Feinberg/Whitman Literary File Prose "WW on Carlyle" (Feb. 24, 1881). Connecticut Courant. Printed Copy. Box 33 Folder 26 Whitman 27 #554/ Supplement to the Courant. Published every other week as a supplement to the Conneticut Courant. Vol. XLV1 Hartford, February 24, 1881. No 4. Californian Cradle Song. There are cumulus clouds on these purple hills, The water runs in forgotten rills Sedate nemophilas' eyes of blue Demurely smile on the world anew, For the raindrops cease their murmur of peace, And the fowls creep out, And the children shout, And an oriole sings, Where a poppy springs, And the field is green, And the sky serene, And the baby wonders, and cannot guess Why the world is clad in such loveliness. O wise young mother whose notes prolong. The dreamful tones of your tranquil song, O trustful babe at your mother's breast Remembering dimly a land more blest, Do you think it strange that the hill-sides change? That a flower renews Its maidenly hues? That an oriole sings And a poppy springs? I recall the grace Of a lifted face, And I see it again in this babe, and guess Why the world is renewed in such loveliness. -Chas. H. Phelps in Californian for February. Captain Camlion. (London World.) In the month of May, 1864, we were encamped under Grant, on the bank of the Rapidan. The opposite side of the river was held by Lee's forces. Our regiment, the 200th Massachusetts - had fought in many of the bloodiest battles of the war, and comparatively few of the original volunteers now survived. Camlion, Fred Belton, and myself, however, still held together, and neither one of us, in all the dangers to which he had been exposed, had ever received a wound. Our acquaintance antedated the war. We had been classmates in Harvard university. I remember we used to nickname Camlion "captain" long before the war of rebellion was thought of. He was tall, strong, and serene, with a dignity about him half boyish and half manly, which made him respected as well as loved. He was president of every college society to which he belonged; he pulled the heaviest oar in the university crew. No exertion tired him, and no provocation put him out of temper, though I do not forget his encounter with Fred Belmont. It was, indeed, the beginning of their friendship. Fred was a Virginian by birth, though he afterward fought on the norther side; he was full of fun and humorous mischief, but subject to ungovernable outbursts of passion. One day he undertook to play off a practical joke on Mrs. Clapper, our laundress, who was more than suspected of using chemicals in her washing, to the detriment of the fabrics committed to her charge. Fred, who was something of a chemist, hit upon the ingenious device of saturating one of his shirts with a mixture which, when brought into contact with the ingredient Mrs. Clapper was accused of, produced an explosion which utterly upset her and her washtub, and besides rendering the poor old lady almost idiotic with fright, injured her rather severely on the hands and face. Fred related the incident with great glee at the supper table that evening. We all thought, it funny and laughed - all except Camlion. "You ought to beg the woman's pardon, Belton," he said. There was an immediate silence when his low but powerful voice struck in, and everybody turned toward him as he sat with both hands resting on the edge of the table, and his face, which was the type of the young Grecian Hercules, slowly reddening. Fred laughed, fancying at first that Camlion was chaffing. But in a moment the latter added, "It was a blackguardly thing to do." Thereupon Fred jumped up, white with rage. "Will you take that back?" he called out. "I say it was a shameful and cowardly trick," was Camlion's answer. Belton snatched up a heavy bread knife that lay on the table, and hurled it with all his force at Camlion's face. It struck him on the cheek, a little below the right eye. It was a murderous act. We all rose confusedly to our feet, anticipating a violent sequel; for Camlion could have shaken Belton's heart out fo him with one hand. He alone remained seated, however, pressing his handkerchief to the deep gash, while he kept his own glance fixed on his assailant. "Of course that makes no difference, Belton," he said, after a pause. Belton, who was by no means a bad fellow, had no sooner done the deed than he was sorry for it, and manfully said as much on the spot. "I don't care a fig about this," answered Camlion, quietly; "but," he added with the grim tenacity which was a feature of his character, "you ought to make it up to Mrs. Clapper." The upshot was that Belton yielded, and presented Mrs. Clapper with $25 and a handsome apology. But the incident roused a good deal of discussion, and opinion was for a while somewhat divided as to Camlion's behavior. Some declared that he ought to have sent the southerner a challenge; but most of us felt that a duel would have been a gratuitous absurdity for a man like Camlion, and it was a sign of the general confidence felt in him that no one ventured to intimate that the fact of Belton's being a notoriuosly dead shot had anything to do with the pacific termination of the affair. Camlion himself never alluded to it in any way, but as I have said, the two men afterward became firm friends, and Belton, who had before belonged to the fast set, gradually mended his ways under Camlion's influence, and joined the athletic party. Another follower of Camlion's - and he had many, though his intimates were few - was Frank Capel, also a southerner, and a well-mannered, pleasant fellow enough. He was chiefly noted, however, for his fanatical devotion to a certain famous sister of his, to whose praise his friends were obliged to listen in season and out. She was, according to Frank, the cleverest, most beautiful, most fascinating creature above ground. Her dancing, her riding, her music, were all perfection, and Frank used to declare that she could beat Fred Belton hollow at shooting. "Why, I've seen her," Frank exclaimed, "take her revolver and put a bullet through each of the fingers of my glove while I was throwing it up in the air ten paces away from her!" In short, she was the ideal of all that woman can or might be, and we looked forward with interest to help her promised appearance on our class day. "We'll introduce Camlion to her, and he shall make her an offer of marriage!" said Belton, with a chuckle. The joke of this suggestion lay in the fact that the else heroic Camlion was what is called "afraid" of young ladies; that is, he could seldom be got to open his mouth in the presence of any woman who was not over thirty and married; and if brought to bay, he would stammer and blush like a schoolboy, and stand twisting his great hands behind him and glancing anxiously this way and that for a chance to bolt. To imagine him carrying on a courtship was too daring a flight of fancy for any one but Belton. With children, however, Camlion was completely at home, and he would spend hours of uproarous happiness in a nursery, tumbling his gigantic frame about ont he floor amid the screams of delight of the smaller people. He treated them with arden reverence and abject forbearance, and they led him unresistingly captive. Our class day came round at last - the longest and loveliest day of summer - with its "spreads" in the men's rooms, its dancing on the college green, its illuminations in the evening, and its various other diversions. Miss Capel was there, and beyond doubt she was, in appearance at least, nearly all that Frank had declared her to be. But for my own part, while recognizing the bewitching brilliancy of her face and manner, I found her slender lips too satirical and her clear brown eyes too unsympathetic to command my entire fealty. She was of those women who, as a bare return for condescending to exist in the presence of a man, demand from him a devotion scarcely distinguishable from slavery. She was witty, rapid, and at once subtle and daring. There was in her, I fancied, more of intellectual appreciation of passion than of passion itself. She seemed to think that the proper place for her arched foot was on the neck of the rest of humanity. She had never been opposed, much less rebuffed or humiliated; she expected that your eye should fall before hers. Her figure was tall and lithe, and nobly proportioned, graceful, erect, and alert. But I was brutal enough to think that some of the ear-boxings which she had doubtless administered to her slaves at home might have been wholesomely returned to her own defiant head. Fred Belton on the other hand, considered her "divine," and 'squired her about most inveterately, she accepting his homage in good part, and laughing with him, or at him, quite affably. For several hours he was a general object of envy. At length, catching sight of Camlion, he whispered a few words to his beautiful companion, who glanced at our serene Hercules, and nodded her head. A moment later he had been brought up and presented. "See you again in half an hour at Harvard hall," said Belton, and was off, chuckling to me, "We've cooked old Camlion's goose for him this time, at all events!" Perhaps he had, though not in the way he imagined. What induced Miss Rosalind absolutely to lay herself out to captivate Camlion of all men? Was it from a subtle feminine perception that no woman had yet won him, when he was worth any woman's winning? Was it, perhaps, that she was really impressed by something in the man's noble, simple nature that revealed to her possibilities she had never till then suspected? Or was it a mere whim, because she was weary 26 SUPPLEMENT TO THE CONNECTICUT COURANT. of being worshiped, and wanted to have the novel sensation of finding herself of the soliciting side? I can not say; but, at all events, she did it -- how effectively and lasting no one knew until years afterward. Meanwhile, it may be remarked that she and Camlion did not make their appearance at Harvard hall, where Fred waited for them until his patience was exhausted. On the contrary they kept together by themselves all the rest of the day and evening; and it was not until the illuminations were over, and most of the merrymakers had dispersed, that Belton came across them, wandering arm-in-arm under the trees at the outskirts of the college grounds. They met his rather discomfited greeting very composedly. "I thought you two must have decamped for good!" he exclaimed, with a reproachful look at the lady. "You know, Miss Capel, you were engaged to dance the first waltz with me at the ball and afterward to come to my spread, and -- " "I found better employment, " interrupted Miss Capel, with a glance of superb insolence. Her white hands, which Belton noticed were ungloved, were clasped over Camlion's mighty arm, and now she looked up at him, in the bright moonlight, with what seemed to Belton an expression of secret intelligence, Camilion bent forward her and said something, but in so low a tone that Belton did not catch it. Miss Capel then turned to the latter and demanded brusquely whether he knew where her brother was. "I came to escort you to him, " was Belton's reply. She allowed her hands lingeringly to leave Camilion's arm; they confronted each other for a moment, their eyes meeting. "Don't forget," she said to him at length, almost in a whisper. "I shall be there," he answered, lifting his hat as he spoke. After another pause she turned away from him slowly and began to move toward the college, quite ignoring Belton, who nevertheless walked beside her. He addressed several remarks to her, to which she vouchsafed no answer whatever. At last, being piqued, he said: "Well, Miss Capel, I hope you've enjoyed your visit to Harvard and the men you've met her." "I have met only one man here," she replied, facing him imperiously. And this was all he got from her that evening. Next morning Camilion was not at breakfast; but some hints of his adventure of the previous evening had leaked out, and Belton had to sustain a good deal of chaff about the manner in which he had been "cut out." As for Miss Capel, it was known that she was staying with her brother and father at the Tremont house in Boston. After breakfast, curiosity or idleness carried me round to Camlien's rooms. I was surprised to find him hurriedly packing his trunk, his usually healthy-looking countenance very pale and drawn. I asked him what was the matter. "I'm going home," he said. "I got a telegram this morning -- something very had has happened to my father." I muttered my sympathy. Presently he resumed: "You were introduced to -- to Miss Capel, I think? Will you see her before she goes, and tell her -- say I would have come if it had been possible; and -- I hope I may see her again some day?" I promised, wondering that I would do what he asked, and soon after I bade him good by. We did not meet again for some years. When I called on the Capels to deliver his message, they were not in, and I did not have another opportunity of discharging my commission. In the course of a few days the newspapers contained the information that, something having gone wrong in the banking house of which Camlion's father was manager, the latter had committed suicide. "By Joye, " exclaimed Fred Belton, when he heard the report, "I almost wish it had been me! Dear old Camlion!" When Camlion and I found ourselves together again at the outbreak of the war, he was much matured in appearance, though his boyish simplicity and gentleness were unchanged. I had heard, in a vague way, that he had devoted himself, not without success, to paying off the liabilities which his unhappy father had incurred. But contact with men and the world, and the hearty preoccupation of his struggle to stone for the sins of the dead, instead of embittering him, had brought his strong nature into a more cheerful frame, and his quiet geniality made his companionship more than ever delightful to me. But once, when I asked him, half jocularly, whether he had no thoughts of getting married, he looked at me very gravely, and answered, in his deep, straightforward voice: "I never met but one woman whom I could have married, and gave her up long ago. Do you remember Miss Capel?" This led to my telling him how his message had failed to reach her; and the intelligence seemed to produce a great effect upon him. He murmurred to himself, several times: "That may have been the reason," and thereafter became totally uncommunicative on the subject. I do not know whether Fred Belton ever heard of this conversation; but for my own part, the stirring events that were daily happening around us soon put it out of my head. As I began by saying, we were encamped on the Rapidan river, just before that terrible series of battles in the wilderness which ushered in the close of the rebellion. Meanwhile, there was an ominous quiet in our neighborhood; the only exception being a rather annoying one in the shape of a sharp. shooter on the confederate side of the river (which was there about three hundred yards wide,) who unerringly picked off anyone of our men who ventured to show so much as his elbow on the federal bank. As he had established himself opposite the only spot in a couple of miles where it was practicable to water our cattle, his presence was particularly inconvenient; and we expanded an apparently disproportionate deal of trouble in our efforts to dislodge him, but nothing had say effect. As ill luck would have it, there were no guns available at this point; and it was in vain that we peppered the place whence the deadly shots proceeded with our rifles. Every day several valuable men were lost, until at last the question, what was to be done, became a serious and pressing one. The unknown marksman was never known to miss; and all that any of us ever saw of him was the puff of smoke from the muzzle of his weapon. One afternoon Fred Belton came to my tent (I was surgeon to our company) in a state of such manifest discomposure that at first I thought either the colonel had been killed or the mysterious sharpshooter captured. It turned out to be quite another matter, however. "What do you think?" he began, in an excited undertone. "Whose house do you suppose is a mile off there, on our left?" And without giving me time to hazard a guess he went on: "The Capels', as sure as you sit there. And whom do you suppose I saw Miss Rosalind herself, as I'm a living sinner. She rode up on horseback just as I was palavering at the front door for provender. By Jove, she's more divinely handsome than ever! And, oh my wig, didn't she give me a rating though! Whew!" "What did she scold you about?" demanded I, amused. "For being a Virginian, and fighting on the northern side. I tell you, she made me feel like a born sneak and a blackguard. A little more, and I believe I should have rattled again, and joined the Johnny Rebs. 'If I were a man,' she said, 'I would make it my business to catch such creatures as you, and hang you?' It's my opinion, if a few hundred women like her were to enlist on the rebs' side we should be thrashed out of our boots in a month. But luckily there's not another woman like her on the planet." "You'd better look out, or she'll make a conquest of you, in more ways than one," said I, laughing. "By the way, this news would interest Camlion. Does he know?" "No; and I don't mean to tell him," returned Belton, rather sharply; and after sitting a few minutes longer he got up and left me in, apparently, no very good humor. The same evening, however, he appeared again, this time in a preoccupied mood, and with his pipe in his mouth. The conversation presently turned upon the ever-active sharpshooter, and after a few remarks had passed Belton suddenly exclaimed: "I've made up my mind to kill that fellow, and I've thought of a way how it may be done. I guess I'm as good a shot as he is, and if I can get a sight of so much as a square inch of him, he's settled!" He then went on to unfold to me his scheme, which appeared feasible, though there were certain obstacles in the way. After we had discussed it for a while, he said: "Do you know why I want to shoot him?" "From patriotic motives, I trust," was my reply. "That's very well so far as it goes; but there's something else. I believe I know who he is -- or what he is, at all events. I believe he's the man whom Rosalind Capel means to marry. From something she said to-day I'm certain she knows him, and that there's something more than ordinary between them. And I don't intend that she shall marry him if I can help it." I did not much like this attitude of Belton's, and I told him so; but he took my strictures in such ill part that for the present I judged it best to say no more. Plainly, he was in love with Miss Capel. I devoutly wished that she was out of the way, but before breakfast time next morning I was destined to hear of her again. It was about the hour of sunrise when Camlion, who had been out on picket duty during the night, entered my tent, his face flushed and his blue eyes kindled with repressed excitement. "I have seen Miss Capel," he said, going to the point at once, as his custom was. "There was an alarm at my outpost two hours ago, and one of my men fired. We heard something fall, went out, and found a rider entangled with his horse, which was shot dead. I knew her in a moment, though she was in man's clothes -- a blouse and high boots. She had lost her way, and had stumbled on us in the darkness. Their house is near here, she says. It was a narrow escape; if she had been killed -- I could not have borne it! I wish this war was over." "Was she armed?" I inquired, feeling more uneasy than I cared to confess. "No. Why should she, poor girl! She had been to see some friends of hers somewhere up the country. I gave her a man to see her safe home." He had spoken the latter sentences in a low voice; now he looked suddenly up and said, with deepest emphasis, "I would give my life to know that she loves me still as I love her! She did love me once! There's no other woman in the world for me." "You must bear in mind that she's a red-hot rebel," I ventured to remark. "On the contrary, she's more than half inclined to our side," returned Camlion eagerly. "She told me almost as much. In her heart she loves the Union best." This unlikely assertion increased my misgivings tenfold; but before I could make up SUPPLEMENT TO THE CONNECTICUT COURANT. 27 my mind what to say I was summoned to at tend another victim of our mysterious enemy on the opposite bank. The man was mortally wounded; but before he died he was able to state that he, had seen his executioner -- a young fellow, with a dark-blue jacket or shirt, who parted aside the bushes and looked across at him, the smoking rifle in his hand. "If anyone with a good aim had been with me," added the poor chap, "we'd had him potted then, sure! They were his last words. But it was not the first time the sharpshooter had been said to have shown himself under similar circumstances; and it set me thinking again of Belton's scheme of the night before. At 5'oclock that afternoon the officers and non-commissioned officers of our company were summoned to meet the colonel; I was also present. As I anticipated, it was Belton's scheme that was the subject of discussion; the long and short of it was as follows: A volunteer was to be found to show himself on the bank and take the enemy's fire. Belton meanwhile was to conceal himself close at hand, as soon as the "young fellow in the straw hat" peered out of his ambush to see the effect of his shot, Belton was to put a Minnie ball through his head. There were only three things that might interfere with the successful prosecution of this plan; the lack of a volunteer prepared to meet almost certain death; the possible omission on the enemy's part to reveal himself; and finally, the chance that Belton might, after all, miss his aim. Nevertheless the colonel gave his consent that the thing should be tried, in default of any better suggestion; and the following morning was appointed for the experiment. At 6 o'clock I saw Camlion leave his tent and set off in the direction of our left. I had already noticed Belton headed the same way about a quarter of an hour previous; and putting this and that together, I awaited the issue in some suspense. But before 7 o'clock Camlion returned, passed me with a strange look on his face and without returning my greeting, and immediately reentered his tent, where, as was afterwards inferred, he must have spent a great part of the night in writing and arranging some papers. What had happened, as nearly as I can judge from subsequent developments, was this: He had started with the intention of calling on Rosalind Capel at her house. The way lay through a wood; but just before emerging from it into the open ground in front of the house, he saw a man and woman standing beneath the shade of some trees about fifty yards away. The man was Belton, the woman Rosalind. Belton was apparently speaking eagerly and excitedly, Rosalind occasionally replying briefly, and moving her head as if in assent. After a minute or two Belton ceased; she extended her hand to him, which he grasped in both his, and raised to his lips. The next moment he had drawn her to his breast and kissed her face passionately and repeatedly, she not resisting. When Camlion saw this a hoarse cry broke from him, and he strode forward a step, with fire in his heart. Then he stopped; a cold and torpid feeling came over him; he turned about, and sluggishly at first, then more rapidly, made his way back to the camp. A little before noon next day Camlion, Belton, and myself, and another man, Haydon by name -- a reckless daredevil fellow, who had volunteered for the post of danger on the occasions - moved silently and cautiously down toward the fatal spot on the river's brink. The adventure was kept a strict secret, for since the night previous, there had been whispers of the treachery in the camp, and we knew not where to look for the traitor among us. It was, of course, indispensable to the success of our plan that the sharpshooter should have no suspicion of there being more than one person in the neighborhood. Keeping heedfully behind cover, we crawled along, and at length lay hidden in the bushes a few yards from the place. Then Camlion, with Haydon in his charge, slipped a little way down towards the left, until they were concealed from our sight by the intervening shrubbery. Belton go his rifle in readiness, and I made my preparations to do all that could be done for Haydon, as soon as the enemy's bullet had struck him. When I last caught sight of the poor fellow there was a droop about the corners of his mouth, and a yellow palor in his cheeks, which showed that he was not insensible to the gravity of the situation. But Camlion had taken care to bring a flask of brandy along with him, and a quiet, steady cheerfulness of demeanor that was, perhaps, a better cordial still. Left to ourselves, Belton and I had nothing to do but wait; and we did wait for what seemed to us many intolerable minutes. The river lapsed smoothly and silently by; a bird skimmed over the surface; a breath of wind rustled the leaves over our heads. I began to fear lest the suspense should make Belton's hand unsteady. Just then a half-smothered exclamation reached our ears from the direction of our unseen companions, and almost simultaneously with it the sound of a heavy step passing from the bushes to the open margin of the stream. The time was come. Belton crouched with his rifle at his shoulder; our eyes were fastened on the opposite bank. Suddenly a white puff of smoke leaped forth -- a sharp, flat report, like the cracking of a whip; then the low unmistakable thud of a bullet striking its quarry. The white smoke drifted down to the windward. Before it had passed away I saw the figure for which we were lying in wait emerge quietly from its covert on the other side and stand revealed. At the same instant the bang of Belton's rifle rent the stillness; yet I had time to remark something inexplicably familiar in that alert, graceful form -- something not compatible with its blue-belted blouse and high boots. And what happened next? To me it all seemed like an ugly, tumultuous dream. I remember leaping down through the bushes to the water's edge. I remember seeing Haydon, alive and unhurt, supporting Camlion's dying head on his knee, while he tore open the front of his uniform, and disclosed the shirt stained with blood. I remember Belton, with ghastly face and sobbing breath, tearing loose the painter of a small skiff that was moored close at hand, and putting off with frantic haste across the stream. And I knew -- but how I can not tell -- that he was going to fecth the body of the woman he loved, and whom he had slain. fro the famous sharpshooter of the Rapidan was Rosalind Capel. She was still living when he brought her in but she had been hit mortally in the right side, and was fast bleeding to death. But sh smiled as we lifted her out, and her voice, though very faint, was distinct and composed. "Lay me by Captain Camlion," she said; "I shall like to die beside him." "I was the one you were to have had," said Haydon; "but at the moment the captain flung me down and went forward himself. It was too late to help it then. God knows I am sorry!" and he burst into tears as he said it. Rosalind smiled strangely, and moved her hand until it touched Camlion's. "Captain Camlion acted like the hero he always was," she said, now almost inaudibly. "I loved him -- never anyone else -- never you, you double traitor!" she added, turning her darkening eyes on Belton, who knelt in voiceless despair before her. "Last night you sold your adopted country for a kiss." Her eyes half closed for a moment, and she breathed stertorously. She opened them once more, turned her face toward Camlion, and made an effort to lift his hands to her lips. I helped her to accomplish her purpose. "Thanks!" she whispered. "I am not fit to kiss his mouth; but -- if he were alive -- I would ask his leave -- and -- his pardon!" She did not speak after this, and in a few moments she died very quietly. Among Camlion's papers was found a letter to Belton, explaining his object in sacrificing himself. "You are my friend," it ran; "I will not stand between you and her, now that I know you love each other; but I shall never find a better time or cause to die in than this." Poor Belton! He was acquitted by the court-martial appointed to try him on the charge of having given imformation to the enemy; but I fear there was that in his memory which made the remainder of his life more bitter to him than any death. -- Julian Hawthorne. WALT WHITMAN ON CARLYLE. And so the flame of the lamp, after long wasting and flickering, has gone out entirely. As a representative author, a literary figure, no man else will bequeath to the future more significant hints of our stormy era, its fierce paradoxes, its din, and its struggling parturition periods, than Carlyle. He belongs to our own branch of the stock too; neither Latin nor Greek, but altogether Gothic. Rugged, mountainous, volcanic, he was himself more a French revolution than any of his volumes. In some respects, so far in the nineteenth century, the best equipt, keenest mind, even from the college point of view, of all Britain; only he had an ailing body. Dyspepsia is to be treated in every page, and now and then fills the page. One may include among the lessons of his life -- even though that life stretched to amazing length -- how behind the tally of genius and morals stands the stomach, and gives a sort of casting vote. Two conflicting agonistic elements seem to have contended in the man, sometimes pulling him different ways, like wild horses. He was a cautious, conservative Scotchman, fully aware what a fœtid gas-bag much of modern radicalism is; but then his great heart demanded reform, demanded change -- an always sympathetic, always human heart -- often terribly at odds with his scornful brain. No author ever put so much wailing and despair into his books, sometimes palpable, oftener latent. He reminds me of that passage in Young's poems where as death presses closer and closer for his prey the soul rushes hither and thither, appealing, shrieking, berating, to escape the general doom. Of short-comings, even positive blur-spots, from an American point of view, he had serious share; but this is no time for specifying them. When we think how great changes never go by jumps in any department of our universe, but that long preparations, processes, awakenings, are indispensable, Carlyle was the most serviceable democrat of the age. How he splashes like leviathan in the seas of modern literature and politics! Doubtless, respecting the latter, one needs first to realize, from actual observation, the squalor, vice and doggedness ingrained in the bulk population of the British Islands, with the red tape, the fatuity, the flunkeyism everywhere to understand the last meaning of his pages. Accordingly, though he was no chartist or radical, I consider Carlyle's by far the most indignant comment or protest anent the fruits of feudalism to-day in Great Britain -- the increasing poverty and degradation of the homeless, landless twenty millions, while a few thousands, or rather a few hundreds, possess the entire soil, the money and the fat berths. Trade and shipping, and clubs 28 SUPPLEMENT TO THE CONNECTICUT COURANT. and culture, and prestige, and guns, and a fine, select class of gentry and aristocracy, with every modern improvement, cannot begin to salve or defend such stupendous hoggishness. For the last three years we in America have had transmitted glimpses of Carlyle's prostration and bodily decay--pictures of a thin-bodied, lonesome, wifeless, childless, very old man, lying on a sofa, kept out of bed by indomitable will, but, of late, never well enough to take the open air. News of this sort was brought us last fall by the sick man's neighbor, Moncure Conway; and I have roted it from time to time in brief descriptions in the papers. A week ago I read such an item just before I started out for my customary evening stroll between eight and nine. In the fine cold night, unusually clear (Feb. 5th, '81,) as I walked some open grounds adjacent, the condition of Carlyle and his approaching -- perhaps even then actual -- death filled me with thoughts, eluding statement, and curiously blending with the scene. The planet Venus, an hour high in the west, with all her volume and luster recovered (she has been shorn and languid for nearly a year,) including an additional sentiment I never noticed before -- not merely voluptuous, Paphian, steeping, fascinating, now with calm commanding, dazzling seriousness and hauteur -- the Milo Venus now. Upward to the zenith, Jupiter, Saturn, and the moon past her quarter, trailing in procession, with the Pleiades following, and the constellation Taurus, and red Aldebaran. Not a cloud in heaven. Orion strode through the southeast, with his glittering belt -- and a trifle below hung the sun of the night, Sirius. Every star dilated, more vitreous, nearer than usual. Not as in some clear nights when the larger stars entirely outshine the rest. Every little star or cluster just as distinctly visible, and just as nigh. Berenice's Hair showing every gem, and new ones. To the northeast and the north the Sickle, the Goat and Kids, Cassiopeia, Castor and Pollux, and the two Dippers. While through the whole of this silent, indescribable show, enclosing and bathing may whole respectively, ran the thought of Carlyle dying. (To soothe and spiritualize and, as far as may be, solve the mysteries of death and genius, consider them under the starts at midnight.) And now that he has gone hence, can it be that Thomas Carlyle, soon to chemically dissolve in ashes and by winds, remains an identity still! In ways perhaps eluding all the statements, lore and speculations of ten thousand years -- eluding all possible statements to mortal sense -- does he yet exist, a definite, vital being, a spirit, an individual -- perhaps now wafted in space among those stellar systems, which, suggestive and limitless as they are, merely edge more limitless, far more suggestive systems! I have no doubt of it. In silence, of a fine night, such questions are answered to the soul, the best answers that can be given. With me, too, when depressed by some specially sad event or tearing problem, I wait till I go out under the stars for the last voiceless satisfaction. Walt Whitman. EMERSON UPON CARLYLE. Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson read a paper upon Thomas Carlyle at the regular monthly meeting of the Massachusetts Historical society, in Boston, on Friday evening. Mr. Carlyle was an honorary member of the society. Mr. Emerson began by acknowledging his indebtedness to Carlyle, who, he said, had alway been a kind writer to him, and then gave at some length, (reading from his original manuscript,) the impressions he received from a visit which he paid Carlyle in England in the year 1848. He described him as being quite as extraordinary in conversation as in his writing; a practical Scotchmen, such as you would find in any saddler's or iron-monger's shop, with an amazing intellectual activity in addition. "I called him," said Mr. Emerson, "a trip-hammer with an Æolian attachment." He talked like a very unhappy man. He understood his own value as well as Mr. Webster, whom in some respects he resembled; and, like him, he could always see society on his own terms. Though no mortal in America could pretend to talk with Carlyle, who, indeed, in England is as remarkable as the tower of London itself, yet he would not satisfy American, and would by means bear transportation. He was a hammer that crushed mediocrity and pretension. His guiding genius was his moral sense. He would have nothing to do with any kind of a lie. He was very serious about the bad times, and wanted men to address themselves more to the great problems of society. He preferred Cambridge to Oxford. The Czar Nicholas was his hero. Carlyle has, best of all men in England, kept the manly attitude. He has stood for the people, scornfully teaching the nobles their peremptory duties. He never feared the face of man. While Mr. Emerson was reading this interesting paper, with an occasional suggestion from his daughter, the members of the society gathered eagerly about him and listened to his words with close attention, and when he finished the expressions of applause were spontaneous and hearty. CURTIS ON CARLYLE. (Harper's Weekly.) Carlyle's quickening touch upon the conscience of his time, the impulse to high thinking and heroic living which his genius unquestionably gave to he generation that knew him in his prime, are those of a sad and sorrowful and impatient man, perhaps, but not of a misanthrope. Swift was a cynic. But no cynic does the work that Carlyle did. His strength lacked serenity and patience, but there is throughout all his long series of works a profound faith in sincere and manly endeavor, and a lofty exhortation to uncompromising loyalty to duty. His life was wholly that of a scholar, but of a scholar who holds that scholarship is not pedantry, but a power with great practical obligations, an accumulation of the riches of all knowledge, not for a selfish delight but for a universal benefit. Without office, without rand, without wealth, Carlyle is one of the great names and great powers of his country and his time, whose fame will perhaps ultimately rest less upon his literary works than upon his influence upon the life and thought of his contemporaries. SINGULAR DISCOVERIES OF GREAT MINES. That rich mines are often dicovered by accident, history, both ancient and modern, verifies. Many instances of this kind have come under my own observation. This is said to be luck, but it matters not whether it is luck or science, so long as the "find" is a good one. In these cases it would seem that it is even better to be born lucky than industrious. Only last spring a prospector, not twenty miles from here, after hunting many days for a quartz ledge, tired in his search, and threw down his pick and shovel in disgust, and took up his rifle and sauntered forth for game. Fortune favored him; his luck came suddenly to him, as it were. He shot a deer which, in its death struggle, fell over the rocks and rolled down the mountain side. When the hunter reached his game he found in lying on the outcrop of an immense galena ledge, which he soon after sold for a good round sum. In the early days of California a poor prospector, sadly out of luck, was returning to his camp after night, when he was assailed by a vicious dog. Having no weapons with which to stand off his enemy, he felt around in the dark and laid hold of the first think he cold catch, which was a rock. The dog had fled, of course, and the man kept the stone in his hand until he was safe in his own cabin. In the morning he saw something bright on the missile of war, and on closer examination he found that the rock was full of gold. He returned and found the ledge from which the quartz bowlder had floated and sold it for a large amount of money. About four years ago a poor but industrious prospector in this county had the misfortune (or good fortune) to lose his horse. It was an old bay horse, and, like his master, was a wandering prospector, only that he prospected for grass while the master prospected for quartz. This particular day the old bay wandered further than he was wont to do, probably because the bunches of grass were few and far between. At any rate, the prospector desired to moved camp, but could not do so without the assistance of his bay companion. He must needs find him. He was at last successful, and while returning with the truant he noticed the head of a mountain ram sticking in the rocks. Stopping to examine it, he saw rich-looking quartz scattered about, and, following it up, he hit upon what is now the noted Ramshorn mine -- the longest and riches silver ledge that we know of. The district was named Bay Horse, as it should have been, and is the richest silver district in the Salmon river county. I knew a man once who followed mining and prospecting for a period of forty years. He had been all through California, Colorado and Montana, and had prospected twenty-five years in Georgia before coming west. He was not much on digging deep holes, but he would go round hunting for shallow diggings so long as the boys would "stake" him. He was getting worn out prospecting, and when, on the 24th day of July, 1864, he camped on a tributary of Prickly Pear Creek, in northern Montana, he said to his three companions, "Let's sink a hole on that bar; it's the last chance; if we cant find it here I don't know where next to prospect." The younger members of the party put the hole to bed rock, the diggings were named Last Chance, and two years later the old man threw away his tools and went home to Georgia with a joyful heart and $100,000 in clean dust, but not until he had seen the city of Helena, the metropolis of Montana, spring up about him. Only last August a prospector in the Lower Wood River country met with an unexpected streak of luck that astonished him. While on his way across from Bellevue to Croy Canyon the pack on the horse he was leading became loose, and in order to adjust it he discounted. While rearranging it he saw something at his feet that resembled rich silver "float." He traced it up to the ledge, which was only a short distance away, and found that the had one of the best "prospects" in Wood River. He located the original and two extensions, and the best ore in the vein assays up into the thousands. Recently he sold out for a snug little fortune. On a mountain trail in California there used to be a big bowlder which furnished a favorite resting place for tired footmen. Thousands of men had sat on that stone and rested their weary limbs. In fact it was of so peculiar shape that it seemed to fit every one who tried it. With long usage it had worn as smooth as ivory, and was greasy with frequent contact with miners' clothing. One day an old prospector squatted himself upon this favorite resting stone, and while getting his wind he carelessly and unconsciously pecked away at the bowlder with his pick. A piece of rock flew off and revealed SUPPLEMENT TO THE CONNECTICUT COURANT. 29 to him the surprising truth that he was sitting on a rich chunk of quartz. He at once proceeded up the hill and found the ledge, and it was full of gold and brought him much wealth. -- Letter to the Omaha (Neb.) Republican. JOHN BRIGHT ON IRELAND. In his speech in Parliament in defense of his course in supporting the coercion bill, after having devoted thirty years of his life to efforts to improve the condition of Ireland, the Hon. John Bright said: -- "But what have these genteel done? They have to a large extent demoralized the people whom they profess to befriend. (Loud and continuous cheering.) We have heard a voice which comes from the countries of Ireland and tells every tenant not only that his rent is too high, which in many cases may be true, but that he is at liberty to fix his own rent -- that he is at liberty to fix his own price for something which he has bought, and that if he likes, and if he finds that the condition of his family is such that it would be convenient and agreeable to pay no rent at all, he is at liberty to pay no rent. (Cheers.) I am not stating anything here which any man in Great Britain or Ireland can contradict. I had a letter the other day from one of the most respected men in Ireland. He told me that when his rents became due some rents were paid: but a number of the tenants wished that he should only give a receipt for one-half the money which had been paid. (Cheers.) It was that these people might present the paper with the lie upon it to your friends of the land league committee, and that, the paper being so represented, they might be saved from the menace, the terror -- it might be the outrage -- to which they would otherwise be subjected, if it were known they had paid the full rent. I have no liking for high rents. I am not an Irish or an English land-owner. Therefore, I have no personal interest in the matter. My sympathies are all with the Irish tenantry, and I would do anything that lay in my power to improve their condition; but to improve their condition the very last thing I would think of doing would be to destroy their honesty of feeling and their sense of honor. (Cheers.) I could tell the honorable member for Tralee, who has attempted to tarnish the fair fame of the Anti-Corn law league, that if his association had been conducted upon the same principles, with the same regard to law, I should have been glad to see it -- as I believe ti would have been seen -- successful all over Ireland, and I should have rejoiced in the ultimate triumph which it must have achieved. (Hear, hear.)" Mr. Bright denied that the proposed bill, in the hands which would have the execution of it, would be oppressive, and he stated, in strong terms, the friendliness of the liberal party toward Ireland, and the results accomplished by it: -- "A law of this kind becomes a tyranny in the hands of tyrants; but in the hands of men who are liberal and just (cries of 'No' from the home rule members) it may be a law of protection and of great mercy to Ireland. (Cheers.) Who dares to say that the gentlemen who sit on this bench (cries of 'We do' from the home rules members) -- who dare to say, and say it honestly -- (Cheers, and renewed cries of 'We do.') If you can see the truth across the strip of water between England and the shores of Ireland, I would ask the peoples of Great Britain whether the men on this bench have not devoted their lives to public freedom. (Cheers, and cries of 'Not Irish freedom.') An Hon. member says 'Not Irish freedom.' Well, for fifty years Ireland has made progress in freedom, and it has made that progress by the constant desire to do the Irish people justice on the part of those who sit on this side of the house. (Hear, hear.) I am glad to know and to believe that the people of Ireland themselves, when the frenzy of the moment shall have passed away, will come to the same conclusion. I take it as one of the things most cheering in this disturbed state of Ireland that all the figures of the magistrates whom you blame, and of the police, whom you distrust, have not been able to show more than the death by violence of seven or eight people. That shows how great strides the Irish people have made from the barbarism of fifty years ago, and I take comfort in believing that, notwithstanding the present time of trouble, there is visible in the Irish people throughout an improvement which those who are not acquainted with their condition fifty years ago, would hardly think possible. The wastes in Ireland are double, nay triple, what they were fifty years ago. All over Ireland people are better dressed, and, with certain temporary exceptions, better fed than they were thirty, forty or fifty years ago; and, notwithstanding all that we see and all that is true and to be regretted in the condition of Ireland, the population of that country are far superior in condition and intelligence and civilization than in the days when I entered this house. (Hear, hear.) I say that no man can doubt -- at least, I will not appeal to the reason or conscience of any man who can express a doubt -- that it is a great and grievous trouble to members of the present administration (Mr. Biggar -- 'On, no, not the slightest') that they have felt themselves compelled to submit a measure like this to the house of commons. (Hear, hear.) It is only under a solemn sense of duty, from which it is impossible to shrink, that we ask the house to support us in a measure of restriction -- restriction, as it will be exercised, a measure of mercy to the many. (Cheers.) This bill will only be temporary. Many persons not so scrupulous as we are on these matters, will say that it ought to be continued for a longer period than the 1st of September next year. (An Irish member -- 'For ever.') Not for ever. (Hear, hear.) We hope the disturbing elements will only be temporary, and that the measure, therefore, will only be temporary. I trust that the land bill, when it comes before the house -- and the sooner this bill is disposed of the sooner the land bill will be on this table -- will be a great and a comprehensive measure, and that it will be a durable monument to the memory of this parliament and of the administration of which my right honorable friend is the head." This speech is one of the clearest indications which the course of parliamentary debate has afforded of the effect which the mad policy of the land league has had in alienating some of the truest friends of Ireland. There is no impeaching the sincerity or the humanity of Mr. Bright, and it is conclusive evidence of the folly of the Irish leaders that they make it impossible for such men as he to stand with them. THE MARSEILLAISE. HISTORY OF THE FRENCH WAR SONG. (Correspondent of the New York Tribune.) Paris, Jan. 29. -- The authorship of the Marseillaise Hymn, so often prohibited by despotic governments and now the national air of France, has often been disputed. M. Seinguerlot, in his interesting works on Strasburg during the revolution, puts an end to controversy on this subject. Seinguerlot is an Alsatian, and a native of the town about which he wrote. He was acquainted from infancy with the revolutionary legends and anecdotes which had currency there, and has been able through his local knowledge to trance many of them to their source and to verify them. The old people of the town put him on the trace of family papers which throw a flood of light on the revolutionary period. M. Seinguerlot has discovered that it was not as an officer but as a member of the staff of Le Feuille de Strasburg that Rouget (de Lisle) frequented the house of the Mayor Dietrich, to whom that journal belonged. M. Rouget bore a name that was and is very common in the east of France. It meant "the little red man." There were hundreds of Rougets in that part of France, not one of which had a right to the nobiliary addition. Some of them were Rougets de la Riviere, others Rougets du Pont, and the family of the author of the Marseillaise were Rougets de l'Isle, or of the Island. M. Rouget brought out his poem in the Feuille de Strasburg. The mayor's wife, Madame Dietrich, a native of Bale, thought it a chef d'œuvre, and induced the officers to have it set to music and to publish it. The Marseillaise appeared in this form probably in the spring of 1792. It was entitled: "A war song for the Army of the Rhine, dedicated to Marshal Luckner, and sold at Strasburg by P.J. Dannbach, printer of the municipality, in one quarto oblong page, or in four pages with the music." M. Seinguerlot thinks it must have come out in the beginning of April. On the 29th of that month, M. de Chastelet, commander of the stronghold of Schlestadet, wrote to the mayor of Strasburg: "I have not yet received the war song of M. de Lisle, which you promised me." M. du Chastelet, who was, of course, a man of old and noble family, drops the vulgar Rouget, and turns what only was an adjective into a name expressing nobiliary pretensions. The letter of the mayor's wife, Louise Dierich, which is in the hands of a distant relation of hers, to whom it came by inheritance as the next of kin, to the grandson of her brother, the Chancellor Ochs, of Bale, tells all about the birth of the Marseillaise. It is as follows: -- My Dear Brother -- I have been so busy for some days past, transcribing and copying music. This occupation amuses me and enables me to shut my ears to political wrangles. Politics are now only discussed here. You know that we receive a deal of company, and that we are always trying to invent something new to entertain our guests, so as to change conversation, and to turn it into agreeable channels. My husband has hit upon the expedient of getting a Chant de Circonstance composed, which will embody the patriotic feeling of the town. A captain of engineers, Rouget de Lisle, who is a very amiable poet and composer, has rapidly done for him the song and the music. My husband, who is a good tenor has sung the morceau, which is spirit-stirring (entraînant) and not wanting in originality. It is in the feeling of Glück, but better than his things, being more lively and alert. On my side I have utilized my talent for orchestration. I have arranged the scores for the harpsichord and other instruments. You will understand from this how hard I have been working. The morceau has been performed at our house to the great satisfaction of those who heard it. I send you a copy of the song and music. The little virtuosos, who surround you will not find the latter difficult, and you will, I am sure, be charmed with the morceau. Yours sister, Louise Dietrich née Ochs. Thus it appears that the Marseillaise was written to please the hospitable mayor of Strasburg and his wife, and not improvised in a moment of feverish excitement. Captain Rouget de Lisle was asked to draw his inspirations from passing events and the dominant sentiment of the town, which was a frontier stronghold, and no doubt tremendously excited by the news of what was going on int Paris and by the declaration of war. It would probably have to bear the brunt of the invasion, and in any case would be the center of military operations. Political discussions went on to the exclusion of all other topics. The fact that the Dietrichs kept the harpsichord going and employed Captain Rouget de Lisle to compose new things for it, in order to create a diversion from stirring politics, is a curious example of the power that "shapes our ends, rough hew them as we may." In trying to silence political wranglers, Madame Dietrich lighted a flame which set France in a blaze. It would be interesting to ascertain in what manner the war song of Captain Rouget got to Marseilles without traversing Paris. A regimental band may have taken it to the south. The first time the Parisians heard it was the day the revolutionary deputation of Marseilles (which had come on foot singing the song that had been composed for the Dietrichs) entered the capital. The entrain which the mayor's said was one of the characteristics incited the impressionable denizens of the Faubourgs to massacre the cidevant nobles, who filled the prisons. Under the monarchical governments the war song of Captain Rouget was, because of its spirit-stirring force, held to be seditious. The first time since the revolution that it was not counted by men in authority treasonable, was at the opening of the World's Fair in 1878. BERNHARDT IN A RAGE. -- Mobile has a very contemptible opinion of Sarah Bernhardt. Mobile also has a rather poor theater called "Temperance Hall." The Bernhardt was billed to appear last Tuesday night, and the house was packed. It was evident from the time the etherial Sarah reached the hall that she was displeased with the smallness of the stage and the lack of the ordinary accessories. She came on the stage to play Camille. The rest of the story is told by the Mobile Register: -- When she appeared the audience immediately noticed that there was something wrong. She never acknowledged their reception. She began talking with a rapidity and volubility that would have shamed the poissardes of Mme. Angot, and when the supper was brought on the stage the guying started. From that time it was plain to the more experienced in theatrical matters that the play was 30 SUPPLEMENT TO THE CONNECTICUT COURANT. to be a farce. The sight of the Lucullan feast which had been spread for mademoiselle, accustomed to the menu of the Maison Corée, didn't suit her. She giggled; she laughed/ she screamed; she could not speak her lines, and finally she rushed off the stage in a very unceremonious manner, leaving her guests at the supper table to wink expressively at the prompter to ring down the curtain. But Mademoiselle had gone too far, and the result was a very serious hysterical fit. It came on suddenly. Her screams could be heard a block away. Schlessinger's orchestra tried their best to drown the shrieks by playing a "Barbe Bleu" medley, but the music grated so on Mademoiselle's ears that it had to be stopped. The ladies got nervous. Some one remarked, "Let us have that scene on the stage." The ladies got still more nervous, and the whole postscenic performance was getting to be tiresome, when Dr. Heustis stepped in front of the curtain with Mr. Snow, and announced that the lady was too ill to appear. Mlle. Bernhardt was then really very ill, but she had brought it on herself, and last night after she was carried to her car she was in the weak and depressing condition which generally follows such nervous attacks. MOASICK'S PRE-EMPTION (J.W. Gally in Spirit of the Times) "Well, no, She's not, ezac'ly, mine nor yet my wife's but we claim her all the same. These remarks referred to a remarkably fine, not to say formidable-looking young woman, who had just reined a high-mettled young horse out of the home gate into the townward lane. "Take the kinks out of him," said the old man, as he closed the gate behind the cavorting steed. To which remark the fair horse-woman made reply by flinging kisses from her whip hand, and dashing away into a cloud of dust. "Yes," he said, in response to my further question, "she's my gal, but she's not my da'ter, nor she ain't my wife's da'ter." "Brother's?" "No. No relation to either of us by blood." "Waif?" " I dunno much wat a waif rightly is. I call her a peremtion." "Do you mean a preemption?" I asked, gently. "Well, no matter if ye call it a per-emtion, or a Pree-emtion," he answered a shade testily, "What I mean is, that I took her up as a wild claim on the unsurveyed lands of the U.S." "Well," and I laughed a little as I answered, "that's another way of getting children." "Purty good way, though, if ye happen to get the kind that suits ye as well as that'n suits me." "Seems to be a fine horsewoman," I said, half musingly, as we were approaching the entrance to the house. "Step in," he said; "the door's open and that shows ye the old woman's not to home; and the way she'll raise Cain, and lectur' on flies, when she does come home will be music in this camp, you bet you!" and the man chuckled inwardly until he developed a touch of asthma that set him coughing in a way that was more comical than serious. "When I get into that kind of a cough," he said, resuming, "I mos' gin'ely take a little old rye and loaf sugar." And so saying he led me into the dining room of his comfortable farm house, asked me to be seated, while he opened the lower half-doors of the dish cupboard, and bringing out a sugar-bowl, spoons, glasses, and a cut glass decanter, he said gently and interrogatively: "Try a little?" Whether I tried a little, or whether I did not, is a question open to debate, which may be settled by each reader according to his or her view of what a man ought to do in such a situation. Suffice it to say, that I believe the man supported the genuineness of his hospitality with a critical and broadly judicious care of the quality of the articles he extended to his guests. "Now said he, when he had carefully re- placed the implements of hospitality in the cupboard, "let's go out to the barn, and see the colts. There is where I can talk best. Though I ain't a first-class talker no time, I can get on better when I'm seeing a good, healthy colt reaching for his hay." "I reckon now," he said, after having shown me his horses seriatim [?], "you're thinking I'd ort to tell you how I presented the gal that went out the gate on the jumping brown colt. Well sit down here, and I will tell ye; but first I want to say a word about that colt she's a-riding. Now, ye might think,seeing a woman on him, that he's a picnic hoss, and that all his cavorting is only frills and passeor doings, but I tell ye he means it. He's a son of a gun o hoofs. I call him Quien Sabe, because I don't know his pedigre. He had just as good a chance to be a Belmont as to be a Patchen, on the side of the sire, and which it is none knows. His dam was Abdallah and Medoc, and that kind of a mix, ye know, makes power and ambition till ye can can't rest. He looks and acts like a Pachen, but he gone like a Belmont. Lainey, that's my gal's na me[?], say he's the strongest inginrubberyest [?], long-bottomest hoss shevever had under her. And she's a judge. She's naterrally[?] a judge as well as by experience. But I, for my part, I wouldn't throw a leg over Quien Sabe- not once- for the price of him, and I refused a thousand for him when he was a two-year-old. He's rising five now, and Lainey's been riding him off and on for two years". 32 SUPPLEMENT TO THE CONNECTICUT COURANT. his death, or, according to his own perhaps excessive modesty, missed him. This man was not even scratched , While his fellow occupant of the same seat, about whose life so many interests were linked, was so hurt about the head that Even his remarkable natural strength gave no hope from the first that he could survive. Things do go strangely in this world. STILL SINGLE. (Boston Advertiser.) I stood by the “Blake Transmitter,” For the telephone bell had rung, And over the wires a sound came, As though a maiden sung A musical tone quite familiar. Her voice I had often heard, For in answering daily telephone calls We had interchanged many a word. Have you never received a letter And paused ere breaking the seal. As you thought concerning the tidings That the contents might reveal? Did not a longing possess you To know what was really within, And yet to avail of that knowledge You seemed in no haste to begin? In some such manner I tarried At our end of the telephone wire, Then at last, mustering courage sufficient, Began at once to inquire: "Well, hello! well, what is wanted?" It seemed at least all I could do, When quick in return came the message: "Hello! well, hello! who are you?" "Why I'm "forty-eight," I responded. "You called only a moment or two." "Forty-eight!" she repeated, in answer, "Well, surely, I don't wish for you!" I was giving my telephone number, As found on the company's page, But I fear, from her hasty answer, She thought I was giving my age. Alas, that the blow came so sudden, I received it bewildered alone-- As the consciousness dawned there upon me, Rejected by telephone! A NOTABLE COLLECTION OF ARMS. The finest and most complete collection of arms belonging to any private person is owned to-day by Mr. William Riggs, of Washington, who for quite a number of years has been engaged abroad in the selection of the weapons, the arms offensive or defensive of past ages. Such capabilities as wealth may give to a collector of arms are secondary to that thorough acquaintance the purchaser must have with the objects offered him. In numerable arms sold in Europe are, if not directly manufactured, composite in character, made up of innumerable pieces of old arms, in which various mechanical methods, appliances, and ornamentations, more or less incongruous, are united. Restored arms are much more plenty than original ones. It requires the most thorough acquaintance with not only mediæval art, but with the most difficult subject of arms in all ages, to prevent deception. Not to be outwitted in making such a collection requires great finesse. Such objects, which grace the best collections, are not simply to be regarded in the light of swords, daggers, shields, or armor. They represent from their wonderful ornamentation the highest art conceptions of the period in which they were made. Kings and princes lavished on their arms all that the best skill and taste of their times would afford. In New York there is a fair collection which was at one time on exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. There are innumerable panoplies scattered through New York houses, rather used for decorative purposes than otherwise. The finest private collection in America is owned by a gentleman in Toronto. This collection is wonderfully rich in Spanish arms of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. At the Trocadero, in 1878, Mr. Riggs's collection had accorded it a particular distinction, being placed in a separate room. The catalogue comprises not less than 5,000 objects. The greater number of pieces are unique of their kind, having been purchased by Mr. Riggs during his residence abroad from the museums made by best known collectors. When Prince Pierre Soltykoff's collection was sold Mr. Riggs was enabled to select the very best pieces, and those left were purchased by Louis Napoleon. It is very much to be desired that Mr. Riggs's collection could be brought to the United States. Some time ago, if we are rightly informed, such was Mr. Riggs's intention; but some absurd restrictions of the customhouse, which opposed the introduction of classical antiquities, prevented the owner of this magnificent collection from allowing his fellow country a sight of his museum of arms. People who spend a great deal of money to advance art, and are desirous of benefiting their own country thereby, are naturally incensed when the United States imposes restrictions on the introduction of their collections, and rather look upon the American custom-house construction of the revenue laws in regard to aesthetic objects in the same light as if they had dealings with the Turks. It is thought that Mr. Riggs, in time, will place the collection in the Smithsonian Institution. It would then, we suppose, form a part of the ethnological museum.---New York Times. ABOUT GREAT MEN. (Springfield Republican) One mild consolation which we may offer to those who lament the decay of great men is that great men are great humbugs. Sixty years ago the country was at the opening of a long era of peace and rapid internal development. It was also and era of "great men" -- at least it seems so now from a distance, although Webster, Clay and Calhoun spread over a long period of 40 years seems not a very generous distribution. What they did for the country would puzzle anybody to tell. It was discovered in 1860, at any rate, that they had left one prodigious job undone. The country without a single "great man" on either side plunged into the greatest civil war of history. The emergency made common men great, and men who become great on an emergency may be pardoned human weakness in more vulgar moments. One sympathizes sometimes with that homely character in the old play, who after much disappointment from the men of genius and brilliancy pressed upon his attention bursts out profanely: "I am tired of your great men and your brilliant fellows. Give me a regular old-fashioned damned fool!" CHAFF. When a married woman buys a pug dog for a low price, she gets a bargain, and her husband gets something to boot. -- Somerville Journal. Josh Billings says that "a good doctor is a gentleman to whom we may pay three dollars a visit for advising us to eat less and exercise more." A Boston newspaper somewhat sarcastically remarks: "The police of New York are being vaccinated. But what's the use of it? They never catch anything." This is a little co-educational scene -- Professor: "Who will see Mr. B. before next Monday?" Lady student, hesitating and blushing a little more: "I shall see him Sunday night, probably." Professor in psychology -- "can we conceive of anything as being out of time and still occupying space?" Musical student thoughtfully -- "Yes, sir, a poor singer in a chorus." -- Undergraduate. Confidential friend (to elderly and not unattractive spinster) -- "Yes; I now go in for woman's lefts." "Woman's lefts! What's that?" "Widowers, my dear!" "I declare," said a gentleman to his ladylove, "you are very handsome." "Pooh," said the lady, "so you would say if you did not think so." "And so you would think," answered he, "though I should not say so." A Galveston widow is about to marry her fifth husband. Her pastor rebuked her for contemplating matrimony so soon again. "Well, I just want you to understand if the Lord keeps on taking them I will, too," was the spirited reply. Old gentleman -- "Wounded in the Crimea, were you? Badly?" Rustic -- The bullet hit me in the chist, here, surr, an' come out at me back!" Old gentleman -- "Come, come, Pat, that won't do! Why, it would have gone right through your heart, man!" Rustic -- "Och, faix, me heart was in me mouth at the thoime, sur!" A young lady was caressing a pretty spaniel and murmuring: "I do love a nice dog!" "Ah!" sighed a dandy, standing near, "I would I were a dog." "Never mind," retorted the young lady, sharply, "you'll grow." An up-town man who surprised his cook smoking one of his choice Connecticut cigars was cut short in his reproof by her asking the conundrum, "If domestic cigars ain't intended for the use of us domestics, what are they called by our name for?" -- N.Y. Telegram. He was seventy and she was eighteen, and they were on their wedding tour. He pointed out to her the beautiful scenery, and said, "We may have many anniversaries of this season." "Yes," she answered, "you will probably live long enough to have a tin wedding." A foreign reviewer observes that Mr. Keene, the draughtsman for Punch, has found a vein of humor in the modern English educational system. His little schoolboys when asked, "Who signed 'Magna Charta,' " exclaim tearfully that "they didn't." Another boy, asked by a pretty lady teacher to define a miracle, replies, "Mother says if you don't marry the new parson, 'twill be a muracle." Gulls: They were watching the sea-gulls whirling in graceful circles above the waters of the bay, while the rays of the sinking gun covered the landscape with a flood of gold. Finally he turned to her, and in a voice trembling with emotion, asked: "Darling, if we were sea-gulls, would you fly away with me and be at rest?" To which she answered, with her gaze fixed on a far off mass of castellated clouds: "No, George; I'd let you fly away, then I'd have all the rest I wanted here." -- Brooklyn Eagle. (Acta Columbia.) Oh, she wears a sealskin sacque, When it snows; And her stunning suit is black As a crow's; Short -- and thinks it is a pity -- Charming, jolly, wise and witty; Has a retrousse -- so pretty -- Little nose. In her basket phaeton, When it blows; With her striking glasses on, Out she goes; And she's just as sweet as stately, As she sits there so sedately, With her cheeks and lips so greatly Like a rose. She plays Chopin, Liszt and Spohr Fro her beaux, And she speaks of "Pinafore" Heaven knows! With a naughty "D" and "Never!" But she's awful nice and clever; If she liked me, I'd endeavor To propose. THE CONDITION OF THE ROADS IN TENNESSEE. (Nashville American.) The roads are not passable, Not even jackassable; And all who would travel 'em Must turn out and gravel 'em. Transcribed and reviewed by contributors participating in the By The People project at crowd.loc.gov.