how.
Only Leam began to look pitifully mournful and desolate, and to shrink back into a solitude which Edgar never invaded, and whence even Alick was banished; and Edgar was irritable, unpleasant, moody, would take no interest in the approaching marriage, and, save that his settlements on Josephine were liberal, seemed to hold himself personally aggrieved by her choice, and conducted himself altogether as if he had been injured somehow thereby, and his wishes disregarded.
He was very disagreeable, and caused Joseph many bitter hours, till at last he took a sudden resolution, and to the relief of every one at the Hill went off to London, promising to be back in time for “that little fool’s wedding with her sentimental muff,” as he disrespectfully called his sister and Sebastian Dundas, but giving no reason why he went, and taking leave of no one–not even of Adelaide, nor yet of Leam.
[TO BE CONTINUED.]
THE SING-SONG OF MALY COE.[1]
In he city of Whampo’
Live Joss-pidgin-man[2] name Coe:
Mister Coe he missionaly,[3]
Catchee one cow-chilo,[4] Maly.
Father-man he leadee[5] book,
Maly talkee with the cook:
Good olo[6] father talkee Josh,[7] But China-woman talkee bosh.
Bym’by Maly gettee so
She only Pidgin-English know,[8]
And father-man he solly[9] see
She thinkee leason[10] like Chinee.
One day some flin[11] flom[12] Boston come And askee, “Mister Coe at home?”
He servant go to opee door,
But Maly lun[13] chop-chop[14] before.
An’ stlanger[15] say when in he come, “Is Mister Coe, my dear, at home?”
And Maly answer velly tlue,
“My thinkee this tim no can do.”[16]
He olo father, still as mouse,
Chin-chin Joss topsidey house:[17] Allo tim he make Joss-pidgin,[18]
What you Fan-kwai[19] callee ‘ligion.
He gentleum much stare galow[20]
To hearee girley talkee so;
And say, “Dear child, may I inquire Which form of faith you most admire?”
And Maly answer he request:
“My like Chinee Joss-pidgin best:
My love Kwan-wan[21] with chilo neat, And Joss-stick[22] smellee velly sweet.”
“Afong, our olo cook down stairs,
Make teachee Maly Chinee players:[23] Say, if my chin-chin Fo[24]–oh joy!–
Nex time my born, my bornee boy!”[25]
“An’ then my gettee nicey-new
A ittle dacket[26]–towsers too–And And lun about with allo[27] boys,
In bu’ful boots that makee noise.”
Tear come in he gentleum eyes,
And then he anger ‘gin to lise:[28] He wailo[29] scoldee Mister Coe
For ‘glectin’ little Maly so.
An’ Mister Coe feel velly sore,
So go an’ scoldy comprador;
An’ comprador, with hollor[30] shook, Lun[31] downy stairs and beatee cook.
And worsey allo-allo pain,
Maly go Boston homo ‘gain:
No filee-clackers[32] any more,
Nor talk with cook and comprador.
MORAL PIDGIN.
If Boston girley be let go,
She sartin sure to b’lieve in Fo,
And the next piecee of her plan
Is to lun lound[33] and act like man.
So, little chilos,[34] mind you look, And nevee talkee with the cook:
You make so-fashion, first you know You catchee sclape,[35] like Maly Coe.
CHARLES G. LELAND.
[Footnote 1: “The Ballad of Mary Coe.”]
[Footnote 2: _Joss-pidgin-man_, clergyman.]
[Footnote 3: Missionary.]
[Footnote 4: Had a female child.]
[Footnote 5: _Leadee_ or _leedee_, read.]
[Footnote 6: _Olo_, old.]
[Footnote 7: _Talkee Josh_ (or Joss), converses on religion.]
[Footnote 8: _Pidgin-English_, the patois spoken in China, meaning business-English, _pigeon_ being the ordinary Chinese pronunciation of English.]
[Footnote 9: _Solly_, sorry.]
[Footnote 10: _Leason_, reason.]
[Footnote 11: _Flin_, friend.]
[Footnote 12: _Flom_, from.]
[Footnote 13: _Lun_, run.]
[Footnote 14: _Chop-chop_, fast.]
[Footnote 15: _Stlanger_, stranger.]
[Footnote 16: “I think it can’t be done”–i.e., “You cannot see him.”]
[Footnote 17: _Chin-chin Joss top-sidey house_, he is praying up stairs.]
[Footnote 18: Devotion.]
[Footnote 19: _Fan-kwai_, foreigner; lit. “foreign devil.”]
[Footnote 20: _Galow, galaw_ or _gala_, a meaningless word, but much used.]
[Footnote 21: _Kwan-wan_, a Chinese female divinity represented with a babe in her arms.]
[Footnote 22: _Joss-stick_, a stick composed of fragrant gum, etc., burnt as incense.]
[Footnote 23: Prayers.]
[Footnote 24: _Chin-chin Fo_, worship Buddha.]
[Footnote 25: Chinese women believe that by frequent repetition of a prayer to Fo they can secure the privilege of being born again as males.]
[Footnote 26: _Dacket_, jacket.]
[Footnote 27: _Allo_, all.]
[Footnote 28: _Lise_, rise.]
[Footnote 29: _Wailo_, run, go.]
[Footnote 30: Horror.]
[Footnote 31: Run.]
[Footnote 32: Fire-crackers.]
[Footnote 33: Run round.]
[Footnote 34: Children.]
[Footnote 35: Scrape.]
LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA.
BY LADY BARKER.
MARITZBURG. November, 1875.
The weather at the beginning of this month was lovely and the climate perfection, but now (I am writing on its last day) it is getting very hot and trying. If ever people might stand excused for talking about the weather when they meet, it is we Natalians, for, especially at this time of year, it varies from hour to hour. All along the coast one hears of terrible buffeting and knocking about among the shipping in the open roadsteads which have to do duty for harbors in these parts; and it was only a few days ago that the lifeboat, with the English mail on board, capsized in crossing the bar at D’Urban. The telegram was–as telegrams always are–terrifying in its vagueness, and spoke of the mail-bags as “floating about.” When one remembers the vast size of the breakers on which this floating would take place, it sounded hopeless for our letters. They turned up, however, a few days later–in a pulpy state, it is true, but quite readable, though the envelopes were curiously blended and engrafted upon the letters inside–so much so that they required to be taken together, for it was impossible to separate them. I had recourse to the expedient of spreading my letters on a dry towel and draining them before attempting to dissever the leaves. Still, we were all only too thankful to get our correspondence in any shape or form, for precious beyond the power of words to express are home-letters to us, so far away from home.
But to return to our weather. At first it was simply perfect. Bright hot days–not too hot, for a light breeze tempered even the midday heat–and crisp, bracing nights succeeded each other during the first fortnight. The country looked exquisitely green in its luxuriant spring tints over hill and dale, and the rich red clay soil made a splendid contrast on road and track with the brilliant green on either hand. Still, people looked anxiously for more rain, declaring that not half enough had fallen to fill tanks or “shuits” (as the ditches are called), and it took four days of continuous downpour to satisfy these thirsty souls even for the moment. Toward the middle of the month the atmosphere became more oppressive and clouds began to come up in thick masses all round the horizon, and gradually spread themselves over the whole sky. The day before the heaviest rain, though not particularly oppressive, was remarkable for the way in which all manner of animals tried to get under shelter at nightfall. The verandah was full of big frogs: if a door remained open for a moment they hopped in, and then cried like trapped birds when they found themselves in a corner. As for the winged creatures, it was something wonderful the numbers in which they flew in at the windows wherever a light attracted them. I was busy writing English letters that evening: I declare the cockroaches fairly drove me away from the table by the mad way in which they flung themselves into my ink-bottle, whilst the smell of singed moths at the other lamp was quite overpowering. Well, after this came rain indeed–not rain according to English ideas, but a tropical deluge, as many inches falling in a few hours as would fill your rain-gauges for months. I believe my conduct was very absurd that first rainy night. The little house had just been newly papered, and as the ceiling was not one to inspire confidence, consisting as it did merely of boards roughly joined together and painted white, through which and through the tiles beyond the sky could be seen quite plainly, I suffered the gravest doubts about the water getting in and spoiling my pretty new paper. Accordingly, whenever any burst of rain came heavier than its immediate predecessor, I jumped out of bed in a perfect agony of mind, and roamed, candle in hand, all over the house to see if I could not detect a leak anywhere. But the unpromising-looking roof and ceiling stood the test bravely, and not a drop of all that descending downpour found its way to my new walls.
By the way, I must describe the house to you, remarking, first of all, that architecture, so far as my observation extends, is at its lowest ebb in South Africa. I have not seen a single pretty building of any sort or kind since I arrived, although in these small houses it would be so easy to break by gable and porch the severe simplicity of the unvarying straight line in which they are built. Whitewashed outer walls with a zinc roof are not uncommon, and they make a bald and hideous combination until kindly, luxuriant Nature has had time to step in and cover up man’s ugly handiwork with her festoons of roses and passion-flowers. Most of the houses have, fortunately, red-tiled roofs, which are not so ugly, and mine is among the number. It is so squat and square, however, that, as our landlord happens to be the chief baker of Maritzburg, it has been proposed to christen it “Cottage Loaf,” but this idea requires consideration on account of the baker’s feelings. In the mean time, it is known briefly as “Smith’s,” that being the landlord’s name. It has, as all the houses here have, a broad projecting roof extending over a wide verandah. Within are four small rooms, two on either side of a narrow passage which runs from one end to the other. By a happy afterthought, a kitchen has been added beyond this extremely simple ground-plan, and on the opposite side a corresponding projection which closely resembles a packing-case, and which has been painted a bright blue inside and out. This is the dining-room, and evidently requires to be severely handled before its present crude and glaring tints can be at all toned down. At a little distance stands the stable, saddle-room, etc., and a good bedroom for English servants, and beyond that, again, among large clumps of rose-bushes, a native hut. It came up here half built–that is, the frame was partly put together elsewhere–and it resembled a huge crinoline more than anything else in its original state. Since that, however, it has been made more secure by extra pales of bamboo, each tied in its place with infinite trouble and patience by a knot every inch or two. The final stage consisted of careful thatching with thick bundles of grass laid on the framework, and secured by long ropes of grass binding the whole together. The door is the very smallest opening imaginable, and inside it is of course pitch dark. All this labor was performed by stalwart Kafir women, one of whom, a fearfully repulsive female, informed my cook that she had just been bought back by her original husband. Stress of circumstances had obliged him to sell her, and she had been bought by three other husband-masters since then, but was now resold, a bargain, to her first owner, whom, she declared, she preferred to any of the others. But few as are these rooms, they yet are watertight–which is a great point out here–and the house, being built of large, awkward blocks of stone, is cool and shady. When I have arranged things a little, it will be quite comfortable and pretty; and I defy any one to wish for a more exquisite view than can be seen from any corner of the verandah. We are on the brow of a hill which slopes gently down to the hollow wherein nestles the picturesque little town, or rather village, of Maritzburg. The intervening distance of a mile or so conceals the real ugliness and monotony of its straight streets, and hides all architectural shortcomings. The clock-tower, for instance, is quite a feature in the landscape, and from here one cannot perceive that the clock does not go. Nothing can be prettier than the effect of the red-tiled roofs and white walls peeping out from among thick clumps of trees, whilst beyond the ground rises again to low hills with deep purple fissures and clefts in their green sides. It is only a couple of years since this little house was built and the garden laid out, and yet the shrubs and trees are as big as if half a dozen years had passed over their leafy heads. As for the roses, I never saw anything like the way they flourish at their own sweet will. Scarcely a leaf is to be seen on the ugly straggling tree–nothing but masses of roses of every tint and kind and old-fashioned variety. The utmost I can do in the way of gathering daily basketsful appears only in the light of judicious pruning, and next day a dozen blossoms have burst forth to supply the place of each theft of mine. And there is such a variety of trees! Oaks and bamboos, blue gums and deodars, seem to flourish equally well within a yard or two of each other, and the more distant flower-beds are filled with an odd mixture of dahlias and daturas, white fleur-de-lis and bushy geraniums, scarlet euphorbias and verbenas. But the weeds! They are a chronic eyesore and grief to every gardener. On path and grass-plat, flower-bed and border, they flaunt and flourish. “Jack,” the Zulu refugee, wages a feeble and totally inadequate warfare against them with a crooked hoe, but he is only a quarter in earnest, and stops to groan and take snuff so often that the result is that our garden is precisely in the condition of the garden of the sluggard, gate and all. This hingeless condition of the gate, however, is, I must in fairness state, neither Jack’s nor our fault. It is a new gate, but no one will come out from the town to hang it. That is my standing grievance. Because we live about a mile from the town it is next to impossible to get anything done. The town itself is one of the shabbiest assemblages of dwellings I have ever seen in a colony. It is not to be named on the same day with Christchurch, the capital of Canterbury, New Zealand, which ten years ago was decently paved and well lighted by gas. Poor sleepy Maritzburg consists now, at more than forty years of age (Christchurch is not twenty-five yet), of a few straight, wide, grass-grown streets, which are only picturesque at a little distance on account of their having trees on each side. On particularly dark nights a dozen oil-lamps standing at long intervals apart are lighted, but when it is even moderately starlight these aids to finding one’s way about are prudently dispensed with. There is not a single handsome and hardly a decent building in the whole place. The streets, as I saw them after rain, are veritable sloughs of despond, but they are capable of being changed by dry weather into deserts of dust. It is true, I have only been as yet twice down to the town, but on both visits it reminded me more of the sleepy villages in Washington Irving’s stories than of a smart, modern, go-ahead colonial “city.” There are some fairly good shops, but they make no show outside, and within the prices of most of the articles sold are nearly double the same things would bring either at Melbourne or at Christchurch. As D’Urban is barely a month away from London in point of communication, and New Zealand (when I knew it) nearly treble the distance and time, this is a great puzzle to me.
A certain air of quaint interest and life is given to the otherwise desolate streets by the groups of Kafirs and the teams of wagons which bring fuel and forage into the town every day. Twenty bullocks drag these ponderous contrivances–bullocks so lean that one wonders how they have strength to carry their wide-spreading horns aloft; bullocks of a stupidity and obstinacy unparalleled in the natural history of horned beasts. At their head walks a Kafir lad called a “forelooper,” who tugs at a rope fastened to the horns of the leading oxen, and in moments of general confusion invariably seems to pull the wrong string and get the whole team into an inextricable tangle of horns and yokes. Sometimes of a quiet Sunday morning these teams and wagons I see “out-spanned” on the green slopes around Maritzburg, making a picturesque addition to the sylvan scenery. Near each wagon a light wreath of smoke steals up into the summer air, marking where some preparation of “mealies” is on foot, and the groups of grazing oxen–“spans,” as each team is called–give the animation of animal life which I miss so sadly at every turn in this part of the world.
In Maritzburg itself I only noticed two buildings which made the least effect. One is the government house, standing in a nice garden and boasting of a rather pretty porch, but otherwise reminding one–except for the sentinel on duty–of a quiet country rectory: the other is a small block comprising the public offices. The original idea of this square building must have come from a model dairy. But the crowning absurdity of the place is the office of the colonial secretary, which stands nearly opposite. I am told that inside it is tolerably comfortable, being the remains of an old Dutch building: outside, it can only be compared to a dilapidated barn on a bankrupt farm, and when it was first pointed out to me I had great difficulty, remembering similar buildings in other colonies, in believing it was a public office.
The native police look very smart and shiny in their white suits, and must be objects of envy to their black brethren on account of their “knobkerries,” the knobbed sticks which they alone are permitted to carry officially in their hands. The native loves a stick, and as he is forbidden to carry either an assegai–which is a very formidable weapon indeed–or even a knobkerry, only one degree less dangerous, he consoles himself with a wand or switch in case of coming across a snake. You never see a Kafir without something of the sort in his hand: if he is not twirling a light stick, then he has a sort of rude reed pipe from which he extracts sharp and tuneless sounds. As a race, the Kafirs make the effect of possessing a fine _physique_: they walk with an erect bearing and a light step, but in true leisurely savage fashion. I have seen the black race in four different quarters of the globe, and I never saw one single individual move quickly of his own free will. We must bear in mind, however, that it is a new and altogether revolutionary idea to a Kafir that he should do any work at all. Work is for women–war or idleness for men; consequently, their fixed idea is to do as little as they can; and no Kafir will work after he has earned money enough to buy a sufficient number of wives who will work for him. “Charlie,” our groom–who is, by the way, a very fine gentleman and speaks “Ingeliss” after a strange fashion of his own–only condescends to work until he can purchase a wife. Unfortunately, the damsel whom he prefers is a costly article, and her parents demand a cow, a kettle and a native hut as the price of her hand–or hands, rather–so Charlie grunts and groans through about as much daily work as an English boy of twelve years old could manage easily. He is a very amusing character, being exceedingly proud, and will only obey his own master, whom he calls his great inkosi or chief. He is always lamenting the advent of the inkosi-casa, or chieftainess, and the piccaninnies and their following, especially the “vaiter,” whom he detests. In his way, Charlie is a wag, and it is as good as a play to see his pretence of stupidity when the “vaiter” or French butler desires him to go and eat “sa paniche.” Charlie understands perfectly that he is told to go and get his breakfast of mealy porridge, but he won’t admit that it is to be called “paniche,” preferring his own word “scoff;” so he shakes his head violently and says, “Nay, nay, paniche.” Then, with many nods, “Scoff, ja;” and so in this strange gibberish of three languages he and the Frenchman carry on quite a pretty quarrel. Charlie also “mocks himself” of the other servants, I am informed, and asserts that he is the “indema” or headman. He freely boxes the ears of Jack, the Zulu refugee–poor Jack, who fled from his own country, next door, the other day, and arrived here clad in only a short flap made of three bucks’ tails. That is only a month ago, and “Jack” is already quite a _petit maitre_ about his clothes. He ordinarily wears a suit of knickerbockers and a shirt of blue check bound with red, and a string of beads round his neck, but he cries like a baby if he tears his clothes, or still worse if the color of the red braid washes out. At first he hated civilized garments, even when they were only two in number, and begged to be allowed to assume a sack with holes for the arms, which is the Kafir compromise when near a town between clothes and flaps made of the tails of wild beasts or strips of hide. But he soon came to delight in them, and is now always begging for “something to wear.”
I confess I am sorry for Jack. He is the kitchen-boy, and is learning with much pains and difficulty the _wrong language_. My cook is also French, and, naturally, all that Jack learns is French, and not English. Imagine poor Jack’s dismay when, after his three years’ apprenticeship to us is ended, he seeks perhaps to better himself, and finds that no one except madame can understand him! Most of their dialogues are carried on by pantomime and the incessant use, in differing tones of voice, of the word “Ja.” Jack is a big, loutish young man, but very ugly and feeble, and apparently under the impression that he is perpetually “wanted” to answer for the little indiscretion, whatever it was, on account of which he was forced to flee over the border. He is timid and scared to the last degree, and abjectly anxious to please if it does not entail too much exertion. He is, as it were, apprenticed to us for three years. We are bound to feed and clothe and doctor him, and he is to work for us, in his own lazy fashion, for small wages. The first time Jack broke a plate his terror and despair were quite edifying to behold. Madame called him a “maladroit” on the spot. Jack learned this word, and after his work was over seated himself gravely on the ground with the fragments of the plate, which he tried to join together, but gave up the attempt at last, announcing in his own tongue that it was “dead.” After a little consideration he said slowly, several times, “Maldraw, ja,” and hit himself a good thump at each “ja.” _Now_, I grieve to say, Jack breaks plates, dishes and cups with a perfectly easy and unembarrassed conscience, and is already far too civilized to care in the least for his misfortunes in that line. Whenever a fowl is killed–and I came upon Jack slowly putting one to death the other day with a pair of nail-scissors–he possesses himself of a small store of feathers, which he wears tastefully placed over his left ear. A gay ribbon, worn like a bandeau across the forehead, is what he really loves. Jack is very proud of a tawdry ribbon of many colors with a golden ground which I found for him the other day, only he never can make up his mind where to wear it; and I often come upon him sitting in the shade with the ribbon in his hands, gravely considering the question.
The Pickle and plague of the establishment, however, is the boy Tom, a grinning young savage fresh from his kraal, up to any amount of mischief, who in an evil hour has been engaged as the baby’s body-servant. I cannot trust him with the child out of my sight for a moment, for he “snuffs” enormously, and smokes coarse tobacco out of a cow’s horn, and is anxious to teach the baby both these accomplishments. Tom wears his snuff-box–which is a brass cylinder a couple of inches long–in either ear impartially, there being huge slits in the cartilage for the purpose, and the baby never rests till he gets possession of it and sneezes himself nearly into fits. Tom likes nursing Baby immensely, and croons to him in a strange buzzing way which lulls him to sleep invariably. He is very anxious, however, to acquire some words of English, and I was much startled the other day to hear in the verandah my own voice saying, “What is it, dear?” over and over again. This phrase proceeded from Tom, who kept on repeating it, parrot-fashion–an exact imitation, but with no idea of its meaning. I had heard the baby whimpering a little time before, and Tom had remarked that these four words produced the happiest effect in restoring good-humor; so he learned them, accent and all, on the spot, and used them as a spell or charm on the next opportunity. I think even the poor baby was puzzled. But one cannot feel sure of what Tom will do next. A few evenings ago I trusted him to wheel the perambulator about the garden-paths, but, becoming anxious in a very few minutes to know what he was about, I went to look for him. I found him grinning in high glee, watching the baby’s efforts at cutting his teeth on a live young bird. Master Tom had spied a nest, climbed the tree, and brought down the poor little bird, which he presented to the child, who instantly put it into his mouth. When I arrived on the scene Baby’s mouth was full of feathers, over which he was making a very disgusted face, and the unhappy bird was nearly dead of fright and squeezing, whilst Tom was in such convulsions of laughter that I nearly boxed his ears. He showed me by signs how Baby insisted on sucking the bird’s head, and conveyed his intense amusement at the idea. I made Master Tom climb the tree instantly and put the poor little half-dead creature back into its nest, and sent for Charlie to explain to him he should have no sugar–the only punishment Tom cares about–for two days. I often think, however, that I must try and find another penalty, for when Tom’s allowance of sugar is stopped he “requisitions” that of every one else, and so gets rather more than usual. He is immensely proud of the brass chin-strap of an old artillery bushy which has been given to him. He used to wear it across his forehead in the favorite Kafir fashion, but as the baby always made it his first business to pull this shining strap down over Tom’s eyes, and eventually over Tom’s mouth, it has been transferred to his neck.
These Kafir-lads make excellent nurse-boys generally, and English children are very fond of them. Nurse-girls are rare, as the Kafir women begin their lives of toil so early that they are never very handy or gentle in a house, and boys are easier to train as servants. I heard to-day, however, of an excellent Kafir nurse-maid who was the daughter of a chief, and whose only drawback was the size of her family. She was actually and truly one of _eighty_ brothers and sisters, her father being a rich man with twenty-five wives. That simply means that he had twenty-five devoted slaves, who worked morning, noon and night for him in field and mealy-patch without wages. Jack the Zulu wanted to be nurse-boy dreadfully, and used to follow Nurse about with a towel rolled up into a bundle, and another towel arranged as drapery, dandling an imaginary baby on his arm, saying plaintively, “Piccaninny, piccaninny!” This Nurse translated to mean that he was an experienced nurse-boy, and had taken care of a baby in his own country, but as I had no confidence in maladroit Jack, who chanced to be very deaf besides, he was ruthlessly relegated to his pots and pans.
It is very curious to see the cast-off clothes of all the armies of Europe finding their way hither. The natives of South Africa prefer an old uniform coat or tunic to any other covering, and the effect of a short scarlet garment when worn with bare legs is irresistibly droll. The apparently inexhaustible supply of old-fashioned English coatees with their worsted epaulettes is just coming to an end, and being succeeded by ragged red tunics, franc-tireurs’ brownish-green jackets and much-worn Prussian gray coats. Kafir-Land may be looked upon as the old-clothes shop of all the fighting world, for sooner or later every cast-off scrap of soldier’s clothing drifts toward it. Charlie prides himself much upon the possession of an old gray great-coat, so patched and faded that it may well have been one of those which toiled up the slopes of Inkerman that rainy Sunday morning twenty years ago; whilst scampish Tom got well chaffed the other day for suddenly making his appearance clad in a stained red tunic with buff collar and cuffs, and the number of the old “dirty Half-hundred” in tarnished metal on the shoulder-scales. “Sir Garnet,” cried Charlie the witty, whilst Jack affected to prostrate himself before the grinning imp, exclaiming, “O great inkosi!”
Charlie is angry with me just now, and looks most reproachfully my way on all occasions. The cause is that he was sweeping away sundry huge spiders’ webs from the roof of the verandah (the work of a single night) when I heard him coughing frightfully. I gave him some lozenges, saying, “Do your cough good, Charlie.” Charlie received them in both hands held like a cup, the highest form of Kafir gratitude, and gulped them all down on the spot. Next day I heard the same dreadful cough, and told F—- to give him some more lozenges. But Charlie would have none of them, alleging he “eats plenty to-morrow’s yesterday, and dey no good at all;” and he evidently despises me and my remedies.
If only there were no hot winds! But the constant changes are so trying and so sudden. Sometimes we have a hot, scorching gale all day, drying and parching one’s very skin up, and shriveling one’s lovely roses like the blast from a furnace: then in the afternoon a dark cloud sails suddenly up from behind the hills to the west. It is over the house before one knows it is coming: a loud clap of thunder shakes the very ground beneath one’s feet, others follow rapidly, and a thunderstorm bewilders one for some ten minutes or so. A few drops of cold rain fall to the sound of the distant thunder, now rolling away eastward, which yet “struggles and howls at fits.” It is not always distant, but we have not yet seen a real thunderstorm; only a few of these short, sudden electrical disturbances, which come and go more like explosions than anything else. A few days ago there was a duststorm which had a very curious effect as we looked down upon it from this hill. All along the roads one could watch the dust being caught up, as it were, and whirled along in dense clouds, whilst the poor little town itself was absolutely blotted out by the blinding masses of fine powder. For half an hour or so we could afford to watch and smile at our neighbors’ plight, but soon we had to flee for shelter ourselves within the house, for a furious hot gale drove heavily up behind the dust and nearly blew us away altogether. Still, there was no thunderstorm, though we quite wished for one to cool the air and refresh the parched and burnt-up grass and flowers. Such afternoons are generally pretty sure to be succeeded by a cold night, and perhaps a cold, damp morning; and one can already understand that these alternations during the summer months are apt to produce dysentery among young children. I hear just now of a good many such cases among babies.
I have been so exceedingly busy this month packing, arranging and settling that there has been but little time for going about and seeing the rather pretty environs of Maritzburg; besides which, the weather is dead against excursions, changing as it does to rain or threatening thunderstorms nearly every afternoon. One evening we ventured out for a walk in spite of growlings and spittings up above among the crass-looking clouds. Natal is not a nice country, for women at all events, to walk in. You have to keep religiously to the road or track, for woe betide the rash person who ventures on the grass, though from repeated burnings all about these hills it is quite short. There is a risk of your treading on a snake, and a certainty of your treading on a frog. You will soon find your legs covered with small and pertinacious ticks, who have apparently taken a “header” into your flesh and made up their minds to die sooner than let go. They must be the bull-dogs of the insect tribe, these ticks, for a sharp needle will scarcely dislodge them. At the last extremity of extraction they only burrow their heads deeper into the skin, and will lose this important part of their tiny bodies sooner than yield to the gentlest leverage. Then there are myriads of burs which cling to you in green and brown scales of roughness, and fringe your petticoats with their sticky little lumps. As for the poor petticoats themselves, however short you may kilt them, you bring them back from a walk deeply flounced with the red clay of the roads; and as the people who wash do not seem to consider this a disadvantage, and take but little pains to remove the earth-stains, one’s garments gradually acquire, even when clean, a uniform bordering of dingy red. All the water at this time of year is red too, as the rivers are stirred up by the heavy summer rains, and resemble angry muddy ditches more than fresh-water streams. I miss at every turn the abundance of clear, clean, sparkling water in the creeks and rivers of my dear New Zealand, and it is only after heavy rain, when every bath and large vessel has been turned into a receptacle during the downpour, that one can compass the luxury of an inviting-looking bath or glass of drinking-water. Of course this turbid water renders it pretty difficult to get one’s clothes properly washed, and the substitute for a mangle is an active Kafir, who makes the roughly-dried clothes up into a neat parcel, places them on a stone and dances up and down upon them for as long or short a time as he pleases. Fuel is so enormously dear that the cost of having clothes ironed is something astounding, and altogether washing is one of the many costly items of Natalian housekeeping. When I remember the frantic state of indignation and alarm we were all in in England three years ago when coals rose to L2 10s. a ton, and think how cheap I should consider that price for fuel here, I can’t help a melancholy smile. Nine solid sovereigns purchase you a tolerable-sized load of wood, about equal for cooking purposes to a ton of coal; but whereas the coal is at all events some comfort and convenience to use, the wood is only a source of additional trouble and expense. It has to be cut up and dried, and finally coaxed and cajoled by incessant use of the bellows into burning. Besides the price of fuel, provisions of all sorts seem to me to be dear and bad. Milk is sold by the quart bottle: it is now fourpence per bottle, but rises to sixpence during the winter. Meat is eightpence a pound, but it is so thin and bony, and of such indifferent quality, that there is very little saving in that respect. I have not tasted any really good butter since we arrived, and we pay two shillings a pound for cheesy, rancid stuff. I hear that “mealies,” the crushed maize, are also very dear, and so is forage for the horses. Instead of the horses being left out on the run night and day, summer and winter, as they used to be in New Zealand, with an occasional feed of oats for a treat, they need to be carefully housed at night and well fed with oaten straw and mealies to give them a chance against the mysterious and fatal “horse-sickness,” which kills them in a few hours. Altogether, so far as my very limited experience–of only a few weeks, remember–goes, I should say that Natal was an expensive place to live in, owing to the scarcity and dearness of the necessaries of life. I am told that far up in the country food and fuel are cheap and good, and that it is the dearness and difficulty of transport which forces Maritzburg to depend for its supplies entirely on what is grown in its own immediate vicinity, where there is not very much land under cultivation; so we must look to the coming railway to remedy all that.
If only one could eat flowers, or if wheat and other cereals grew as freely and luxuriously as flowers grow, how nice it would be! On the open grassy downs about here the blossoms are lovely–beautiful lilies in scarlet and white clusters, several sorts of periwinkles, heaths, cinnerarias, both purple and white, and golden bushes of citisus or Cape broom, load the air with fragrance. By the side of every “spruit” or brook one sees clumps of tall arum lilies filling every little water-washed hollow in the brook, and the ferns which make each ditch and water-course green and plumy have a separate shady beauty of their own. This is all in Nature’s own free, open garden, and when the least cultivation or care is added to her bounteous luxuriance a magnificent garden for fruit, vegetables and flowers is the result; always supposing you are fortunate enough to be able to induce these lazy Kafirs to dig the ground for you.
About a fortnight ago I braved the dirt and disagreeables of a cross-country walk in showery weather–for we have not been able to meet with a horse to suit us yet–and went to see a beautiful garden a couple of miles away. It was approached by a long double avenue of blue gum trees, planted only nine years ago, but tall and stately as though a century had passed over their lofty, pointed heads, and with a broad red clay road running between the parallel lines of trees. The ordinary practice of clearing away the grass as much as possible round a house strikes an English eye as bare and odd, but when one hears that it is done to avoid snakes, it becomes a necessary and harmonious adjunct to the rest of the scene. In this instance I found these broad smooth walks, with their deep rich red color, a very beautiful contrast to the glow of brilliant blossoms in the enormous flower-beds. For this garden was not at all like an ordinary garden, still less like a prim English parterre. The beds were as large as small fields, slightly raised and bordered by a thick line of violets. Large shrubs of beautiful semitropical plants made tangled heaps of purple, scarlet and white blossoms on every side; the large creamy bells of the datura drooped toward the reddish earth; thorny shrubs of that odd bluish-green peculiar to Australian foliage grew side by side with the sombre-leaved myrtle. Every plant grew in the most liberal fashion; green things which we are accustomed to see in England in small pots shoot up here to the height of laurel bushes; a screen of scarlet euphorbia made a brilliant line against a background formed by a hedge of shell-like cluster-roses, and each pillar of the verandah of the little house had its own magnificent creeper. Up one standard an ipomea twined closely; another pillar was hidden by the luxuriance of a trumpet-honeysuckle; whilst a third was thickly covered by an immense passion-flower. In shady, damp places grew many varieties of ferns and blue hydrangeas, whilst other beds were filled by gay patches of verbenas of every hue and shade. The sweet-scented verbena is one of the commonest and most successful shrubs in a Natal garden, and just now the large bushes of it which one sees in every direction are covered by tapering spikes of its tiny white blossoms. But the feature of this garden was roses–roses on each side whichever way you turned, and I should think of at least a hundred different sorts. Not the stiff standard rose tree of an English garden, with its few precious blossoms, to be looked at from a distance and admired with respectful gravity. No: in this garden the roses grow as they might have grown in Eden–untrained, unpruned, in enormous bushes covered entirely by magnificent blossoms, each bloom of which would have won a prize at a rose-show. There was one cloth-of-gold rose bush that I shall never forget–its size, its fragrance, its wealth of creamy-yellowish blossoms. A few yards off stood a still bigger and more luxuriant pyramid, some ten feet high, covered with the large, delicate and regular pink bloom of the souvenir de Malmaison. When I talk of _a_ bush I only mean one especial bush which caught my eye. I suppose there were fifty cloth-of-gold and fifty souvenir rose bushes in that garden. Red roses, white roses, tea roses, blush-roses, moss roses, and, last not least, the dear old-fashioned, homely cabbage rose, sweetest and most sturdy of all. You could wander for acres and acres among fruit trees and plantations of oaks and willows and other trees, but you never got away from the roses. There they were, beautiful, delicious things at every turn–hedges of them, screens of them and giant bushes of them on either hand. As I have said before, though kept free from weeds by some half dozen scantily-clad but stalwart Kafirs with their awkward hoes, it was not a bit like a trim English garden. It was like a garden in which Lalla Rookh might have wandered by moonlight talking sentimental philosophy with her minstrel prince under old Fadladeen’s chaperonage, or a garden that Boccaccio might have peopled with his Arcadian fine ladies and gentlemen. It was emphatically a poet’s or a painter’s garden, not a gardener’s garden. Then, as though nothing should be wanting to make the scene lovely, one could hear through the fragrant silence the tinkling of the little “spruit” or brook at the bottom of the garden, and the sweet song of the Cape canary, the same sort of greenish finch which is the parent stock of all our canaries, and whose acquaintance I first made in Madeira. A very sweet warbler it is, and the clear, flute-like notes sounded prettily among the roses. From blossom to blossom lovely butterflies flitted, perching quite fearlessly on the red clay walk just before me, folding and unfolding their big painted wings. Every day I see a new kind of butterfly, and the moths which one comes upon hidden away under the leaves of the creepers during the bright noisy day are lovely beyond the power of words. One little fellow is a great pet of mine. He wears pure white wings, with vermilion stripes drawn in regular horizontal lines across his back, and between the lines are shorter, broken streaks of black, which is at once neat and uncommon; but he is always in the last stage of sleepiness when I see him.
I am so glad little G—- is not old enough to want to catch them all and impale them upon corks in a glass case; so the pretty creatures live out their brief and happy life in the sunshine, without let or hinderance from him.
The subject of which my mind is most full just now is the purchase of a horse. F—- has a fairly good chestnut cob of his own; G—- has become possessed, to his intense delight, of an aged and long-suffering Basuto pony, whom he fidgets to death during the day by driving him all over the place, declaring he is “only showing him where the nicest grass grows;” and I want a steed to draw my pony-carriage and to carry me. F—- and I are at dagger’s drawn on this question. He wants to buy me a young, handsome, showy horse of whom his admirers predict that “he will steady down presently,” whilst my affections are firmly fixed on an aged screw who would not turn his head if an Armstrong gun were fired behind him. His owner says Scotsman is “rising eleven:” F—- declares Scotsman will never see his twentieth birthday again. F—- points out to me that Scotsman has had rough times of it, apparently, in his distant youth, and that he is strangely battered about the head, and has a large notch out of one ear. I retaliate by reminding him how sagely the old horse picked his way, with a precision of judgment which only years can give, through the morass which lies at the foot of the hill, and which must be crossed every time I go into town (and there is nowhere else to go). That morass is a bog in summer and a honey-comb of deep ruts and holes in winter, which, you must bear in mind, is the dry season here. Besides his tact in the matter of the morass, did I not drive Scotsman the other day to the park, and did he not comport himself in the most delightfully sedate fashion? You require experience to be on the lookout for the perils of Maritzburg streets, it seems, for all their sleepy, deserted, tumble-down air. First of all, there are the transport-wagons, with their long span of oxen straggling all across the road, and a nervous bullock precipitating himself under your horse’s nose. The driver, too, invariably takes the opportunity of a lady passing him to crack his whip violently, enough to startle any horse except Scotsman. Then when you have passed the place where the wagons most do congregate, and think you are tolerably safe and need only look out for ruts and holes in the street, lo! a furious galloping behind you, and some half dozen of the “gilded youth” of Maritzburg dash past you, stop, wheel round and gallop past again, until you are almost blinded with dust or smothered with mud, according to the season. This peril occurred several times during my drive to and from the park, and I can only remark that dear old Scotsman kept his temper better than I did: perhaps he was more accustomed to Maritzburg manners.
When the park was reached at last, across a frail and uncertain wooden bridge shaded by large weeping willows, I found it the most creditable thing I had yet seen. It is admirably laid out, the natural undulations of the ground being made the most of, and exceedingly well kept. This in itself is a difficult matter where all vegetation runs up like Jack’s famous beanstalk, and where the old proverb about the steed starving whilst his grass is growing falls completely to the ground. There are numerous drives, made level by a coating of smooth black shale, and bordered by a double line of syringas and oaks, with hedges of myrtle or pomegranate. In some places the roads run alongside the little river–a very muddy torrent when I saw it–and then the oaks give way to great drooping willows, beneath whose trailing branches the river swirled angrily. On fine Saturday afternoons the band of the regiment stationed here plays on a clear space under some shady trees–for you can never sit or stand on the grass in Natal, and even croquet is played on bare leveled earth–and everybody rides or walks or drives about. When I saw the park there was not a living creature in it, for it was, as most of our summer afternoons are, wet and cold and drizzling; but, considering that there was no thunderstorm likely to break over our heads that day, I felt that I could afford to despise a silent Scotch mist. We varied our afternoon weather last week by a hailstorm, of which the stones were as big as large marbles. I was scoffed at for remarking this, and assured it was “nothing, absolutely nothing,” to _the_ great hailstorm of two years ago, which broke nearly every tile and pane of glass in Maritzburg, and left the town looking precisely as though it had been bombarded. I have seen photographs of some of the ruined houses, and it is certainly difficult to believe that hail could have done so much mischief. Then, again, stories reach me of a certain thunderstorm one Sunday evening just before I arrived in which the lightning struck a room in which a family was assembled at evening prayers, killing the poor old father with the Bible in his hand, and knocking over every member of the little congregation. My informant said, “I assure you it seemed as though the lightning were poured out of heaven in a jug. There were no distinct flashes: the heavens appeared to split open and pour down a flood of blazing violet light.” I have seen nothing like this yet, but can quite realize what such a storm must be like, for I have observed already how different the color of the lightning is. The flashes I have seen were exactly of the lilac color he described, and they followed each other with a rapidity of succession unknown in less electric regions. And yet my last English letters were full of complaints of the wet weather in London, and much self-pity for the long imprisonment in-doors. Why, those very people don’t know what weather inconveniences are. If London streets are muddy, at all events there are no dangerous morasses in them. No matter how much it rains, people get their comfortable meals three times a day. _Here_, rain means a risk of starvation (if the little wooden bridge between us and the town were to be swept away) and a certainty of short commons. A wet morning means damp bread for breakfast and a thousand other disagreeables. No, I have no patience with the pampered Londoners, who want perpetual sunshine in addition to their other blessings, for saying one word about discomfort. They are all much too civilized and luxurious, and their lives are made altogether too smooth for them. Let them come out here and try to keep house on the top of a hill with servants whose language they don’t understand, a couple of noisy children and a small income, and then, as dear Mark Twain says, “they’ll know something about woe.”
DINNER IN A STATE PRISON.
An invitation to take dinner with a friend in the State’s prison was something new and exciting to a quiet little body like me, and I re-read Ruth Denham’s kindly-worded note to that effect, and thought how odd it was that we should meet again in this way after ten years’ separation and all the changes that had intervened in both our lives. We had parted last on the night of our grand closing-school party, after having been friends and fellow-pupils for five years. She was then fifteen, and the prettiest, brightest and cleverest girl at Lynnhope. I was younger, and felt distinguished by her friendship, and heart-broken at the idea of losing her, for she was going abroad with her family, while I remained to complete my studies at the institute.
I had plenty of letters the first year, but then her father died, and with him went his reputed fortune. A painful change occurred in the position of the Welfords in consequence, and Ruth became a teacher, as I heard, until she met and married a young man from the West, whither she returned with him immediately after the ceremony. She had written to me once after becoming Ruth Denham, and her letter was kind and cordial as her old self, but the correspondence thus renewed soon ceased. I was also an orphan, but a close attendant at the couch of my invalid aunt; and Ruth’s new strange life was too crowded with pressing duties to permit her to write regularly to her girlhood’s companion, whom she had not seen for years. My aunt had now recovered so far as to indulge a taste for travel. We were on our way by the great railroad to the Pacific coast, and we stopped at the small capital of one of the newest States to discover that Ruth Denham was a resident there, the wife of the lieutenant-governor, who was consequently the warden of the State prison. The note I held in my hand was in answer to one I had despatched to her an hour before by the hands of a Chinaman from the hotel, and it was as glad and affectionate as I could wish:
“My husband is quite ill with sciatica, which completely lames him, as well as causing him intense pain. I am his only attendant, or I would fly to you at once, my dearest Jenny. I am so sorry you leave by the midnight train for San Francisco to-morrow, but must be content to see you as much of the day as you can spare us, and hope for a longer visit on your return. We dine at four: may I not send the carriage for you as early as two o’clock?
“Your loving friend,
“RUTH DENHAM.”
I had my aunt’s permission to leave her, and was ready at the appointed hour to find the carriage there to the minute; and a very comfortable, easy conveyance it proved over one of the worst roads I ever traveled on.
The prison was about a mile from the outskirts of the straggling town, which boasted two or three fine State buildings, in strong contrast with its scattering and mostly mean and shambling dwellings. Some hot springs had been discovered near the site, and over them had been erected a wooden hotel and baths of the simplest order of architecture and on the barest possible plan of ornament or comfort. Just beyond this edifice was the prison, situated at the rise of one hill and under the shadow of another and more considerable one. It was built of a softish, light-colored stone dug from a neighboring quarry, as the driver told me, and looking even at a cursory glance too destructible and crumbling to secure such desperate and determined inmates.
“They used to keep ’em in a sort o’ wooden shed,” said my driver, alluding to the prisoners, “until they got this shebang fixed up. Pretty smart lot of chaps they were, for they built it themselves mostly, and made good time on it, too.”
It was surrounded by a high wooden fence, within which a stone wall of the same material as the building was in course of construction.
“If it wasn’t Sunday,” said my companion as we drove through the guarded gate, “you could see ’em at work, for they’re putting up their defences, and doing it first-rate, too.”
I had only time for a glance at the inside of the enclosure. We were already at the principal entrance, which was a wide door opening into a hall, with a staircase leading up to the second floor. On the right hand was a strongly-grated iron door opening into the main corridor between the cells: the other side seemed to be devoted to offices and quarters for the guards. I saw knots of men about, but only the two at the entrance appeared to be armed, and they had that lounging, easy air, that belongs to security and the absence of thought. It was in every respect opposite to my preconceived idea of a penitentiary, and all recollection of its first design fled when I saw Ruth’s cheery face, bright and handsome as ever, beaming on me from the first landing, and felt her warm, firm arms clasping me in an embrace of affectionate welcome. It was my friend’s home, and nothing else, from that moment, and a very pretty, daintily-ordered home it was. She had five rooms on the second floor, with a kitchen below: this was her parlor in front, a bright, well-furnished room, tastefully ornamented with pictures, some of which I recognized as her own paintings in our school-days; and here was her dining-room to the left, with a small guest-chamber that she hoped I would occupy when I returned. The other rooms on the west of the parlor were hers and Nellie’s–Oh, I had not seen Nellie, her five-year-old, nor her dear husband, who was so much better to-day, though he could not rise without difficulty; and would I therefore come and see him?
As Ruth gave me thus a passing glance at her household arrangements, I saw through the open door of an apartment back of the dining-room a light shower of plaster fall to the ground, marking the oilcloth that covered the floor, and for one instant sending out into the hall a puff of whitish dust.
“Oh, that is one of the effects of our terribly dry climate,” said Ruth, following my glance and noticing the dust: “every little while portions of our walls crumble and fall in like that. There is no doubt a sad litter in Mr. Foster the clerk’s room, where that shower occurred: he has gone to the city for the day, however, and it can be cleared before his return. Here is my husband, Jenny.”
In a recess by the parlor window, on a lounge, Mr. Denham was trying to disguise the necessity for keeping his tortured limb extended by an appearance of smiling ease. He was a handsome, frank-faced man, with a firm, fearless eye and a gentle, kindly mouth, and I could readily understand my friend’s look of sweet content when I saw him and her child Nellie, who was hanging over her papa with the fond protecting air of a precocious nurse. I sat down quickly beside them to prevent my host’s attempting to rise, and the hour that elapsed before dinner flew by in interesting conversation.
“I am so sorry I had to go for a little while,” said Ruth, returning to announce that meal, “but my good Wang-Ho is sick to-day, and I had to help him a little.”
“Where is Lester, Ruth?” asked her husband.
“Oh, he is kind and helpful as ever, but he does not understand making dessert, you know, Edward.”
“That’s true, and Miss Jane will excuse you, I am sure, for she and I have been reviewing the principal features of pioneer-life, and she professes herself rather in love with it than otherwise.”
“It is all so fresh and enjoyable, despite its discomforts and inconveniences,” I said; “and need I quote a stronger argument in its favor than yourself, my dear Ruth? You seem perfectly happy, and I really cannot see why you should not be so.”
She had her golden-haired little girl in one arm, and she laid the other hand caressingly on her husband’s shoulder, “There is none: I _am_ happy,” she said in a low, earnest tone; and then added laughingly, “or I shall be as soon as Edward gets well of sciatica and Wang-Ho recovers from his chills.”
Mr. Denham begged us to go before him, and his wife led the way to the dining-room.
“Poor fellow!” she whispered, “he suffers horribly when he moves, and I tried to persuade him to have his dinner sent into the parlor, but in honor of your presence he will come, and he doesn’t want us to see him wince and writhe under the effort.”
Just as we entered the dining-room a young man came in by another door, carrying a tray with dishes. I had seen plenty of Chinamen, but this was not one, nor could I reconcile his appearance with the position of a servant. He was tall, well-made, and his face, though unnaturally pale, was decidedly good-looking. He wore a pair of coarse gray pantaloons with a remarkable stripe down one leg, but had on a beautifully clean and fine, white shirt fastened at the throat with a diamond button. The weather was warm, and he was without coat or vest, and had a sash of red knitted silk, such as Mexicans wear, round his middle.
Ruth took the dishes from him and placed them on the table. “Please tell Wang-Ho about the coffee, Lester,” she said as he retired.
“Is that man a servant, Ruth?” I asked in an astonished whisper.
“No,” she replied in the same low tone: “he is a murderer condemned for life.”
Mr. Denham hobbled in and slid down upon a seat. I appreciated his gallant attention, but it was painful to see the effort it cost: besides, much as I had seen, and familiar as I was becoming with pioneer life, to be waited on at dinner by a young and handsome murderer condemned to prison for life was a sensation new and startling, and I was full of curiosity as to the nature of his crime and the peculiar administration of the Western penal code that made house-servants of convicts. Seeing my perturbation, Ruth evidently intended to relieve it by the explanatory remark of “He is a ‘trusty,’ Jenny dear,” but really threw no light whatever on the subject.
It was a very nice dinner, served tastefully and with a home comfort about everything connected with the table that seemed most unlike a prison. Mr. Denham’s intelligence and cheerfulness added to the delusion that I was enjoying the hospitalities of a cultivated Eastern home. He and his wife had kept themselves thoroughly familiar with all topics of general interest through the medium of periodicals, and had much to ask about the actual progress of improvements they had read of and the changes occurring among dear and familiar Eastern scenes.
Lester came in again with the empty tray, and quietly gathered the plates from the table preparatory to placing dessert. I wanted to look at him–indeed, a fascination I could not resist drew my eyes to his face like a magnet–yet, somehow, I dared not keep them there: the consciousness of meeting his glance, and feeling that I should then be ashamed of my curiosity, made them drop uneasily every time he turned; and once when I found his gaze rest on me an instant, I felt myself color violently under the quiet look of his steel-gray eyes.
One thing was very observable in the little group: the child Nellie was intensely fond of the man, and he himself seemed to entertain and constantly endeavor to express an exalted admiration for Mr. Denham. While the latter was speaking Lester’s animated looks followed every word and gesture: he anticipated his unexpressed wishes, and watched to save him the trouble of moving or asking for anything.
“No, no, Nellie, stay and finish your dinner: Lester is not quite ready for you yet.” Her mother said this in reference to the child’s eagerness to follow the trusty attendant from the room, and her neglect of her meal in consequence. “Nellie is in the habit of carrying up the sugar and cream for the coffee, and she thinks Lester cannot possibly get on if she does not assist,” said Ruth in smiling explanation as Nellie hastened after him.
The next instant there was the mingled sound of a heavy fall or succession of falls outside, and one quick, stifled scream from the child.
“The dumb-waiter, quick! It has broken from its weights and scalded Nell with the hot coffee,” cried Ruth, making a spring toward the door by which Lester had gone out.
Her husband, forgetting his lameness, was instantly at her side, but some force held the door against them both, and abandoning it after the first effort, the father turned hurriedly to the one leading into the hall. I sat nearest that, and in the excitement I had moved quickly aside, so that when it was flung violently open the moment before my host the governor of the prison reached it, I was thrust back against the wall, from which place, half dead with fright, I saw the hall crowded with convicts, the foremost of whom held a pistol directly toward Mr. Denham’s head.
It snapped with a sharp report, and when the smoke cleared I found Mr. Denham had dodged the fire and was closed in a scuffle with the villain for the weapon. A dozen more seemed to spring on him from the threshold; I heard his wife’s cry of agony; and then the door at the other side burst in, and Lester, with his gray eyes gleaming like a flame, bounded over the body of a bloody convict that fell from his grasp as he broke into the room. Quick as thought he caught up one of the heavy chairs in his hands, and bringing it down with desperate force on the heads of the governor’s assailants, felled one, while the other staggered back and dropped his pistol. Mr. Denham caught it like a flash, and fired it in the face of a wretch who was aiming at Lester’s heart. The convicts fell back, and over their bodies the governor and his aid sprang into the crowded hall.
“The child! the child! O God! my little daughter!” It was Ruth’s voice in tones of such anguish and terror as I never before heard uttered by human voice.
She was looking from the window into the yard below, and there she beheld Nellie lifted up as a shield against the guns of the guards by a party of the escaping convicts. The little creature was deadly white and perfectly silent: her great blue eyes were wide and frozen with fright, and her little hands were clasped in entreating agony and stretched toward her mother.
“Stand behind me and shoot them down, governor,” cried Lester, dealing steady blows with the now broken chair, and trying to make his own body a shield for Mr. Denham. The governor continued to fire on the convicts, who were pouring in a steady stream down the stairs from out of the room where I had seen the shower of dust, and through the ceiling of which, as it was afterward, proved, they had cut a hole, and so escaped from the upper corridor of the prison.
I tried to hold Ruth in my arms, for in her frenzy to reach her child she had flung up the window and endeavored to drop from it at the risk of her life. “They will not dare to hurt her: God will protect her innocent life,” was all I could say, when a random ball from below struck the window-frame, and, glancing off, stunned without wounding the wretched mother. She fell, jarred by the shock, and I drew her as well as I could behind the door, on the other side of which lay the two bleeding prisoners who had tried to take her husband’s life.
Groans, shouts, curses, yells and pistol-shots sounded in the hall and on the stairs; only the back of the chair remained in Lester’s grasp, but heaps of men felled by its weight and crushed by their struggling fellows had tumbled down and been kicked over the broken balustrade to the hall below.
The guards had rallied from their surprise, and sparing the escaped for the sake of the precious shield they bore, turned their fire upon the escaping, cutting them off until the whole corridor below was blocked with wounded, dead and dying. One more man appeared at the clerk’s door: he was a powerful fellow with a horse-pistol and a stone-hammer. Lester had staggered back from a flying iron bar aimed at his head by a villain he struck at without reaching, and who had bounded down the stairs to receive his death from the guard’s musket at the door. The prisoner with the horse-pistol saw his advantage, and, cursing the governor in blasphemous rage, aimed at him as he fled. Recovering himself, Lester struck for his arm, but not soon enough to stop the fire: the charge reached its object, but not his heart, as it was meant to do. It glanced aside, and Mr. Denham’s pistol dropped: his right arm fell maimed at his side; but the field was clear, and Lester, catching the fallen pistol, went down the stairs over the bodies in a series of flying leaps.
“Where’s my wife?” exclaimed Mr. Denham, turning round dizzily and trying to steady his head with his uninjured hand. “Tell her I’ve gone for Nellie;” and he made an effort to rush after Lester, but, reaching the top of the stairs, dropped suddenly upon a convict’s body stretched there by his own pistol. Then I saw by the reddish hole in his trousers just below the knee that he had been wounded before, though he did not know it, and was now streaming with blood.
“Where’s Nell? where’s Edward?” asked Ruth, sitting up with a ghastly face, and looking at me in a bewildered stare.
“All right, all safe, tell the lady,” cried a clear, exulting voice from below: “here’s sweet little Miss Nellie, without a scratch on her.”
It was Lester’s shout from the yard, and it rang through all the building.
“Do you hear, Ruth? do you hear?” I screamed, beside myself with joy and thankfulness. “He has saved your husband a dozen times, that hero, and now he brings back your child to you. Oh, what a noble fellow! how I envy him his feelings!”
He was in the room by this time with Nellie in his arms: he heard me and gave me just one look. I never saw him again, but I never shall forget it, for it revealed the long agony of a blighted life that moment struggling into hope again through expiation. He did not wait for Ruth’s broken cry of gratitude, but was gone as soon as the child was in her arms.
“Come, boys,” I heard him cry cheerily outside, “lend a hand to help the governor to his room: he’s got a scratch or two, and the doctor’s coming to dress them. He will be all right again before we can get things set straight round here.”
Governor Denham’s wounds were not so slight as Lester hoped, but they were not dangerous, and when, to prevent my aunt’s alarm for my safety (for the news of “the break” spread rapidly through the town), I parted from my friends before nightfall and rode back to the hotel as I had come, I left three of the most excitedly grateful and happy people behind me I had ever seen.
“I suppose it is no use to urge it further, Ruth darling,” said her husband as we parted, “but I really wish you would go to San Francisco with our friend and let Nellie have a chance to forget the shock she has endured. You need the change too, if you would ever think of yourself.”
“It is because I do think of myself that I prefer to remain where I am happiest,” said Ruth decidedly. “As for Nell, she is a pioneer child, and will soon be as merry and fearless as ever. But, Jenny dear, we owe you an apology for the novel dinner-party we have given you. When you come back it will seem like a frightful dream, and not a reality, we shall all be so quiet and orderly again.” As we stood alone in the hall, from which every sign of the late terrible conflict had been removed save the bloodstains that had sunk into the stone beyond the power of a hasty washing to obliterate, Ruth said in a low whispering tone that was full of pent-up feeling, “I told you that Lester was a murderer condemned for life, Jenny, but there were extenuating circumstances in connection with his crime. That is not his name we call him by: I do not even know his real one, but I am convinced that he belongs to educated and reputable people, and that he suffers the keenest remorse for the wild life that led him so terribly astray. He became desperately attached to a Spanish girl, who was married as a child to a brutal fellow who deserted her, and she thought him dead. She and Lester were to be married, I believe, when the missing husband reappeared and tormented them both. The girl he treated shockingly, and it was in a fit of rage at his abuse of her that Lester killed him; but appearances were all against the deed, and he was convicted of murder in the second degree and sentenced for life. Edward is kind and discriminating, and he pitied him. Lester told his story freely, and my husband gained his lasting gratitude by taking care of the wretched girl and paying her passage in a vessel bound for her native town in Mexico. The only favor we could show him here was to separate him from the wretches in the common prison by making him a ‘trusty’ or prison-servant. He understood our motive in doing so, and was very thankful and most reliable. What we owe him to-day you know: he makes light of it, protesting that he only picked up Nell from the gulch where the escaped convicts had dropped her on their way to the hills; but he cannot lessen the debt: it is too great to be calculated even.”
The subsequent report proved that twenty-eight prisoners had conspired to effect the break, and by secreting the tools they wrought with in their sleeves passed in on Saturday from the wall-building to cut an entrance through the ceiling of their own corridor into the loft above Mr. Foster’s room, through which they dropped while the family were at dinner, choosing that hour so as to produce a surprise and secure the child, who always went below with Lester to help carry up the coffee. Of the whole number, five were killed outright and six wounded: twelve escaped uninjured, but were nearly all afterward retaken; and five repented their share in the movement or lacked courage to carry it out, and so remained in the prison. The most interesting item of the whole came to me at San Francisco in my friend’s letter. It said: “We are looking forward with great delight to your visit, and planning every pleasure our sterile life can yield to make it enjoyable. But you will not see Lester: he is gone. His pardon, full and entire in view of his courage and fidelity, and the manly stand he took against the murderous plotters, came on Monday last, and at nightfall he left the prison to go by the stage to meet the midnight train. ‘To Mexico!’ were his last words to us. Heaven bless him, and grant him wisdom and courage to retrieve the past and open a fair bright future!”
MARGARET HOSMER.
FAREWELL.
[From Friederich Bodenstedt’s _Aus dem Nachlasse Mirza-Schaffys._]
Aloft the moon in heaven’s dome.
Sultry the night, tempests foretelling: For the last time before I roam
I see the surf in splendor swelling.
A ship glides by, a shadowy form,
Faint roseate lights around me sparkle, A gathering mist precedes the storm,
And far-off forest tree-tops darkle.
The silver-crested waves are lashing The pebbly shore tumultuously:
Absorbed I watch their ceaseless dashing, Myself as still as bush or tree.
Within arise fond memories
Of moonlight evenings long since vanished, Once full of life as waves and breeze,
From this familiar shore now banished.
Hushed in the grove is the birds’ song, Spring’s blossoms tempests caused to perish; Yet what through eye and ear did throng The heart for evermore will cherish.
AUBER FORESTIER.
THE INSTRUCTION OF DEAF MUTES.
While I was a teacher in the Illinois Institution for the Deaf and Dumb the following letters were written by some of the pupils. The first was written the day after Thanksgiving, and ran thus:
“DEAR MOTHER: We had Thanks be unto God, no school yesterday, Turkey mince-pies, and many other kinds of fruits.”
The day after Christmas a boy wrote: “We had Glory to God in the highest, no school yesterday, and a fine time.” What he really meant to say was, that they had a motto in evergreens of “Glory to God in the Highest,” and they had also a holiday.
This motto, by the way, got up by the pupils themselves, was striking. It was placed over one of the dining-room doors, and the ceiling being very low it was necessarily put just under it. A single glance sufficed to show the utter impossibility of getting the “Glory” any higher.
The younger pupils write in almost every letter, “There are —- pupils in this institution, —- boys and —- girls. All of the pupils are well, but some are sick.” This is English pretty badly broken.
These letters serve to illustrate a remark which Principal Peet of the New York institution made to me not long ago: “The great difficulty in instructing deaf mutes is in teaching them the English language.” In this, of course, he had reference to the deaf mutes of our own country, and his statement appears, on its face, paradoxical. That American children should learn at least to read the English language, even when they cannot speak it, seems quite a matter of course. The fact is, however, different. The first disadvantage under which the deaf mute labors is the limited extent to which his mental powers have been developed. This deficiency is attributable to two causes–his deprivation of the immense amount of information to be gained by the sense of hearing, and his want of language. Before an infant, one possessed of all its faculties, has acquired at least an understanding of articulate language, it has but vague and feeble ideas. No clear, distinct conception is shaped in its mind. “Ideas,” says M. Marcel in his essay on the _Study of Languages_, “are not innate: they must be received before they can be communicated. This is so true that native curiosity impels us to listen long before we can speak…. Impression … must therefore precede expression.” Real thought, therefore, it will be seen, grows with the child’s acquisition of language–an acquisition which is obtained in the earlier years entirely through the organ of hearing. This principal avenue to the mind is closed to the deaf mute. It is evident, therefore, that, lacking these two fundamental sources of all knowledge, his mental growth is incredibly slower than that of the hearing child. All that can be learned by means of the other senses is, however, learned rapidly, these being quickened and stimulated by the absence of one. Hence, the deaf-mute child of eight or ten years of age often appears as bright and intelligent as his more favored playmate. The latter, however, has a store of knowledge and a fund of thought wholly unknown to the deaf mute.
But it is the want of written language, and the obstacles in the way of its acquirement, which constitute the chief disability of the deaf mute in the attempt to gain an education. If you set a child of seven years of age to learn Greek, requiring him to receive and express his ideas wholly in that language, you would not hope for any very clear expression of those ideas with less than a year’s instruction, nor would you expect him to appreciate the delicate beauties of the _Odyssey_ in that length of time. The progress of the deaf mute in any language, even the most simply constructed, is greatly slower than that of the hearing child. The latter is assisted at every step by his previous knowledge of his vernacular. The former does not think in words, as you have done from your earliest recollection. Undertake to do your thinking in a foreign tongue, of which you have but a limited knowledge: the attempt is discouraging. The deaf mute thinks in signs. This, his only vehicle of thought, is a hindrance instead of a help in learning written language, there being no analogy whatever between the two methods of expressing ideas.
With these tremendous odds against him the deaf-mute child is set to the task of acquiring a knowledge of written language. His ideas (in signs) shape themselves in this wise: “Horses, two, run fast.” Of course he does not think these words. The idea of a horse, its shape and color, is probably imaged in his mind, or if the horse be not present to his sight, the sign which he uses for that animal comes into his thought. He next touches or grasps or holds up two of his fingers, which he uses on all occasions to express number. Then the idea of running by means of its sign, and lastly that of speed, suggest themselves, the last two, however, being probably closely connected, as in our own minds.
Observe, here, that the order in which the thoughts arrange themselves is different from the manner of those who think by means of words. The main idea is “horse,” and he gives it the preference, as the older and more simply constructed languages always did. It is reserved for our cultured and perfected language to describe an object before telling what that object is. Who will say that it is according to philosophical principles that we say, “A fine large red apple,” instead of “An apple, fine, red, large”? A deaf-mute boy tells me that he saw two dogs fighting yesterday. He explains it in signs in this manner: “Dogs, two, fight; first, second ear bit, blood much. Second ran, hid; saw yesterday, I.” Thus the fact is arranged in his mind. Let him attempt to translate–for it is nothing but translation–this simple statement into English. The perplexity which first seizes the hapless school-boy over his “Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres” is nothing to it. Like him, he must go hunting, as if for a needle in a haystack, for the word to put first. It is the last idea in his sign-sentence. Then he slowly learns to pick out the words and arrange them in English order–an order, as I said before, not founded on philosophical principles, but in most instances wholly arbitrary. This is by no means an easy task. Years of training do not ensure him against ludicrous lapses. A fair percentage of the whole number educated learn to construct sentences with tolerable accuracy; a smaller percentage of these acquire fluency, precision and, in some rare instances, grace of expression; but a large proportion never become good English scholars.
The method of beginning their instruction is by means of simple familiar objects, or, where these cannot be obtained, illustrations of them. A picture of a horse is placed, at one end of the teacher’s blackboard. Instantly two fingers of each hand go up to the top of each little head. If it were a picture of an animal with longer ears, each would make an ass of himself. So far so good, only they do not know the name of this animal, familiar as they are with him. The teacher writes the name under the picture. The article “A” is also written, which, though it puzzles them, they must take on trust. It cannot be explained at this stage. The teacher then holds up an ear of corn. Of course they know that very well, and make the sign for it, shelling the fore finger. It is then laid upon the opposite end of the blackboard, and its name written under it. A short pause, with a glance first at the horse and then at the corn, soon brings out the sign for “eats,” which is written in its proper place, and the sentence is complete. The little “ignorants,” as they are dubbed by the older pupils, are then plunged head and ears into the task of learning to form the written characters as well as the construction of sentences. It is setting foot in an unexplored wilderness. No ray of light penetrates the darkness of that wilderness save the tiny torch just placed in their hands.
Mr. Isaac Lewis Peet, principal of the New York institution, before referred to in this paper, has lately been preparing a textbook for the use of deaf-mute instructors, which promises to be of great value. It reduces the whole of the earlier stages of instruction to a perfected system, by which each part of speech, with the various moods and tenses of the verbs, the different cases of nouns, etc., is brought out in successive stages entirely by means of sentences. A few illustrations will suffice to show the scope of the work, which promises to be of much value also in the ordinary school-room, for which it is likewise designed by the author. An object, such as a pitcher, is placed on the teacher’s desk. A pupil is required to come forward and touch it. The teacher then asks the question, writing it upon the blackboard or spelling it upon his fingers, “What did John do?” Answer, “He touched the pitcher.” A change from a boy to a girl brings out another pronoun; a change of objects, another noun; a change of actions, another verb.
In this way, by gradual, systematic stages, the language is taught by actual and constant use, the teacher doing away entirely with signs in the school-room. This is an end constantly aimed at in deaf-mute instruction, as it forces the pupils to use language instead of signs to express their thoughts. By constant effort at first, and constant practice, words gradually take the place of signs in their modes of thought, though not perhaps entirely.
Objective ideas are readily acquired by deaf mutes, their perceptive faculties being usually keen and quick. Abstract subjects are less readily apprehended, and sometimes cause great surprise. One Sunday morning Dr. Gillett, principal of the Illinois institution, had for the Scripture lesson in the chapel the “Resurrection.” When he had made it plain and simple for the comprehension of the new pupils, some of the ideas, brought out by the lesson caused great astonishment, and even consternation among them. The little fellows shook their heads in utter skepticism at the thought of themselves dying.
“I’m not going to die,” said one. “Sick people die: I’m well and strong;” standing on his feet and shaking his arms in attestation of the fact.
“But you will be sick some time,” said Dr. G., “and you will have to die.”
But they did not believe him in the least. The next morning one little fellow met the principal and said, “You said yesterday I was going to die: well, here I am, and I ain’t dead yet.”
On Monday morning, when they assembled in school, they were still full of the new ideas. “Dr. Gillett had said they all had to die: would they, truly?” they asked me. I could only confirm the statement. Whereupon they all began drawing graves, tombstones, weeping willows, and all such funereal paraphernalia upon the blackboards. It was a solemn scene, save for my own irrepressible laughter, which they thought very unaccountable when they learned that I must suffer a like fate. I explained as cheerfully as I could the delights of going to heaven, whereupon one boy burst into tears, saying he did not want to go to heaven: he would rather go home and see his mother.
One asked if we should go to heaven in the cars. I said I had been told that we should go through the air, perhaps fly there. A little girl immediately held up a wood-cut of a vulture, saying, “Ugly thing! I don’t want to be one.” A boy whose new skates lay spoiling for the ice in his trunk asked if he could skate there. Not having quite the faith of the author of _Gates Ajar_, I could not answer “Yes” unhesitatingly. A girl asked if fishes went to heaven. I answered “No.” “Where, then?” I replied that we ate the fishes, but was greatly troubled afterward lest she should confound me with the question, “What becomes of the snakes?”
In addition to the ordinary one-hand alphabet, the only one commonly used by deaf mutes, there are five others. One of these is the two-hand alphabet, sometimes used by hearing children at school. It is clumsy and inconvenient, however. A second is made by the arms alone. Still a third is formed by means of the body and arms also, in various positions, to represent the different letters, and is used in signaling at a distance. It is not often learned by deaf mutes, however. A fourth is made entirely with the feet. But the most curious of all is the facial or expression alphabet. Various emotions and passions expressed on the face represent, by means of their initial letters, the letters of the alphabet. Thus, A is indicated by an expression of avarice, B by boldness, C by curiosity, D by devotion, etc. This alphabet is sometimes so admirably rendered that words can easily be spelled by means of it by the spectators.
Deaf mutes also excel in pantomime. A large amount of gesture and pantomime is naturally employed in their conversation, and it thus becomes easy to train them to perform pantomimic plays. I have seen one young man, a deaf mute, whose narration in this manner of a hunter who made a pair of buckskin breeches, hung them up during the summer, drew them on when the rainy season came on, and found a hornet’s nest within, was interpreted amid roars of laughter. Thus told, it was far more vivid than words could have possibly made it, and infinitely more amusing.
The sign-language, growing slowly from natural signs–i.e., signs representing the shape, quality or use of objects, or the action expressed by verbs–has at length become a perfected system. This language is the same throughout Europe and America, so that deaf mutes from any country of Christendom who have acquired the regular system can readily communicate with each other, however diverse their nationality. Being formed from analogy, many of the signs are exceedingly expressive. Thus, the sign for “headache” is made by darting the two forefingers toward each other just in front of the forehead. The sign for “summer” is drawing the curved forefinger across the brow, as if wiping off the sweat. “Heat,” or rather “hotness,” is expressed by blowing with open mouth into the hand, and then shaking it suddenly as if burned. “Flame” and “fire” are represented by a quivering, upward motion of all the fingers. The memory of the ancient ruffled shirt of our forefathers is perpetuated in the sign for “genteel,” “gentility” or “fine.” It is the whole open hand, with fingers pointing upward, shaken in front of the breast. “Gentleman” and “lady” are expressed by the signs for “man” (the hat-brim) and “woman” (the bonnet-string), followed by the ruffled-shirt sign. The sign for “Jesus” is doubtless the most tender and touching in the whole language. It is made by touching the palm of each hand in succession with the middle finger of the other. This represents the print of the nails. The name “Jesus” itself does not convey so pathetic and expressive a meaning as does this sign.
Hearing persons who understand the sign-language sometimes find it exceedingly convenient as a means of communicating when they wish to be private, I remember an amusing incident occurring at a festival which I attended while teaching in the Illinois institution. Another teacher and myself sat apart, surrounded by entire strangers. Near by stood a lady in a gorgeous green silk dress, with many gaudy accessories. My companion remarked in signs to me upon her striking costume. I replied in like manner, expressing my appreciation of so magnificent a proportion of apple-green silk. There was a great deal of lady, but a great deal more of dress.
“See them dummies, Jake,” she remarked to her husband at her side, whose dazzling expanse of bright-figured velvet waistcoat and massive gold chain was in admirable keeping with his wife’s attire. It was a _landscape_, begging the word, after Turner’s own heart. “Them’s two dummies from the asylum, I know,” she continued. “Let’s watch ’em make signs.” And she gazed upon us from the serene heights of green sward with an amused, patronizing smile.
We dared not laugh. Dummies we had been dubbed, and dummies we must remain to the end of the scene. Were ever mortals in such a fix? We talked _them_ over well, however, while suffering tortures from our pent-up emotions.
“That there one’s rayther good-looking,” ventured the proprietor of the velvet and gold.
“Not so mighty, either,” said his wife, bridling. “Face is too chalky-like, and the other one is too fat.” This was near being the death of us both, as the two critics together would have turned the scale at near five hundred. Consternation seized us just then, however, as we saw a fellow-teacher approaching us who would be sure to address us in spoken language and reveal us as two cheats. Hastily retreating from the scene, we made our way to an anteroom, where it was not considered a sin to laugh.
The instruction of deaf mutes in articulate speech has of late years attracted considerable attention in both Europe and America. In some of the European schools, in the Clark Institute at Northampton, Massachusetts, and in a few of our State institutions it is brought to great perfection. There are also special schools for this system of teaching in most of our large cities. The majority of pupils in these schools converse with ease, and understand readily what is said to them by means of the motion of the lips. The Clark Institute at Northampton, already referred to, under the conduct of Miss Harriet Rogers, is the largest and most widely known of the schools for this special method of instruction in this country. This is not a State institution, but one endowed by the munificence of a private gentleman, and consequently subject to none of the restrictions imposed on the public institutions. Of course, only the most promising pupils are sent there, and from these a careful selection is made, by which means the highest possible success is ensured. Some of the State institutions, however, burdened as they are with a large and unassorted mass of pupils, have made most encouraging progress in this direction. Of these, one of the most successful is the Illinois institution. In its last published report the correspondence between the principal and the parents of those pupils who have been taught by this method is given, showing the utmost satisfaction at the progress made and results attained.
Deaf mutes are divided into two classes–viz., entire mutes and semi-mutes. The first comprises those who either have been born deaf or have become so at so early an age as to have retained no knowledge of articulate speech. The second class embraces those who have lost their hearing after attaining such an age as still to be able to talk. Speech is more easily and perfectly learned if the pupil has learned to read before the loss of hearing. A knowledge of the sounds and powers of the letters enables him to acquire the pronunciation of new words with much greater facility than would be otherwise possible, giving him a foundation on which to build his acquisition of spoken language. To this last class, semi-mutes, articulation is invaluable, enabling them to pursue their education with less difficulty, and also to retain their power of communication with the outside world. In regard to entire mutes, the utility of the accomplishment is seriously questioned by some experienced educators. The fact must be admitted that, while a much larger number of entire mutes can be taught to converse intelligently and agreeably than would be imagined by those unacquainted with the results obtained, the great mass of the deaf and dumb must still be instructed wholly by means of written language. In most instances, to ensure success, instruction should be begun at a very much earlier age than it is possible to receive them into school, and constantly practiced by all who hold communication with the pupil, doing away entirely with the habit of using signs. It also requires pupils of bright, quick mind, keen perceptive faculties, and an amount of intelligence and perseverance on the part of the parents not found in the average parent of deaf mutes; for it is well known that a very large proportion of deaf mutes come from the poorer and more illiterate classes. This is mainly attributable to the fact that by far the larger number lose their hearing in infancy or early childhood through disease–scarlet fever, measles and diphtheria being probably the most frequent causes of deafness. Among those able to give skillful nursing and to obtain good medical aid the number of cases resulting in deafness is reduced to a minimum. Accidents, too, causing deafness, occur more frequently among those unable to give their children proper care. Congenital deafness is also probably greater among the laboring classes, and is undoubtedly due to similar causes.
The methods used in the teaching of articulation form a subject of much interest. The system has materially changed within the past few years. The first step to be taken is to convey a knowledge of the powers of the consonants and sounds of the vowels. Formerly, this was done by what was called the “imitation method.” The letter H was usually the point of attack, the aspirate being the simplest of all the powers of the letters. The teacher, holding up the hand of the pupil, makes the aspirate by breathing upon his palm. This is soon imitated, and thus a starting-point is gained. The feeling produced upon the hand is the method of giving him an idea of the powers of the consonants. A later and better system is that called “visible speech.” This is a system of symbols representing positions of the mouth and tongue and all the organs of speech, and if the pupil does what the symbols direct he cannot help giving the powers of the letters correctly. By this method a more distinct and perfect articulation is gained, with one-half the labor of the other method. As fast as the powers of the letters are learned, the spelling of words is undertaken. Many words are pronounced perfectly after a few trials: others, however, often defy the most strenuous and persevering effort.
Entire mutes who undertake articulation are like hearing children endeavoring to keep up the full curriculum of a modern school and pursue the study of music in addition: the ordinary studies demand all the energies of the child. Articulation consumes much time and strength. Exceptional cases are of course to be found which are indeed a triumph of culture, but the great mass of the deaf and dumb must always be content with written language.
Articulation is also exceedingly trying to the unused or long-disused throat and lungs. In this the teachers are likewise sufferers. The tax upon the vocal organs is necessarily much greater than that in ordinary speaking schools. But the disuse of the vocal organs in articulate speech does not indicate that they are wholly unused. A lady visiting an institution for the deaf and dumb a few years ago poetically called the pupils the “children of silence.” Considering the tremendous volume of noise they are able to keep up with both feet and throat, the title is amusingly inappropriate. A deaf-and-dumb institution is the noisiest place in the world.
In summing up the results usually attained, let no discontented taxpayer grumble at the large outlays annually made in behalf of the deaf and dumb. If they learned absolutely nothing in the school-room, the intelligence they gain by contact with each other, by the lectures in signs, by intercourse with teachers, and the regular and systematic physical habits acquired, are of untold value. Add to this a tolerable acquaintance with the common English branches, such as reading, writing, arithmetic–one of their most useful acquirements–geography and history, and we have an amount of education which is of incalculable value.
JENNIE EGGLESTON ZIMMERMAN.
OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.
THE CITY OF VIOLETS.
Wartburg, with its pleasant memories of delightful excursions during the previous summer, was covered with snow, as if buried in slumber, when I dashed past it on the 25th of March. A gray mantle of mist obscured the sky, and by all the roadsides stood bushes loaded with green buds shivering in the frosty air. The exquisite landscape, which I had last seen glowing with such brilliant hues, now appeared robed in one monotonous tint of gray, and the ancient towers and pointed roofs of Weimar loomed with a melancholy aspect through the dense fog. Only the welcome of my faithful friends, Gerhard Rohlfs and his pretty, fair-haired wife, was blithe and gay. The brave desert wanderer and bird of passage has now built himself a little wigwam or nest near the railway-station: the grand duke of Weimar gave him for the purpose a charming piece of ground with a delightful view. On the 25th of March a light veil of snow still rested on the ground, but two days later we were listening to the notes of the lark and gathering violets to take to Schiller’s house and adorn the table of the beloved singer. Everything was illumined by the brilliant sunlight–the narrow bedstead on which he died, and all the numerous withered laurel-wreaths and bouquets of flowers that filled it–while outside, in Schiller’s little garden, in the bed where his bust is placed, violets nodded at us between the leaves of the luxuriant ivy.
And we carried in our hands bouquets of violets when we stood before Goethe’s house to pay our respects to the lady who in these bustling days remains a revered memento of the times of Carl Augustus and his poet-friend–Ottilie von Goethe. The beloved daughter-in-law of the great master of song lives in the poet’s house in the utmost seclusion: few strangers know that she receives visitors. Only on rare occasions is the classic little _salon_ opened in the evening to a select few–only now and then, when the health of the aged lady permits it, a circle of faithful friends gather round her listening eagerly to her vivid descriptions of long-past days. The grand duke himself often knocks at this door, and the grand duchess and princesses take pleasure in coming hither. With deep emotion we crossed the threshold over which Goethe’s coffin was borne, and with light step ascended the broad, easy staircase of the house that we had so often heard described. Half-effaced frescoes, which had gleamed over the head of the king of poesy, looked down upon us, and our eyes wandered over the bronze figures past which Goethe had walked day after day.
On reaching the second story, Ottilie von Goethe came forward to greet us, looking like an apparition from another world. Her figure was small and fragile, but there was an aristocratic repose in all her movements. A white lace cap trimmed with dark-red velvet bows rested on her hair, which was arranged over her temples in thick gray curls, framing her face, from which a pair of brown eyes greeted us with a bright, cordial glance. A white knit shawl covered her shoulders and a black silk dress fell around her in ample folds. At her side stood her younger sister, a canoness, who was paying her a few days’ visit–an amiable lady with a very cheerful temperament. Ottilie von Goethe shared the violets with her. An easy conversation commenced. Frau von Goethe was very much interested in Herr Rohlfs’ travels and Edward Vogel’s fate, and said that one of her grandsons also cherished the same ardent, restless longing to see foreign countries and people. Then she spoke of her own journeys to Italy, “a long, long time ago,” and of the charms of Venice and Verona. Underlying the words was a slight tone of regret that she was now not only bound to the spot, but also to the house, for invalids cannot venture out of doors to enjoy the spring until the first of May, and September drives them back into their quiet cell. “How often one longs for a distant horizon!” she sighed. My eyes wandered over the wilderness of ancient roofs upon which the windows of Goethe’s house looked out, and discovered a small spot where the blue mountain-peaks appeared.
“Why, there is a distant horizon!” I involuntarily exclaimed.
“Ah, but even that is so near!” replied Frau von Goethe, smiling.
The room where we were, as well as the adjoining apartment into which we were allowed to peep, was full of relics of all kinds. Each article probably had its special history, from the paintings and drawings on the walls and the old-fashioned chests, chairs and tables, to the cups, vases, glasses, coverlets, and cushions arranged in the neatest order, some standing or lying around the apartment, others visible through the glass doors of a cupboard. But the most interesting object to me was the portrait of Goethe painted by Stieler. It has been made familiar to all by copies, and represents the poet, though at an advanced age, in the full possession of his physical strength. He holds in his hand a letter, from which he is in the act of looking up: the face is turned slightly aside. It seems as if the glance was one of greeting to some friend who is just entering. The colors are still wonderfully fresh and the expression bewitching. The large eyes beam with the fire of genius, Olympian majesty is enthroned upon the brow, and the curve of the lips possesses unequaled grace and beauty. A more aristocratic, noble mouth cannot be imagined. Who could have resisted the eloquence of those lips?
“This picture is not in the least idealized: it is a perfect likeness of my father-in-law,” observed Frau von Goethe, and added that this portrait by Stieler was one of the best which had ever been painted. Not far from the superb portrait of the father appears the melancholy face of the son, August von Goethe, but I sought in vain for a picture of the bud so early broken, Goethe’s granddaughter, the lovely Alma, who died in Vienna.
Fran von Goethe noticed with evident pleasure our eager interest in her surroundings, and showed us many a relic. As she spoke of the radiance of those long-past days which still gilded her quiet life, she seemed to me like the venerable figure in the tale of the “Seven Ravens,” who relates marvelous stories to a listening group. Gradually a throng of shapes from the dim past entered the small room and gathered round the speaker, who suddenly became transfigured by the light of youth. She was again the poet’s cheerful nurse, the fair flower of the household, the happy mother, the intellectual woman, the centre of a brilliant circle. I gazed as if at a buried world, which suddenly became once more alive: its inhabitants, clad in antique garments, walked past us, stared in astonishment, and seemed to say, We too were happy and beloved, feted and praised, the blue sky arched over us also, and we plucked violets and rejoiced in their fragrance till the deep, heavy sleep came.
Wait–only wait:
Soon thou too will rest.
It was a cold, feeble hand I respectfully kissed at parting, and I remained under its spell, lingering in the strange world conjured up by Ottilie von Goethe, till we stood before Goethe’s pretty summer-house and the blue violets peeped at us from the turf. The windows stood wide open, the mild breeze swept gently in, and the sun also looked to see if everything was in order in “der alte Herr’s” rooms. Far away between the trees gleamed the white pillars of the house, and the ground at our feet was covered with a blue carpet. It is said that nowhere in North Germany are there so many violets as in the vicinity of Weimar. And why? Because, as the people poetically say, “der alte Herr,” whenever he went to walk, always filled his pockets with violet-seeds, and scattered them everywhere with lavish hands.
ELISE POLKO.
LA BEFANA.
Putting out of the question the Piazza of St. Peter’s with Bernini’s encircling colonnades, which is a special thing and unlike anything else in the world, the Piazza Navona is the handsomest piazza in Rome. It is situated in the thickest and busiest part of the city, far out of the usual haunts of the foreign residents, and nearly in the centre of that portion of the city which is enclosed between the Corso and the great curving sweep of the Tiber. It is handsome, not only from its great space and regular shape–a somewhat elongated double cube–but from its three fountains richly ornamented with statuary of no mean artistic excellence, and from the clean and convenient pavement which, intended for foot-passengers only, occupies all the space save a carriage-way close to the houses encircling it. This large extent of pavement, well provided with benches, and protected from the incursion of carriages, which make almost every other part of Rome more or less unsafe for all save the most wide-awake passengers, renders the Piazza Navona a playground specially adapted for nurses and their charges, who may generally be seen occupying it in considerable numbers. But on the occasion on which I wish to call the reader’s attention to it the scene it presents is a very different and far more locally characteristic one.
We will suppose it to be about midnight on the fifth of January, the day preceding the well-known revel, now come to be mainly a children’s festival, which English people call Twelfth Night and celebrate by the consumption of huge plumcakes and the drawing of lots for the offices of king and queen of the revels. The Italians call it the festival of the “Befana,” the word being a readily-perceived corruption of “Epifania.” Of course the sense and meaning of the original term have been entirely forgotten, and the Befana of the Italian populace is a sort of witch, mainly benevolent indeed, and especially friendly to children, to whom in the course of the night she brings presents, to be found by them in the morning in a stocking or a shoe or any other such fantastic hiding-place. But Italians are all more or less children of a larger growth, and at Rome especially the populace of all ages, ever ready for _circenses_ in any form, make a point of “keeping” the festival of the Befana, who holds her high court on her own night in the Piazza Navona.
We will betake ourselves thither about midnight, as I have said. It is a bitterly cold night, and the stars are shining brilliantly in the clear, steely-looking sky–such a night as Rome has still occasionally at this time of year, and as she used to have more frequently when Horace spoke of incautious early risers getting nipped by the cold. One of the first things that strikes us as we make our way to the place of general rendezvous muffled in our thickest and heaviest cloaks and shawls is the apparent insensibility of this people to the cold. One would have expected it to be just the reverse. But whether it be that their organisms have stored up such a quantity of sunshine during the summer as enables them to defy the winter’s cold, or whether their Southern blood runs more rapidly in their veins, it is certain that men, women and children–and especially the women–will for amusement’s sake expose themselves to a degree of cold and inclement weather that a Northerner would shrink from.
For some days previously, in preparation for the annual revel, a series of temporary booths have by special permission of the municipality been erected around the piazza. In these will be sold every kind of children’s toys–of the more ordinary sorts, that is to say; for Roman children have never yet been rendered fastidious in this respect by the artistic inventions that have been provided for more civilized but perhaps not happier childhood. There will also be a store of masks, colored dominoes, harlequins’ dresses, monstrous and outrageous pasteboard noses, and, especially and above all, every kind of contrivance for making a noise. In this latter kind the peculiar and characteristic specialty of the day are straight tin trumpets some four or five feet in length. These are in universal request among young and old; and the general preference for them is justified by the peculiarly painful character of the note which they produce. It is a very loud and vibrating sound of the harshest possible quality. One feels when hearing it as if the French phrase of “skinning the ears” were not a metaphorical but a literal description of the result of listening to the sound. And when hundreds of blowers of these are wandering about the streets in all parts of the town, but especially in the neighborhood of the Piazza Navona, making night hideous with their braying, it may be imagined that those who go to their beds instead of doing homage to the Befana have not a very good time of it there.
It is a curious thing that the Italians, who are denizens of “the land of song,” should take especial delight in mere abundance of discordant noise. Yet such is unquestionably the case. They are in their festive hours the most noisy people on earth. And the farther southward you go the more pronounced and marked is the propensity. You may hear boys and men imitating the most inharmonious and vociferous street-cries solely for the purpose of exercising their lungs and making a noise. The criers of the newspapers in the streets must take an enthusiastic delight in their trade; and I have heard boys in the street who had no papers to sell, and nothing on earth to do with the business, screaming out the names of the different papers at the hour of their distribution at the utmost stretch of their voices, and for no reason on earth save the pleasure of doing it–just as one cock begins to crow when he hears another.
The crowd on the piazza is so thick and close-packed that it is a difficult matter to move in any direction when you are once within it, but good-humor and courtesy are universal. An Italian crowd is always the best-behaved crowd in the world–partly, I take it, from the natural patience of the people, and the fact that nobody is ever in a hurry to move from the place in which he may happen to be; and partly as a consequence of the general sobriety. Even on such a night of saturnalia as this of the Befana very little drunkenness is to be seen. Although the crowd is so dense that every one’s shoulder is closely pressed against that of his neighbor, there is a great deal of dancing going on. Here and there a ring is formed, carved out, as it were, from the solid mass of human beings, in which some half dozen couples are revolving more or less in time to the braying of a bagpipe or scraping of a fiddle, executing something which has more or less semblance to a waltz. The mode in which these rings are formed is at once simple and efficacious. Any couple who feel disposed to dance link themselves together and begin to bump themselves against their immediate neighbors. These accept the intimation with the most perfect good-humor, and assist in shoving back those behind them. A space is thus gained in the first instance barely enough for the original couple to gyrate in. But by violently and persistently dancing up against the foremost of the little ring the area is gradually enlarged: first one other couple and then another are moved to follow the example, and they in their turn assist in bumping out the limits of the ring till it has become some twenty feet or so in diameter. These impromptu ball-rooms rarely much exceed that size, but dozens of them may be found in the course of one’s peregrinations around the large piazza. The occupants of some of them will be found to consist of town-bred Romans, and those of others of people from the country. There is no mistaking them one for the other, and the two elements rarely mingle together. The differences to be observed in the bearing and ways of the two are not a little amusing, and often suggestive of considerations not uninstructive to the sociologist. The probabilities are that the music in the case of the first mentioned of the above classes will be found to consist of a fiddle–in that of the latter, of a bagpipe, the old classical _cornamusa_, which has been the national instrument of the hill-country around the Campagna for it