No More Learning

It can
hardly be said that he is the leader of a school of fiction;
he is rather the exponent in this country of a school whose leaders
are the modern Russian novelists, and in which Tolstoy is the high-
est authority. The realism of 'Anna Karénina' is also the realism
of Silas Lapham. ' Both works- the one a tragedy, the other a seri-
ous comedy-are steeped in the atmosphere of fact; an atmosphere
in which there are no mists of idealism and no elusive distances.
Howells perceived early the rich field which American life offers to
the writer of realistic fiction. The American people are yet too young
for mellowed romance; they are still in the literal period of youth.
The painter of Silas Lapham and of Lemuel Barker embodies this
frank noonday spirit of average life in his novels; only in his essays
and poems does he allow himself occasional truancies from the school
of the actual. He was himself peculiarly fitted by birth, education,
and training, to obtain a firm hold upon the unromantic, humorous,
pathetic life of the every-day American man and woman; to under-
stand its gaucheries, its brave nonchalance, its splendid attempts and
prophetic failures. William Dean Howells is an American of Ameri-
cans. He was born in Ohio in 1837, of a family founded originally
by Welsh Quakers, but closely resembling the families of Transcend-
ental New England in its habits of religious and philosophical
thought; in its simplicity of living; in its simple and democratic
tastes. During the boyhood of the author, his father owned and pub-
lished daily papers in Hamilton and in Dayton, Ohio, successively.
The son learned the printer's trade, and gradually the whole business
of conducting a newspaper. In his latest published work, 'Impres-
sions and Experiences,' he has embodied his recollections of this
apprenticeship in an essay of great charm. At the age of nineteen
he became the Columbus correspondent of the Cincinnati Gazette.
At twenty-two he was appointed news editor of the State Journal at
Columbus. About this time he published a volume of verse.
Although Howells is a realist in his literary methods, there have
always been imaginative elements in his prose work; and from the
day when as a young man he published a slim volume of lyrics with


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7654
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
his friend Piatt, he has been a poet. The early verse was graceful,
musical, distinctive; the later, deeper work, gathered into the striking
volume 'Stops of Various Quills' (1895), shows Howells's intense inter-
est in the great modern social problems, and his yearning brotherli-
ness. The brooding minor note is constant in these haunting poems,
which are rich in suggestion, full of noble thought and feeling, and
in their simple, almost bald diction, at times both touching and
beautiful.
His consulship at Venice, 1861-65, prepared him by its liberalizing
influences for the more cosmopolitan demands of the essay and the
novel. His impressions of his sojourn were embodied in 'Venetian
Life,' a book which revealed the qualities of his literary talent: his
powers of minute and kindly observation; his sense of the pictur-
esque; his close adhesion to delicate particulars, to expressive details,
to significant facts.
His subsequent residence in New York City, as a writer for the
Tribune and the Nation, paved the way still further for his fiction
writing. It was not until 1871, when he had become the assistant
editor of the Atlantic Monthly, that he ventured into this field. His
first novel, Their Wedding Journey,' was instantly recognized as
something more than a well-told story. It was a transcript of two
very human lives. Its spirit of actuality was new in American fiction.
Its homeliness, its pleasantry, its every-day character, at once secured
its popularity. It was followed by a long succession of well-written
novels. If he had had no other claims upon the allegiance of those
anxious to establish high literary standards in this country, Howells
would still deserve the approval of the most critical lovers of litera-
ture for his delicate and conscientious workmanship. He has set a
much-needed example of carefulness and thoughtfulness in style and
construction. He has the conscience, the instinct, and the taste of an
artist. Though a deliberate, he has however been a prolific writer.
Almost every year since 1871 has brought forth a novel. 'A Chance
Acquaintance' appeared in 1873; A Foregone Conclusion' in 1874:
'Out of the Question' in 1876, and 'A Counterfeit Presentment' in
1877,- both cast in drama form; The Lady of the Aroostook' in
1878; The Undiscovered Country' in 1880; 'A Fearful Responsibil-
ity in 1882; 'Dr. Breen's Practice' in 1883; A Modern Instance' in
1883; A Woman's Reason' in 1884; Three Villages' in 1885; and
later The Rise of Silas Lapham,' 'Annie Kilburn,' 'April Hopes,'
'A Hazard of New Fortunes,' The Shadow of a Dream,' and numer-
ous farces which have appeared from time to time in various maga-
zines. The Rise of Silas Lapham' is a finely representative novel
of what may be called the middle period of Howells's development.
It is a triumph of realism; it is thoroughly and broadly American in


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WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
7655
tone; it is instinct with kindly human sympathy. The novelist has
a true comprehension of the "common people," especially of the
common people as they are found in these United States: fixed mem-
bers of no class, endowed with many virtues, destitute of traditions,—
the First Man or the First Woman, for all practical purposes, in a
new world; God-fearing, money-making persons, acknowledging no
superiors in theory, but always awed by their "betters» in fact.
These types appear and reappear in Howells's stories; he is the Dick-
ens of the self-made man. Silas Lapham is born a poor boy, of hon-
est parents, without educational or social opportunities. He makes his
money in mineral paint. His daughters are
His daughters are as much in advance of
him and his crude successes as the second generation of the newly
rich usually is in this country. By a series of accidents this family
of American types is thrown with gentlefolk of Boston. The usual
little tragedies and comedies ensue. The story is told with consum-
mate skill. Its objectivity is heightened by the author's fidelity to the
facts of the case. Its humor is unmistakable. Moreover, it is writ-
ten with that marvelous clearness of diction, that easy command of
current idiom, which constitute Howells's strongest claim to a great
style. The author says what he means in unmistakable language.
He never sacrifices lucidity to effect. He never indulges in mere
word-painting. His essays are as satisfactory as his novels in this
respect.
Mr. Howells's latest phase, that in which he shows a deep desire
to understand and set forth the strenuous American social problems,
-the meaning of socialism, the relations of labor and capital, and,
more broadly, the mystery of poverty and of human suffering,—is
typified in a book like 'A Hazard of New Fortunes. It is American
in its scenes and characters, and all through it is a sense of the dra-
matic unrest of current conditions in a great city like New York,—
the stormy and pathetic episode quoted being the culmination of
causes which attract the most earnest thought of Howells, an ideal
statement thereof coming out in such a volume as the suggestive 'A
Traveler from Altruria. '
The absence of idealism in Howells's writings has been cited as
their gravest defect; but it is by no means true that he excludes the
ideal sides of life from treatment. In the main, however, it is enough
for him to present the lives of men without comment, after nature's
own fashion. The American world of letters owes him a lasting debt
of gratitude in that he has made his presentation with fidelity to a
high ideal of artistic excellence. Since the year 1881, when he re-
signed the editorship of the Atlantic Monthly, he has lived first in
Boston and later in New York, devoting himself to the writing of
novels, essays, and miscellaneous sketches. In these novels and in
¡


## p. 7656 (#470) ###########################################

7656
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
his occasional essays his hand preserves its cunning, and his writing
always has that indefinable charm which is the enduring note in
good literature. And to the charm is added the broad outlook and
the deep ethical interest which are typical of the man in the ripe
maturity of his powers.
THE BEWILDERED GUEST
From Stops of Various Quills. Copyright 1895, by Harper & Brothers
WAS not asked if I should like to come.
I
I have not seen my host here since I came,
Or had a word of welcome in his name.
Some say that we shall never see him, and some
That we shall see him elsewhere, and then know
Why we were bid. How long I am to stay
I have not the least notion. None, they say,
Was ever told when he should come or go.
But every now and then there bursts upon
The song and mirth a lamentable noise,
A sound of shrieks and sobs, that strikes our joys
Dumb in our breasts; and then, some one is gone.
They say we meet him. None knows where or when.
We know we shall not meet him here again.
WR
HOPE
From Stops of Various Quills. Copyright 1895, by Harper & Brothers
E SAILED and sailed upon the desert sea
Where for whole days we alone seemed to be.
At last we saw a dim, vague line arise
Between the empty billows and the skies,
That grew and grew until it wore the shape
Of cove and inlet, promontory and cape;
Then hills and valleys, rivers, fields, and woods,
Steeples and roofs, and village neighborhoods.
And then I thought, "Sometime I shall embark
Upon a sea more desert and more dark
Than ever this was, and between the skies
And empty billows I shall see arise
Another world out of that waste and lapse,
Like yonder land. Perhaps - perhaps - perhaps! "


## p. 7657 (#471) ###########################################

WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
7657
SOCIETY
Copyright 1895, by Harper & Brothers
From Stops of Various Quills.
I
LOOKED, and saw a splendid pageantry
Of beautiful women and of lordly men,
Taking their pleasure in a flowery plain,
Where poppies and the red anemone,
And many another leaf of cramoisy,
Flickered about their feet, and gave their stain
To heels of iron or satin, and the grain
Of silken garments floating far and free,
As in the dance they wove themselves, or strayed
By twos together, or lightly smiled and bowed,
Or curtsied to each other, or else played
At games of mirth and pastime, unafraid
In their delight; and all so high and proud
They seemed scarce of the earth whereon they trod.
I looked again, and saw that flowery space
Stirring, as if alive, beneath the tread
That rested now upon an old man's head,
And now upon a baby's gasping face,
Or mother's bosom, or the rounded grace
Of a girl's throat; and what had seemed the red
Of flowers was blood, in gouts and gushes shed
From hearts that broke under that frolic pace.
And now and then from out the dreadful floor
An arm or brow was lifted from the rest,
As if to strike in madness, or implore
For mercy; and anon some suffering breast
Heaved from the mass and sank; and as before
The revelers above them thronged and prest.
ANOTHER DAY
From Stops of Various Quills. Copyright 1895, by Harper & Brothers
A
NOTHER day, and with it that brute joy,
Or that prophetic rapture of the boy
Whom every morning brings as glad a breath
As if it dawned upon the end of death!
All other days have run the common course,
And left me at their going neither worse


## p. 7658 (#472) ###########################################

7658
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
Nor better for them; only a little older,
A little sadder, and a little colder.
But this it seems as if this day might be
The day I somehow always thought to see,
And that should come to bless me past the scope
And measure of my farthest-reaching hope.
―――
To-day, maybe, the things that were concealed
Before the first day was, shall be revealed;
The riddle of our misery shall be read,
And it be clear whether the dead are dead.
Before this sun shall sink into the west
The tired earth may have fallen on his breast,
And into heaven the world have passed away.
At any rate, it is another day!
A MIDSUMMER-DAY'S DREAM
From Their Wedding Journey. Copyright 1871 and 1894, by W. D. Howells.
Reprinted by permission of the author, and of Houghton, Mifflin & Co. ,
publishers.
TH
HEY had waited to see Leonard, in order that they might
learn better how to find his house in the country; and now,
when they came in upon him at nine o'clock, he welcomed
them with all his friendly heart. He rose from the pile of morn-
ing's letters to which he had but just sat down; he placed them
the easiest chairs; he made a feint of its not being a busy hour
with him, and would have had them look upon his office, which
was still damp and odorous from the porter's broom, as a kind of
down-town parlor: but after they had briefly accounted to his
amazement for their appearance then and there, and Isabel had
boasted of the original fashion in which they had that morning
seen New York, they took pity on him and bade him adieu till
evening.
They crossed from Broadway to the noisome street by the
ferry, and in a little while had taken their places in the train on
the thither side of the water.
"Don't tell me, Basil," said Isabel, "that Leonard travels fifty
miles every day by rail going to and from his work! "
"I must, dearest, if I would be truthful. "


## p. 7659 (#473) ###########################################

WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
7659
«< Then, darling, there are worse things in this world than
living up at the South End, aren't there? " And in agreement
upon Boston as a place of the greatest natural advantages, as
well as all acquirable merits, with after-talk that need not be
recorded, they arrived in the best humor at the little country
station near which the Leonards dwelt.
I must inevitably follow Mrs. Isabel thither, though I do it
at the cost of the reader, who suspects the excitements which a
long description of the movement would delay. The ladies were
very old friends, and they had not met since Isabel's return from
Europe and renewal of her engagement. Upon the news of this,
Mrs. Leonard had swallowed with surprising ease all that she
had said in blame of Basil's conduct during the rupture, and
exacted a promise from her friend that she should pay her the
first visit after their marriage. And now that they had come
together, their only talk was of husbands, whom they viewed in
every light to which husbands could be turned, and still found
an inexhaustible novelty in the theme. Mrs. Leonard beheld in
her friend's joy the sweet reflection of her own honeymoon, and
Isabel was pleased to look upon the prosperous marriage of the
former as the image of her future. Thus, with immense profit
and comfort, they reassured one another by every question and
answer, and in their weak content lapsed far behind the repre-
sentative women of our age, when husbands are at best a neces-
sary evil, and the relation of wives to them is known to be one
of pitiable subjection. When these two pretty fogies put their
heads of false hair together, they were as silly and benighted as
their great-grandmothers could have been in the same circum-
stances, and as I say, shamefully encouraged each other in their
absurdity. The absurdity appeared too good and blessed to be
true. "Do you really suppose, Basil," Isabel would say to her
oppressor, after having given him some elegant extract from the
last conversation upon husbands, "that we shall get on as smoothly
as the Leonards when we have been married ten years? Lucy
says that things go more hitchily the first year than ever they
do afterwards, and that people love each other better and better,
just because they've got used to it. Well, our bliss does seem a
little crude and garish compared with their happiness; and yet"
-she put up both her palms against his, and gave a vehement
little push"there is something agreeable about it, even at this
stage of the proceedings. "


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7660
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
"Isabel," said her husband with severity, "this is bridal! ”
"No matter! I only want to seem an old married woman to
the general public. But the application of it is that you must be
careful not to contradict me, or cross me in anything, so that we
can be like the Leonards very much sooner than they became so.
The great object is not to have any hitchiness; and you know
you are provoking—at times. "
They both educated themselves for continued and tranquil
happiness by the example and precept of their friends; and the
time passed swiftly in the pleasant learning, and in the novelty
of the life led by the Leonards. This indeed merits a closer
study than can be given here, for it is the life led by vast num-
bers of prosperous New-Yorkers who love both the excitement of
the city and the repose of the country, and who aspire to unite
the enjoyment of both in their daily existence. The suburbs of
the metropolis stretch landward fifty miles in every direction; and
everywhere are handsome villas like Leonard's, inhabited by men
like himself, whom strict study of the time-table enables to spend
all their working hours in the city and all their smoking and
sleeping hours in the country.
The home and the neighborhood of the Leonards put on their
best looks for our bridal pair, and they were charmed. They all
enjoyed the visit, said guests and hosts, they were all sorry to
have it come to an end; yet they all resigned themselves to this
conclusion. Practically, it had no other result than to detain the
travelers into the very heart of the hot weather. In that weather
it was easy to do anything that did not require an active effort,
and resignation was so natural with the mercury at ninety, that
I am not sure but there was something sinful in it.
They had given up their cherished purpose of going to Albany
by the day boat, which was represented to them in every impos
sible phase. It would be dreadfully crowded, and whenever it
stopped the heat would be insupportable. Besides, it would bring
them to Albany at an hour when they must either spend the
night there, or push on to Niagara by the night train. "You
had better go by the evening boat. It will be light almost till
you reach West Point, and you'll see all the best scenery. Then
you can get a good night's rest, and start fresh in the morning. "
So they were counseled, and they assented, as they would have
done if they had been advised: "You had better go by the
morning boat. It's deliciously cool, traveling; you see the whole


## p. 7661 (#475) ###########################################

WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
7661
of the river; you reach Albany for supper, and you push through
to Niagara that night and are done with it. "
They took leave of Leonard at breakfast and of his wife at
noon, and fifteen minutes later they were rushing from the heat
of the country into the heat of the city, where some affairs and
pleasures were to employ them till the evening boat should start.
Their spirits were low, for the terrible spell of the great heat
brooded upon them. All abroad burned the fierce white light of
the sun, in which not only the earth seemed to parch and thirst,
but the very air withered, and was faint and thin to the troubled
respiration. Their train was full of people who had come long
journeys from broiling cities of the West, and who were dusty
and ashen and reeking in the slumbers at which some of them
still vainly caught. On every one lay an awful languor. Here
and there stirred a fan, like the broken wing of a dying bird;
now and then a sweltering young mother shifted her hot baby
from one arm to another; after every station the desperate con-
ductor swung through the long aisle and punched the ticket,
which each passenger seemed to yield him with a tacit maledic-
tion; a suffering child hung about the empty tank, which could
only gasp out a cindery drop or two of ice-water. The wind
buffeted faintly at the windows; when the door was opened, the
clatter of rails struck through and through the car like a de-
moniac yell.
Yet when they arrived at the station by the ferry-side, they
seemed to have entered its stifling darkness from fresh and vig-
orous atmosphere, so close and dead and mixed with the carbonic
breath of the locomotives was the air of the place. The thin old
wooden walls that shut out the glare of the sun transmitted an
intensified warmth; the roof seemed to hover lower and lower,
and in its coal-smoked, raftery hollow to generate a heat deadlier
than that poured upon it from the skies.
In a convenient place in the station hung a thermometer,
before which every passenger, on going aboard the ferry-boat,
paused as at a shrine, and mutely paid his devotions. At the
altar of this fetich our friends also paused, and saw that the
mercury was above ninety; and, exulting with the pride that sav
ages take in the cruel might of their idols, bowed their souls to
the great god Heat.
On the boat they found a place where the breath of the
sea struck cool across their faces, and made them forget the


## p. 7662 (#476) ###########################################

7662
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
thermometer for the brief time of the transit. But presently
they drew near that strange irregular row of wooden buildings
and jutting piers which skirts the river on the New York side;
and before the boat's motion ceased the air grew thick and warm
again, and tainted with the foulness of the street on which the
buildings front. Upon this the boat's passengers issued, passing
up through the gangway, on one side of which a throng of
return passengers was pent by a gate of iron bars, like a herd
of wild animals. They were streaming with perspiration, and
according to their different temperaments had faces of deep crim-
son or deadly pallor.
"Now the question is, my dear," said Basil, when free of the
press they lingered for a moment in the shade outside, "whether
we had better walk up to Broadway, at an immediate sacrifice of
fibre, and get a stage there, or take one of these cars here and
be landed a little nearer, with half the exertion. By this route
we shall have sights and smells which the other can't offer us,
but whichever we take we shall be sorry. "
"Then I say take this," decided Isabel. "I want to be sorry
upon the easiest possible terms, this weather. "
They hailed the first car that passed, and got into it. Well
for them both if she could have exercised this philosophy with
regard to the whole day's business, or if she could have given
up her plans for it with the same resignation she had practiced
in regard to the day boat! It seems to me a proof of the small
advance our race has made in true wisdom, that we find it so
hard to give up doing anything we have meant to do. It matters
very little whether the affair is one of enjoyment or of business,
we feel the same bitter need of pursuing it to the end. The
mere fact of intention gives it a flavor of duty; and dutiolatry, as
one may call the devotion, has passed so deeply into our life that
we have scarcely a sense any more of the sweetness of even a
neglected pleasure. We will not taste the fine, guilty rapture
of a deliberate dereliction; the gentle sin of omission is all but
blotted from the calendar of our crimes. If I had been Colum-
bus, I should have thought twice before setting sail, when I was
quite ready to do so; and as for Plymouth Rock, I should have
sternly resisted the blandishments of those twin sirens, Starvation
and Cold, who beckoned the Puritans shoreward, and as soon as
ever I came into sight of their granite perch should have turned
back to England. But it is now too late to repair these errors;


## p. 7663 (#477) ###########################################

WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
7663
and so, on one of the hottest days of last year, behold my obdu-
rate bridal pair, in a Tenth or Twentieth Avenue horse-car, setting
forth upon the fulfillment of a series of intentions, any of which
had wiselier been left unaccomplished.
Isabel had said they
would call upon certain people in Fiftieth Street, and then shop
slowly down, ice-creaming and staging and variously cooling and
calming by the way, until they reached the ticket office on
Broadway, whence they could indefinitely betake themselves to
the steamboat an hour or two before her departure. She felt
that they had yielded sufficiently to circumstances and conditions.
already on this journey, and she was resolved that the present
half-day in New York should be the half-day of her original
design.
It was not the most advisable thing, as I have allowed; but it
was inevitable, and it afforded them a spectacle which is by no
means wanting in sublimity, and which is certainly unique,— the
spectacle of that great city on a hot day, defiant of the elements.
and prospering on, with every form of labor and at a terrible
cost of life. The man carrying the hod to the top of the walls,
that rankly grow and grow as from his life's blood, will only lay
down his load when he feels the mortal glare of the sun blaze
in upon heart and brain; the plethoric millionaire for whom he
toils will plot and plan in his office till he swoons at the desk;
the trembling beast must stagger forward while the flame-faced
tormentor on the box has strength to lash him on: in all those
vast palaces of commerce there are ceaseless sale and purchase,
packing and unpacking, lifting up and laying down, arriving and
departing loads; in thousands of shops is the unspared and
unsparing weariness of selling; in the street, filled by the hurry
and suffering of tens of thousands, is the weariness of buying.
Their afternoon's experience was something that Basil and
Isabel could, when it was past, look upon only as a kind of vis-
ion, magnificent at times, and at other times full of indignity and
pain. They seemed to have dreamed of a long horse-car pilgrim-
age through that squalid street by the river-side; where presently
they came to a market, opening upon the view hideous vistas of
carnage, and then into a wide avenue, with processions of cars
like their own coming and going up and down the centre of a
foolish and useless breadth, which made even the tall buildings
(rising gauntly up among the older houses of one or two stories)
on either hand look low, and let in the sun to bake the dust


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7664
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
that the hot breaths of wind caught up and sent swirling into
the shabby shops. Here they dreamed of the eternal demolition
and construction of the city, and farther on of vacant lots full of
granite bowlders, clambered over by goats. In their dream they
had fellow-passengers, whose sufferings made them odious, and
whom they were glad to leave behind when they alighted from
the car, and running out of the blaze of the avenue quenched
themselves in the shade of the cross street. A little strip of
shadow lay along the row of brown-stone fronts, but there were
intervals where the vacant lots cast no shadow.
With great
bestowal of thought they studied hopelessly how to avoid these
spaces, as if they had been difficult torrents or vast expanses
of desert sand; they crept slowly along till they came to such a
place, and dashed swiftly across it, and then, fainter than before,
moved on.
They seemed now and then to stand at doors, and to
be told that people were out, and again that they were in; and
they had a sense of cool dark parlors, and the airy rustling of
light-muslined ladies, of chat and of fans and ice-water, and then
they came forth again; and evermore
"The day increased from heat to heat. "
At last they were aware of an end of their visits, and of a
purpose to go down-town again, and of seeking the nearest car
by endless blocks of brown-stone fronts, which with their eter-
nal brown-stone flights of steps, and their handsome, intolerable
uniformity, oppressed them like a procession of houses trying
to pass a given point and never getting by. Upon these streets
there was seldom a soul to be seen; so that when their ringing
at a door had evoked answer, it had startled them with vague,
sad surprise. In the distance on either hand they could see cars
and carts and wagons toiling up and down the avenues, and on
the next intersecting pavement sometimes a laborer with his
jacket slung across his shoulder, or a dog that had plainly made
up his mind to go mad. Up to the time of their getting into
one of those phantasmal cars for the return down-townwards they
had kept up a show of talk in their wretched dream. They had
spoken of other hot days that they had known elsewhere; and
they had wondered that the tragical character of heat had been
so little recognized. They said that the daily New York murder
might even at that moment be somewhere taking place, and that
no murder of the whole homicidal year could have such proper


## p. 7665 (#479) ###########################################

WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
7665
circumstance; they morbidly wondered what that day's murder
would be, and in what swarming tenement-house, or den of the
assassin streets by the river-sides,- if indeed it did not befall in
some such high, close-shuttered, handsome dwelling as those they
passed, in whose twilight it would be so easy to strike down the
master, and leave him undiscovered and unmourned by the fam-
ily ignorantly absent at the mountains or the seaside. They
conjectured of the horror of midsummer battles, and pictured the
anguish of shipwrecked men upon a tropical coast, and the grimy
misery of stevedores unloading shiny cargoes of anthracite coal
at city docks. But now at last, as they took seats opposite one
another in the crowded car, they seemed to have drifted infinite
distances and long epochs asunder. They looked hopelessly across
the intervening gulf, and mutely questioned when it was and
from what far city they or some remote ancestors of theirs had
set forth upon a wedding journey. They bade each other a tacit
farewell, and with patient, pathetic faces awaited the end of the
world.
When they alighted, they took their way up through one of
the streets of the great wholesale businesses, to Broadway. On
this street was a throng of trucks and wagons lading and unlad-
ing; bales and boxes rose and sank by pulleys overhead; the
footway was a labyrinth of packages of every shape and size:
there was no flagging of the pitiless energy that moved all
forward, no sign of how heavy a weight lay on it, save in the
reeking faces of its helpless instruments. But when the wedding-
journeyers emerged upon Broadway, the other passages and inci-
dents of their dream faded before the superior fantasticality of
the spectacle. It was four o'clock, the deadliest hour of the
deadly summer day. The spiritless air seemed to have a quality
of blackness in it, as if filled with the gloom of low-hovering
wings.
One half the street lay in shadow, and one half in sun;
but the sunshine itself was dim, as if a heat greater than its own
had smitten it with languor. Little gusts of sick, warm wind
blew across the great avenue at the corners of the intersecting
streets. In the upward distance, at which the journeyers looked,
the loftier roofs and steeples lifted themselves dim out of the
livid atmosphere, and far up and down the length of the street
swept a stream of tormented life. All sorts of wheeled things
thronged it, conspicuous among which rolled and jarred the gaud-
ily painted stages, with quivering horses driven each by a man
XIII-480


## p. 7666 (#480) ###########################################

7666
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
It
who sat in the shade of a branching white umbrella, and suffered
with a moody truculence of aspect, and as if he harbored the bit-
terness of death in his heart for the crowding passengers within,
when one of them pulled the strap about his legs and sum-
moned him to halt. Most of the foot passengers kept to the
shady side; and to the unaccustomed eyes of the strangers they
were not less in number than at any other time, though there
were fewer women among them. Indomitably resolute of soul,
they held their course with the swift pace of custom, and only
here and there they showed the effect of the heat.
One man,
collarless, with waistcoat unbuttoned and hat set far back from
his forehead, waved a fan before his death-white flabby face, and
set down one foot after the other with the heaviness of a som-
nambulist. Another, as they passed him, was saying huskily to
the friend at his side, "I can't stand this much longer. My
hands tingle as if they had gone to sleep; my heart—" But
still the multitude hurried on, passing, repassing, encountering,
evading, vanishing into shop-doors and emerging from them, dis-
persing down the side streets and swarming out of them.
was a scene that possessed the beholder with singular fascination,
and in its effect of universal lunacy it might well have seemed
the last phase of a world presently to be destroyed. They who
were in it but not of it, as they fancied,- though there was no
reason for this,-looked on it amazed; and at last, their own
errands being accomplished, and themselves so far cured of the
madness of purpose, they cried with one voice that it was a hid-
eous sight, and strove to take refuge from it in the nearest place
where the soda fountain sparkled. It was a vain desire. At the
front door of the apothecary's hung a thermometer, and as they
entered they heard the next comer cry out, with a maniacal pride
in the affliction laid upon mankind, "Ninety-seven degrees! "
Behind them at the door there poured in a ceaseless stream of
people, each pausing at the shrine of heat before he tossed off
the hissing draught that two pale, close-clipped boys served them
from either side of the fountain. Then in the order of their
coming they issued through another door upon the side street;
each, as he disappeared, turning his face half round, and casting
a casual glance upon a little group near another counter. The
group was of a very patient, half frightened, half puzzled looking
gentleman who sat perfectly still on a stool, and of a lady who
stood beside him, rubbing all over his head a handkerchief full


## p. 7667 (#481) ###########################################

WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
7667
of pounded ice, and easing one hand with the other when the
first became tired. Basil drank his soda and paused to look
upon this group, which he felt would commend itself to realistic
sculpture as eminently characteristic of the local life, and as "The
Sunstroke" would sell enormously in the hot season.
« Better
take a little more of that," the apothecary said, looking up from
his prescription, and at the organized sympathy of the seemingly
indifferent crowd smiling very kindly at his patient, who there-
upon tasted something in the glass he held. "Do you still feel
like fainting? " asked the humane authority. "Slightly, now and
then," answered the other; "but I'm hanging on hard to the
bottom curve of that icicled S on your soda fountain, and I feel
that I'm all right as long as I can see that. The people get
rather hazy occasionally, and have no features to speak of. But
I don't know that I look very impressive myself," he added, in
the jesting mood which seems the natural condition of Ameri-
cans in the face of all embarrassments.
"Oh, you'll do! " the apothecary answered with a laugh; but
he said, in answer to an anxious question from the lady, "He
mustn't be moved for an hour yet," and gayly pestled away at a
prescription, while she resumed her office of grinding the pounded
ice round and round upon her husband's skull. Isabel offered
her the commiseration of friendly words, and of looks kinder yet;
and then, seeing that they could do nothing, she and Basil fell
into the endless procession, and passed out of the side door.
"What a shocking thing! " she whispered. "Did you see how
all the people looked, one after another, so indifferently at that
couple, and evidently forgot them the next instant?
It was
dreadful. I shouldn't like to have you sunstruck in New York. ”
"That's very considerate of you; but place for place, if any
accident must happen to me among strangers, I think I should
prefer to have it in New York. The biggest place is always the
kindest as well as the cruelest place. Amongst the thousands of
spectators the good Samaritan as well as the Levite would be
sure to be. As for a sunstroke, it requires peculiar gifts. But
if you compel me to a choice in the matter, then I say, give
me the busiest part of Broadway for a sunstroke. There is such
experience of calamity there that you could hardly fall the first
victim to any misfortune. Probably the gentleman at the apothe-
cary's was merely exhausted by the heat, and ran in there for
revival. The apothecary has a case of the kind on his hands


## p. 7668 (#482) ###########################################

7668
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
every blazing afternoon, and knows just what to do. The crowd
may be a little ennuyé of sunstrokes, and to that degree indif-
ferent; but they most likely know that they can only do harm by
an expression of sympathy, and so they delegate their pity as
they have delegated their helpfulness, to the proper authority, and
go about their business. If a man was overcome in the middle
of a village street, the blundering country druggist wouldn't know
what to do, and the tender-hearted people would crowd about so
that no breath of air could reach the victim. "
"Maybe so, dear," said the wife pensively; "but if anything
did happen to you in New York, I should like to have the spec-
tators look as if they saw a human being in trouble. Perhaps
I'm a little exacting. "
"I think you are.
Nothing is so hard as to understand that
there are human beings in this world besides one's self and
one's set. But let us be selfishly thankful that it isn't you and
I there in the apothecary's shop, as it might very well be; and
let us get to the boat as soon as we can, and end this horrible
midsummer-day's dream. We must have a carriage," he added
with a tardy wisdom, hailing an empty hack, "as we ought to
have had all day; though I'm not sorry, now the worst's over, to
have seen the worst. "
THE STREET-CAR STRIKE
From A Hazard of New Fortunes. Copyright 1889, by W. D. Howells
THE
HE tide of his confused and aimless revery had carried him
far down-town, he thought; but when he looked up from it
to see where he was, he found himself on Sixth Avenue,
only a little below Thirty-ninth Street, very hot and blown,-
that idiotic fur overcoat was stifling. He could not possibly walk
down to Eleventh; he did not want to walk even to the Elevated
station at Thirty-fourth; he stopped at the corner to wait for a
surface car, and fell again into his bitter fancies. After a while
he roused himself and looked up the track, but there was no car
coming. He found himself beside a policeman, who was lazily
swinging his club by its thong from his wrist.
"When do you suppose a car will be along? " he asked, rather
in a general sarcasm of the absence of the cars than in any spe-
cial belief that the policeman could tell him.


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WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
7669
The policeman waited to discharge his tobacco juice into the
gutter. "In about a week," he said, nonchalantly.
"What's the matter? " asked Beaton, wondering what the joke
could be.
"Strike," said the policeman. His interest in Beaton's ig-
norance seemed to overcome his contempt of it. "Knocked off
everywhere this morning except Third Avenue and one or two
cross-town lines. " He spat again, and kept his bulk at its
incline over the gutter to glance at a group of men on the cor-
ner below. They were neatly dressed, and looked like something
better than workingmen, and they had a holiday air of being in
their best clothes.
"Some of the strikers? " asked Beaton.
The policeman nodded.
"Any trouble yet? "
"There won't be any trouble till we begin to move the cars,"
said the policeman.
Beaton felt a sudden turn of his rage toward the men whose
action would now force him to walk five blocks and mount the
stairs of the Elevated station. "If you'd take out eight or ten of
those fellows," he said ferociously, "and set them up against a
wall and shoot them, you'd save a great deal of bother. "
"I guess we shan't have to shoot much," said the policeman,
still swinging his locust. "Anyway, we shan't begin it. If it
comes to a fight, though," he said, with a look at the men under
the scooping rim of his helmet, "we can drive the whole six
thousand of 'em into the East River without pullin' a trigger. "
"Are there six thousand in it? "
« About. "
"What do the infernal fools expect to live on? "
"The interest of their money, I suppose," said the officer, with
a grin of satisfaction in his irony. "It's got to run its course.
Then they'll come back with their heads tied up and their tails
between their legs, and plead to be taken on again. "
"If I was a manager of the roads," said Beaton, thinking of
how much he was already inconvenienced by the strike, and ob-
scurely connecting it as one of the series with the wrongs he had
suffered at the hands of Mrs. Horn and Mrs. Mandel, "I would
see them starve before I'd take them back-every one of them. "
"Well," said the policeman, impartially, as a man might whom
the companies allowed to ride free, but who had made friends.


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WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
with a good many drivers and conductors in the course of his
free riding, "I guess that's what the roads would like to do if
they could; but the men are too many for them, and there ain't
enough other men to take their places. "
"No matter," said Beaton, severely. "They can bring in men
from other places. "
"Oh, they'll do that fast enough," said the policeman.
A man came out of the saloon on the corner where the strik-
ers were standing, noisy drunk, and they began, as they would
have said, to have some fun with him. The policeman left Bea-
ton, and sauntered slowly down toward the group as if in the
natural course of an afternoon ramble. On the other side of
the street Beaton could see another officer sauntering up from
the block below. Looking up and down the avenue, so silent of
its horse-car bells, he saw a policeman at every corner. It was
rather impressive.
THE strike made a good deal of talk in the office of Every
Other Week - that is, it made Fulkerson talk a good deal. He
congratulated himself that he was not personally incommoded by
it, like some of the fellows who lived up-town and had not every-
thing under one roof, as it were. He enjoyed the excitement of
it, and he kept the office-boy running out to buy the extras
which the newsmen came crying through the street almost every
hour with a lamentable, unintelligible noise. He read not only
the latest intelligence of the strike, but the editorial comments
on it, which praised the firm attitude of both parties, and the
admirable measures taken by the police to preserve order. Ful-
kerson enjoyed the interviews with the police captains and the
leaders of the strike; he equally enjoyed the attempts of the
reporters to interview the road managers, which were so graphi-
cally detailed, and with such a fine feeling for the right use of
scare-heads, as to have almost the value of direct expression from
them, though it seemed that they had resolutely refused to speak.
He said, at second-hand from the papers, that if the men behaved
themselves and respected the rights of property, they would
have public sympathy with them every time; but just as soon as
they began to interfere with the roads' right to manage their
own affairs in their own way, they must be put down with an
iron hand: the phrase "iron hand" did Fulkerson almost as much


## p. 7671 (#485) ###########################################

WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
7671
good as if it had never been used before. News began to come
of fighting between the police and the strikers when the roads
tried to move their cars with men imported from Philadelphia,
and then Fulkerson rejoiced at the splendid courage of the police.
At the same time he believed what the strikers said, and that
the trouble was not made by them, but by gangs of roughs act-
ing without their approval.
In this juncture he was relieved by the arrival of the State
Board of Arbitration, which took up its quarters with a great
many scare-heads, at one of the principal hotels, and invited the
roads and the strikers to lay the matter in dispute before them;
he said that now we should see the working of the greatest piece
of social machinery in modern times. But it appeared to work
only in the alacrity of the strikers to submit their grievance.
The roads were as one road in declaring that there was nothing
to arbitrate, and that they were merely asserting their right to
manage their own affairs in their own way. One of the presi-
dents was reported to have told a member of the Board, who per-
sonally summoned him, to get out and to go about his business.
Then, to Fulkerson's extreme disappointment, the august tri-
bunal, acting on behalf of the sovereign people in the interest
of peace, declared itself powerless and got out, and would no
doubt have gone about its business if it had had any. Fulker-
son did not know what to say, perhaps because the extras did
not; but March laughed at this result.
"It's a good deal like the military manœuvre of the King of
France and his forty thousand men.
suppose somebody told
him at the top of the hill that there was nothing to arbitrate,
and to get out and go about his business, and that was the rea-
son he marched down after he had marched up with all that
ceremony. What amuses me is to find that in an affair of this
kind the roads have rights and the strikers have rights, but the
public has no rights at all. The roads and the strikers are
allowed to fight out a private war in our midst, as thoroughly
and precisely a private war as any we despise the Middle Ages
for having tolerated, as any street war in Florence or Verona,-
and to fight it out at our pains and expense; and we stand by
like sheep and wait till they get tired. It's a funny attitude for
a city of fifteen hundred thousand inhabitants. "
"What would you do? " asked Fulkerson, a good deal daunted
by this view of the case.
―――
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## p. 7672 (#486) ###########################################

7672
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
"Do? Nothing. Hasn't the State Board of Arbitration de-
clared itself powerless? We have no hold upon the strikers; and
we're so used to being snubbed and disobliged by common car-
riers that we have forgotten our hold on the roads, and always
allow them to manage their own affairs in their own way, quite
as if we had nothing to do with them, and they owed us no serv-
ices in return for their privileges. "
"That's a good deal so," said Fulkerson, disordering his hair.
"Well, it's nuts for the Colonel nowadays. He says if he was
boss of this town he would seize the roads on behalf of the peo-
ple, and man 'em with policemen, and run 'em till the managers
had come to terms with the strikers; and he'd do that every time
there was a strike. "
"Doesn't that rather savor of the paternalism he condemned
in Lindau? " asked March.
"I don't know. It savors of horse-sense. "
"You are pretty far gone, Fulkerson. I thought you were the
most engaged man I ever saw; but I guess you're more father-
in-lawed. And before you're married too. "
"Well, the Colonel's a glorious old fellow, March. I wish he
had the power to do that thing, just for the fun of looking on
while he waltzed in. He's on the keen jump from morning till
night, and he's up late and early to see the row. I'm afraid he'll
get shot at some of the fights; he sees them all: I can't get any
show at them; haven't seen a brickbat shied or a club swung
yet. Have you? "
“No: I find I can philosophize the situation about as well
from the papers, and that's what I really want to do, I suppose.
Besides, I'm solemnly pledged by Mrs. March not to go near any
sort of crowd, under penalty of having her bring the children and
go with me. Her theory is that we must all die together; the
children haven't been at school since the strike began. There's
no precaution that Mrs. March hasn't used. She watches me
whenever I go out, and sees that I start straight for this office. "
Fulkerson laughed, and said, "Well, it's probably the only
thing that's saved your life. Have you seen anything of Beaton
lately? "
"No. You don't mean to say he's killed! "
«< Not if he knows it. But I don't know- What do you say,
March? What's the reason you couldn't get us up a paper on
the strike? ”
-


## p. 7673 (#487) ###########################################

WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
7673
"I knew it would fetch round to Every Other Week some-
how. "
"No, but seriously. There'll be plenty of newspaper accounts.
But you could treat it in the historical spirit-like something
that happened several centuries ago; Defoe's 'Plague of London'
style. Heigh? What made me think of it was Beaton. If I
could get hold of him, you two could go round together and take
down its æsthetic aspects. It's a big thing, March, this strike is.
I tell you it's imposing to have a private war, as you say, fought
out this way, in the heart of New York, and New York not
minding it a bit. See? Might take that view of it.
With your
descriptions and Beaton's sketches-well, it would be just the
greatest card! Come! What do you say? "
"Will you undertake to make it right with Mrs. March if I'm
killed, and she and the children are not killed with me?
>>
"Well, it would be difficult. I wonder how it would do to get
Kendricks to do the literary part? "
"I've no doubt he'd jump at the chance. I've yet to see
the form of literature that Kendricks wouldn't lay down his life
for. "
"Say! " March perceived that Fulkerson was about to vent
another inspiration, and smiled patiently. "Look here! What's
the reason we couldn't get one of the strikers to write it up for
us ? »
"Might have a symposium of strikers and presidents," March
suggested.
"No: I'm in earnest. They say some of those fellows-
especially the foreigners-are educated men. I know one fellow,
a Bohemian, that used to edit a Bohemian newspaper here. He
could write it out in his kind of Dutch, and we could get Lin-
dau to translate it. "
"I guess not," said March, dryly.
"Why not? He'd do it for the cause, wouldn't he? Suppose
you put it up on him, the next time you see him. "
"I don't see Lindau any more," said March. He added, "I
guess he's renounced me along with Mr. Dryfoos's money. "
"Pshaw! You don't mean he hasn't been round since? "
"He came for a while, but he's left off coming now. -I don't
feel particularly gay about it," March said, with some resentment
of Fulkerson's grin. "He's left me in debt to him for lessons to
the children. "


## p. 7674 (#488) ###########################################

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WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
Fulkerson laughed out.
"Well, he is the greatest old fool!
Who'd 'a' thought he'd 'a' been in earnest with those 'brincibles'
of his ?