He
believed
it, but he had not forgotten that he had
been himself its champion.
been himself its champion.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v11 - Fro to Gre
A consequential youth who had just heard of the
death of his elder brother was flying home to take his inherit-
ance. A great lady had secured, as she had hoped, a brilliant
match for her daughter; her work over, she had been at the baths
to recover from the dissipation of the season; difficulty had arisen
unlooked for, and unless she was at hand to remove it the worst
consequences might be feared. A banker declared that the credit
of a leading commercial house might fail, unless he could be at
home on the day fixed for his return; he alone could save it. A
solicitor had the evidence in his portmanteau which would deter-
mine the succession to the lands and title of an ancient family.
An elderly gentleman was in despair about his young wife, whom
he had left at home; he had made a will by which she was to
lose his fortune if she married again after his death, but the will
was lying in his desk unsigned. The archbishop was on his way
to a synod, where the great question was to be discussed whether
gas might be used at the altar instead of candles. The altar
candles were blessed before they were used, and the doubt was
whether gas could be blessed. The right reverend prelate con-
ceived that if the gas tubes were made in the shape of candles
the difficulty could be got over, but he feared that without his
moderating influence the majority might come to a rash de-
cision.
All these persons were clamoring over their various anxi-
eties with the most naïve frankness, the truth coming freely out,
## p. 6088 (#58) ############################################
6088
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
whatever it might be. One distinguished-looking lady in deep
mourning, with a sad, gentle face, alone was resigned and hopeful.
It seemed that her husband had been stopped not long before at
the same station. She thought it possible that she might meet
him again.
The station-master listened to the complaints with composed
indifference. He told the loudest that they need not alarm them-
selves. The State would survive the absence of the minister.
The minister, in fact, was not thinking of the State at all, but of
the party triumph which he expected; and the peerage which was
to be his reward, the station-master said, would now be of no use to
him. The youth had a second brother who would succeed instead
of him, and the tenants would not be inconvenienced by the
change. The fine lady's daughter would marry to her own liking
instead of her mother's, and would be all the happier for it. The
commercial house was already insolvent, and the longer it lasted
the more innocent people would be ruined by it. The boy whom
the lawyer intended to make into a rich baronet was now work-
ing industriously at school, and would grow up a useful man.
a great estate fell in to him he would be idle and dissolute.
The old man might congratulate himself that he had escaped so
soon from the scrape into which he had fallen. His wife would
marry an adventurer, and would suffer worse from inheriting his
fortune. The archbishop was commended for his anxiety. His
solution of the candle problem was no doubt an excellent one; but
his clergy were now provided with a harmless subject to quarrel
over, and if it was adopted they might fall out over something
else which might be seriously mischievous.
If
"Do you mean, then, that you are not going to send us for-
ward at all? " the minister inquired sternly.
"You will see," the station-master answered with a curious
short laugh. I observed that he looked more gently at the lady
in mourning. She had said nothing, but he knew what was in
her mind, and though he held out no hope in words that her
wish would be gratified, he smiled sadly, and the irony passed
out of his face.
The crowd meanwhile were standing about the platform,
whistling tunes or amusing themselves, not ill-naturedly at the
distress of their grand companions. Something considerable was
happening. But they had so long experienced the ups and downs
of things that they were prepared for what fortune might send.
## p. 6089 (#59) ############################################
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
6089
They had not expected to find a Paradise where they were going,
and one place might be as good as another. They had nothing.
belonging to them except the clothes they stood in and their bits
of skill in their different trades. Wherever men were, there
would be need of cobblers, and tailors, and smiths, and carpenters.
If not, they might fall on their feet somehow, if there was work
to be done of any sort.
Presently a bell rang, a door was flung open, and we were
ordered into a waiting-room, where we were told that our lug-
gage was to be examined. It was a large, barely furnished
apartment, like the salle d'attente at the Northern Railway Sta-
tion at Paris. A rail ran across, behind which we were all
penned; opposite to us was the usual long table, on which were
piled boxes, bags, and portmanteaus, and behind them stood a
row of officials, in a plain uniform with gold bands round their
caps, and the dry peremptory manner which passengers accus-
tomed to deference so particularly dislike. At their backs was a
screen extending across the room, reaching half-way to the ceil-
ing; in the rear of it there was apparently an office.
We each looked to see that our particular belongings were
safe, but we were surprised to find that we could recognize none
of them. Packages there were in plenty, alleged to be the property
of the passengers who had come in by the train. They were
arranged in the three classes,-first, second, and third,- but the
proportions were inverted: most of it was labeled as the luggage
of the travelers in fustian, who had brought nothing with them
but what they carried in their hands; a moderate heap stood
where the second-class luggage should have been, and some of
superior quality; but none of us could make out the shapes of
our own trunks. As to the grand ladies and gentlemen, the in-
numerable articles which I had seen put as theirs into the van
were nowhere to be found. A few shawls and cloaks lay upon
the planks, and that was all. There was a loud outcry; but the
officials were accustomed to it, and took no notice. The station-
master, who was still in charge of us, said briefly that the saloon
luggage would be sent forward in the next train. The late
owners would have no more use for it, and it would be delivered
to their friends.
The late owners! Were we no longer actual owners, then?
My individual loss was not great, and besides, it might be made
up to me; for I saw my name on a strange box on the table,
## p. 6090 (#60) ############################################
6090
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
and being of curious disposition, the singularity of the adventure
made it interesting to me. The consternation of the rest was
indescribable. The minister supposed that he had fallen among
communists, who disbelieved in property, and was beginning a
speech on the elementary conditions of society; when silence was
called, and the third-class passengers were ordered to advance,
that their boxes might be opened. Each man had his own care-
fully docketed. The lids flew off, and within, instead of clothes,
and shoes, and dressing apparatus, and money, and jewels, and
such-like, were simply samples of the work which he had done
in his life. There was an account-book also, in which were
entered the number of days which he had worked, the number
and size of the fields, etc. , which he had drained and inclosed
and plowed, the crops which he had reaped, the walls which he
had built, the metal which he had dug out and smelted and
fashioned into articles of use to mankind, the leather which he
had tanned, the clothes which he had woven,-all entered with
punctual exactness; and on the opposite page, the wages which
he had received, and the share which had been allotted to him
of the good things which he had helped to create.
Besides his work, so specifically called, there were his actions,—
his affection for his parents or his wife and children, his self-
denials, his charities, his purity, his truth, his honesty; or it
might be ugly catalogues of sins and oaths and drunkenness and
brutality. But inquiry into action was reserved for a second
investigation before a higher commissioner. The first examina-
tion was confined to the literal work done by each man for the
general good,-how much he had contributed, and how much.
society had done for him in return; and no one, it seemed, could
be allowed to go any further without a certificate of having
passed this test satisfactorily. With the workmen, the balance in
most instances was found enormously in their favor. The state
of the case was so clear that the scrutiny was rapidly got over,
and they and their luggage were passed in to the higher court.
A few were found whose boxes were empty, who had done
nothing useful all their lives, and had subsisted by begging and
stealing. These were ordered to stand aside till the rest of us
had been disposed of.
The saloon passengers were taken next. Most of them, who
had nothing at all to show, were called up together and were
asked what they had to say for themselves. A well-dressed
## p. 6091 (#61) ############################################
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
6091
gentleman, who spoke for the rest, said that the whole investiga-
tion was a mystery to him. He and his friends had been born
to good fortunes, and had found themselves, on entering upon
life, amply provided for. They had never been told that work
was required of them, either work with their hands or work with
their heads, in fact, work of any kind. It was right of course
for the poor to work, because they could not honestly live other-
wise. For themselves, they had spent their time in amusements,
generally innocent. They had paid for everything which they
had consumed. They had stolen nothing, taken nothing from
any man by violence or fraud. They had kept the Command-
ments, all ten of them, from the time when they were old enough
to understand them. The speaker, at least, declared that he had
no breach of any Commandment on his own conscience, and he
believed that he might say as much of his companions. They
were superior people, who had been always looked up to and
well spoken of; and to call upon them to show what they had
done was against reason and equity.
"Gentlemen," said the chief official, "we have heard this
many times; yet as often as it is repeated we feel fresh aston-
ishment. You have been in a world where work is the condition
of life. Not a meal can be had by any man that some one has
not worked to produce. Those who work deserve to eat; those
who do not work deserve to starve. There are but three ways
of living: by working, by stealing, or by begging. Those who
have not lived by the first have lived by one of the other two.
And no matter how superior you think yourselves, you will not
pass here till you have something of your own to produce. You
have had your wages beforehand - ample wages, as you acknowl-
edge yourselves. What have you to show? "
"Wages! " the speaker said: "we are not hired servants; we
received no wages. What we spent was our own. All the or-
We have
ders we received were that we were not to do wrong.
done no wrong. I appeal to the higher court. "
But the appeal could not be received. To all who presented
themselves with empty boxes, no matter who they were, or how
excellent their characters appeared to one another, there was the
irrevocable answer - "No admittance, till you come better fur-
nished. " All who were in this condition, the duke and duchess
among them, were ordered to stand aside with the thieves. The
duchess declared that she had given the finest parties in the
-
## p. 6092 (#62) ############################################
6092
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
season, and as it was universally agreed that they had been the
most tedious, and that no one had found any pleasure there, a
momentary doubt rose whether they might not have answered
some useful purpose in disgusting people with such modes of en-
tertainment; but no evidence of this was forthcoming: the world
had attended them because the world had nothing else to do,
and she and her guests had been alike unprofitable. Thus the
large majority of the saloon passengers was disposed of. The
minister, the archbishop, the lawyer, the banker, and others who
although they had no material work credited to them had yet
been active and laborious in their different callings, were passed
to the superior judges.
Our turn came next,- ours of the second class, and a motley
gathering we were. Busy we must all have been, from the mul-
titude of articles which we found assigned to us: manufacturers
with their wares, solicitors with their law-suits, doctors and cler-
gymen with the bodies and souls which they had saved or lost,
authors with their books, painters and sculptors with their pict-
ures and statues. But the hard test was applied to all that we
had produced,-the wages which we had received on one side, and
the value of our exertions to mankind on the other,— and im-
posing as our performances looked when laid out to be exam-
ined, we had been paid, most of us, out of all proportion to
what we were found to have deserved. I was reminded of a
large compartment in the Paris Exhibition, where an active gen-
tleman, wishing to show the state of English literature, had col-
lected copies of every book, review, pamphlet, or newspaper
which had been published in a single year. The bulk was over-
whelming, but the figures were only decimal points, and the
worth of the whole was a fraction above zero. A few of us
were turned back summarily among the thieves and the fine
gentlemen and ladies: speculators who had done nothing but
handle money which had clung to their fingers in passing
through them, divines who had preached a morality which they
did not practice, and fluent orators who had made speeches which
they knew to be nonsense; philosophers who had spun out of
moonshine systems of the universe, distinguished pleaders who
had defeated justice while they established points of law, writers
of books upon subjects of which they knew enough to mislead
their readers, purveyors of luxuries which had added nothing to
human health or strength, physicians and apothecaries who had
-
## p. 6093 (#63) ############################################
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
6093
pretended to knowledge which they knew that they did not pos-
sess, these all, as the contents of their boxes bore witness
against them, were thrust back into the rejected herd.
There were some whose account stood better, as having at
least produced something of real merit, but they were cast on
the point of wages: modest excellence had come badly off; the
plausible and unscrupulous had thriven and grown rich. It was
tragical, and evidently a surprise to most of us, to see how
mendacious we had been: how we had sanded our sugar, watered
our milk, scamped our carpentering and mason's work, literally
and metaphorically; how in all things we had been thinking less.
of producing good work than of the profit which we could make
out of it; how we had sold ourselves to tell lies and act them,
because the public found lies pleasant and truth expensive and
troublesome. Some of us were manifest rogues, who had bought
cheap and sold dear, had used false measures and weights, had
made cotton pass for wool, and hemp for silk, and tin for silver.
The American peddler happened to be in the party, who had
put a rind upon a grindstone and had sold it as a cheese. These
were promptly sifted out and placed with their fellows; only per-
sons whose services were on the whole greater than the pay
which they had received were allowed their certificates. When
my own box was opened, I perceived that though the wages had
been small, the work done seemed smaller still; and I was sur-
prised to find myself among those who had passed.
The whistle of a train was heard at this moment, coming in
upon the main line. It was to go in half an hour, and those
who had been turned back were told that they were to proceed
by it to the place where they had been originally going. They
looked infinitely relieved at the news; but before they started, a
few questions had to be put to them, and a few alterations made
which were to affect their future. They were asked to explain
how they had come to be such worthless creatures. They gave
many answers, which came mainly to the same thing. Circum-
stances had been against them. It was all owing to circumstances.
They had been badly brought up. They had been placed in
situations where it had been impossible for them to do better.
The rich people repeated that they had never been informed that
any work was expected of them. Their wants had all been pro-
vided for, and it was unfair to expect that they should have ex-
erted themselves of their own accord when they had no motive
## p. 6094 (#64) ############################################
6094
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
for working. If they had only been born poor, all would have
gone well with them. The cheating tradesman declared that the
first duty of a shopkeeper, according to all received principles,
was to make money and better his condition. It was the buyer's
business to see to the quality of the articles which he purchased;
the shopkeeper was entitled to sell his wares at the highest price
which he could get for them. So, at least, it was believed and
taught by the recognized authorities on the subject. The orators,
preachers, newspaper writers, novel-writers, etc. , etc. , of whom
there were a great many, appealed to the crowds who came to
listen to them, or bought and read their productions. Tout le
monde, it was said, was wiser than the wisest single sage. They
had given the world what the world wished for and approved;
they had worked at supplying it with all their might, and it was
extremely hard to blame them for guiding themselves by the
world's judgment. The thieves and vagabonds argued that they
had been brought into existence without their consent being
asked: they had not wished for it; although they had not been
without their pleasures, they regarded existence on the whole as
a nuisance which they would gladly have been spared. Being
alive, however, they had to keep alive; and for all that they
could see, they had as full a right to the good things which the
world contained as anybody else, provided they could get them.
They were called thieves. Law and language were made by the
property-owners, who were their natural enemies. If society had
given them the means of living honestly they would have found
it easy to be honest. Society had done nothing for them—why
should they do anything for society?
So, in their various ways, those who had been "plucked"
defended themselves. They were all delighted to hear that they
were to have another chance; and I was amused to observe that
though some of them had pretended that they had not wished to
be born, and had rather not have been born, not one of them
protested against being sent back. All they asked was that they
should be put in a new position, and that the adverse influ-
ences should be taken off. I expected that among these adverse
influences they would have mentioned the faults of their own
dispositions. My own opinion had been that half the misdoings
of men came from congenital defects of character which they
had brought with them into the world, and that constitutional
courage, right-mindedness, and practical ability were as much gifts
## p. 6095 (#65) ############################################
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
6095
of nature or circumstance as the accidents of fortune. A change
in this respect was of more consequence than in any other. But
with themselves they were all apparently satisfied, and they
required only an improvement in their surroundings. The alter-
ations were rapidly made. The duchess was sent to begin her
life again in a laborer's cottage. She was to attend the village
school and rise thence into a housemaid. The fine gentleman
was made a plowboy. The authors and preachers were to become
mechanics, and bound apprentices to carpenters and blacksmiths.
A philosopher who, having had a good fortune and unbroken.
health, had insisted that the world was as good as it could be
made, was to be born blind and paralytic, and to find his way
through life under the new conditions. The thieves and cheats,
who pretended that their misdemeanors were due to poverty,
were to find themselves, when they arrived in the world again,
in palaces surrounded with luxury. The cup of Lethe was sent
round. The past became a blank. They were hurried into the
train; the engine screamed and flew away with them.
They will be all here again in a few years," the station-
master said, "and it will be the same story over again. I have
had these very people in my hands a dozen times. They have
been tried in all positions, and there is still nothing to show,
and nothing but complaints of circumstances. For my part,
I would put them out altogether. " "How long is it to last? " I
asked. "Well," he said, "it does not depend on me.
No one
passes here who cannot prove that he has lived to some purpose.
Some of the worst I have known made at last into pigs and
geese, to be fatted up and eaten, and made of use that way.
Others have become asses, condemned to carry burdens, to be
beaten with sticks, and to breed asses like themselves for a
hundred generations. All animated creatures tend to take the
shape at last which suits their character. "
The train was scarcely out of sight when again the bell rang.
The scene changed as at a theatre. The screen was rolled back,
and we who were left found ourselves in the presence of four
grave-looking persons, like the board of examiners whom we
remembered at college. We were called up one by one. The
work which had passed the first ordeal was again looked into,
and the quality of it compared with the talent or faculty of the
producer, to see how far he had done his best,- whether any-
where he had done worse than he might have done and knew
## p. 6096 (#66) ############################################
6096
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
how to have done; while besides, in a separate collection, were
the vices, the sins, the selfishnesses and ill-humors, with-in the
other scale- the acts of personal duty, of love and kindness and
charity, which had increased the happiness or lightened the sor-
rows of those connected with him. These last, I observed, had
generally been forgotten by the owner, who saw them appear
with surprise, and even repudiated them with protest. In the
work, of course, both material and moral, there was every gra-
dation both of kind and merit. But while nothing was abso-
lutely worthless, everything, even the highest achievements of
the greatest artist or the greatest saint, fell short of absolute
perfection. Each of us saw our own performances, from our
first ignorant beginnings to what we regarded as our greatest
triumph; and it was easy to trace how much of our faults were
due to natural deficiencies and the necessary failures of inexperi-
ence, and how much to self-will or vanity or idleness. Some
taint of mean motives, too,- some desire of reward, desire of
praise or honor or wealth, some foolish self-satisfaction, when
satisfaction ought not to have been felt, was to be seen infect-
ing everything, even the very best which was presented for scru-
tiny.
So plain was this that one of us, an earnest, impressive-look-
ing person, whose own work bore inspection better than that of
most of us, exclaimed passionately that so far as he was con-
cerned the examiners might spare their labor. From his earliest
years he had known what he ought to do, and in no instance
had he ever completely done it. He had struggled; he had con-
quered his grosser faults: but the farther he had gone, and the
better he had been able to do, his knowledge had still grown
faster than his power of acting upon it; and every additional day
that he had lived, his shortcomings had become more miserably
plain to him. Even if he could have reached perfection at last,
he could not undo the past, and the faults of his youth would
bear witness against him and call for his condemnation. There-
fore, he said, he abhorred himself. He had no merit which could
entitle him to look for favor. He had labored on to the end,
but he had labored with a full knowledge that the best which he
could offer would be unworthy of acceptance. He had been told,
and he believed, that a high Spirit not subject to infirmity had
done his work for him, and done it perfectly, and that if he
abandoned all claim on his own account, he might be accepted
## p. 6097 (#67) ############################################
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
6097
for the sake of what another had done. This, he trusted, was
true, and it was his sole dependence. In the so-called good
actions with which he seemed to be credited, there was nothing
that was really good; there was not one which was altogether
what it ought to have been.
He was evidently sincere, and what he said was undoubtedly
true true of him and true of every one. Even in the vehe-
mence of his self-abandonment a trace lingered of the taint which
he was confessing, for he was a polemical divine; he had spent
his life and gained a reputation in maintaining this particular
doctrine.
He believed it, but he had not forgotten that he had
been himself its champion.
The examiner looked kindly at him, but answered:-
"We do not expect impossibilities; and we do not blame you
when you have not accomplished what is beyond your strength.
Only those who are themselves perfect can do anything perfectly.
Human beings are born ignorant and helpless. They bring into
the world with them a disposition to seek what is pleasant to
themselves, and what is pleasant is not always right. They learn
to live as they learn everything else. At first they cannot do
rightly at all. They improve under teaching and practice. The
best only arrive at excellence. We do not find fault with the
painter on account of his first bad copies, if they were as good
as could be looked for at his age. Every craftsman acquires his
art by degrees. He begins badly; he cannot help it; and it is
the same with life. You learn to walk by falling down. You
learn to live by going wrong and experiencing the consequences
of it. We do not record against a man 'the sins of his youth'
if he has been honestly trying to improve himself. We do not
require the same self-control in a child as in a man. We do
not require the same attainments from all. Some are well
taught, some are ill taught, some are not taught at all. Some
have naturally good dispositions, some have naturally bad dispo-
sitions. Not one has had power to fulfill the law,' as you call
it, completely. Therefore it is no crime in him if he fails. We
reckon as faults those only which arise from idleness, willfulness,
selfishness, and deliberate preference of evil to good. Each is
judged according to what he has received. "
I was amused to observe how pleased the archbishop looked
while the examiner was speaking. He had himself been engaged
in controversy with this gentleman on the share of "good works »
―
XI-382
## p. 6098 (#68) ############################################
6098
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
in justifying a man; and if the examiner had not taken his side in
the discussion, he had at least demolished his adversary. The arch-
bishop had been the more disinterested in the line which he had
taken, as his own "works," though in several large folios, weighed
extremely little; and indeed, had it not been for passages in his
early life,—he had starved himself at college that he might not
be a burden upon his widowed mother,—I do not know but that
he might have been sent back into the world to serve as a parish
clerk.
For myself, there were questions which I was longing to ask,
and I was trying to collect my courage to speak. I wanted chiefly
to know what the examiner meant by "natural disposition. " Was
it that a man might be born with a natural capacity for becom-
ing a saint, as another man with a capacity to become a great
artist or musician, and that each of us could only grow to the
limits of his natural powers? And again, were idleness, willful-
ness, selfishness, etc. , etc. , natural dispositions? for in that case-
But at the moment the bell rang again, and my own name
was called. There was no occasion to ask who I was.
In every
instance the identity of the person, his history, small or large,
and all that he had said or done, was placed before the court so
clearly that there was no need for extorting a confession. There
stood the catalogue inexorably impartial, the bad actions in a
schedule painfully large, the few good actions veined with per-
sonal motives which spoilt the best of them. In the way of work
there was nothing to be shown but certain books and other writ-
ings, and these were spread out to be tested. A fluid was poured
on the pages, the effect of which was to obliterate entirely every
untrue proposition, and to make every partially true proposition
grow faint in proportion to the false element which entered into
it. Alas! chapter after chapter vanished away, leaving the paper
clean, as if no compositor had ever labored in setting type for it.
Pale and illegible became the fine-sounding paragraphs on which
I had secretly prided myself. A few passages, however, survived
here and there at long intervals. They were those on which I
had labored least, and had almost forgotten; or those, as I observed
in one or two instances, which had been selected for special repro-
bation in the weekly journals. Something stood to my credit,
and the worst charge, of willfully and intentionally setting down
what I did not believe to be true, was not alleged against me.
Ignorance, prejudice, carelessness; sins of infirmity, - culpable
## p. 6099 (#69) ############################################
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
6099
indeed, but not culpable in the last degree; the water in the ink,
the commonplaces, the ineffectual sentiments-these, to my un-
speakable comfort, I perceived were my heaviest crimes.
been accused of absolute worthlessness, I should have pleaded
guilty in the state of humiliation to which I was reduced; but
things were better than they might have been. I was flattering
myself that when it came to the wages question, the balance
would be in my favor: so many years of labor such and such
cheques received from my publisher. Here at least I held myself
safe, and I was in good hope that I might scrape through.
-
The examiner was good-natured in his manner. A reviewer
who had been listening for my condemnation was beginning to
look disgusted, when suddenly one of the walls of the court be-
came transparent, and there appeared an interminable vista of
creatures — creatures of all kinds from land and water, reaching
away into the extreme distance. They were those which in the
course of my life I had devoured, either in part or whole, to sus-
tain my unconscionable carcass. There they stood in lines with
solemn and reproachful faces,-oxen and calves, sheep and lambs,
deer, hares, rabbits, turkeys, ducks, chickens, pheasants, grouse,
and partridges, down to the larks and sparrows and blackbirds
which I had shot when a boy and made into puddings. Every
one of them had come up to bear witness against their murderer;
out of sea and river had come the trout and salmon, the soles
and turbots, the ling and cod, the whiting and mackerel, the
smelts and whitebait, the oysters, the crabs, the lobsters, the
shrimps. They seemed literally to be in millions, and I had eaten
them all. I talked of wages. These had been my wages. At
this enormous cost had my existence been maintained.
A stag
spoke for the rest: "We all," he said, "were sacrificed to keep
this cormorant in being, and to enable him to produce the mis-
erable bits of printed paper which are all that he has to show
for himself. Our lives were dear to us. In meadow and wood,
in air and water, we wandered harmless and innocent, enjoy-
ing the pleasant sunlight, the light of heaven and the sparkling
We were not worth much; we have no pretensions to high
qualities. If the person who stands here to answer for himself
can affirm that his value in the universe was equivalent to the
value of all of us who were sacrificed to feed him, we have no
more to say. Let it be so pronounced. We shall look at our
numbers, and we shall wonder at the judgment, though we shall
waves.
――
## p. 6100 (#70) ############################################
6100
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
withdraw our complaint. But for ourselves we say freely that we
have long watched him,-him and his fellows, and we have
failed to see in what the superiority of the human creature lies.
We know him only as the most cunning, the most destructive,
and unhappily the longest lived of all carnivorous beasts.
delight is in killing. Even when his hunger is satisfied, he kills.
us for his mere amusement. "
-
I
The oxen lowed approval, the sheep bleated, the birds screamed,
the fishes flapped their tails. I, for myself, stood mute and self-
condemned. What answer but one was possible? Had I been
myself on the bench I could not have hesitated. The fatal sen-
tence of condemnation was evidently about to be uttered, when
the scene became indistinct, there was a confused noise, a change
of condition, a sound of running feet and of many voices.
awoke. I was again in the railway carriage; the door was thrown
open; porters entered to take our things. We stepped out upon
the platform. We were at the terminus for which we had been
originally destined. Carriages and cabs were waiting; tall pow-
dered footmen flew to the assistance of the duke and duchess.
The station-master was standing hat in hand, and obsequiously
bowing; the minister's private secretary had come to meet his
right honorable chief with the red dispatch box, knowing the im-
patience with which it was waited for. The duke shook hands
with the archbishop before he drove away. "Dine with us to-
morrow? " he said. "I have had a very singular dream. You
shall be my Daniel and interpret it for me. " The archbishop
regretted infinitely that he must deny himself the honor; his
presence was required at the Conference. "I too have dreamt,
he said; "but with your Grace and me the realities of this world
are too serious to leave us leisure for the freaks of imagination. ”
## p. 6101 (#71) ############################################
6101
HENRY B. FULLER
(1859-)
EW ENGLAND blood reveals itself in certain characteristics of
Mr. Henry B. Fuller's fiction, though his grandfather took
root in Chicago even after its incorporation in 1840. Born
in the "windy city," of prosperous merchant stock, he is of the intel-
lectual race of Margaret Fuller; and the saying of one of his charac-
ters, "Get the right kind of New England face, and you can't do
much better," shows his liking for the transplanted qualities which
began the good fortunes of the Great West.
Family councils decreed that he should fill an important inherited
place in the business world; but temperament was too strong for
predestination. He might have been an architect, he might have
been a musician, had he not turned out a novelist. But a creative
artist he was constrained by nature to become. His first story, un-
acknowledged at first, and entitled 'The Chevalier of Pensieri-Vani,'
attracted little notice until it fell by chance under the eye of
Professor Norton of Cambridge, who sent it with a kindly word to
Lowell. This fine critic wrote a cordial letter of praise to the
author, and the book was republished by the Century Company of
New York in 1892 and widely read. The Chatelaine of La Trinité,'
his next venture, appeared as a serial in the Century Magazine during
the same year. Both of these stories have a European background;
in both a certain remoteness and romantic quality predominates, and
both have little in common with this workaday world.
To the amazement of his public, Mr. Fuller's next book-pub-
lished as a serial in Harper's Weekly, during the summer of the
World's Fair, and called 'The Cliff-Dwellers - pictured Chicago in
its most sordid and utilitarian aspect. King Money sat on the throne,
and the whole community paid tribute. The intensity of the struggle
for existence, the push of competition, the relentlessness of the real-
ism of the book, left the reader almost breathless at the end, un-
certain whether to admire the force of the story-teller or to lament
his mercilessness.
In 1895 appeared 'With the Procession,' another picture of Chicago
social life, but painted with a more kindly touch. The artist still
delineates what he sees, but he sees more truly, because more sym-
pathetically. The theme of the story is admirable, and it is carried
out with a half humorous and wholly serious thoroughness. This
## p. 6102 (#72) ############################################
6102
HENRY B. FULLER
theme is the total reconstruction of the social concepts of an old-
fashioned, rich, stolid, commercial Chicago family, in obedience to
the decree of the modernized younger son and daughters.
The pro-
cess is more or less tragic, though it is set forth with an artistic
lightness of touch. With the Procession' is such a story as might
happen round the corner in any year. Herr Sienkiewicz's Polanyet-
skis are not more genuinely "children of the soil" than Mr. Fuller's
Marshalls and Bateses. In these later stories he seems to be asking
himself, in most serious words, what is to be the social outcome
of the great industrial civilization of the time, and to demand of his
readers that they too shall fall to thinking.
AT THE HEAD OF THE MARCH
From With the Procession. ' Copyright 1894 by Henry B. Fuller, and re-
printed by permission of Harper & Brothers, publishers, New York
"WELL
ELL, here goes! " said Jane half aloud, with her foot on
the lowest of the glistening granite steps. The steps
led up to the ponderous pillared arches of a grandiose
and massive porch; above the porch a sturdy and rugged bal-
ustrade half intercepted the rough-faced glitter of a vast and
variegated façade; and higher still, the morning sun shattered its
beams over a tumult of angular roofs and towering chimneys.
"It is swell, I declare! " said Jane, with her eye on the
wrought-iron work of the outer doors, and the jewels and bevels
of the inner ones.
"Where is the thingamajig, anyway? " she inquired of her-
self. She was searching for the door-bell, and she fell back on
her own rustic lingo in order to ward off the incipient panic
caused by this overwhelming splendor. "Oh, here it is! There! "
She gave a push. "And now I'm in for it. " She had decided
to take the richest and best known and most fashionable woman
on her list to start with; the worst over at the beginning, she
thought, the rest would follow easily enough.
"I suppose the 'maid' will wear a cap and a silver tray,"
she observed further. "Or will it be a gold one, with diamonds
around the edge? "
The door-knob turned from within. "Is Mrs. Bates
began.
The door opened half-way. A grave, smooth-shaven man ap-
peared; his chin and upper lip had the mottled smudge that
-
» she
## p. 6103 (#73) ############################################
HENRY B. FULLER
6103
shows in so many of those conscientious portraits of the olden
time.
"Gracious me! " said the startled Jane to herself.
She dropped her disconcerted vision to the door-mat. Then
she saw that the man wore knee-breeches and black-silk stockings.
"Heaven be merciful! " was her inward cry. "It's a foot-
man, as I live. I've been reading about them all my life, and
now I've met one. But I never suspected that there was really
anything of the kind in this town! "
She left the contemplation of the servant's pumps and stock-
ings, and began to grapple fiercely with the catch of her hand-
bag.
The man in the meanwhile studied her with a searching grav-
ity, and as it seemed, with some disapproval. The splendor of
the front that his master presented to the world had indeed
intimidated poor Jane; but there were many others upon whom
it had no deterring effect at all. Some of these brought art-
books in monthly parts; others brought polish for the piano legs.
Many of them were quite as prepossessing in appearance as Jane
was; some of them were much less plain and dowdy; few of
them were so recklessly indiscreet as to betray themselves at the
threshold by exhibiting a black leather bag.
"There! " remarked Jane to the footman, "I knew I should
get at it eventually. " She smiled at him with a friendly good-
will: she acknowledged him as a human being, and she hoped to
propitiate him into the concession that she herself was nothing
less.
The man took her card, which was fortunately as correct as
the most discreet and contemporaneous stationer could fashion.
He decided that he was running no risk with his mistress, and
"Miss Jane Marshall" was permitted to pass the gate.
She was ushered into a small reception-room. The hard-wood
floor was partly covered by a meagre Persian rug. There was a
plain sofa of forbidding angles, and a scantily upholstered chair
which insisted upon nobody's remaining longer than necessary.
But through the narrow door Jane caught branching vistas of
room after room heaped up with the pillage of a sacked and rav-
aged globe, and a stairway which led with a wide sweep to
regions of unimaginable glories above.
"Did you ever! " exclaimed Jane. It was of the footman that
she was speaking; he in fact loomed up, to the practical eclipse
## p. 6104 (#74) ############################################
6104
HENRY B. FULLER
of all this luxury and display. "Only eighty years from the
Massacre, and hardly eight hundred feet from the Monument! "
Presently she heard a tapping and a rustling without. She
thought that she might lean a few inches to one side with no
risk of being detected in an impropriety, and she was rewarded
by seeing the splendid vacuity of the grand stairway finally filled
-filled more completely, more amply, than she could have im-
agined possible through the passage of one person merely. A
woman of fifty or more was descending with a slow and some-
what ponderous stateliness. She wore an elaborate morning-
gown with a broad plait down the back, and an immensity of
superfluous material in the sleeves. Her person was broad, her
bosom ample, and her voluminous gray hair was tossed and
fretted about the temples after the fashion of a marquise of the
old régime. Jane set her jaw and clamped her knotty fingers to
the two edges of her inhospitable chair.
"I don't care if she is so rich," she muttered, "and so famous,
and so fashionable, and so terribly handsome; she can't bear me
down. "
The woman reached the bottom step, and took a turn that
for a moment carried her out of sight. At the same time the
sound of her footsteps was silenced by one of the big rugs that
covered the floor of the wide and roomy hall. But Jane had had
a glimpse, and she knew with whom she was to deal with one
of the big, the broad, the great, the triumphant; with one of a
Roman amplitude and vigor, an Indian keenness and sagacity,
an American ambition and determination; with one who baffles
circumstance and almost masters fate-with one of the con-
querors, in short.
"I don't hear her," thought the expectant girl, in some trepi-
dation; "but all the same, she's got to cross that bare space just
outside the door before—yes, there's her step! And here she is
herself! »
Mrs. Bates appeared in the doorway. She had a strong nose
of the lofty Roman type; her bosom heaved with breaths deep,
but quiet and regular. She had a pair of large, full blue eyes,
and these she now fixed on Jane with an expression of rather
cold questioning.
"Miss Marshall ? >>> Her voice was firm, smooth, even, rich,
deep. She advanced a foot or two within the room and remained
standing there.
## p. 6105 (#75) ############################################
HENRY B. FULLER
6105
"My father," Jane began again, in the same tone, "is David
Marshall. He is very well known, I believe, in Chicago. We
have lived here a great many years. It seems to me that there
ought to ->
"David Marshall? " repeated Mrs. Bates, gently. "Ah, I do
know David Marshall-yes," she said; "or did a good many
years ago. " She looked up into Jane's face now with a com-
pletely altered expression. Her glance was curious and search-
ing, but it was very kindly.
death of his elder brother was flying home to take his inherit-
ance. A great lady had secured, as she had hoped, a brilliant
match for her daughter; her work over, she had been at the baths
to recover from the dissipation of the season; difficulty had arisen
unlooked for, and unless she was at hand to remove it the worst
consequences might be feared. A banker declared that the credit
of a leading commercial house might fail, unless he could be at
home on the day fixed for his return; he alone could save it. A
solicitor had the evidence in his portmanteau which would deter-
mine the succession to the lands and title of an ancient family.
An elderly gentleman was in despair about his young wife, whom
he had left at home; he had made a will by which she was to
lose his fortune if she married again after his death, but the will
was lying in his desk unsigned. The archbishop was on his way
to a synod, where the great question was to be discussed whether
gas might be used at the altar instead of candles. The altar
candles were blessed before they were used, and the doubt was
whether gas could be blessed. The right reverend prelate con-
ceived that if the gas tubes were made in the shape of candles
the difficulty could be got over, but he feared that without his
moderating influence the majority might come to a rash de-
cision.
All these persons were clamoring over their various anxi-
eties with the most naïve frankness, the truth coming freely out,
## p. 6088 (#58) ############################################
6088
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
whatever it might be. One distinguished-looking lady in deep
mourning, with a sad, gentle face, alone was resigned and hopeful.
It seemed that her husband had been stopped not long before at
the same station. She thought it possible that she might meet
him again.
The station-master listened to the complaints with composed
indifference. He told the loudest that they need not alarm them-
selves. The State would survive the absence of the minister.
The minister, in fact, was not thinking of the State at all, but of
the party triumph which he expected; and the peerage which was
to be his reward, the station-master said, would now be of no use to
him. The youth had a second brother who would succeed instead
of him, and the tenants would not be inconvenienced by the
change. The fine lady's daughter would marry to her own liking
instead of her mother's, and would be all the happier for it. The
commercial house was already insolvent, and the longer it lasted
the more innocent people would be ruined by it. The boy whom
the lawyer intended to make into a rich baronet was now work-
ing industriously at school, and would grow up a useful man.
a great estate fell in to him he would be idle and dissolute.
The old man might congratulate himself that he had escaped so
soon from the scrape into which he had fallen. His wife would
marry an adventurer, and would suffer worse from inheriting his
fortune. The archbishop was commended for his anxiety. His
solution of the candle problem was no doubt an excellent one; but
his clergy were now provided with a harmless subject to quarrel
over, and if it was adopted they might fall out over something
else which might be seriously mischievous.
If
"Do you mean, then, that you are not going to send us for-
ward at all? " the minister inquired sternly.
"You will see," the station-master answered with a curious
short laugh. I observed that he looked more gently at the lady
in mourning. She had said nothing, but he knew what was in
her mind, and though he held out no hope in words that her
wish would be gratified, he smiled sadly, and the irony passed
out of his face.
The crowd meanwhile were standing about the platform,
whistling tunes or amusing themselves, not ill-naturedly at the
distress of their grand companions. Something considerable was
happening. But they had so long experienced the ups and downs
of things that they were prepared for what fortune might send.
## p. 6089 (#59) ############################################
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
6089
They had not expected to find a Paradise where they were going,
and one place might be as good as another. They had nothing.
belonging to them except the clothes they stood in and their bits
of skill in their different trades. Wherever men were, there
would be need of cobblers, and tailors, and smiths, and carpenters.
If not, they might fall on their feet somehow, if there was work
to be done of any sort.
Presently a bell rang, a door was flung open, and we were
ordered into a waiting-room, where we were told that our lug-
gage was to be examined. It was a large, barely furnished
apartment, like the salle d'attente at the Northern Railway Sta-
tion at Paris. A rail ran across, behind which we were all
penned; opposite to us was the usual long table, on which were
piled boxes, bags, and portmanteaus, and behind them stood a
row of officials, in a plain uniform with gold bands round their
caps, and the dry peremptory manner which passengers accus-
tomed to deference so particularly dislike. At their backs was a
screen extending across the room, reaching half-way to the ceil-
ing; in the rear of it there was apparently an office.
We each looked to see that our particular belongings were
safe, but we were surprised to find that we could recognize none
of them. Packages there were in plenty, alleged to be the property
of the passengers who had come in by the train. They were
arranged in the three classes,-first, second, and third,- but the
proportions were inverted: most of it was labeled as the luggage
of the travelers in fustian, who had brought nothing with them
but what they carried in their hands; a moderate heap stood
where the second-class luggage should have been, and some of
superior quality; but none of us could make out the shapes of
our own trunks. As to the grand ladies and gentlemen, the in-
numerable articles which I had seen put as theirs into the van
were nowhere to be found. A few shawls and cloaks lay upon
the planks, and that was all. There was a loud outcry; but the
officials were accustomed to it, and took no notice. The station-
master, who was still in charge of us, said briefly that the saloon
luggage would be sent forward in the next train. The late
owners would have no more use for it, and it would be delivered
to their friends.
The late owners! Were we no longer actual owners, then?
My individual loss was not great, and besides, it might be made
up to me; for I saw my name on a strange box on the table,
## p. 6090 (#60) ############################################
6090
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
and being of curious disposition, the singularity of the adventure
made it interesting to me. The consternation of the rest was
indescribable. The minister supposed that he had fallen among
communists, who disbelieved in property, and was beginning a
speech on the elementary conditions of society; when silence was
called, and the third-class passengers were ordered to advance,
that their boxes might be opened. Each man had his own care-
fully docketed. The lids flew off, and within, instead of clothes,
and shoes, and dressing apparatus, and money, and jewels, and
such-like, were simply samples of the work which he had done
in his life. There was an account-book also, in which were
entered the number of days which he had worked, the number
and size of the fields, etc. , which he had drained and inclosed
and plowed, the crops which he had reaped, the walls which he
had built, the metal which he had dug out and smelted and
fashioned into articles of use to mankind, the leather which he
had tanned, the clothes which he had woven,-all entered with
punctual exactness; and on the opposite page, the wages which
he had received, and the share which had been allotted to him
of the good things which he had helped to create.
Besides his work, so specifically called, there were his actions,—
his affection for his parents or his wife and children, his self-
denials, his charities, his purity, his truth, his honesty; or it
might be ugly catalogues of sins and oaths and drunkenness and
brutality. But inquiry into action was reserved for a second
investigation before a higher commissioner. The first examina-
tion was confined to the literal work done by each man for the
general good,-how much he had contributed, and how much.
society had done for him in return; and no one, it seemed, could
be allowed to go any further without a certificate of having
passed this test satisfactorily. With the workmen, the balance in
most instances was found enormously in their favor. The state
of the case was so clear that the scrutiny was rapidly got over,
and they and their luggage were passed in to the higher court.
A few were found whose boxes were empty, who had done
nothing useful all their lives, and had subsisted by begging and
stealing. These were ordered to stand aside till the rest of us
had been disposed of.
The saloon passengers were taken next. Most of them, who
had nothing at all to show, were called up together and were
asked what they had to say for themselves. A well-dressed
## p. 6091 (#61) ############################################
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
6091
gentleman, who spoke for the rest, said that the whole investiga-
tion was a mystery to him. He and his friends had been born
to good fortunes, and had found themselves, on entering upon
life, amply provided for. They had never been told that work
was required of them, either work with their hands or work with
their heads, in fact, work of any kind. It was right of course
for the poor to work, because they could not honestly live other-
wise. For themselves, they had spent their time in amusements,
generally innocent. They had paid for everything which they
had consumed. They had stolen nothing, taken nothing from
any man by violence or fraud. They had kept the Command-
ments, all ten of them, from the time when they were old enough
to understand them. The speaker, at least, declared that he had
no breach of any Commandment on his own conscience, and he
believed that he might say as much of his companions. They
were superior people, who had been always looked up to and
well spoken of; and to call upon them to show what they had
done was against reason and equity.
"Gentlemen," said the chief official, "we have heard this
many times; yet as often as it is repeated we feel fresh aston-
ishment. You have been in a world where work is the condition
of life. Not a meal can be had by any man that some one has
not worked to produce. Those who work deserve to eat; those
who do not work deserve to starve. There are but three ways
of living: by working, by stealing, or by begging. Those who
have not lived by the first have lived by one of the other two.
And no matter how superior you think yourselves, you will not
pass here till you have something of your own to produce. You
have had your wages beforehand - ample wages, as you acknowl-
edge yourselves. What have you to show? "
"Wages! " the speaker said: "we are not hired servants; we
received no wages. What we spent was our own. All the or-
We have
ders we received were that we were not to do wrong.
done no wrong. I appeal to the higher court. "
But the appeal could not be received. To all who presented
themselves with empty boxes, no matter who they were, or how
excellent their characters appeared to one another, there was the
irrevocable answer - "No admittance, till you come better fur-
nished. " All who were in this condition, the duke and duchess
among them, were ordered to stand aside with the thieves. The
duchess declared that she had given the finest parties in the
-
## p. 6092 (#62) ############################################
6092
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
season, and as it was universally agreed that they had been the
most tedious, and that no one had found any pleasure there, a
momentary doubt rose whether they might not have answered
some useful purpose in disgusting people with such modes of en-
tertainment; but no evidence of this was forthcoming: the world
had attended them because the world had nothing else to do,
and she and her guests had been alike unprofitable. Thus the
large majority of the saloon passengers was disposed of. The
minister, the archbishop, the lawyer, the banker, and others who
although they had no material work credited to them had yet
been active and laborious in their different callings, were passed
to the superior judges.
Our turn came next,- ours of the second class, and a motley
gathering we were. Busy we must all have been, from the mul-
titude of articles which we found assigned to us: manufacturers
with their wares, solicitors with their law-suits, doctors and cler-
gymen with the bodies and souls which they had saved or lost,
authors with their books, painters and sculptors with their pict-
ures and statues. But the hard test was applied to all that we
had produced,-the wages which we had received on one side, and
the value of our exertions to mankind on the other,— and im-
posing as our performances looked when laid out to be exam-
ined, we had been paid, most of us, out of all proportion to
what we were found to have deserved. I was reminded of a
large compartment in the Paris Exhibition, where an active gen-
tleman, wishing to show the state of English literature, had col-
lected copies of every book, review, pamphlet, or newspaper
which had been published in a single year. The bulk was over-
whelming, but the figures were only decimal points, and the
worth of the whole was a fraction above zero. A few of us
were turned back summarily among the thieves and the fine
gentlemen and ladies: speculators who had done nothing but
handle money which had clung to their fingers in passing
through them, divines who had preached a morality which they
did not practice, and fluent orators who had made speeches which
they knew to be nonsense; philosophers who had spun out of
moonshine systems of the universe, distinguished pleaders who
had defeated justice while they established points of law, writers
of books upon subjects of which they knew enough to mislead
their readers, purveyors of luxuries which had added nothing to
human health or strength, physicians and apothecaries who had
-
## p. 6093 (#63) ############################################
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
6093
pretended to knowledge which they knew that they did not pos-
sess, these all, as the contents of their boxes bore witness
against them, were thrust back into the rejected herd.
There were some whose account stood better, as having at
least produced something of real merit, but they were cast on
the point of wages: modest excellence had come badly off; the
plausible and unscrupulous had thriven and grown rich. It was
tragical, and evidently a surprise to most of us, to see how
mendacious we had been: how we had sanded our sugar, watered
our milk, scamped our carpentering and mason's work, literally
and metaphorically; how in all things we had been thinking less.
of producing good work than of the profit which we could make
out of it; how we had sold ourselves to tell lies and act them,
because the public found lies pleasant and truth expensive and
troublesome. Some of us were manifest rogues, who had bought
cheap and sold dear, had used false measures and weights, had
made cotton pass for wool, and hemp for silk, and tin for silver.
The American peddler happened to be in the party, who had
put a rind upon a grindstone and had sold it as a cheese. These
were promptly sifted out and placed with their fellows; only per-
sons whose services were on the whole greater than the pay
which they had received were allowed their certificates. When
my own box was opened, I perceived that though the wages had
been small, the work done seemed smaller still; and I was sur-
prised to find myself among those who had passed.
The whistle of a train was heard at this moment, coming in
upon the main line. It was to go in half an hour, and those
who had been turned back were told that they were to proceed
by it to the place where they had been originally going. They
looked infinitely relieved at the news; but before they started, a
few questions had to be put to them, and a few alterations made
which were to affect their future. They were asked to explain
how they had come to be such worthless creatures. They gave
many answers, which came mainly to the same thing. Circum-
stances had been against them. It was all owing to circumstances.
They had been badly brought up. They had been placed in
situations where it had been impossible for them to do better.
The rich people repeated that they had never been informed that
any work was expected of them. Their wants had all been pro-
vided for, and it was unfair to expect that they should have ex-
erted themselves of their own accord when they had no motive
## p. 6094 (#64) ############################################
6094
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
for working. If they had only been born poor, all would have
gone well with them. The cheating tradesman declared that the
first duty of a shopkeeper, according to all received principles,
was to make money and better his condition. It was the buyer's
business to see to the quality of the articles which he purchased;
the shopkeeper was entitled to sell his wares at the highest price
which he could get for them. So, at least, it was believed and
taught by the recognized authorities on the subject. The orators,
preachers, newspaper writers, novel-writers, etc. , etc. , of whom
there were a great many, appealed to the crowds who came to
listen to them, or bought and read their productions. Tout le
monde, it was said, was wiser than the wisest single sage. They
had given the world what the world wished for and approved;
they had worked at supplying it with all their might, and it was
extremely hard to blame them for guiding themselves by the
world's judgment. The thieves and vagabonds argued that they
had been brought into existence without their consent being
asked: they had not wished for it; although they had not been
without their pleasures, they regarded existence on the whole as
a nuisance which they would gladly have been spared. Being
alive, however, they had to keep alive; and for all that they
could see, they had as full a right to the good things which the
world contained as anybody else, provided they could get them.
They were called thieves. Law and language were made by the
property-owners, who were their natural enemies. If society had
given them the means of living honestly they would have found
it easy to be honest. Society had done nothing for them—why
should they do anything for society?
So, in their various ways, those who had been "plucked"
defended themselves. They were all delighted to hear that they
were to have another chance; and I was amused to observe that
though some of them had pretended that they had not wished to
be born, and had rather not have been born, not one of them
protested against being sent back. All they asked was that they
should be put in a new position, and that the adverse influ-
ences should be taken off. I expected that among these adverse
influences they would have mentioned the faults of their own
dispositions. My own opinion had been that half the misdoings
of men came from congenital defects of character which they
had brought with them into the world, and that constitutional
courage, right-mindedness, and practical ability were as much gifts
## p. 6095 (#65) ############################################
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
6095
of nature or circumstance as the accidents of fortune. A change
in this respect was of more consequence than in any other. But
with themselves they were all apparently satisfied, and they
required only an improvement in their surroundings. The alter-
ations were rapidly made. The duchess was sent to begin her
life again in a laborer's cottage. She was to attend the village
school and rise thence into a housemaid. The fine gentleman
was made a plowboy. The authors and preachers were to become
mechanics, and bound apprentices to carpenters and blacksmiths.
A philosopher who, having had a good fortune and unbroken.
health, had insisted that the world was as good as it could be
made, was to be born blind and paralytic, and to find his way
through life under the new conditions. The thieves and cheats,
who pretended that their misdemeanors were due to poverty,
were to find themselves, when they arrived in the world again,
in palaces surrounded with luxury. The cup of Lethe was sent
round. The past became a blank. They were hurried into the
train; the engine screamed and flew away with them.
They will be all here again in a few years," the station-
master said, "and it will be the same story over again. I have
had these very people in my hands a dozen times. They have
been tried in all positions, and there is still nothing to show,
and nothing but complaints of circumstances. For my part,
I would put them out altogether. " "How long is it to last? " I
asked. "Well," he said, "it does not depend on me.
No one
passes here who cannot prove that he has lived to some purpose.
Some of the worst I have known made at last into pigs and
geese, to be fatted up and eaten, and made of use that way.
Others have become asses, condemned to carry burdens, to be
beaten with sticks, and to breed asses like themselves for a
hundred generations. All animated creatures tend to take the
shape at last which suits their character. "
The train was scarcely out of sight when again the bell rang.
The scene changed as at a theatre. The screen was rolled back,
and we who were left found ourselves in the presence of four
grave-looking persons, like the board of examiners whom we
remembered at college. We were called up one by one. The
work which had passed the first ordeal was again looked into,
and the quality of it compared with the talent or faculty of the
producer, to see how far he had done his best,- whether any-
where he had done worse than he might have done and knew
## p. 6096 (#66) ############################################
6096
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
how to have done; while besides, in a separate collection, were
the vices, the sins, the selfishnesses and ill-humors, with-in the
other scale- the acts of personal duty, of love and kindness and
charity, which had increased the happiness or lightened the sor-
rows of those connected with him. These last, I observed, had
generally been forgotten by the owner, who saw them appear
with surprise, and even repudiated them with protest. In the
work, of course, both material and moral, there was every gra-
dation both of kind and merit. But while nothing was abso-
lutely worthless, everything, even the highest achievements of
the greatest artist or the greatest saint, fell short of absolute
perfection. Each of us saw our own performances, from our
first ignorant beginnings to what we regarded as our greatest
triumph; and it was easy to trace how much of our faults were
due to natural deficiencies and the necessary failures of inexperi-
ence, and how much to self-will or vanity or idleness. Some
taint of mean motives, too,- some desire of reward, desire of
praise or honor or wealth, some foolish self-satisfaction, when
satisfaction ought not to have been felt, was to be seen infect-
ing everything, even the very best which was presented for scru-
tiny.
So plain was this that one of us, an earnest, impressive-look-
ing person, whose own work bore inspection better than that of
most of us, exclaimed passionately that so far as he was con-
cerned the examiners might spare their labor. From his earliest
years he had known what he ought to do, and in no instance
had he ever completely done it. He had struggled; he had con-
quered his grosser faults: but the farther he had gone, and the
better he had been able to do, his knowledge had still grown
faster than his power of acting upon it; and every additional day
that he had lived, his shortcomings had become more miserably
plain to him. Even if he could have reached perfection at last,
he could not undo the past, and the faults of his youth would
bear witness against him and call for his condemnation. There-
fore, he said, he abhorred himself. He had no merit which could
entitle him to look for favor. He had labored on to the end,
but he had labored with a full knowledge that the best which he
could offer would be unworthy of acceptance. He had been told,
and he believed, that a high Spirit not subject to infirmity had
done his work for him, and done it perfectly, and that if he
abandoned all claim on his own account, he might be accepted
## p. 6097 (#67) ############################################
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
6097
for the sake of what another had done. This, he trusted, was
true, and it was his sole dependence. In the so-called good
actions with which he seemed to be credited, there was nothing
that was really good; there was not one which was altogether
what it ought to have been.
He was evidently sincere, and what he said was undoubtedly
true true of him and true of every one. Even in the vehe-
mence of his self-abandonment a trace lingered of the taint which
he was confessing, for he was a polemical divine; he had spent
his life and gained a reputation in maintaining this particular
doctrine.
He believed it, but he had not forgotten that he had
been himself its champion.
The examiner looked kindly at him, but answered:-
"We do not expect impossibilities; and we do not blame you
when you have not accomplished what is beyond your strength.
Only those who are themselves perfect can do anything perfectly.
Human beings are born ignorant and helpless. They bring into
the world with them a disposition to seek what is pleasant to
themselves, and what is pleasant is not always right. They learn
to live as they learn everything else. At first they cannot do
rightly at all. They improve under teaching and practice. The
best only arrive at excellence. We do not find fault with the
painter on account of his first bad copies, if they were as good
as could be looked for at his age. Every craftsman acquires his
art by degrees. He begins badly; he cannot help it; and it is
the same with life. You learn to walk by falling down. You
learn to live by going wrong and experiencing the consequences
of it. We do not record against a man 'the sins of his youth'
if he has been honestly trying to improve himself. We do not
require the same self-control in a child as in a man. We do
not require the same attainments from all. Some are well
taught, some are ill taught, some are not taught at all. Some
have naturally good dispositions, some have naturally bad dispo-
sitions. Not one has had power to fulfill the law,' as you call
it, completely. Therefore it is no crime in him if he fails. We
reckon as faults those only which arise from idleness, willfulness,
selfishness, and deliberate preference of evil to good. Each is
judged according to what he has received. "
I was amused to observe how pleased the archbishop looked
while the examiner was speaking. He had himself been engaged
in controversy with this gentleman on the share of "good works »
―
XI-382
## p. 6098 (#68) ############################################
6098
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
in justifying a man; and if the examiner had not taken his side in
the discussion, he had at least demolished his adversary. The arch-
bishop had been the more disinterested in the line which he had
taken, as his own "works," though in several large folios, weighed
extremely little; and indeed, had it not been for passages in his
early life,—he had starved himself at college that he might not
be a burden upon his widowed mother,—I do not know but that
he might have been sent back into the world to serve as a parish
clerk.
For myself, there were questions which I was longing to ask,
and I was trying to collect my courage to speak. I wanted chiefly
to know what the examiner meant by "natural disposition. " Was
it that a man might be born with a natural capacity for becom-
ing a saint, as another man with a capacity to become a great
artist or musician, and that each of us could only grow to the
limits of his natural powers? And again, were idleness, willful-
ness, selfishness, etc. , etc. , natural dispositions? for in that case-
But at the moment the bell rang again, and my own name
was called. There was no occasion to ask who I was.
In every
instance the identity of the person, his history, small or large,
and all that he had said or done, was placed before the court so
clearly that there was no need for extorting a confession. There
stood the catalogue inexorably impartial, the bad actions in a
schedule painfully large, the few good actions veined with per-
sonal motives which spoilt the best of them. In the way of work
there was nothing to be shown but certain books and other writ-
ings, and these were spread out to be tested. A fluid was poured
on the pages, the effect of which was to obliterate entirely every
untrue proposition, and to make every partially true proposition
grow faint in proportion to the false element which entered into
it. Alas! chapter after chapter vanished away, leaving the paper
clean, as if no compositor had ever labored in setting type for it.
Pale and illegible became the fine-sounding paragraphs on which
I had secretly prided myself. A few passages, however, survived
here and there at long intervals. They were those on which I
had labored least, and had almost forgotten; or those, as I observed
in one or two instances, which had been selected for special repro-
bation in the weekly journals. Something stood to my credit,
and the worst charge, of willfully and intentionally setting down
what I did not believe to be true, was not alleged against me.
Ignorance, prejudice, carelessness; sins of infirmity, - culpable
## p. 6099 (#69) ############################################
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
6099
indeed, but not culpable in the last degree; the water in the ink,
the commonplaces, the ineffectual sentiments-these, to my un-
speakable comfort, I perceived were my heaviest crimes.
been accused of absolute worthlessness, I should have pleaded
guilty in the state of humiliation to which I was reduced; but
things were better than they might have been. I was flattering
myself that when it came to the wages question, the balance
would be in my favor: so many years of labor such and such
cheques received from my publisher. Here at least I held myself
safe, and I was in good hope that I might scrape through.
-
The examiner was good-natured in his manner. A reviewer
who had been listening for my condemnation was beginning to
look disgusted, when suddenly one of the walls of the court be-
came transparent, and there appeared an interminable vista of
creatures — creatures of all kinds from land and water, reaching
away into the extreme distance. They were those which in the
course of my life I had devoured, either in part or whole, to sus-
tain my unconscionable carcass. There they stood in lines with
solemn and reproachful faces,-oxen and calves, sheep and lambs,
deer, hares, rabbits, turkeys, ducks, chickens, pheasants, grouse,
and partridges, down to the larks and sparrows and blackbirds
which I had shot when a boy and made into puddings. Every
one of them had come up to bear witness against their murderer;
out of sea and river had come the trout and salmon, the soles
and turbots, the ling and cod, the whiting and mackerel, the
smelts and whitebait, the oysters, the crabs, the lobsters, the
shrimps. They seemed literally to be in millions, and I had eaten
them all. I talked of wages. These had been my wages. At
this enormous cost had my existence been maintained.
A stag
spoke for the rest: "We all," he said, "were sacrificed to keep
this cormorant in being, and to enable him to produce the mis-
erable bits of printed paper which are all that he has to show
for himself. Our lives were dear to us. In meadow and wood,
in air and water, we wandered harmless and innocent, enjoy-
ing the pleasant sunlight, the light of heaven and the sparkling
We were not worth much; we have no pretensions to high
qualities. If the person who stands here to answer for himself
can affirm that his value in the universe was equivalent to the
value of all of us who were sacrificed to feed him, we have no
more to say. Let it be so pronounced. We shall look at our
numbers, and we shall wonder at the judgment, though we shall
waves.
――
## p. 6100 (#70) ############################################
6100
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
withdraw our complaint. But for ourselves we say freely that we
have long watched him,-him and his fellows, and we have
failed to see in what the superiority of the human creature lies.
We know him only as the most cunning, the most destructive,
and unhappily the longest lived of all carnivorous beasts.
delight is in killing. Even when his hunger is satisfied, he kills.
us for his mere amusement. "
-
I
The oxen lowed approval, the sheep bleated, the birds screamed,
the fishes flapped their tails. I, for myself, stood mute and self-
condemned. What answer but one was possible? Had I been
myself on the bench I could not have hesitated. The fatal sen-
tence of condemnation was evidently about to be uttered, when
the scene became indistinct, there was a confused noise, a change
of condition, a sound of running feet and of many voices.
awoke. I was again in the railway carriage; the door was thrown
open; porters entered to take our things. We stepped out upon
the platform. We were at the terminus for which we had been
originally destined. Carriages and cabs were waiting; tall pow-
dered footmen flew to the assistance of the duke and duchess.
The station-master was standing hat in hand, and obsequiously
bowing; the minister's private secretary had come to meet his
right honorable chief with the red dispatch box, knowing the im-
patience with which it was waited for. The duke shook hands
with the archbishop before he drove away. "Dine with us to-
morrow? " he said. "I have had a very singular dream. You
shall be my Daniel and interpret it for me. " The archbishop
regretted infinitely that he must deny himself the honor; his
presence was required at the Conference. "I too have dreamt,
he said; "but with your Grace and me the realities of this world
are too serious to leave us leisure for the freaks of imagination. ”
## p. 6101 (#71) ############################################
6101
HENRY B. FULLER
(1859-)
EW ENGLAND blood reveals itself in certain characteristics of
Mr. Henry B. Fuller's fiction, though his grandfather took
root in Chicago even after its incorporation in 1840. Born
in the "windy city," of prosperous merchant stock, he is of the intel-
lectual race of Margaret Fuller; and the saying of one of his charac-
ters, "Get the right kind of New England face, and you can't do
much better," shows his liking for the transplanted qualities which
began the good fortunes of the Great West.
Family councils decreed that he should fill an important inherited
place in the business world; but temperament was too strong for
predestination. He might have been an architect, he might have
been a musician, had he not turned out a novelist. But a creative
artist he was constrained by nature to become. His first story, un-
acknowledged at first, and entitled 'The Chevalier of Pensieri-Vani,'
attracted little notice until it fell by chance under the eye of
Professor Norton of Cambridge, who sent it with a kindly word to
Lowell. This fine critic wrote a cordial letter of praise to the
author, and the book was republished by the Century Company of
New York in 1892 and widely read. The Chatelaine of La Trinité,'
his next venture, appeared as a serial in the Century Magazine during
the same year. Both of these stories have a European background;
in both a certain remoteness and romantic quality predominates, and
both have little in common with this workaday world.
To the amazement of his public, Mr. Fuller's next book-pub-
lished as a serial in Harper's Weekly, during the summer of the
World's Fair, and called 'The Cliff-Dwellers - pictured Chicago in
its most sordid and utilitarian aspect. King Money sat on the throne,
and the whole community paid tribute. The intensity of the struggle
for existence, the push of competition, the relentlessness of the real-
ism of the book, left the reader almost breathless at the end, un-
certain whether to admire the force of the story-teller or to lament
his mercilessness.
In 1895 appeared 'With the Procession,' another picture of Chicago
social life, but painted with a more kindly touch. The artist still
delineates what he sees, but he sees more truly, because more sym-
pathetically. The theme of the story is admirable, and it is carried
out with a half humorous and wholly serious thoroughness. This
## p. 6102 (#72) ############################################
6102
HENRY B. FULLER
theme is the total reconstruction of the social concepts of an old-
fashioned, rich, stolid, commercial Chicago family, in obedience to
the decree of the modernized younger son and daughters.
The pro-
cess is more or less tragic, though it is set forth with an artistic
lightness of touch. With the Procession' is such a story as might
happen round the corner in any year. Herr Sienkiewicz's Polanyet-
skis are not more genuinely "children of the soil" than Mr. Fuller's
Marshalls and Bateses. In these later stories he seems to be asking
himself, in most serious words, what is to be the social outcome
of the great industrial civilization of the time, and to demand of his
readers that they too shall fall to thinking.
AT THE HEAD OF THE MARCH
From With the Procession. ' Copyright 1894 by Henry B. Fuller, and re-
printed by permission of Harper & Brothers, publishers, New York
"WELL
ELL, here goes! " said Jane half aloud, with her foot on
the lowest of the glistening granite steps. The steps
led up to the ponderous pillared arches of a grandiose
and massive porch; above the porch a sturdy and rugged bal-
ustrade half intercepted the rough-faced glitter of a vast and
variegated façade; and higher still, the morning sun shattered its
beams over a tumult of angular roofs and towering chimneys.
"It is swell, I declare! " said Jane, with her eye on the
wrought-iron work of the outer doors, and the jewels and bevels
of the inner ones.
"Where is the thingamajig, anyway? " she inquired of her-
self. She was searching for the door-bell, and she fell back on
her own rustic lingo in order to ward off the incipient panic
caused by this overwhelming splendor. "Oh, here it is! There! "
She gave a push. "And now I'm in for it. " She had decided
to take the richest and best known and most fashionable woman
on her list to start with; the worst over at the beginning, she
thought, the rest would follow easily enough.
"I suppose the 'maid' will wear a cap and a silver tray,"
she observed further. "Or will it be a gold one, with diamonds
around the edge? "
The door-knob turned from within. "Is Mrs. Bates
began.
The door opened half-way. A grave, smooth-shaven man ap-
peared; his chin and upper lip had the mottled smudge that
-
» she
## p. 6103 (#73) ############################################
HENRY B. FULLER
6103
shows in so many of those conscientious portraits of the olden
time.
"Gracious me! " said the startled Jane to herself.
She dropped her disconcerted vision to the door-mat. Then
she saw that the man wore knee-breeches and black-silk stockings.
"Heaven be merciful! " was her inward cry. "It's a foot-
man, as I live. I've been reading about them all my life, and
now I've met one. But I never suspected that there was really
anything of the kind in this town! "
She left the contemplation of the servant's pumps and stock-
ings, and began to grapple fiercely with the catch of her hand-
bag.
The man in the meanwhile studied her with a searching grav-
ity, and as it seemed, with some disapproval. The splendor of
the front that his master presented to the world had indeed
intimidated poor Jane; but there were many others upon whom
it had no deterring effect at all. Some of these brought art-
books in monthly parts; others brought polish for the piano legs.
Many of them were quite as prepossessing in appearance as Jane
was; some of them were much less plain and dowdy; few of
them were so recklessly indiscreet as to betray themselves at the
threshold by exhibiting a black leather bag.
"There! " remarked Jane to the footman, "I knew I should
get at it eventually. " She smiled at him with a friendly good-
will: she acknowledged him as a human being, and she hoped to
propitiate him into the concession that she herself was nothing
less.
The man took her card, which was fortunately as correct as
the most discreet and contemporaneous stationer could fashion.
He decided that he was running no risk with his mistress, and
"Miss Jane Marshall" was permitted to pass the gate.
She was ushered into a small reception-room. The hard-wood
floor was partly covered by a meagre Persian rug. There was a
plain sofa of forbidding angles, and a scantily upholstered chair
which insisted upon nobody's remaining longer than necessary.
But through the narrow door Jane caught branching vistas of
room after room heaped up with the pillage of a sacked and rav-
aged globe, and a stairway which led with a wide sweep to
regions of unimaginable glories above.
"Did you ever! " exclaimed Jane. It was of the footman that
she was speaking; he in fact loomed up, to the practical eclipse
## p. 6104 (#74) ############################################
6104
HENRY B. FULLER
of all this luxury and display. "Only eighty years from the
Massacre, and hardly eight hundred feet from the Monument! "
Presently she heard a tapping and a rustling without. She
thought that she might lean a few inches to one side with no
risk of being detected in an impropriety, and she was rewarded
by seeing the splendid vacuity of the grand stairway finally filled
-filled more completely, more amply, than she could have im-
agined possible through the passage of one person merely. A
woman of fifty or more was descending with a slow and some-
what ponderous stateliness. She wore an elaborate morning-
gown with a broad plait down the back, and an immensity of
superfluous material in the sleeves. Her person was broad, her
bosom ample, and her voluminous gray hair was tossed and
fretted about the temples after the fashion of a marquise of the
old régime. Jane set her jaw and clamped her knotty fingers to
the two edges of her inhospitable chair.
"I don't care if she is so rich," she muttered, "and so famous,
and so fashionable, and so terribly handsome; she can't bear me
down. "
The woman reached the bottom step, and took a turn that
for a moment carried her out of sight. At the same time the
sound of her footsteps was silenced by one of the big rugs that
covered the floor of the wide and roomy hall. But Jane had had
a glimpse, and she knew with whom she was to deal with one
of the big, the broad, the great, the triumphant; with one of a
Roman amplitude and vigor, an Indian keenness and sagacity,
an American ambition and determination; with one who baffles
circumstance and almost masters fate-with one of the con-
querors, in short.
"I don't hear her," thought the expectant girl, in some trepi-
dation; "but all the same, she's got to cross that bare space just
outside the door before—yes, there's her step! And here she is
herself! »
Mrs. Bates appeared in the doorway. She had a strong nose
of the lofty Roman type; her bosom heaved with breaths deep,
but quiet and regular. She had a pair of large, full blue eyes,
and these she now fixed on Jane with an expression of rather
cold questioning.
"Miss Marshall ? >>> Her voice was firm, smooth, even, rich,
deep. She advanced a foot or two within the room and remained
standing there.
## p. 6105 (#75) ############################################
HENRY B. FULLER
6105
"My father," Jane began again, in the same tone, "is David
Marshall. He is very well known, I believe, in Chicago. We
have lived here a great many years. It seems to me that there
ought to ->
"David Marshall? " repeated Mrs. Bates, gently. "Ah, I do
know David Marshall-yes," she said; "or did a good many
years ago. " She looked up into Jane's face now with a com-
pletely altered expression. Her glance was curious and search-
ing, but it was very kindly.
