in political life. During campaigns they make speeches for their husbands and brothers, and at other times traverse the country expounding the doctrines of the party they espouse. They resemble the English political woman of the style of Mrs. Humphrey Ward's "Marcella," a type scarcely to be found in any other country.
Even into slumbering Turkey, land of harems, Greek women are carrying modern ideas of education. There is aGreek girls' school in Constantinople; and, principally through Greek influence, Turkish women are studying European languages, reading foreign books, and looking toward the great world where women can be the comrades, friends, and equals of men, instead of their playthings and slaves.
All through the Orient the conditions of Turkey are practically reproduced. In spite of the abolition of the suttee, the poor widows of India have a mournful lot. It is only the most daring of Chinese mothers who would leave her little daughter's feet unbound. A few Japanese women rebel at giving up home and children simply because milord has tired of his wife; but to most the thought of opposing the customs of centuries is still remote.
Even Asiatic women, nevertheless, are progressing. Some come to America for the education their own continent cannot furnish. A Chinese woman doctor recently lectured on her country all through the United States; and Japanese women are found in our colleges.
In the Pacific Ocean, far beyond China and Japan, lie the only two countries in the world which fully acknowledge the equality of men and women by giving political rights to all citizens of twenty-one, regardless of sex. They are New Zealand and Australia.
New Zealand was the first by a dozen years to put her daughters on an equality with her sons. It was in 1867 that the cry was raised. "Shall our mothers, wives, and sisters be our equals or our subjects?"
The answer was given in 1893 by the full enfranchisement of women. In Australia the change came more gradually, province by province. But a few months ago the final concession was made and now Australian women, like their sisters of New Zealand, are the equals and not the subjects of their husbands, brothers, and sons.
More conservative than England's colonies of the Southern Seas is her great Northern possession, Canada. There widows and spinsters are held in high favor, for full municipal suffrage belongs to them. But the married woman is barred out. This is probably a survival of the subordination of the wife; but the Canadian woman is asking whether the acceptance of a husband should be considered unfailing proof of her inferior judgment.
There are four States in the Union—Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah—where women have full political rights. They vote on every election from school trustee to President. They are eligible for every office from pound-keeper to Governor. They have sat in the different Legislatures and have filled many executive offices.
These four States do not, however, hold a monopoly of the women voters. Four more have some form of local suffrage, and in twenty-five women can vote on school elections. In New York, for instance, women taxpayers may vote on all propositions for the expenditure of public money. In addition, they have school suffrage and are eligible as trustees.
There are clubs and societies which enroll in this country about four million women. There are associations of different nations to forward the interests of all women regardless of country. Such is the International Council of Women, representing twenty lands. Its great congresses, meeting every five years, are the event of the year in the land where they convene.
There is the International Woman's Suffrage Alliance and the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, with its branches in every country. Indeed the boundaries of countries are disappearing before this new sisterhood of woman.
Of famous women it would be folly to attempt to speak. America is justly proud of her many clever daughters, but every nation has its brilliant women. Mme. Curie, who was awarded the Nobel prize for science, was born and reared in Poland and lives in France. This year the Nobel peace prize fell to the Austrian Baroness von Suttner.
Considering the progress of the past half-century, one can but wonder what the next one hundred years will bring.
All the world is graft,And all the men and women merely grafters.They have their sure things and their bunco games,And one man in his time works many grafts,His bluffs being seven ages. At first the infantConning his dad until he walks the floor;And then the whining schoolboy, poring o'er his book,Jollying his teacher into marking himA goodly grade. And then the lover,Making each maiden think that sheIs but the only one. And then the soldier,Full of strange words and bearded like a pard,Seeking the bubble reputation,Even in the magazines. And then the justice,Handing out the bull con to the benchAnd jollying the jury till it thinksHe knows it all. The sixth age shiftsTo lean and slippered pantaloon,With spectacles on nose—his is a graft!For he is then the Old InhabitantAnd all must hear him talk. Last scene of all,That ends this strange, eventful history,Is second childishness and mere oblivion,Sans graft, sans pull, sans cinch, sans everything.Chicago Tribune.
All the world is graft,And all the men and women merely grafters.They have their sure things and their bunco games,And one man in his time works many grafts,His bluffs being seven ages. At first the infantConning his dad until he walks the floor;And then the whining schoolboy, poring o'er his book,Jollying his teacher into marking himA goodly grade. And then the lover,Making each maiden think that sheIs but the only one. And then the soldier,Full of strange words and bearded like a pard,Seeking the bubble reputation,Even in the magazines. And then the justice,Handing out the bull con to the benchAnd jollying the jury till it thinksHe knows it all. The sixth age shiftsTo lean and slippered pantaloon,With spectacles on nose—his is a graft!For he is then the Old InhabitantAnd all must hear him talk. Last scene of all,That ends this strange, eventful history,Is second childishness and mere oblivion,Sans graft, sans pull, sans cinch, sans everything.
Chicago Tribune.
"Whatchy goin' t' gimme?" says the youngest boy to pa;"Whatchy goin' t' gimme?" says the youngest girl to ma;"Whatchy goin' t' gimme?" says the maiden to her beau;Everywhere the answer is, "Oh, sumpin, I dunno.""Whatchy goin' t' gimme?" asks the little boy at school—His just 'fore Christmas goodness makes him mindful of each rule;"Whatchy goin' t' gimme?" sings the gamin in the street;"Whatchy goin' t' gimme?" on our every hand we meet."Whatchy goin' t' gimme?" asks the yawning money-boxMeant to catch the coin to feed the hungry folks in flocks;"Whatchy goin' t' gimme?" asks the wretched and the poor,Living in their penury a stone's throw from your door."Whatchy goin' t' gimme?" asks the great big world, of you;"Lifetime full of usefulness, heart sincere and true?""Whatchy goin' t' gimme?" Hear it everywhere you go—Always comes the answer, "Oh, just sumpin, I dunno."Baltimore American.
"Whatchy goin' t' gimme?" says the youngest boy to pa;"Whatchy goin' t' gimme?" says the youngest girl to ma;"Whatchy goin' t' gimme?" says the maiden to her beau;Everywhere the answer is, "Oh, sumpin, I dunno."
"Whatchy goin' t' gimme?" asks the little boy at school—His just 'fore Christmas goodness makes him mindful of each rule;"Whatchy goin' t' gimme?" sings the gamin in the street;"Whatchy goin' t' gimme?" on our every hand we meet.
"Whatchy goin' t' gimme?" asks the yawning money-boxMeant to catch the coin to feed the hungry folks in flocks;"Whatchy goin' t' gimme?" asks the wretched and the poor,Living in their penury a stone's throw from your door.
"Whatchy goin' t' gimme?" asks the great big world, of you;"Lifetime full of usefulness, heart sincere and true?""Whatchy goin' t' gimme?" Hear it everywhere you go—Always comes the answer, "Oh, just sumpin, I dunno."
Baltimore American.
"And Crœsus lifted up his voice and cried, 'Solon! Solon!' And King Cyrus ordered that the fire be extinguished and the captive released."—Herodotus.
"And Crœsus lifted up his voice and cried, 'Solon! Solon!' And King Cyrus ordered that the fire be extinguished and the captive released."—Herodotus.
There's a basis for a thesis in the history of Crœsus—Mr. Crœsus, Greece's captain of finance;It contains an exegesis on the clippings of the fleecesOf the lambs, when Wall Street's breezes are not tempered, and the geese'sRavished feathers pay the piper for the dance."In the days of old Rameses, this here story had paresis"—So says Kipling, and what he says goes with me,But old or new, it pleases me at times to save the piecesOf the stories of the glories and the grandeurs that were Greece's,When they prophesy a modern case, you see.The capture of old Crœsus was a stunt of the police'sThat for up-to-dateness seizes me with joy.He was roasted like a cheese is, out there on the Chersonesus,Till he hollered for his lawyer—"Solon!"Ay, that's where the squeeze is—"Technicality"—trial ceases—"vindication"—this release isWhat the grafters count on nowadays, my boy!Cleveland Leader.
There's a basis for a thesis in the history of Crœsus—Mr. Crœsus, Greece's captain of finance;It contains an exegesis on the clippings of the fleecesOf the lambs, when Wall Street's breezes are not tempered, and the geese'sRavished feathers pay the piper for the dance.
"In the days of old Rameses, this here story had paresis"—So says Kipling, and what he says goes with me,But old or new, it pleases me at times to save the piecesOf the stories of the glories and the grandeurs that were Greece's,When they prophesy a modern case, you see.
The capture of old Crœsus was a stunt of the police'sThat for up-to-dateness seizes me with joy.He was roasted like a cheese is, out there on the Chersonesus,Till he hollered for his lawyer—"Solon!"Ay, that's where the squeeze is—"Technicality"—trial ceases—"vindication"—this release isWhat the grafters count on nowadays, my boy!
Cleveland Leader.
BY WASHINGTON IRVING.
Washington Irving was born in the city of New York, April 3, 1783, and died at Sunnyside, near Tarrytown, New York, November 28, 1859. Irving is frequently spoken of as the founder of American literature. Though fond of reading, he had little taste for study in his youth, and did not attend college.Failing health caused him to go to Europe, where he traveled for several years. His first literary work of importance was his "Knickerbocker's History of New York." Shortly afterward, while engaged in a commercial venture with his brothers, he found it necessary to make a second visit to England. The firm failed, and, while still in England, Irving again devoted all his attention to literature.The "Sketch Book" was the first of the young author's works to win favor on the other side. This was followed by "Bracebridge Hall" and "Tales of a Traveler." Irving then went to Spain, and in the course of the several years that he spent there he wrote "A Life of Columbus," the "Conquest of Granada," and "The Alhambra." Subsequently he wrote his two most celebrated biographical works—"The Life of Washington" and "The Life of Goldsmith."Irving was noted principally for his quaint humor and graceful literary expression. The following story, "The Devil and Tom Walker," is taken from "The Tales of a Traveler."
Washington Irving was born in the city of New York, April 3, 1783, and died at Sunnyside, near Tarrytown, New York, November 28, 1859. Irving is frequently spoken of as the founder of American literature. Though fond of reading, he had little taste for study in his youth, and did not attend college.Failing health caused him to go to Europe, where he traveled for several years. His first literary work of importance was his "Knickerbocker's History of New York." Shortly afterward, while engaged in a commercial venture with his brothers, he found it necessary to make a second visit to England. The firm failed, and, while still in England, Irving again devoted all his attention to literature.The "Sketch Book" was the first of the young author's works to win favor on the other side. This was followed by "Bracebridge Hall" and "Tales of a Traveler." Irving then went to Spain, and in the course of the several years that he spent there he wrote "A Life of Columbus," the "Conquest of Granada," and "The Alhambra." Subsequently he wrote his two most celebrated biographical works—"The Life of Washington" and "The Life of Goldsmith."Irving was noted principally for his quaint humor and graceful literary expression. The following story, "The Devil and Tom Walker," is taken from "The Tales of a Traveler."
Washington Irving was born in the city of New York, April 3, 1783, and died at Sunnyside, near Tarrytown, New York, November 28, 1859. Irving is frequently spoken of as the founder of American literature. Though fond of reading, he had little taste for study in his youth, and did not attend college.Failing health caused him to go to Europe, where he traveled for several years. His first literary work of importance was his "Knickerbocker's History of New York." Shortly afterward, while engaged in a commercial venture with his brothers, he found it necessary to make a second visit to England. The firm failed, and, while still in England, Irving again devoted all his attention to literature.The "Sketch Book" was the first of the young author's works to win favor on the other side. This was followed by "Bracebridge Hall" and "Tales of a Traveler." Irving then went to Spain, and in the course of the several years that he spent there he wrote "A Life of Columbus," the "Conquest of Granada," and "The Alhambra." Subsequently he wrote his two most celebrated biographical works—"The Life of Washington" and "The Life of Goldsmith."Irving was noted principally for his quaint humor and graceful literary expression. The following story, "The Devil and Tom Walker," is taken from "The Tales of a Traveler."
Washington Irving was born in the city of New York, April 3, 1783, and died at Sunnyside, near Tarrytown, New York, November 28, 1859. Irving is frequently spoken of as the founder of American literature. Though fond of reading, he had little taste for study in his youth, and did not attend college.Failing health caused him to go to Europe, where he traveled for several years. His first literary work of importance was his "Knickerbocker's History of New York." Shortly afterward, while engaged in a commercial venture with his brothers, he found it necessary to make a second visit to England. The firm failed, and, while still in England, Irving again devoted all his attention to literature.The "Sketch Book" was the first of the young author's works to win favor on the other side. This was followed by "Bracebridge Hall" and "Tales of a Traveler." Irving then went to Spain, and in the course of the several years that he spent there he wrote "A Life of Columbus," the "Conquest of Granada," and "The Alhambra." Subsequently he wrote his two most celebrated biographical works—"The Life of Washington" and "The Life of Goldsmith."Irving was noted principally for his quaint humor and graceful literary expression. The following story, "The Devil and Tom Walker," is taken from "The Tales of a Traveler."
Washington Irving was born in the city of New York, April 3, 1783, and died at Sunnyside, near Tarrytown, New York, November 28, 1859. Irving is frequently spoken of as the founder of American literature. Though fond of reading, he had little taste for study in his youth, and did not attend college.
Failing health caused him to go to Europe, where he traveled for several years. His first literary work of importance was his "Knickerbocker's History of New York." Shortly afterward, while engaged in a commercial venture with his brothers, he found it necessary to make a second visit to England. The firm failed, and, while still in England, Irving again devoted all his attention to literature.
The "Sketch Book" was the first of the young author's works to win favor on the other side. This was followed by "Bracebridge Hall" and "Tales of a Traveler." Irving then went to Spain, and in the course of the several years that he spent there he wrote "A Life of Columbus," the "Conquest of Granada," and "The Alhambra." Subsequently he wrote his two most celebrated biographical works—"The Life of Washington" and "The Life of Goldsmith."
Irving was noted principally for his quaint humor and graceful literary expression. The following story, "The Devil and Tom Walker," is taken from "The Tales of a Traveler."
A few miles from Boston, in Massachusetts, there is a deep inlet winding several miles into the interior of the country from Charles Bay, and terminating in a thickly wooded swamp, or morass. On one side of this inlet is a beautiful dark grove; on the opposite side the land rises abruptly from the water's edge, into a high ridge on which grow a few scattered oaks of great age and immense size.
It was under one of these gigantic trees, according to old stories, that Kidd the pirate buried his treasure. The inlet allowed a facility to bring the money in a boat secretly and at night to the very foot of the hill. The elevation of the place permitted a good lookout to be kept that no one was at hand, while the remarkable trees formed good landmarks by which the place might easily be found again.
The old stories add, moreover, that the devil presided at the hiding of the money, and took it under his guardianship; but this, it is well known, he always does with buried treasure, particularly when it has been ill gotten. Be that as it may, Kidd never returned to recover his wealth, being shortly after seized at Boston, sent out to England, and there hanged for a pirate.
About the year 1727, just at the time when earthquakes were prevalent in New England, and shook many tall sinners down upon their knees, there lived near this place a meager, miserly fellow of the name of Tom Walker. He had a wife as miserly as himself; they were so miserly that they even conspired to cheat each other. Whatever the woman could lay hands on she hid away; a hen could not cackle but she was on the alert to secure the new-laid egg. Her husband was continually prying about to detect her secret hoards, and many and fierce were the conflicts that took place about what ought to have been common property.
They lived in a forlorn-looking house that stood alone and had an air ofstarvation. A few straggling savin-trees, emblems of sterility, grew near it; no smoke ever curled from its chimney; no traveler stopped at its door. A miserable horse, whose ribs were as articulate as the bars of a gridiron, stalked about a field where a thin carpet of moss, scarcely covering the ragged beds of pudding-stone, tantalized and balked his hunger, and sometimes he would lean his head over the fence, look piteously at the passer-by, and seem to petition deliverance from this land of famine.
The house and its inmates had altogether a bad name. Tom's wife was a tall termagant, fierce of temper, loud of tongue, and strong of arm. Her voice was often heard in wordy warfare with her husband, and his face sometimes showed signs that their conflicts were not confined to words. No one ventured, however, to interfere between them; the lonely wayfarer shrunk within himself at the horrid clamor and clapper-clawing; eyed the den of discord askance, and hurried on his way, rejoicing, if a bachelor, in his celibacy.
One day that Tom Walker had been to a distant part of the neighborhood, he took what he considered a short cut homeward through the swamp. Like most short cuts, it was an ill-chosen route. The swamp was thickly grown with great gloomy pines and hemlocks, some of them ninety feet high, which made it dark at noonday, and a retreat for all the owls of the neighborhood. It was full of pits and quagmires, partly covered with weeds and mosses, where the green surface often betrayed the traveler into a gulf of black smothering mud; there were also dark and stagnant pools, the abodes of the tadpole, the bullfrog, and the water-snake, and where trunks of pines and hemlocks lay half-drowned, half-rotting, looking like alligators, sleeping in the mire.
Tom had long been picking his way cautiously through this treacherous forest; stepping from tuft to tuft of rushes and roots which afforded precarious footholds among the deep sloughs; or pacing carefully, like a cat, among the prostrate trunks of trees; startled now and then by the sudden screaming of the bittern, or the quacking of a wild duck, rising on the wing from some solitary pool.
At length he arrived at a piece of firm ground which ran out like a peninsula into the deep bosom of the swamp. It had been one of the strongholds of the Indians during their wars with the first colonists. Here they had thrown up a kind of fort which they had looked upon as almost impregnable, and had used as a place of refuge for their squaws and children. Nothing remained of the Indian fort but a few embankments gradually sinking to the level of the surrounding earth, and already overgrown in part by oaks and other forest trees, the foliage of which formed a contrast to the dark pines and hemlocks of the swamp.
It was late in the dusk of evening that Tom Walker reached the old fort, and he paused there for a while to rest himself. Any one but he would have felt unwilling to linger in this lonely, melancholy place, for the common people had a bad opinion of it from the stories handed down from the time of the Indian wars, when it was asserted that the savages held incantations here and made sacrifices to the evil spirit. Tom Walker, however, was not a man to be troubled with any fears of the kind.
He reposed himself for some time on the trunk of a fallen hemlock, listening to the boding cry of the tree-toad, and delving with his walking-staff into a mound of black mold at his feet. As he turned up the soil unconsciously, his staff struck against something hard. He raked it out of the vegetable mold, and lo! a cloven skull, with an Indian tomahawk buried deep in it, lay before him. The rust on the weapon showed the time that had elapsed since this death-blow had been given. It was a dreary memento of the fierce struggle that had taken place in this last foothold of the Indian warriors.
"Humph!" said Tom Walker, as he gave the skull a kick to shake the dirt from it.
"Let that skull alone!" said a gruff voice.
Tom lifted up his eyes and beheld a great black man, seated directly opposite him on the stump of a tree.
He was exceedingly surprised, having neither seen nor heard any one approach, and he was still more perplexedon observing, as well as the gathering gloom would permit, that the stranger was neither negro nor Indian.
It is true, he was dressed in a rude, half Indian garb, and had a red belt or sash swathed round his body, but his face was neither black nor copper color, but swarthy and dingy and begrimed with soot, as if he had been accustomed to toil among fires and forges. He had a shock of coarse black hair that stood out from his head in all directions, and bore an ax on his shoulder.
He scowled for a moment at Tom with a pair of great red eyes.
"What are you doing in my grounds?" said the black man, with a hoarse growling voice.
"Your grounds?" said Tom, with a sneer; "no more your grounds than mine: they belong to Deacon Peabody."
"Deacon Peabody be d——d," said the stranger, "as I flatter myself he will be, if he does not look more to his own sins and less to his neighbors'. Look yonder, and see how Deacon Peabody is faring."
Tom looked in the direction that the stranger pointed, and beheld one of the great trees, fair and flourishing without, but rotten at the core, and saw that it had been nearly hewn through, so that the first high wind was likely to blow it down. On the bark of the tree was scored the name of Deacon Peabody.
He now looked round and found most of the tall trees marked with the names of some great men of the colony, and all more or less scored by the ax. The one on which he had been seated, and which had evidently just been hewn down, bore the name of Crowninshield; and he recollected a mighty rich man of that name, who had made a vulgar display of wealth, which it was whispered he had acquired by buccaneering.
"He's just ready for burning!" said the black man, with a growl of triumph. "You see I am likely to have a good stock of firewood for winter."
"But what right have you," said Tom, "to cut down Deacon Peabody's timber?"
"The right of prior claim," said the other. "This woodland belonged to me long before one of your white-faced race put foot upon the soil."
"And pray, who are you, if I may be so bold?" said Tom.
"Oh, I go by various names. I am the Wild Huntsman in some countries; the Black Miner in others. In this neighborhood I am known by the name of the Black Woodsman. I am he to whom the red men devoted this spot, and now and then roasted a white man by way of sweet-smelling sacrifice. Since the red men have been exterminated by you white savages, I amuse myself by presiding at the persecutions of Quakers and Anabaptists; I am the great patron and prompter of slave dealers, and the grand master of the Salem witches."
"The upshot of all which is, that, if I mistake not," said Tom sturdily, "you are he commonly called 'Old Scratch.'"
"The same at your service!" replied the black man, with a half civil nod.
Such was the opening of this interview, according to the old story, though it has almost too familiar an air to be credited. One would think that to meet with such a singular personage in this wild, lonely place would have shaken any man's nerves; but Tom was a hard-minded fellow, not easily daunted, and he had lived so long with a termagant wife that he did not even fear the devil.
It is said that after this commencement they had a long and earnest conversation together as Tom returned homeward. The black man told him of great sums of money which had been buried by Kidd the pirate, under the oak-trees on the high ridge not far from the morass. All these were under his command and protected by his power, so that none could find them but such as propitiated his favor. These he offered to place within Tom Walker's reach, having conceived an especial kindness for him, but they were to be had only on certain conditions.
What these conditions were may easily be surmised, though Tom never disclosed them publicly. They must have been very hard, for he required time to think of them, and he was not a man to stick at trifles where money was in view. When they had reached the edge of the swamp the stranger paused.
"What proof have I that all you have been telling me is true?" said Tom.
"There is my signature," said theblack man, pressing his finger on Tom's forehead. So saying, he turned off among the thickets of the swamp, and seemed, as Tom said, to go down, down, down, into the earth, until he totally disappeared.
When Tom reached home he found the black print of a finger burnt, as it were, into his forehead, which nothing could obliterate.
The first news his wife had to tell him was the sudden death of Absalom Crowninshield, the rich buccaneer. It was announced in the papers with the usual flourish that "a great man had fallen in Israel."
Tom recollected the tree which his black friend had just hewn down, and which was ready for burning. "Let the freebooter roast," said Tom; "who cares!" He now felt convinced that all he had heard and seen was no illusion.
He was not prone to let his wife into his confidence, but as this was an uneasy secret he willingly shared it with her. All her avarice was awakened at the mention of hidden gold, and she urged her husband to comply with the black man's terms and secure what would make them wealthy for life. However Tom might have felt disposed to sell himself to the devil, he was determined not to do so to oblige his wife; so he flatly refused out of the mere spirit of contradiction. Many and bitter were the quarrels they had on the subject, but the more she talked the more resolute was Tom not to be damned to please her. At length she determined to drive the bargain on her own account, and, if she succeeded, to keep all the gain to herself.
Being of the same fearless temper as her husband, she set off for the old Indian fort toward the close of a summer's day. She was many hours absent. When she came back she was reserved and sullen in her replies. She spoke something of a black man whom she had met about twilight, hewing at the root of a tall tree. He was sulky, however, and would not come to terms; she was to go again with a propitiatory offering, but what it was she forbore to say.
The next evening she set off again for the swamp, with her apron heavily laden. Tom waited and waited for her, but in vain: midnight came, but she did not make her appearance; morning, noon, night returned, but still she did not come. Tom now grew uneasy for her safety, especially as he found she had carried off in her apron the silver teapot and spoons, and every portable article of value. Another night elapsed, another morning came; but no wife. In a word, she was never heard of more.
What was her real fate nobody knows, in consequence of so many pretending to know. It is one of those facts that have become confounded by a variety of historians. Some asserted that she lost her way among the tangled mazes of the swamp and sunk into some pit or slough; others, more uncharitable, hinted that she had eloped with the household booty, and made off to some other province; while others assert that the tempter had decoyed her into a dismal quagmire, on top of which her hat was found lying. In confirmation of this it was said a great black man with an ax on his shoulder was seen late that very evening coming out of the swamp, carrying a bundle tied in a check apron, with an air of surly triumph.
The most current and probable story, however, observes that Tom Walker grew so anxious about the fate of his wife and his property that he set out at length to seek them both at the Indian fort. During a long summer's afternoon he searched about the gloomy place, but no wife was to be seen. He called her name repeatedly, but she was nowhere to be heard. The bittern alone responded to his voice, as he flew screaming by; or the bullfrog croaked dolefully from a neighborly pool.
At length, it is said, just in the brown hour of twilight, when the owls began to hoot and the bats to flit about, his attention was attracted by the clamor of carrion crows that were hovering about a cypress-tree. He looked and beheld a bundle tied in a check apron and hanging in the branches of a tree; with a great vulture perched hard by, as if keeping watch upon it. He leaped with joy, for he recognized his wife's apron, and supposed it to contain the household valuables.
"Let us get hold of the property," said he consolingly to himself, "and we will endeavor to do without the woman."
As he scrambled up the tree the vulture spread its wide wings, and sailed off screaming into the deep shadows of the forest. Tom seized the check apron, but, woful sight! found nothing but a heart and liver tied up in it.
Such, according to the most authentic old story, was all that was to be found of Tom's wife. She had probably attempted to deal with the black man as she had been accustomed to deal with her husband; but though a female scold is generally considered a match for the devil, yet in this instance she appears to have had the worst of it.
She must have died game, however: from the part that remained unconquered. Indeed, it is said, Tom noticed many prints of cloven feet deeply stamped about the tree, and several handfuls of hair that looked as if they had been plucked from the coarse black shock of the woodsman. Tom knew his wife's prowess by experience. He shrugged his shoulders as he looked at the signs of a fierce clapper-clawing. "Egad," said he to himself, "Old Scratch must have had a tough time of it!"
Tom consoled himself for the loss of his property by the loss of his wife; for he was a little of a philosopher. He even felt something like gratitude toward the black woodsman, who he considered had done him a kindness. He sought, therefore, to cultivate a further acquaintance with him, but for some time without success; the old black legs played shy, for whatever people may think, he is not always to be had for calling for; he knows how to play his cards when pretty sure of his game.
At length, it is said, when delay had whetted Tom's eagerness to the quick, and prepared him to agree to anything rather than not gain the promised treasure, he met the black man one evening in his usual woodsman dress, with his ax on his shoulder, sauntering along the edge of the swamp, and humming a tune. He affected to receive Tom's advance with great indifference, made brief replies, and went on humming his tune.
By degrees, however, Tom brought him to business, and they began to haggle about the terms on which the former was to have the pirate's treasure. There was one condition which need not be mentioned, being generally understood in all cases where the devil grants favors; but there were others about which, though of less importance, he was inflexibly obstinate. He insisted that the money found through his means should be employed in his service. He proposed, therefore, that Tom should employ it in the black traffic—that is to say, that he should fit out a slave ship. This, however, Tom resolutely refused; he was bad enough, in all conscience, but the devil himself could not tempt him to turn slave-dealer.
Finding Tom so squeamish on this point, he did not insist upon it, but proposed instead that he should turn usurer; the devil being extremely anxious for the increase of usurers, looking upon them as his peculiar people.
To this no objections were made, for it was just to Tom's taste.
"You shall open a broker's shop in Boston next month," said the black man.
"I'll do it to-morrow if you wish," said Tom Walker.
"You shall lend money at two per cent a month."
"Egad, I'll charge four!" replied Tom Walker.
"You shall extort bonds, foreclose mortgages, drive the merchant to bankruptcy——"
"I'll drive him to the d——l!" cried Tom Walker eagerly.
"You are the usurer for my money!" said the black legs, with delight.
"When will you want the rhino?"
"This very night."
"Done!" said the devil.
"Done!" said Tom Walker.
So they shook hands and struck a bargain.
A few days' time saw Tom Walker seated behind his desk in a counting-house in Boston. His reputation for a ready-moneyed man, who would lend money out for a good consideration, soon spread abroad. Everybody remembers the days of Governor Belcher, when money was particularly scarce. It was a time of paper credit.
The country had been deluged with government bills; the famous Land Bank had been established; there had been a rage for speculating; the peoplehad run mad with schemes for new settlements, for building cities in the wilderness; land jobbers went about with maps of grants and townships and Eldorados, lying nobody knew where, but which everybody was ready to purchase. In a word, the great speculating fever which breaks out every now and then in the country had raged to an alarming degree, and everybody was dreaming of making sudden fortunes from nothing. As usual, the fever had subsided; the dream had gone off, and the imaginary fortunes with it; the patients were left in doleful plight, and the whole country resounded with the consequent cry of "hard times."
At this propitious time of public distress did Tom Walker set up as a usurer in Boston. His door was soon thronged by customers. The needy and the adventurous; the gambling speculator; the dreaming land-jobber; the thriftless tradesman; the merchant with cracked credit; in short, every one driven to raise money by desperate means and desperate sacrifices hurried to Tom Walker.
Thus Tom was the universal friend of the needy, and he acted like a "friend in need"—that is to say, he always exacted good pay and good security. In proportion to the distress of the applicant was the hardness of his terms. He accumulated bonds and mortgages; gradually squeezed his customers closer and closer, and sent them at length, dry as a sponge, from his door.
In this way he made money hand over hand; became a rich and mighty man, and exalted his cocked hat upon 'change. He built himself, as usual, a vast house, out of ostentation; but left the greater part of it unfinished and unfurnished out of parsimony. He even set up a carriage in the fulness of his vainglory, though he nearly starved the horses which drew it; and as the ungreased wheels groaned and screeched on the axletrees, you would have thought you heard the souls of the poor debtors he was squeezing.
As Tom waxed old, however, he grew thoughtful. Having secured the good things of this world, he began to feel anxious about those of the next. He thought with regret on the bargain he had made with his black friend, and set his wits to work to cheat him out of the conditions. He became, therefore, all of a sudden, a violent churchgoer. He prayed loudly and strenuously, as if heaven were to be taken by force of lungs. Indeed, one might always tell when he had sinned most during the week, by the clamor of his Sunday devotion.
The quiet Christians who had been modestly and steadfastly traveling Zion-ward were struck with self-reproach at seeing themselves so suddenly outstripped in their career by this new-made convert. Tom was as rigid in religious as in money matters; he was a stern supervisor and censurer of his neighbors, and seemed to think every sin entered up to their account became a credit on his own side of the page. He even talked of the expediency of reviving the persecution of Quakers and Anabaptists. In a word, Tom's zeal became as notorious as his riches.
Still, in spite of all this strenuous attention to forms, Tom had a lurking dread that the devil, after all, would have his due. That he might not be taken unawares, therefore, it is said he always carried a small Bible in his coat-pocket. He had also a great folio Bible on his counting-house desk, and would frequently be found reading it when people called on business; on such occasions he would lay his green spectacles on the book, to mark the place, while he turned round to drive some usurious bargain.
Some say that Tom grew a little crack-brained in his old days, and that, fancying his end approaching, he had his horse new shod, saddled, and bridled, and buried with his feet uppermost, because he supposed that at the last day the world would be turned upside down; in which case he should find his horse standing ready for mounting, and he was determined at the worst to give his old friend a run for it. This, however, is probably a mere old wives' fable. If he really did take such a precaution it was totally superfluous; at least, so says the authentic old legend, which closes his story in the following manner:
On one hot afternoon in the dog days, just as a terrible black thunder-gust was coming up, Tom sat in his counting-house in his white linen cap and India silk morning-gown. He was on the point of foreclosing a mortgage by which he would complete the ruin of an unlucky land speculator, for whom he had professed the greatest friendship. The poor land-jobber begged him to grant a few months' indulgence. Tom had grown testy and irritated, and refused another day.
"My family will be ruined and brought upon the parish," said the land-jobber.
"Charity begins at home," replied Tom. "I must take care of myself in these hard times."
"You have made so much money out of me," said the speculator.
Tom lost his patience and his piety. "The devil take me," said he, "if I have made a farthing!"
Just then there were three loud knocks at the street-door. He stepped out to see who was there.
A black man was holding a black horse which neighed and stamped with impatience.
"Tom, you're come for!" said the black fellow gruffly.
Tom shrunk back, but too late. He had left his little Bible at the bottom of his coat pocket, and his big Bible on the desk buried under the mortgage he was about to foreclose. Never was sinner taken more unawares. The black man whisked him like a child astride the horse and away he galloped in the midst of a thunder-storm.
The clerks stuck their pens behind their ears and stared after him from the windows. Away went Tom Walker, dashing down the street, his white cap bobbing up and down, his morning-gown fluttering in the wind, and his steed striking fire out of the pavement. When the clerks turned to look for the black man he had disappeared.
Tom Walker never returned to foreclose the mortgage. A countryman who lived on the borders of the swamp reported that in the height of the thunder-gust he had heard a great clattering of hoofs and a howling along the road, and that when he ran to the window he just caught sight of a figure such as I have described on a horse that galloped like mad across the fields, over the hills and down into the black hemlock swamp toward the old Indian fort, and that shortly after a thunderbolt fell in that direction which seemed to set the whole forest in a blaze.
The good people of Boston shook their heads and shrugged their shoulders, but had been so much accustomed to witches and goblins and tricks of the devil in all kinds of shapes from the first settlement of the colony, that they were not so much horror-struck as might have been expected.
Trustees were appointed to take charge of Tom's effects. There was nothing, however, to administer upon. On searching his coffers, all his bonds and mortgages were found reduced to cinders. In place of gold and silver, his iron chest was filled with worthless chips and shavings; two skeletons lay in his stable instead of his half-starved horses, and the very next day his great house took fire and was burnt to the ground.
Such was the end of Tom Walker and his ill-gotten wealth. Let all griping money-brokers lay this story to heart. The truth of it is not to be doubted. The very hole under the oak-trees, from whence he dug Kidd's money, is to be seen to this day, and the neighboring swamp and old Indian fort are often haunted on stormy nights by a figure on horseback, in a morning-gown and white cap, which is doubtless the troubled spirit of the usurer.
In fact, the story has resolved itself into a proverb, and is the origin of that saying prevalent throughout New England of "The Devil and Tom Walker."
They were earth's purest children, young and fair,With eyes the shrines of unawaken'd thought,And brows as bright as spring or morning.