No More Learning

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. "And you are David Marshall's
daughter? " She smiled indulgently at Jane's outburst of spunk.
"Really - David Marshall's daughter? "
"Yes," answered Jane, with a gruff brevity. She was far
from ready to be placated yet.
"David Marshall's daughter! Then, my dear child, why not
have said so in the first place, without lugging in everybody and
everything else you could think of? Hasn't your father ever
spoken of me? And how is he, anyway? I haven't seen him
to really speak to him—for fifteen years. It may be even more. '
She seemed to have laid hands on a heavy bar, to have
wrenched it from its holds, to have flung it aside from the foot-
path, and to be inviting Jane to advance without let or hin-
drance.
-
>>
But Jane stood there with pique in her breast, and her long
thin arms laid rigid against her sides. "Let her 'dear child'
me, if she wants to; she sha'n't bring me around in any such
way as that. »
ner.
All this, however, availed little against Mrs. Bates's new man-
The citadel so closely sealed to charity was throwing itself
wide open to memory. The portcullis was dropped, and the late
enemy was invited to advance as a friend.
Nay, urged. Mrs. Bates presently seized Jane's unwilling
hands. She gathered those poor, stiff, knotted fingers into two
crackling bundles within her own plump and warm palms,
squeezed them forcibly, and looked into Jane's face with all
imaginable kindness. "I had just that temper once myself," she
said.
The sluice gates of caution and reserve were opening wide;
the streams of tenderness and sympathy were bubbling and fret-
ting to take their course.
"And your father is well? And you are living in the same
old place? Oh, this terrible town! You can't keep your old


## p. 6106 (#76) ############################################

6106
HENRY B. FULLER
friends; you can hardly know your new ones. We are only a
mile or two apart, and yet it is the same as if it were a hun-
dred. "
Jane yielded up her hands half unwillingly. She could not,
in spite of herself, remain completely unrelenting, but she was
determined not to permit herself to be patronized. "Yes, we
live in the same old place. And in the same old way," she
added in the spirit of concession.
Mrs. Bates studied her face intently. "Do you look like him.
-like your father? "
"No," answered Jane. "Not so very much. Nor like any of
the rest of the family. " The statue was beginning to melt. "I'm
unique. " And another drop fell.
"Don't slander yourself. " She tapped Jane lightly on the
shoulder.
Jane looked at her with a protesting, or at least a question-
ing, seriousness. It had the usual effect of a wild stare. “I
wasn't meaning to," she said, shortly, and began to congeal
again. She also shrugged her shoulder; she was not quite ready
yet to be tapped and patted.
"But don't remain standing, child," Mrs. Bates proceeded,
genially. She motioned Jane back to her chair, and herself ad-
vanced to the roomier sofa. "Or no; this little pen is like a
refrigerator to-day; it's so hard, every fall, to get the steam heat
running as it should. Come; it ought to be warmer in the music-
room. "
"The fact is," she proceeded, as they passed through the hall,
"that I have a spare hour on my hands this morning-the first
in a month. My music teacher has just sent word that she is
down with a cold. You shall have as much of that hour as you
wish. So tell me all about your plans; I dare say I can scrape
together a few pennies for Jane Marshall. "
"Her music teacher! " thought Jane. She was not yet so far
appeased nor so far forgetful of her own initial awkwardness as
to refrain from searching out the joints in the other's armor.
"What does a woman of fifty-five want to be taking music les-
sons for? »
-
The music-room was a lofty and spacious apartment done com-
pletely in hard-woods; its paneled walls and ceilings rang with a
magnificent sonority as the two pairs of feet moved across the
mirror-like marquetry of the floor.


## p. 6107 (#77) ############################################

HENRY B. FULLER
6107
To one side stood a concert-grand; its case was so unique and
so luxurious that even Jane was conscious of its having been
made by special order and from a special design. Close at hand
stood a tall music-stand in style to correspond. It was laden with
handsomely bound scores of all the German classics and the usual
operas of the French and Italian schools. These were all ranged
in precise order; nothing there seemed to have been disturbed
for a year past. "My! isn't it grand! " sighed Jane. She already
felt herself succumbing beneath these accumulated splendors.
Mrs. Bates carelessly seated herself on the piano stool, with her
back to the instrument. "I don't suppose," she observed, casually,
"that I have sat down here for a month. "
"What! " cried Jane, with a stare. "If I had such a lovely
room as this I should play in it every day. "
"Dear me," rejoined Mrs. Bates, "what pleasure could I get
from practicing in this great barn of a place, that isn't half full
until you've got seventy or eighty people in it? Or on this big
sprawling thing? "-thrusting out her elbow backward towards
the shimmering cover of the keyboard.
"So then," said Jane to herself, "it's all for show. I knew it
was. I don't believe she can play a single note. "
"What do you suppose happened to me last winter? " Mrs.
Bates went on. "I had the greatest set-back of my life. I asked
to join the Amateur Musical Club. They wouldn't let me in. "
"Why not? "
"Well, I played before their committee, and then the secre-
tary wrote me a note. It was a nice enough note, of course, but
I knew what it meant. I see now well enough that my fingers
were rather stiffer than I realized, and that my Twinkling
Sprays' and 'Fluttering Zephyrs' were not quite up to date.
They wanted Grieg and Lassen and Chopin. Very well,' said I,
'just wait. ' Now, I never knuckle under. I never give up. So
I sent right out for a teacher. I practiced scales an hour a day
for weeks and months. Granger thought I was crazy. I tackled
Grieg and Lassen and Chopin,—yes, and Tschaikowsky, too.
going to play for that committee next month.
Let me see if
they'll dare to vote me out again! "
I'm
"Oh, that's it! " thought Jane. She was beginning to feel
desirous of meting out exact and even-handed justice. She found
it impossible to withhold respect from so much grit and deter-
mination.


## p. 6108 (#78) ############################################

6108
HENRY B. FULLER
"But your father liked those old-time things, and so did all
the other young men. " Mrs. Bates creased and folded the end of
one of her long sleeves, and seemed lapsing into a retrospective
mood. "Why, some evenings they used to sit two deep around
the room to hear me do the 'Battle of Prague. ' Do you know
the 'Java March'? " she asked suddenly.
"I'm afraid not," Jane was obliged to confess.
"Your father always had a great fondness for that. I don't
know," she went on, after a short pause, "whether you under-
stand that your father was one of my old beaux-at least, I
always counted him with the rest. I was a gay girl in my day,
and wanted to make the list as long as I could; so I counted
in the quiet ones as well as the noisy ones. Your father was one
of the quiet ones. "
"So I should have imagined," said Jane. Her maiden deli-
cacy was just a shade affrighted at the turn the talk was taking.
"When I was playing he would sit there by the hour and
never say a word. My banner piece was really a fantasia on
'Sonnambula a new thing here; I was the first one in town
to have it. There were thirteen pages, and there was always a
rush to see who should turn them. Your father didn't often
enter the rush, but I really liked his way of turning the best of
any. He never turned too soon or too late; he never bothered
me by shifting his feet every second or two, nor by talking to
me at the hard places. In fact, he was the only one who could
do it right. "
"Yes," said Jane, with an appreciative sigh; "that's pa-all
over. "
Mrs. Bates was twisting her long sleeves around her wrists.
Presently she shivered slightly. "Well, really," she said, "I don't
see that this place is much warmer than the other; let's try the
library. "
In this room our antique and Spartan Jane was made to feel
the need of yet stronger props to hold her up against the over-
bearing weight of latter-day magnificence. She found herself
surrounded now by a sombre and solid splendor. Stamped hang-
ings of Cordova leather lined the walls, around whose bases ran
a low range of ornate bookcases, constructed with the utmost
taste and skill of the cabinet-maker's art. In the centre of the
room a wide and substantial table was set with all the parapher-
nalia of correspondence, and the leathery abysses of three or
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## p. 6109 (#79) ############################################

HENRY B. FULLER
6109
four vast easy-chairs invited the reader to bookish self-abandon-
ment.
"How glorious! " cried Jane, as her eyes ranged over the
ranks and rows of formal and costly bindings. It all seemed
doubly glorious after that poor sole book-case of theirs at home-
a huge black-walnut thing like a wardrobe, and with a couple of
drawers at the bottom, receptacles that seemed less adapted to
pamphlets than to goloshes. "How grand! " Jane was not exi-
gent as regarded music, but her whole being went forth towards
books. "Dickens and Thackeray and Bulwer and Hume and
Gibbon, and Johnson's 'Lives of the Poets,' and -»
"And twenty or thirty yards of Scott," Mrs. Bates broke in
genially; "and enough Encyclopædia Britannica to reach around
the corner and back again. Sets-sets-sets.
"What a lovely chair to sit and study in! " cried Jane, not at
all abashed by her hostess's comments. "What a grand table to
sit and write papers at! " Writing papers was one of Jane's chief
interests.
"Oh, yes," said Mrs. Bates with a quiet toleration, as she
glanced towards the shining inkstand and the immaculate blot-
ting-pad. "But really, I don't suppose I've written two lines at
that table since it was put there. And as for all these books,
Heaven only knows where the keys are to get at them with. I
can't do anything with them; why, some of them weigh five or
six pounds! "
Jane shriveled and shivered under this. She regretted doubly
that she had been betrayed into such an unstinted expression of
her honest interest. "All for show and display," she muttered,
as she bowed her head to search out new titles; "bought by the
pound and stacked by the cord; doing nobody any good-their
owners least of all. " She resolved to admire openly nothing
more whatever.
Mrs. Bates sank into one of the big chairs and motioned Jane
towards another. "Your father was a great reader," she said,
with a resumption of her retrospective expression.
"He was
very fond of books - especially poetry. He often read aloud to
me; when he thought I was likely to be alone, he would bring
his Shakespeare over. I believe I could give you even now, if
I was put to it, Antony's address to the Romans. Yes; and
almost all of Hamlet's soliloquies, too. "
Jane was preparing to make a stand against this woman; and
here apparently was the opportunity. "Do you mean to tell


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