Per-
haps she was wondering in what Ready Letter-Writer of the last
century Mr.
haps she was wondering in what Ready Letter-Writer of the last
century Mr.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v05 - Bro to Cai
It is a tale of New York life in the inter-
esting old French quarter of South Fifth Avenue. Again, in “The
Story of a New York House,' he displayed the same quick feeling
for the spirit of the place, as it was and is. This tale first appeared
in the newly founded Scribner's Magazine, to which he has since
been a constant contributor. Here some of his best short stories
have been published, including the excellent (Zadoc Pine, with its
healthy presentation of independent manhood in contest with the
oppressive exactions of labor organizations. But Bunner was no be-
liever in stories with a tendency; the conditions which lie at the root
of great sociological questions he used as artistic material, never as
texts. His stories are distinguished by simplicity of motive; each is
related with fine unobtrusive humor and with an underlying pathos,
never unduly emphasized. The most popular of his collections of
tales is that entitled Short Sixes, which, having first appeared in
Puck, were published in book form in 1891. A second volume came
out three years later. When the shadow of death had already fallen
upon Bunner, a new collection of his sketches was in process of
publication: Jersey Street and Jersey Lane. ' In these, as in the
still more recent Suburban Sage,' is revealed the same fineness of
sympathetic observation in town and country that we have come to
associate with Bunner's name. Among his prose writings there re-
mains to be mentioned the series from Puck entitled Made in
France. These are an application of the methods of Maupassant to
American subjects; they display that wonderful facility in reprodu-
cing the flavor of another's style which is exhibited in Bunner's verse
in a still more eminent degree. His prose style never attained the
perfection of literary finish, but it is easy and direct, free from senti-
mentality and rhetoric; in the simplicity of his conceptions and the
delicacy of his treatment lies its chief charm.
## p. 2733 (#297) ###########################################
HENRY CUYLER BUNNER
2733
Bunner's verse, on the other hand, shows a complete mastery of
form. He was a close student of Horace; he tried successfully the
most exacting of exotic verse-forms, and enjoyed the distinction of
having written the only English example of the difficult Chant-
Royal. Graceful vers de société and bits of witty epigram flowed from
him without effort. But it was not to this often dangerous facility
that Bunner owed his poetic fame. His tenderness, his quick sym-
pathy with nature, his insight into the human heart, above all, the
love and longing that filled his soul, have infused into his perfected
rhythms the spirit of universal brotherhood that underlies all genu-
ine poetry. His Airs from Arcady' (1884) achieved a success unusual
for a volume of poems; and the love lyrics and patriotic songs of
his later volume, (Rowen, maintain the high level of the earlier
book. The great mass of his poems is still buried in the back num-
bers of the magazines, from which the best are to be rescued in a
new volume. If his place is not among the greatest of our time,
he has produced a sufficient body of fine verse to rescue his name
from oblivion and render his memory dear to all who value the
legacy of a sincere and genuine poet. He died on May uth, 1896, at
the age of forty-one.
TRIOLET
A
PITCHER of mignonette,
In a tenement's highest casement:
Queer sort of flower-pot - yet
That pitcher of mignonette
Is a garden in heaven set,
To the little sick child in the basement
The pitcher of mignonette,
In the tenement's highest casement.
Copyrighted by Charles Scribner's Sons.
THE LOVE-LETTERS OF SMITH
From (Short Sixes )
HEN the little seamstress had climbed to her room in the
story over the top story of the great brick tenement
house in which she lived, she was quite tired out. If
you do not understand what a story over a top story is, you
must remember that there are no limits to human greed, and
## p. 2734 (#298) ###########################################
HENRY CUYLER BUNNER
2734
hardly any to the height of tenement houses. When the man
who owned that seven-story tenement found that he could rent
another floor, he found no difficulty in persuading the guardians
of our building laws to let him clap another story on the roof,
like a cabin on the deck of a ship; and in the southeasterly of
the four apartments on this floor the little seamstress lived.
You could just see the top of her window from the street — the
huge cornice that had capped the original front, and that served
as her window-sill now, quite hid all the lower part of the story
on top of the top story.
The little seamstress was scarcely thirty years old, but she
was such an old-fashioned little body in so many of her looks
and ways that I had almost spelled her “sempstress,” after the
fashion of our grandmothers. She had been a comely body,
too; and would have been still, if she had not been thin and
pale and anxious-eyed.
She was tired out to-night, because she had been working
hard all day for a lady who lived far up in the New Wards”
beyond Harlem River, and after the long journey home she had
to climb seven flights of tenement-house stairs. She was too
tired, both in body and in mind, to cook the two little chops
she had brought home. She would save them for breakfast, she
thought. So she made herself a cup of tea on the miniature
stove, and ate a slice of dry bread with it. It was too much
trouble to make toast.
But after dinner she watered her flowers. She was never too
tired for that, and the six pots of geraniums that caught the
south sun on the top of the cornice did their best to repay her.
Then she sat down in her rocking-chair by the window and
looked out. Her eyry was high above all the other buildings,
and she could look across some low roofs opposite and see the
further end of Tompkins Square, with its sparse spring green
showing faintly through the dusk. The eternal roar of the city
floated up to her and vaguely troubled her. She was a country
girl; and although she had lived for ten years in New York,
she had never grown used to that ceaseless murmur. To-night
she felt the languor of the new season, as well as the heavi-
ness of physical exhaustion. She was almost too tired to go to
bed.
She thought of the hard day done and the hard day to be
begun after the night spent on the hard little bed. She thought
## p. 2735 (#299) ###########################################
HENRY CUYLER BUNNER
2735
of the peaceful days in the country, when she taught school in
the Massachusetts village where she was born. She thought of a
hundred small slights that she had to bear from people better
fed than bred. She thought of the sweet green fields that she
rarely saw nowadays. She thought of the long journey forth and
back that must begin and end her morrow's work, and she won-
dered if her employer would think to offer to pay her fare.
Then she pulled herself together. She must think of more
agreeable things or she could not sleep. And as the only agree-
able things she had to think about were her flowers, she looked
at the garden on top of the cornice.
A peculiar gritting noise made her look down, and she saw a
cylindrical object that glittered in the twilight, advancing in an
irregular and uncertain manner toward her flower-pots. Looking
closer, she saw that it was a pewter beer-mug, which somebody
in the next apartment was pushing with a two-foot rule. On top
of the beer-mug was a piece of paper, and on this paper was
written, in a sprawling, half-formed hand:-
porter
pleas excuse the libberty And
drink it
The seamstress started up in terror and shut the window. She
remembered that there was a man in the next apartment. She
had seen him on the stairs on Sundays. He seemed a grave,
decent person; but — he must be drunk. She sat down on her
bed all a-tremble. Then she reasoned with herself.
The man
was drunk, that was all. He probably would not annoy her fur-
ther. And if he did, she had only to retreat to Mrs. Mulvaney's
apartment in the rear, and Mr. Mulvaney, who was a highly
respectable man and worked in a boiler-shop, would protect her.
So, being a poor woman who had already had occasion to excuse
- and refuse — two or three “libberties” of like sort, she made
up her mind to go to bed like a reasonable seamstress, and she
did. She was rewarded, for when her light was out, she could see
in the moonlight that the two-foot rule appeared again with one
joint bent back, hitched itself into the mug-handle, and withdrew
the mug.
The next day was a hard one for the little seamstress, and
she hardly thought of the affair of the night before until the
same hour had come around again, and she sat once more by
## p. 2736 (#300) ###########################################
2736
HENRY CUYLER BUNNER
her window. Then she smiled at the remembrance. « Poor fel-
low," she said in her charitable heart, "I've no doubt he's
awfully ashamed of it now. Perhaps he was never tipsy before.
Perhaps he didn't know there was a lone woman in here to be
frightened. ”
Just then she heard a gritting sound. She looked down. The
pewter pot was in front of her, and the two-foot rule was slowly
retiring. On the pot was a piece of paper, and on the paper
was
porter
good for the helth
it makes meet
This time the little seamstress shut her window with a bang
of indignation. The color rose to her pale cheeks. She thought
that she would go down to see the janitor at once. Then she
remembered the seven fights of stairs; and she resolved to see
the janitor in the morning. Then she went to bed, and saw the
mug drawn back just as it had been drawn back the night before.
The morning came, but somehow the seamstress did not care
to complain to the janitor. She hated to make trouble - and the
janitor might think — and — and — well, if the wretch did it again
she would speak to him herself, and that would settle it. And
so on the next night, which was a Thursday, the little seamstress
sat down by her window, resolved to settle the matter. And she
had not sat there long, rocking in the creaking little rocking-
chair which she had brought with her from her old home, when the
pewter pot hove in sight, with a piece of paper on the top.
time the legend read:
Perhaps you are afrade i will
adress you
i am not that kind
The seamstress did not quite know whether to laugh or to
cry. But she felt that the time had come for speech. She leaned
out of her window and addressed the twilight heaven.
“Mr. — Mr. — sir —1— will you please put your head out of
the window so that I can speak to you ? ”
The silence of the other room was undisturbed.
The seam-
stress drew back, blushing. But before she could nerve herself
for another attack, a piece of paper appeared on the end of the
two-foot rule.
## p. 2737 (#301) ###########################################
HENRY CUYLER BUNNER
2737
when i Say a thing i
mene it
i have Sed i would not
Adress you and i
Will not
What was the little seamstress to do? She stood by the win-
dow and thought hard about it. Should she complain to the
janitor ? But the creature was perfectly respectful. No doubt he
meant to be kind. He certainly was kind, to waste these pots
of porter on her. She remembered the last time - and the first-
that she had drunk porter. It was at home, when she was a
young girl, after she had the diphtheria. She remembered how
good it was, and how it had given her back her strength. And
without one thought of what she was doing, she lifted the pot of
porter and took one little reminiscent sip-two little reminiscent
sips—and became aware of her utter fall and defeat. She blushed
now as she had never blushed before, put the pot down, closed
the window, and fled to her bed like a deer to the woods.
And when the porter arrived the next night, bearing the sim-
ple appeal
Dont be afrade of it
drink it all
the little seamstress arose and grasped the pot firmly by the
handle, and poured its contents over the earth around her largest
geranium. She poured the contents out to the last drop, and
then she dropped the pot, and ran back and sat on her bed and
cried, with her face hid in her hands.
“Now,” she said to herself, you've done it! And you're
just as nasty and hard-hearted and suspicious and mean as — as
pusley! ” And she wept to think of her hardness of heart. ~ He
will never give me a chance to say I am sorry,'
) » she thought.
And really, she might have spoken kindly to the poor man, and
told him that she was much obliged to him, but that he really
must not ask her to drink porter with him.
“But it's all over and done now,” she said to herself as she
sat at her window on Saturday night. And then she looked at
the cornice, and saw the faithful little pewter pot traveling
slowly toward her.
She was conquered. This act of Christian forbearance was too
much for her kindly spirit. She read the inscription on the paper,
porter is good for Flours
but better for Fokes
V-172
## p. 2738 (#302) ###########################################
2738
HENRY CUYLER BUNNER
and she lifted the pot to her lips, which were not half so red as
her cheeks, and took a good, hearty, grateful draught.
She sipped in thoughtful silence after this first plunge, and
presently she was surprised to find the bottom of the pot in full
view. On the table at her side a few pearl buttons were
screwed up in a bit of white paper. She untwisted the paper
and smoothed it out, and wrote in a tremulous hand — she could
write a very neat hand
Thanks.
This she laid on the top of the pot, and in a moment the bent
two-foot rule appeared and drew the mail-carriage home. Then
she sat still, enjoying the warm glow of the porter, which seemed
to have permeated her entire being with a heat that was not at
all like the unpleasant and oppressive heat of the atmosphere, an
atmosphere heavy with the spring damp. A gritting on the tin
aroused her. A piece of paper lay under her eyes.
fine groing weather
Smith
Now it is unlikely that in the whole round and range of
conversational commonplaces there was one other greeting that
could have induced the seamstress to continue the exchange of
communications. But this simple and homely phrase touched her
country heart. What did “groing weather” matter to the toilers
in this waste of brick and mortar? This stranger must be, like
herself, a country-bred soul, longing for the new green and the
upturned brown mold of the country fields. She took up the
paper, and wrote under the first message: -
Fine
But that seemed curt: ”for” she added; for what? She did
not know. At last in desperation she put down "potatoes. ” The
piece of paper was withdrawn, and came back with an addition:
Toomist for potatos
And when the little seamstress had read this, and grasped the
fact that “m-i-s-t” represented the writer's pronunciation of
"moist,” she laughed softly to herself. A man whose mind at
such a time was seriously bent upon potatoes was not a man to
be feared. She found a half-sheet of note-paper, and wrote:
## p. 2739 (#303) ###########################################
HENRY CUYLER BUNNER
2739
I lived in a small village before I came to New York,
but I am afraid I do not know much about farming. Are
you a farmer!
The answer came:
have ben most Every thing
farmed a Spel in Maine
Smith
As she read this, the seamstress heard the church clock strike
nine.
« Bless me, is it so late ? ” she cried, and she hurriedly pen-
ciled Good Night, thrust the paper out, and closed the window.
But a few minutes later, passing by, she saw yet another bit of
paper on the cornice, fluttering in the evening breeze. It said
only good nite, and after a moment's hesitation, the little seam-
stress took it in and gave it shelter.
After this they were the best of friends. Every evening the
pot appeared, and while the seamstress drank from it at her
window, Mr. Smith drank from its twin at his; and notes were
exchanged as rapidly as Mr. Smith's early education permitted.
They told each other their histories, and Mr. Smith's was one of
travel and variety, which he seemed to consider quite a matter
of course. He had followed the sea, he had farmed, he had
been a logger and a hunter in the Maine woods. Now he was
foreman of an East River lumber-yard, and he was prospering.
In a year or two he would have enough laid by to go home to
Bucksport and buy a share in a ship-building business. All this
dribbled out in the course of a jerky but variegated correspond-
ence, in which autobiographic details were mixed with reflections
moral and philosophical.
A few samples will give an idea of Mr. Smith's style:-
i was one trip to van demens
land
To which the seamstress replied:-
It must have been very interesting.
But Mr. Smith disposed of this subject very briefly:-
it wornt
## p. 2740 (#304) ###########################################
2740
HENRY CUYLER BUNNER
Further he vouchsafed:
i seen a chinese cook in
hong kong could cook flapjacks
like your mother
a mishnery that sells Rum
is the menest of Gods crechers
a bulfite is not what it is
cract up to Be
the dagos are wussen the
brutes
i am 6 134
but my Father was 6 foot 4
The seamstress had taught school one winter, and she could
not refrain from making an attempt to reform Mr. Smith's or-
thography. One evening, in answer to this communication,
i killd a Bare in Maine 600
lbs waight
she wrote:
Isn't it generally spelled Bear?
but she gave up the attempt when he responded :-
a bare is a mene animle any
way you spel him
The spring wore on, and the summer came, and still the
evening drink and the evening correspondence brightened the
close of each day for the little seamstress. And the draught of
porter put her to sleep each night, giving her a calmer rest than
she had ever known during her stay in the noisy city; and it
began, moreover, to make a little “meet» for her. And then
the thought that she was going to have an hour of pleasant
companionship somehow gave her courage to cook and eat her
little dinner, however tired she was. The seamstress's cheeks
began to blossom with the June roses.
And all this time Mr. Smith kept his vow of silence unbroken,
though the seamstress sometimes tempted him with little ejacu-
lations and exclamations to which he might have responded. He
was silent and invisible. Only the smoke of his pipe, and the
## p. 2741 (#305) ###########################################
HENRY CUYLER BUNNER
2741
clink of his mug as he set it down on the cornice, told her that
a living, material Smith was her correspondent. They never met
on the stairs, for their hours of coming and going did not co-
incide. Once or twice they passed each other in the street — but
Mr. Smith looked straight ahead of him about a foot over her
head. The little seamstress thought he was a very fine-looking
man, with his six feet one and three-quarters and his thick brown
beard. Most people would have called him plain.
Once she spoke to him. She was coming home one summer
evening, and a gang of corner-loafers stopped her and demanded
money to buy beer, as is their custom. Before she had time to
be frightened, Mr. Smith appeared, - whence, she knew not, -
scattered the gang like chaff, and collaring two of the human
hyenas, kicked them, with deliberate, ponderous, alternate kicks,
until they writhed in ineffable agony. When he let them crawl
away, she turned to him and thanked him warmly, looking
very pretty now, with the color in her cheeks. But Mr. Smith
answered no word. He stared over her head, grew red in the
face, fidgeted nervously, but held his peace until his eyes fell on
a rotund Teuton passing by.
“Say, Dutchy! ” he roared. The German stood aghast. « I
ain't got nothing to write with! ” thundered Mr. Smith, looking
him in the eye. And then the man of his word passed on his
way.
And so the summer went on, and the two correspondents
chatted silently from window to window, hid from sight of all
the world below by the friendly cornice. And they looked out
over the roof and saw the green of Tompkins Square grow
darker and dustier as the months went on.
Mr. Smith was given to Sunday trips into the suburbs, and
he never came back without a bunch of daisies or black-eyed
Susans or, later, asters or golden-rod for the little seamstress.
Sometimes, with a sagacity rare in his sex, he brought her a
whole plant, with fresh loam for potting.
He gave her also a reel in a bottle, which, he wrote, he had
“maid” himself, and some coral, and a dried flying-fish that was
something fearful to look upon, with its sword-like fins and its
At first she could not go to sleep with that flying-
fish hanging on the wall.
But he surprised the little seamstress very much one cool Sep-
tember evening, when he shoved this letter along the cornice:-
hollow eyes.
## p. 2742 (#306) ###########################################
2742
HENRY CUYLER BUNNER
Resputed and Honored Madam :
Having long and rainly sought' an
opportunity to convey to you the expression
of any sentiments, y now avail imyself
of the privilege of epistolary communication
to acquaint you with the fact that the
Emotionig which you
have raised in my
breasts are those which should point to
Connubial Love and Affection ratheri
than to simple Friendshipoin shortg:
Madam g et have the Honor to approach you
with a Proposal 9 the acceptonee of which
will fill me with ecstatie Gratitudes
and enable me to extend to you those
Protecting bareng which the Natimonial
Bond makes at once the Duty and the
Privilege of hing nho nould, at no
distant date lead to the Moymeneal
Altar one whose charms and ritus should
suffice to kindle ita Flameng mithout
ex hiteous Aid
Sremaing Dear Nbadong
Your Kumble servant and
Ardent Adores Idemith
The little seamstress gazed at this letter a long time.
Per-
haps she was wondering in what Ready Letter-Writer of the last
century Mr. Smith had found his form. Perhaps she was amused
at the results of his first attempt at punctuation. Perhaps she
was thinking of something else, for there were tears in her eyes
and a smile on her small mouth,
But it must have been a long time, and Mr. Smith must have
grown nervous, for presently another communication came along
the line where the top of the cornice was worn smooth. It read:
If not understood will you
mary me
## p. 2743 (#307) ###########################################
HENRY CUYLER BUNNER
2743
The little seamstress seized a piece of paper and wrote:
If I say Yes, will you speak to me?
Then she rose and passed it out to him, leaning out of the win-
dow, and their faces met.
Copyright of Keppler and Schwarzmann.
THE WAY TO ARCADY
O"
H, What's the way to Arcady,
To Arcady, to Arcady;
Oh, what's the way to Arcady,
Where all the leaves are merry ?
Oh, what's the way to Arcady?
The spring is rustling in the tree —
The tree the wind is blowing through —
It sets the blossoms flickering white.
I knew not skies could burn so blue
Nor any breezes blow so light.
They blow an old-time way for me,
Across the world to Arcady.
Oh, what's the way to Arcady?
Sir Poet, with the rusty coat,
Quit mocking of the song-bird's note.
How have you heart for any tune,
You with the wayworn russet shoon?
Your scrip, a-swinging by your side,
Gapes with a gaunt mouth hungry-wide.
I'll brim it well with pieces red,
If you will tell the way to tread.
Oh, I am bound for Arcady,
And if you but keep pace with me
You tread the way to Arcady.
And where away lies Arcady,
And how long yet may the journey be?
Ah, that (quoth he) I do not know:
Across the clover and the snow-
Across the forest, across the flowers —
Through summer seconds and winter hours.
I've trod the way my whole life long,
And know not now where it may be;
## p. 2744 (#308) ###########################################
2744
HENRY CUYLER BUNNER
My guide is but the stir to song,
That tells me I cannot go wrong,
Or clear or dark the pathway be
l'pon the road to Arcady.
But how shall I do who cannot sing?
I was wont to sing, once on a time-
There is never an echo now to ring
Remembrance back to the trick of rhyme.
'Tis strange you cannot sing (quoth he),
The folk all sing in Arcady.
But how may he find Arcady
Who hath nor youth nor melody ?
What, know you not, old man (quoth he) –
Your hair is white, your face is wise-
That Love must kiss that Mortal's eyes
Who hopes to see fair Arcady ?
No gold can buy you entrance there,
But beggared Love may go all bare;
No wisdom won with weariness,
But Love goes in with Folly's dress;
No fame that wit could ever win,
But only Love, may lead Love in
To Arcady, to Arcady.
Ah, woe is me, through all my days
Wisdom and wealth I both have got,
And fame and name, and great men's praise;
But Love, ah Love! I have it not.
There was a time, when life was new
But far away, and half forgot
I only know her eyes were blue;
But Love - I fear I knew it not.
We did not wed, for lack of gold,
And she is dead, and I am old.
All things have come since then to me,
Save Love, ah Love! and Arcady.
Ah, then I fear we part (quoth he),
My way's for Love and Arcady.
But you, you fare alone like me;
The gray is likewise in your hair.
What love have you to lead you there,
To Arcady, to Arcady?
## p. 2745 (#309) ###########################################
HENRY CUYLER BUNNER
2745
Ah, no, not lonely do I fare:
My true companion's Memory.
With Love he fills the Spring-time air;
With Love he clothes the Winter tree.
Oh, past this poor horizon's bound
My song goes straight to one who stands –
Her face all gladdening at the sound -
To lead me to the Spring-green lands,
To wander with enlacing hands.
The songs within my breast that stir
Are all of her, are all of her.
My maid is dead long years (quoth he),
She waits for me in Arcady.
Oh, yon's the way to Arcady,
To Arcady, to Arcady:
Oh, yon's the way to Arcady,
Where all the leaves are merry.
Copyrighted by Charles Scribner's Sons.
CHANT-ROYAL
I
WOULD that all men my hard case might know;
How grievously I suffer for no sin :
1, Adolphe Culpepper Ferguson, for lo!
I of my landlady am locked in,
For being short on this sad Saturday,
Nor having shekels of silver wherewith to pay:
She has turned and is departed with my key;
Wherefore, not even as other boarders free,
I sing (as prisoners to their dungeon stones
When for ten days they expiate a spree):
Behold the deeds that are done of Mrs. Jones!
One night and one day have I wept my woe;
Nor wot I, when the morrow doth begin,
If I shall have to write to Briggs & Co. ,
To pray them to advance the requisite tin
For ransom of their salesman, that he may
Go forth as other boarders go alway-
As those I hear now flocking from their tea,
Led by the daughter of my landlady
Piano-ward. This day, for all my moans,
Dry bread and water have been served me.
Behold the deeds that are done of Mrs. Jones!
## p. 2746 (#310) ###########################################
2746
HENRY CUYLER BUNNER
Miss Amabel Jones is musical, and so
The heart of the young he-boardér doth win,
Playing «The Maiden's Prayer' adagio --
That fetcheth him, as fetcheth the banco skin
The innocent rustic.
For my part,
I
pray
That Badarjewska maid may wait for aye
Ere sits she with a lover, as did we
Once sit together, Amabel! Can it be
That all that arduous wooing not atones
For Saturday shortness of trade dollars three?
Behold the deeds that are done of Mrs. Jones!
Yea! she forgets the arm was wont to go
Around her waist. She wears a buckle, whose pin
Galleth the crook of the young man's elbów.
I forget not, for I that youth have been.
Smith was aforetime the Lothario gay.
Yet once, I mind me, Smith was forced to stay
Close in his room. Not calm, as I, was he;
But his noise brought no pleasa unce, verily.
Small ease he got of playing on the bones
Or hammering on his stove-pipe, that I see.
Behold the deeds that are done of Mrs. Jones!
Thou, for whose fear the figurative crow
I eat, accursed be thou and all thy kin!
Thee will I show up — yea, up will I show
Thy too thick buckwheats, and thy tea too thin.
Ay! here I dare thee, ready for the fray:
Thou dost not “keep a first-class house,” I say!
It does not with the advertisements agree.
Thou lodgest a Briton with a puggaree,
And thou hast harbored Jacobses and Cohns,
Also a Mulligan. Thus denounce I thee!
Behold the deeds that are done of Mrs. Jones!
ENVOY
Boarders! the worst I have not told to ye:
She hath stolen my trousers, that I may not flee
Privily by the window.
Hence these groans.
There is no fleeing in a robe de nuit.
Behold the deeds that are done of Mrs. Jones!
Copyrighted by Charles Scribner's Sons.
## p. 2746 (#311) ###########################################
## p. 2746 (#312) ###########################################
JOHN BUNYAN.
## p. 2746 (#313) ###########################################
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## p. 2746 (#314) ###########################################
JOHN BUNYAN.
## p. 2747 (#315) ###########################################
2747
JOHN BUNYAN
(1628-1688)
BY REV. EDWIN P. PARKER
OHN BUNYAN, son of Thomas Bunnionn Jun' and Margaret
Bentley, was born 1628, in the quaint old village of Elstow,
one mile southwest of Bedford, near the spot where, three
hundred years before, his ancestor William Boynon resided. His
father was a poor tinker or braseyer,”
» and his mother's lineage is
unknown. He says, — "I never went to school to Aristotle or Plato,
but was brought up at my father's house in a very mean condition,
among a company of poor countrymen. ”
He learned to read and write «according to the rate of other poor
men's children”; but soon lost “almost utterly” the little he had
learned. Shortly after his mother's death, when he was about seven-
teen years of age, he served as a soldier for several months, probably
in the Parliamentary army. Not long afterward he married a woman
as poor as himself, by whose gentle influence he was gradually led
into the way of those severe spiritual conflicts and painful exercises
of mind” from which he finally came forth, at great cost, victorious.
These religious experiences, vividly described in his (Grace Abound-
ing,' traceable in the course of his chief Pilgrim, and frequently
referred to in his discourses, have been too literally interpreted by
some, and too much explained away as unreal by others; but pre-
sent no special difficulty to those who will but consider Bunyan's own
explanations.
From boyhood he had lived a roving and non-religious life,
although possessing no little tenderness of conscience. He
neither intemperate nor dishonest; he was not a law-breaker; he
explicitly and indignantly declares: - If all the fornicators and
adulterers in England were hanged by the neck till they be dead,
John Bunyan would still be alive and well! The particular sins of
which he was guilty, so far as he specifies them, were profane
swearing, from which he suddenly ceased at a woman's reproof, and
certain sports, innocent enough in themselves, which the prevailing
Puritan rigor severely condemned. What, then, of that vague and
exceeding sinfulness of which he so bitterly accuses and repents
himself? It was that vision of sin, however disproportionate, which
a deeply wounded and graciously healed spirit often has, in looking
back upon the past from that theological standpoint whence all want
of conformity to the perfect law of God seems heinous and dreadful.
was
## p. 2748 (#316) ###########################################
2748
JOHN BUNYAN
“A sinner may be comparatively a little sinner, and sensibly a great one.
There are two sorts of greatness in sin: greatness by reason of number;
greatness by reason of the horrible nature of sin. In the last sense, he that
has but one sin, if such an one could be found, may in his own eyes find
himself the biggest sinner in the world. »
« Visions of God break the heart, because, by the sight the soul then has
of His perfections, it sees its own infinite and unspeakable disproportion. ”
« The best saints are most sensible of their sins, and most apt to make
mountains of their molehills. »
Such sentences from Bunyan's own writings – and many like them
might be quoted - shed more light upon the much-debated question
of his wickedness than all that his biographers have written.
In John Gifford, pastor of a little Free Church in Bedford, Bunyan
found a wise friend, and in 1653 he joined that church.
He soon
discovered his gifts among the brethren, and in due time was ap-
pointed to the office of a gospel minister, in which he labored with
indefatigable industry and zeal, and with ever-increasing fame and
success, until his death.
His hard personal fortunes between the
Restoration of 1660 and the Declaration of Indulgence of 1672, in-
cluding his imprisonment for twelve years in Bedford Gaol; his sub-
sequent imprisonment in 1675-6, when the first part of the Pilgrim's
Progress) was probably written; and the arduous engagements of his
later and comparatively peaceful years. -- must be sought in biogra-
phies, the latest and perhaps the best of which is that by Rev. John
Brown, minister of the Bunyan Church at Bedford. The statute
under which Bunyan suffered is the 35th Eliz. , Cap. I, re-enacted
with rigor in the 16th Charles II. , Cap. 4, 1662; and the spirit of it
appears in the indictment preferred against him : «that he hath
devilishly and perniciously abstained from coming to Church to hear
Divine service, and is a common upholder of several unlawful meet-
ings and conventicles, to the great disturbance and distraction of the
good subjects of this Kingdom, etc. , etc.
The story of Bunyan's life up to the time of his imprisonment,
and particularly that of his arrests and examinations before the just-
ices, and also the account of his experiences in prison, should be
read in his own most graphic narrative, in the Grace Abounding,'
which is one of the most precious portions of all autobiographic
literature. Bunyan was born and bred, he lived and labored, among
the common people, with whom his sympathies were strong and ten-
der, and by whom he was regarded with the utmost veneration and
affection. He understood them, and they him. For nearly a century
they were almost the only readers of his published writings. They
came to call him Bishop Bunyan. His native genius, his great
human-heartedness and loving-kindness, his burning zeal and indom-
itable courage, his racy humor and kindling imagination, all vitalized
## p. 2749 (#317) ###########################################
JOHN BUNYAN
2749
by the spiritual force which came upon him through the encompass-
ing atmosphere of devout Puritanism, were consecrated to the welfare
of his fellow-men. His personal friend, Mr. Doe, describes him as
« tall in stature, strong-boned, of a ruddy face, with sparkling eyes,
nose well set, mouth moderately large, forehead something high,
and his habit always plain and modest. ” His portrait, painted in
1685, shows a vigorous, kindly face, with mustachios and imperial,
and abundance of hair falling in long wavy masses about the neck
and shoulders, — more Cavalier-like than Roundhead.
Bunyan was a voluminous writer, and his works, many of them
posthumous, are said to equal in number the sixty years of his life.
But even the devout and sympathetic critic is compelled to acknowl-
edge the justice of that verdict of time which has consigned most of
them to a virtual oblivion. The controversial tracts possess no ele-
ments of enduring interest. The doctrinal and spiritual discourses are
elaborations of a system of religious thought which long ago «had
its day and ceased to be. ” Yet they contain pithy sentences, homely
and pat illustrations, and many a paragraph, rugged or tender, in
which one recognizes the stamp of his genius, and an intimation of
his remarkable power as a preacher. The best of these discourses,
(The Jerusalem Sinner Saved,' Come and Welcome to Jesus Christ,'
and Light for Them that Sit in Darkness,' while they sparkle here
and there with things unique and precious to the Bunyan-curious
student, would seem dull and tedious to the general though devout
reader. In many a passage we feel, to use his phrase, his heart-
pulling power,” no less than the force and felicity of his most
original images and analogies; but these passages are little oases in
a dry and thirsty land. The Life and Death of Mr. Badman' viv-
idly presents certain aspects of English provincial life in that day;
but they are repulsive, and the entire work is marred by flat moral- .
izings and coarse, often incredible stories.
The Holy War, which Macaulay said would have been our great-
est religious allegory if the Pilgrim's Progress' had not been writ-
ten, has ceased to be much read. The conception of the conquest of
the human soul by the irresistible operation of divine force is so for-
eign to modern thought and faith that Bunyan's similitude no longer
seems a verisimilitude. The pages abound with quaint, humorous,
and lifelike touches; as where Diabolus stations at Ear-Gate a
guard of deaf men under old Mr. Prejudice, and Unbelief is described
as "a nimble jack whom they could never lay hold of”;- but as
compared with the Pilgrim's Progress the allegory is artificial, its
elaboration of analogies is ponderous and tedious, and its characters
lack solidity and reality.
All these works, however, exhibit a remarkable command of the
inother tongue, a shrewd common-sense and mother wit, a fervid
## p. 2750 (#318) ###########################################
2750
JOHN BUNYAN
spiritual life, and a wonderful knowledge of the English Bible. They
may be likened to more or less submerged wrecks kept from sinking
into utter neglect by the bond of authorship which connects them
with the one incomparable work which floats, unimpaired by time.
on the sea of universal appreciation and favor. Bunyan's unique and
secure position in English literature was gained by the Pilgrim's
Progress,' the first part of which was published in 1678, and the
second in 1685.
The broader, freer conception of the pilgrimage - as old in liter-
ature as the ninetieth Psalm, apt and fond, as innumerable books
show, from De Guileville's "Le Pelerinage de l'Homme) in the four-
teenth century to Patrick's Parable three hundred years later —
took sudden possession of Bunyan's imagination while he was in
prison, and kindled all his finest powers. Then he undertook, poet-
wise, to work out this conception, capable of such diversity of illus-
tration, in a form of literature that has ever been especially congenial
to the human mind. Unguided save by his own consecrated genius,
unaided by other books than his English Bible and Fox's Book of
Martyrs,' he proceeded with a simplicity of purpose and felicity of
expression, and with a fidelity to nature and life, which gave to his
unconsciously artistic story the charm of perfect artlessness as well
as the semblance of reality. When Bunyan's lack of learning and
culture are considered, and also the comparative dryness of his con-
troversial and didactic writings, this efflorescence of a vital spirit of
beauty and of an essentially poetic genius in him seems quite inex-
plicable. The author's rhymed Apology for His Book,' which
usually prefaces the Pilgrim's Progress,' contains many significant
hints as to the way in which he was led to
«Make truth spangle, and its rays to shine. ”
He had no thought of producing a work of literary excellence; but
on the other hand he had not, in writing this book, his customary
purpose of spiritual edification. Indeed, he put his multiplying
thoughts and fancies aside, lest they should interfere with a more
serious and important book which he had in hand!
« I only thought to make
I knew not what: nor did I undertake
Thereby to please my neighbor; no, not 1:
I did it mine own self to gratify.
Thus I set pen to paper with delight,
And quickly had my thoughts in black and white. »
## p. 2751 (#319) ###########################################
JOHN BUNYAN
2751
The words are exceedingly suggestive. In writing so aimlessly –
“I knew not what » – to gratify himself by permitting the allegory
into which he had suddenly fallen to take possession of him and
carry him whithersoever it would, while he wrote out with delight
his teeming fancies, was not Bunyan for the first time exercising his
genius in a freedom from all theological and other restraint, and so
in a surpassing range and power? The dreamer and poet supplanted
the preacher and teacher. He yielded to the simple impulse of his
genius, gave his imagination full sweep, and so, as never before or
elsewhere, soared and sang in what seemed to many of his Puritan
friends a questionable freedom and profane inspiration. And yet his
song, or story, was not a creation of mere fancy,-
“It came from my own heart, so to my head,
And thence into my fingers tricklèd ; ».
one
and therefore, we add, it finds its way to the heart of mankind.
Hence the spontaneity of the allegory, its ease and freedom of
movement, its unlabored development, its natural and vital enfolding
of that old pilgrim idea of human life which had so often bloomed
in the literature of all climes and ages, but whose consummate
flower appeared in the book of this inspired Puritan tinker-preacher.
Hence also the dramatic unity and methodic perfectness of the story.
Its byways all lead to its highway; its episodes are as vitally related
to the main theme as are the ramifications of a tree to its central
stem. The great diversities of experience in the true pilgrims are
dominated by
supreme motive.
As for the others, they
appear incidentally to complete the scenes, and make the world and
its life manifold and real. The Pilgrim is a most substantial person,
and once well on the way, the characters he meets, the difficulties
he encounters, the succor he receives, the scenes in which he
mingles, are all, however surprising, most natural. The names, and
one might almost say the forms and faces, of Pliable, Obstinate,
Faithful, Hopeful, Talkative, Mercy, Great-heart, old Honest, Valiant-
for-truth, Feeble-mind, Ready-to-halt, Miss Much-afraid, and many
another, are familiar to us all. Indeed, the pilgrimage is our own
- in many of its phases at least, — and we have met the people
whom Bunyan saw in his dream, and are ourselves they whom he
describes.
esting old French quarter of South Fifth Avenue. Again, in “The
Story of a New York House,' he displayed the same quick feeling
for the spirit of the place, as it was and is. This tale first appeared
in the newly founded Scribner's Magazine, to which he has since
been a constant contributor. Here some of his best short stories
have been published, including the excellent (Zadoc Pine, with its
healthy presentation of independent manhood in contest with the
oppressive exactions of labor organizations. But Bunner was no be-
liever in stories with a tendency; the conditions which lie at the root
of great sociological questions he used as artistic material, never as
texts. His stories are distinguished by simplicity of motive; each is
related with fine unobtrusive humor and with an underlying pathos,
never unduly emphasized. The most popular of his collections of
tales is that entitled Short Sixes, which, having first appeared in
Puck, were published in book form in 1891. A second volume came
out three years later. When the shadow of death had already fallen
upon Bunner, a new collection of his sketches was in process of
publication: Jersey Street and Jersey Lane. ' In these, as in the
still more recent Suburban Sage,' is revealed the same fineness of
sympathetic observation in town and country that we have come to
associate with Bunner's name. Among his prose writings there re-
mains to be mentioned the series from Puck entitled Made in
France. These are an application of the methods of Maupassant to
American subjects; they display that wonderful facility in reprodu-
cing the flavor of another's style which is exhibited in Bunner's verse
in a still more eminent degree. His prose style never attained the
perfection of literary finish, but it is easy and direct, free from senti-
mentality and rhetoric; in the simplicity of his conceptions and the
delicacy of his treatment lies its chief charm.
## p. 2733 (#297) ###########################################
HENRY CUYLER BUNNER
2733
Bunner's verse, on the other hand, shows a complete mastery of
form. He was a close student of Horace; he tried successfully the
most exacting of exotic verse-forms, and enjoyed the distinction of
having written the only English example of the difficult Chant-
Royal. Graceful vers de société and bits of witty epigram flowed from
him without effort. But it was not to this often dangerous facility
that Bunner owed his poetic fame. His tenderness, his quick sym-
pathy with nature, his insight into the human heart, above all, the
love and longing that filled his soul, have infused into his perfected
rhythms the spirit of universal brotherhood that underlies all genu-
ine poetry. His Airs from Arcady' (1884) achieved a success unusual
for a volume of poems; and the love lyrics and patriotic songs of
his later volume, (Rowen, maintain the high level of the earlier
book. The great mass of his poems is still buried in the back num-
bers of the magazines, from which the best are to be rescued in a
new volume. If his place is not among the greatest of our time,
he has produced a sufficient body of fine verse to rescue his name
from oblivion and render his memory dear to all who value the
legacy of a sincere and genuine poet. He died on May uth, 1896, at
the age of forty-one.
TRIOLET
A
PITCHER of mignonette,
In a tenement's highest casement:
Queer sort of flower-pot - yet
That pitcher of mignonette
Is a garden in heaven set,
To the little sick child in the basement
The pitcher of mignonette,
In the tenement's highest casement.
Copyrighted by Charles Scribner's Sons.
THE LOVE-LETTERS OF SMITH
From (Short Sixes )
HEN the little seamstress had climbed to her room in the
story over the top story of the great brick tenement
house in which she lived, she was quite tired out. If
you do not understand what a story over a top story is, you
must remember that there are no limits to human greed, and
## p. 2734 (#298) ###########################################
HENRY CUYLER BUNNER
2734
hardly any to the height of tenement houses. When the man
who owned that seven-story tenement found that he could rent
another floor, he found no difficulty in persuading the guardians
of our building laws to let him clap another story on the roof,
like a cabin on the deck of a ship; and in the southeasterly of
the four apartments on this floor the little seamstress lived.
You could just see the top of her window from the street — the
huge cornice that had capped the original front, and that served
as her window-sill now, quite hid all the lower part of the story
on top of the top story.
The little seamstress was scarcely thirty years old, but she
was such an old-fashioned little body in so many of her looks
and ways that I had almost spelled her “sempstress,” after the
fashion of our grandmothers. She had been a comely body,
too; and would have been still, if she had not been thin and
pale and anxious-eyed.
She was tired out to-night, because she had been working
hard all day for a lady who lived far up in the New Wards”
beyond Harlem River, and after the long journey home she had
to climb seven flights of tenement-house stairs. She was too
tired, both in body and in mind, to cook the two little chops
she had brought home. She would save them for breakfast, she
thought. So she made herself a cup of tea on the miniature
stove, and ate a slice of dry bread with it. It was too much
trouble to make toast.
But after dinner she watered her flowers. She was never too
tired for that, and the six pots of geraniums that caught the
south sun on the top of the cornice did their best to repay her.
Then she sat down in her rocking-chair by the window and
looked out. Her eyry was high above all the other buildings,
and she could look across some low roofs opposite and see the
further end of Tompkins Square, with its sparse spring green
showing faintly through the dusk. The eternal roar of the city
floated up to her and vaguely troubled her. She was a country
girl; and although she had lived for ten years in New York,
she had never grown used to that ceaseless murmur. To-night
she felt the languor of the new season, as well as the heavi-
ness of physical exhaustion. She was almost too tired to go to
bed.
She thought of the hard day done and the hard day to be
begun after the night spent on the hard little bed. She thought
## p. 2735 (#299) ###########################################
HENRY CUYLER BUNNER
2735
of the peaceful days in the country, when she taught school in
the Massachusetts village where she was born. She thought of a
hundred small slights that she had to bear from people better
fed than bred. She thought of the sweet green fields that she
rarely saw nowadays. She thought of the long journey forth and
back that must begin and end her morrow's work, and she won-
dered if her employer would think to offer to pay her fare.
Then she pulled herself together. She must think of more
agreeable things or she could not sleep. And as the only agree-
able things she had to think about were her flowers, she looked
at the garden on top of the cornice.
A peculiar gritting noise made her look down, and she saw a
cylindrical object that glittered in the twilight, advancing in an
irregular and uncertain manner toward her flower-pots. Looking
closer, she saw that it was a pewter beer-mug, which somebody
in the next apartment was pushing with a two-foot rule. On top
of the beer-mug was a piece of paper, and on this paper was
written, in a sprawling, half-formed hand:-
porter
pleas excuse the libberty And
drink it
The seamstress started up in terror and shut the window. She
remembered that there was a man in the next apartment. She
had seen him on the stairs on Sundays. He seemed a grave,
decent person; but — he must be drunk. She sat down on her
bed all a-tremble. Then she reasoned with herself.
The man
was drunk, that was all. He probably would not annoy her fur-
ther. And if he did, she had only to retreat to Mrs. Mulvaney's
apartment in the rear, and Mr. Mulvaney, who was a highly
respectable man and worked in a boiler-shop, would protect her.
So, being a poor woman who had already had occasion to excuse
- and refuse — two or three “libberties” of like sort, she made
up her mind to go to bed like a reasonable seamstress, and she
did. She was rewarded, for when her light was out, she could see
in the moonlight that the two-foot rule appeared again with one
joint bent back, hitched itself into the mug-handle, and withdrew
the mug.
The next day was a hard one for the little seamstress, and
she hardly thought of the affair of the night before until the
same hour had come around again, and she sat once more by
## p. 2736 (#300) ###########################################
2736
HENRY CUYLER BUNNER
her window. Then she smiled at the remembrance. « Poor fel-
low," she said in her charitable heart, "I've no doubt he's
awfully ashamed of it now. Perhaps he was never tipsy before.
Perhaps he didn't know there was a lone woman in here to be
frightened. ”
Just then she heard a gritting sound. She looked down. The
pewter pot was in front of her, and the two-foot rule was slowly
retiring. On the pot was a piece of paper, and on the paper
was
porter
good for the helth
it makes meet
This time the little seamstress shut her window with a bang
of indignation. The color rose to her pale cheeks. She thought
that she would go down to see the janitor at once. Then she
remembered the seven fights of stairs; and she resolved to see
the janitor in the morning. Then she went to bed, and saw the
mug drawn back just as it had been drawn back the night before.
The morning came, but somehow the seamstress did not care
to complain to the janitor. She hated to make trouble - and the
janitor might think — and — and — well, if the wretch did it again
she would speak to him herself, and that would settle it. And
so on the next night, which was a Thursday, the little seamstress
sat down by her window, resolved to settle the matter. And she
had not sat there long, rocking in the creaking little rocking-
chair which she had brought with her from her old home, when the
pewter pot hove in sight, with a piece of paper on the top.
time the legend read:
Perhaps you are afrade i will
adress you
i am not that kind
The seamstress did not quite know whether to laugh or to
cry. But she felt that the time had come for speech. She leaned
out of her window and addressed the twilight heaven.
“Mr. — Mr. — sir —1— will you please put your head out of
the window so that I can speak to you ? ”
The silence of the other room was undisturbed.
The seam-
stress drew back, blushing. But before she could nerve herself
for another attack, a piece of paper appeared on the end of the
two-foot rule.
## p. 2737 (#301) ###########################################
HENRY CUYLER BUNNER
2737
when i Say a thing i
mene it
i have Sed i would not
Adress you and i
Will not
What was the little seamstress to do? She stood by the win-
dow and thought hard about it. Should she complain to the
janitor ? But the creature was perfectly respectful. No doubt he
meant to be kind. He certainly was kind, to waste these pots
of porter on her. She remembered the last time - and the first-
that she had drunk porter. It was at home, when she was a
young girl, after she had the diphtheria. She remembered how
good it was, and how it had given her back her strength. And
without one thought of what she was doing, she lifted the pot of
porter and took one little reminiscent sip-two little reminiscent
sips—and became aware of her utter fall and defeat. She blushed
now as she had never blushed before, put the pot down, closed
the window, and fled to her bed like a deer to the woods.
And when the porter arrived the next night, bearing the sim-
ple appeal
Dont be afrade of it
drink it all
the little seamstress arose and grasped the pot firmly by the
handle, and poured its contents over the earth around her largest
geranium. She poured the contents out to the last drop, and
then she dropped the pot, and ran back and sat on her bed and
cried, with her face hid in her hands.
“Now,” she said to herself, you've done it! And you're
just as nasty and hard-hearted and suspicious and mean as — as
pusley! ” And she wept to think of her hardness of heart. ~ He
will never give me a chance to say I am sorry,'
) » she thought.
And really, she might have spoken kindly to the poor man, and
told him that she was much obliged to him, but that he really
must not ask her to drink porter with him.
“But it's all over and done now,” she said to herself as she
sat at her window on Saturday night. And then she looked at
the cornice, and saw the faithful little pewter pot traveling
slowly toward her.
She was conquered. This act of Christian forbearance was too
much for her kindly spirit. She read the inscription on the paper,
porter is good for Flours
but better for Fokes
V-172
## p. 2738 (#302) ###########################################
2738
HENRY CUYLER BUNNER
and she lifted the pot to her lips, which were not half so red as
her cheeks, and took a good, hearty, grateful draught.
She sipped in thoughtful silence after this first plunge, and
presently she was surprised to find the bottom of the pot in full
view. On the table at her side a few pearl buttons were
screwed up in a bit of white paper. She untwisted the paper
and smoothed it out, and wrote in a tremulous hand — she could
write a very neat hand
Thanks.
This she laid on the top of the pot, and in a moment the bent
two-foot rule appeared and drew the mail-carriage home. Then
she sat still, enjoying the warm glow of the porter, which seemed
to have permeated her entire being with a heat that was not at
all like the unpleasant and oppressive heat of the atmosphere, an
atmosphere heavy with the spring damp. A gritting on the tin
aroused her. A piece of paper lay under her eyes.
fine groing weather
Smith
Now it is unlikely that in the whole round and range of
conversational commonplaces there was one other greeting that
could have induced the seamstress to continue the exchange of
communications. But this simple and homely phrase touched her
country heart. What did “groing weather” matter to the toilers
in this waste of brick and mortar? This stranger must be, like
herself, a country-bred soul, longing for the new green and the
upturned brown mold of the country fields. She took up the
paper, and wrote under the first message: -
Fine
But that seemed curt: ”for” she added; for what? She did
not know. At last in desperation she put down "potatoes. ” The
piece of paper was withdrawn, and came back with an addition:
Toomist for potatos
And when the little seamstress had read this, and grasped the
fact that “m-i-s-t” represented the writer's pronunciation of
"moist,” she laughed softly to herself. A man whose mind at
such a time was seriously bent upon potatoes was not a man to
be feared. She found a half-sheet of note-paper, and wrote:
## p. 2739 (#303) ###########################################
HENRY CUYLER BUNNER
2739
I lived in a small village before I came to New York,
but I am afraid I do not know much about farming. Are
you a farmer!
The answer came:
have ben most Every thing
farmed a Spel in Maine
Smith
As she read this, the seamstress heard the church clock strike
nine.
« Bless me, is it so late ? ” she cried, and she hurriedly pen-
ciled Good Night, thrust the paper out, and closed the window.
But a few minutes later, passing by, she saw yet another bit of
paper on the cornice, fluttering in the evening breeze. It said
only good nite, and after a moment's hesitation, the little seam-
stress took it in and gave it shelter.
After this they were the best of friends. Every evening the
pot appeared, and while the seamstress drank from it at her
window, Mr. Smith drank from its twin at his; and notes were
exchanged as rapidly as Mr. Smith's early education permitted.
They told each other their histories, and Mr. Smith's was one of
travel and variety, which he seemed to consider quite a matter
of course. He had followed the sea, he had farmed, he had
been a logger and a hunter in the Maine woods. Now he was
foreman of an East River lumber-yard, and he was prospering.
In a year or two he would have enough laid by to go home to
Bucksport and buy a share in a ship-building business. All this
dribbled out in the course of a jerky but variegated correspond-
ence, in which autobiographic details were mixed with reflections
moral and philosophical.
A few samples will give an idea of Mr. Smith's style:-
i was one trip to van demens
land
To which the seamstress replied:-
It must have been very interesting.
But Mr. Smith disposed of this subject very briefly:-
it wornt
## p. 2740 (#304) ###########################################
2740
HENRY CUYLER BUNNER
Further he vouchsafed:
i seen a chinese cook in
hong kong could cook flapjacks
like your mother
a mishnery that sells Rum
is the menest of Gods crechers
a bulfite is not what it is
cract up to Be
the dagos are wussen the
brutes
i am 6 134
but my Father was 6 foot 4
The seamstress had taught school one winter, and she could
not refrain from making an attempt to reform Mr. Smith's or-
thography. One evening, in answer to this communication,
i killd a Bare in Maine 600
lbs waight
she wrote:
Isn't it generally spelled Bear?
but she gave up the attempt when he responded :-
a bare is a mene animle any
way you spel him
The spring wore on, and the summer came, and still the
evening drink and the evening correspondence brightened the
close of each day for the little seamstress. And the draught of
porter put her to sleep each night, giving her a calmer rest than
she had ever known during her stay in the noisy city; and it
began, moreover, to make a little “meet» for her. And then
the thought that she was going to have an hour of pleasant
companionship somehow gave her courage to cook and eat her
little dinner, however tired she was. The seamstress's cheeks
began to blossom with the June roses.
And all this time Mr. Smith kept his vow of silence unbroken,
though the seamstress sometimes tempted him with little ejacu-
lations and exclamations to which he might have responded. He
was silent and invisible. Only the smoke of his pipe, and the
## p. 2741 (#305) ###########################################
HENRY CUYLER BUNNER
2741
clink of his mug as he set it down on the cornice, told her that
a living, material Smith was her correspondent. They never met
on the stairs, for their hours of coming and going did not co-
incide. Once or twice they passed each other in the street — but
Mr. Smith looked straight ahead of him about a foot over her
head. The little seamstress thought he was a very fine-looking
man, with his six feet one and three-quarters and his thick brown
beard. Most people would have called him plain.
Once she spoke to him. She was coming home one summer
evening, and a gang of corner-loafers stopped her and demanded
money to buy beer, as is their custom. Before she had time to
be frightened, Mr. Smith appeared, - whence, she knew not, -
scattered the gang like chaff, and collaring two of the human
hyenas, kicked them, with deliberate, ponderous, alternate kicks,
until they writhed in ineffable agony. When he let them crawl
away, she turned to him and thanked him warmly, looking
very pretty now, with the color in her cheeks. But Mr. Smith
answered no word. He stared over her head, grew red in the
face, fidgeted nervously, but held his peace until his eyes fell on
a rotund Teuton passing by.
“Say, Dutchy! ” he roared. The German stood aghast. « I
ain't got nothing to write with! ” thundered Mr. Smith, looking
him in the eye. And then the man of his word passed on his
way.
And so the summer went on, and the two correspondents
chatted silently from window to window, hid from sight of all
the world below by the friendly cornice. And they looked out
over the roof and saw the green of Tompkins Square grow
darker and dustier as the months went on.
Mr. Smith was given to Sunday trips into the suburbs, and
he never came back without a bunch of daisies or black-eyed
Susans or, later, asters or golden-rod for the little seamstress.
Sometimes, with a sagacity rare in his sex, he brought her a
whole plant, with fresh loam for potting.
He gave her also a reel in a bottle, which, he wrote, he had
“maid” himself, and some coral, and a dried flying-fish that was
something fearful to look upon, with its sword-like fins and its
At first she could not go to sleep with that flying-
fish hanging on the wall.
But he surprised the little seamstress very much one cool Sep-
tember evening, when he shoved this letter along the cornice:-
hollow eyes.
## p. 2742 (#306) ###########################################
2742
HENRY CUYLER BUNNER
Resputed and Honored Madam :
Having long and rainly sought' an
opportunity to convey to you the expression
of any sentiments, y now avail imyself
of the privilege of epistolary communication
to acquaint you with the fact that the
Emotionig which you
have raised in my
breasts are those which should point to
Connubial Love and Affection ratheri
than to simple Friendshipoin shortg:
Madam g et have the Honor to approach you
with a Proposal 9 the acceptonee of which
will fill me with ecstatie Gratitudes
and enable me to extend to you those
Protecting bareng which the Natimonial
Bond makes at once the Duty and the
Privilege of hing nho nould, at no
distant date lead to the Moymeneal
Altar one whose charms and ritus should
suffice to kindle ita Flameng mithout
ex hiteous Aid
Sremaing Dear Nbadong
Your Kumble servant and
Ardent Adores Idemith
The little seamstress gazed at this letter a long time.
Per-
haps she was wondering in what Ready Letter-Writer of the last
century Mr. Smith had found his form. Perhaps she was amused
at the results of his first attempt at punctuation. Perhaps she
was thinking of something else, for there were tears in her eyes
and a smile on her small mouth,
But it must have been a long time, and Mr. Smith must have
grown nervous, for presently another communication came along
the line where the top of the cornice was worn smooth. It read:
If not understood will you
mary me
## p. 2743 (#307) ###########################################
HENRY CUYLER BUNNER
2743
The little seamstress seized a piece of paper and wrote:
If I say Yes, will you speak to me?
Then she rose and passed it out to him, leaning out of the win-
dow, and their faces met.
Copyright of Keppler and Schwarzmann.
THE WAY TO ARCADY
O"
H, What's the way to Arcady,
To Arcady, to Arcady;
Oh, what's the way to Arcady,
Where all the leaves are merry ?
Oh, what's the way to Arcady?
The spring is rustling in the tree —
The tree the wind is blowing through —
It sets the blossoms flickering white.
I knew not skies could burn so blue
Nor any breezes blow so light.
They blow an old-time way for me,
Across the world to Arcady.
Oh, what's the way to Arcady?
Sir Poet, with the rusty coat,
Quit mocking of the song-bird's note.
How have you heart for any tune,
You with the wayworn russet shoon?
Your scrip, a-swinging by your side,
Gapes with a gaunt mouth hungry-wide.
I'll brim it well with pieces red,
If you will tell the way to tread.
Oh, I am bound for Arcady,
And if you but keep pace with me
You tread the way to Arcady.
And where away lies Arcady,
And how long yet may the journey be?
Ah, that (quoth he) I do not know:
Across the clover and the snow-
Across the forest, across the flowers —
Through summer seconds and winter hours.
I've trod the way my whole life long,
And know not now where it may be;
## p. 2744 (#308) ###########################################
2744
HENRY CUYLER BUNNER
My guide is but the stir to song,
That tells me I cannot go wrong,
Or clear or dark the pathway be
l'pon the road to Arcady.
But how shall I do who cannot sing?
I was wont to sing, once on a time-
There is never an echo now to ring
Remembrance back to the trick of rhyme.
'Tis strange you cannot sing (quoth he),
The folk all sing in Arcady.
But how may he find Arcady
Who hath nor youth nor melody ?
What, know you not, old man (quoth he) –
Your hair is white, your face is wise-
That Love must kiss that Mortal's eyes
Who hopes to see fair Arcady ?
No gold can buy you entrance there,
But beggared Love may go all bare;
No wisdom won with weariness,
But Love goes in with Folly's dress;
No fame that wit could ever win,
But only Love, may lead Love in
To Arcady, to Arcady.
Ah, woe is me, through all my days
Wisdom and wealth I both have got,
And fame and name, and great men's praise;
But Love, ah Love! I have it not.
There was a time, when life was new
But far away, and half forgot
I only know her eyes were blue;
But Love - I fear I knew it not.
We did not wed, for lack of gold,
And she is dead, and I am old.
All things have come since then to me,
Save Love, ah Love! and Arcady.
Ah, then I fear we part (quoth he),
My way's for Love and Arcady.
But you, you fare alone like me;
The gray is likewise in your hair.
What love have you to lead you there,
To Arcady, to Arcady?
## p. 2745 (#309) ###########################################
HENRY CUYLER BUNNER
2745
Ah, no, not lonely do I fare:
My true companion's Memory.
With Love he fills the Spring-time air;
With Love he clothes the Winter tree.
Oh, past this poor horizon's bound
My song goes straight to one who stands –
Her face all gladdening at the sound -
To lead me to the Spring-green lands,
To wander with enlacing hands.
The songs within my breast that stir
Are all of her, are all of her.
My maid is dead long years (quoth he),
She waits for me in Arcady.
Oh, yon's the way to Arcady,
To Arcady, to Arcady:
Oh, yon's the way to Arcady,
Where all the leaves are merry.
Copyrighted by Charles Scribner's Sons.
CHANT-ROYAL
I
WOULD that all men my hard case might know;
How grievously I suffer for no sin :
1, Adolphe Culpepper Ferguson, for lo!
I of my landlady am locked in,
For being short on this sad Saturday,
Nor having shekels of silver wherewith to pay:
She has turned and is departed with my key;
Wherefore, not even as other boarders free,
I sing (as prisoners to their dungeon stones
When for ten days they expiate a spree):
Behold the deeds that are done of Mrs. Jones!
One night and one day have I wept my woe;
Nor wot I, when the morrow doth begin,
If I shall have to write to Briggs & Co. ,
To pray them to advance the requisite tin
For ransom of their salesman, that he may
Go forth as other boarders go alway-
As those I hear now flocking from their tea,
Led by the daughter of my landlady
Piano-ward. This day, for all my moans,
Dry bread and water have been served me.
Behold the deeds that are done of Mrs. Jones!
## p. 2746 (#310) ###########################################
2746
HENRY CUYLER BUNNER
Miss Amabel Jones is musical, and so
The heart of the young he-boardér doth win,
Playing «The Maiden's Prayer' adagio --
That fetcheth him, as fetcheth the banco skin
The innocent rustic.
For my part,
I
pray
That Badarjewska maid may wait for aye
Ere sits she with a lover, as did we
Once sit together, Amabel! Can it be
That all that arduous wooing not atones
For Saturday shortness of trade dollars three?
Behold the deeds that are done of Mrs. Jones!
Yea! she forgets the arm was wont to go
Around her waist. She wears a buckle, whose pin
Galleth the crook of the young man's elbów.
I forget not, for I that youth have been.
Smith was aforetime the Lothario gay.
Yet once, I mind me, Smith was forced to stay
Close in his room. Not calm, as I, was he;
But his noise brought no pleasa unce, verily.
Small ease he got of playing on the bones
Or hammering on his stove-pipe, that I see.
Behold the deeds that are done of Mrs. Jones!
Thou, for whose fear the figurative crow
I eat, accursed be thou and all thy kin!
Thee will I show up — yea, up will I show
Thy too thick buckwheats, and thy tea too thin.
Ay! here I dare thee, ready for the fray:
Thou dost not “keep a first-class house,” I say!
It does not with the advertisements agree.
Thou lodgest a Briton with a puggaree,
And thou hast harbored Jacobses and Cohns,
Also a Mulligan. Thus denounce I thee!
Behold the deeds that are done of Mrs. Jones!
ENVOY
Boarders! the worst I have not told to ye:
She hath stolen my trousers, that I may not flee
Privily by the window.
Hence these groans.
There is no fleeing in a robe de nuit.
Behold the deeds that are done of Mrs. Jones!
Copyrighted by Charles Scribner's Sons.
## p. 2746 (#311) ###########################################
## p. 2746 (#312) ###########################################
JOHN BUNYAN.
## p. 2746 (#313) ###########################################
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## p. 2746 (#314) ###########################################
JOHN BUNYAN.
## p. 2747 (#315) ###########################################
2747
JOHN BUNYAN
(1628-1688)
BY REV. EDWIN P. PARKER
OHN BUNYAN, son of Thomas Bunnionn Jun' and Margaret
Bentley, was born 1628, in the quaint old village of Elstow,
one mile southwest of Bedford, near the spot where, three
hundred years before, his ancestor William Boynon resided. His
father was a poor tinker or braseyer,”
» and his mother's lineage is
unknown. He says, — "I never went to school to Aristotle or Plato,
but was brought up at my father's house in a very mean condition,
among a company of poor countrymen. ”
He learned to read and write «according to the rate of other poor
men's children”; but soon lost “almost utterly” the little he had
learned. Shortly after his mother's death, when he was about seven-
teen years of age, he served as a soldier for several months, probably
in the Parliamentary army. Not long afterward he married a woman
as poor as himself, by whose gentle influence he was gradually led
into the way of those severe spiritual conflicts and painful exercises
of mind” from which he finally came forth, at great cost, victorious.
These religious experiences, vividly described in his (Grace Abound-
ing,' traceable in the course of his chief Pilgrim, and frequently
referred to in his discourses, have been too literally interpreted by
some, and too much explained away as unreal by others; but pre-
sent no special difficulty to those who will but consider Bunyan's own
explanations.
From boyhood he had lived a roving and non-religious life,
although possessing no little tenderness of conscience. He
neither intemperate nor dishonest; he was not a law-breaker; he
explicitly and indignantly declares: - If all the fornicators and
adulterers in England were hanged by the neck till they be dead,
John Bunyan would still be alive and well! The particular sins of
which he was guilty, so far as he specifies them, were profane
swearing, from which he suddenly ceased at a woman's reproof, and
certain sports, innocent enough in themselves, which the prevailing
Puritan rigor severely condemned. What, then, of that vague and
exceeding sinfulness of which he so bitterly accuses and repents
himself? It was that vision of sin, however disproportionate, which
a deeply wounded and graciously healed spirit often has, in looking
back upon the past from that theological standpoint whence all want
of conformity to the perfect law of God seems heinous and dreadful.
was
## p. 2748 (#316) ###########################################
2748
JOHN BUNYAN
“A sinner may be comparatively a little sinner, and sensibly a great one.
There are two sorts of greatness in sin: greatness by reason of number;
greatness by reason of the horrible nature of sin. In the last sense, he that
has but one sin, if such an one could be found, may in his own eyes find
himself the biggest sinner in the world. »
« Visions of God break the heart, because, by the sight the soul then has
of His perfections, it sees its own infinite and unspeakable disproportion. ”
« The best saints are most sensible of their sins, and most apt to make
mountains of their molehills. »
Such sentences from Bunyan's own writings – and many like them
might be quoted - shed more light upon the much-debated question
of his wickedness than all that his biographers have written.
In John Gifford, pastor of a little Free Church in Bedford, Bunyan
found a wise friend, and in 1653 he joined that church.
He soon
discovered his gifts among the brethren, and in due time was ap-
pointed to the office of a gospel minister, in which he labored with
indefatigable industry and zeal, and with ever-increasing fame and
success, until his death.
His hard personal fortunes between the
Restoration of 1660 and the Declaration of Indulgence of 1672, in-
cluding his imprisonment for twelve years in Bedford Gaol; his sub-
sequent imprisonment in 1675-6, when the first part of the Pilgrim's
Progress) was probably written; and the arduous engagements of his
later and comparatively peaceful years. -- must be sought in biogra-
phies, the latest and perhaps the best of which is that by Rev. John
Brown, minister of the Bunyan Church at Bedford. The statute
under which Bunyan suffered is the 35th Eliz. , Cap. I, re-enacted
with rigor in the 16th Charles II. , Cap. 4, 1662; and the spirit of it
appears in the indictment preferred against him : «that he hath
devilishly and perniciously abstained from coming to Church to hear
Divine service, and is a common upholder of several unlawful meet-
ings and conventicles, to the great disturbance and distraction of the
good subjects of this Kingdom, etc. , etc.
The story of Bunyan's life up to the time of his imprisonment,
and particularly that of his arrests and examinations before the just-
ices, and also the account of his experiences in prison, should be
read in his own most graphic narrative, in the Grace Abounding,'
which is one of the most precious portions of all autobiographic
literature. Bunyan was born and bred, he lived and labored, among
the common people, with whom his sympathies were strong and ten-
der, and by whom he was regarded with the utmost veneration and
affection. He understood them, and they him. For nearly a century
they were almost the only readers of his published writings. They
came to call him Bishop Bunyan. His native genius, his great
human-heartedness and loving-kindness, his burning zeal and indom-
itable courage, his racy humor and kindling imagination, all vitalized
## p. 2749 (#317) ###########################################
JOHN BUNYAN
2749
by the spiritual force which came upon him through the encompass-
ing atmosphere of devout Puritanism, were consecrated to the welfare
of his fellow-men. His personal friend, Mr. Doe, describes him as
« tall in stature, strong-boned, of a ruddy face, with sparkling eyes,
nose well set, mouth moderately large, forehead something high,
and his habit always plain and modest. ” His portrait, painted in
1685, shows a vigorous, kindly face, with mustachios and imperial,
and abundance of hair falling in long wavy masses about the neck
and shoulders, — more Cavalier-like than Roundhead.
Bunyan was a voluminous writer, and his works, many of them
posthumous, are said to equal in number the sixty years of his life.
But even the devout and sympathetic critic is compelled to acknowl-
edge the justice of that verdict of time which has consigned most of
them to a virtual oblivion. The controversial tracts possess no ele-
ments of enduring interest. The doctrinal and spiritual discourses are
elaborations of a system of religious thought which long ago «had
its day and ceased to be. ” Yet they contain pithy sentences, homely
and pat illustrations, and many a paragraph, rugged or tender, in
which one recognizes the stamp of his genius, and an intimation of
his remarkable power as a preacher. The best of these discourses,
(The Jerusalem Sinner Saved,' Come and Welcome to Jesus Christ,'
and Light for Them that Sit in Darkness,' while they sparkle here
and there with things unique and precious to the Bunyan-curious
student, would seem dull and tedious to the general though devout
reader. In many a passage we feel, to use his phrase, his heart-
pulling power,” no less than the force and felicity of his most
original images and analogies; but these passages are little oases in
a dry and thirsty land. The Life and Death of Mr. Badman' viv-
idly presents certain aspects of English provincial life in that day;
but they are repulsive, and the entire work is marred by flat moral- .
izings and coarse, often incredible stories.
The Holy War, which Macaulay said would have been our great-
est religious allegory if the Pilgrim's Progress' had not been writ-
ten, has ceased to be much read. The conception of the conquest of
the human soul by the irresistible operation of divine force is so for-
eign to modern thought and faith that Bunyan's similitude no longer
seems a verisimilitude. The pages abound with quaint, humorous,
and lifelike touches; as where Diabolus stations at Ear-Gate a
guard of deaf men under old Mr. Prejudice, and Unbelief is described
as "a nimble jack whom they could never lay hold of”;- but as
compared with the Pilgrim's Progress the allegory is artificial, its
elaboration of analogies is ponderous and tedious, and its characters
lack solidity and reality.
All these works, however, exhibit a remarkable command of the
inother tongue, a shrewd common-sense and mother wit, a fervid
## p. 2750 (#318) ###########################################
2750
JOHN BUNYAN
spiritual life, and a wonderful knowledge of the English Bible. They
may be likened to more or less submerged wrecks kept from sinking
into utter neglect by the bond of authorship which connects them
with the one incomparable work which floats, unimpaired by time.
on the sea of universal appreciation and favor. Bunyan's unique and
secure position in English literature was gained by the Pilgrim's
Progress,' the first part of which was published in 1678, and the
second in 1685.
The broader, freer conception of the pilgrimage - as old in liter-
ature as the ninetieth Psalm, apt and fond, as innumerable books
show, from De Guileville's "Le Pelerinage de l'Homme) in the four-
teenth century to Patrick's Parable three hundred years later —
took sudden possession of Bunyan's imagination while he was in
prison, and kindled all his finest powers. Then he undertook, poet-
wise, to work out this conception, capable of such diversity of illus-
tration, in a form of literature that has ever been especially congenial
to the human mind. Unguided save by his own consecrated genius,
unaided by other books than his English Bible and Fox's Book of
Martyrs,' he proceeded with a simplicity of purpose and felicity of
expression, and with a fidelity to nature and life, which gave to his
unconsciously artistic story the charm of perfect artlessness as well
as the semblance of reality. When Bunyan's lack of learning and
culture are considered, and also the comparative dryness of his con-
troversial and didactic writings, this efflorescence of a vital spirit of
beauty and of an essentially poetic genius in him seems quite inex-
plicable. The author's rhymed Apology for His Book,' which
usually prefaces the Pilgrim's Progress,' contains many significant
hints as to the way in which he was led to
«Make truth spangle, and its rays to shine. ”
He had no thought of producing a work of literary excellence; but
on the other hand he had not, in writing this book, his customary
purpose of spiritual edification. Indeed, he put his multiplying
thoughts and fancies aside, lest they should interfere with a more
serious and important book which he had in hand!
« I only thought to make
I knew not what: nor did I undertake
Thereby to please my neighbor; no, not 1:
I did it mine own self to gratify.
Thus I set pen to paper with delight,
And quickly had my thoughts in black and white. »
## p. 2751 (#319) ###########################################
JOHN BUNYAN
2751
The words are exceedingly suggestive. In writing so aimlessly –
“I knew not what » – to gratify himself by permitting the allegory
into which he had suddenly fallen to take possession of him and
carry him whithersoever it would, while he wrote out with delight
his teeming fancies, was not Bunyan for the first time exercising his
genius in a freedom from all theological and other restraint, and so
in a surpassing range and power? The dreamer and poet supplanted
the preacher and teacher. He yielded to the simple impulse of his
genius, gave his imagination full sweep, and so, as never before or
elsewhere, soared and sang in what seemed to many of his Puritan
friends a questionable freedom and profane inspiration. And yet his
song, or story, was not a creation of mere fancy,-
“It came from my own heart, so to my head,
And thence into my fingers tricklèd ; ».
one
and therefore, we add, it finds its way to the heart of mankind.
Hence the spontaneity of the allegory, its ease and freedom of
movement, its unlabored development, its natural and vital enfolding
of that old pilgrim idea of human life which had so often bloomed
in the literature of all climes and ages, but whose consummate
flower appeared in the book of this inspired Puritan tinker-preacher.
Hence also the dramatic unity and methodic perfectness of the story.
Its byways all lead to its highway; its episodes are as vitally related
to the main theme as are the ramifications of a tree to its central
stem. The great diversities of experience in the true pilgrims are
dominated by
supreme motive.
As for the others, they
appear incidentally to complete the scenes, and make the world and
its life manifold and real. The Pilgrim is a most substantial person,
and once well on the way, the characters he meets, the difficulties
he encounters, the succor he receives, the scenes in which he
mingles, are all, however surprising, most natural. The names, and
one might almost say the forms and faces, of Pliable, Obstinate,
Faithful, Hopeful, Talkative, Mercy, Great-heart, old Honest, Valiant-
for-truth, Feeble-mind, Ready-to-halt, Miss Much-afraid, and many
another, are familiar to us all. Indeed, the pilgrimage is our own
- in many of its phases at least, — and we have met the people
whom Bunyan saw in his dream, and are ourselves they whom he
describes.
