Belford's Magazine, Vol. II, No. 3, February 1889

Vandeleur is snorting like a steam calliope in bad repair, and I am breathing with the jerky movement of an overworked accordion. "I can go no farther," he exclaims, dropping down in a huddled heap at the foot of a scrubby pine-tree like a bag of old clothes.

I don't feel much in a hurry either, but I try to infuse some life into him by hustling him and shaking him in a brutal and unsympathetic manner.

"Do you hear that?" I howl in despair as the baying of the bloodhounds rolls towards us over the meadow like muttered thunder. "There is nothing to do but climb this tree, unless you want to furnish a free lunch for those brutes."

"Free lunch? get me some," he mumbles, relapsing into his old idiotic state again. Then I fall upon that unfortunate man in a fury of rage, and pound him into a consciousness of his danger.

He consents at last to be pushed or rather dragged up in a tree, whose lowest limb I straddle with a feeling of wild joy and ecstasy just as the hounds rush past below, their flashing eyes looking to me just then as large as the headlights of a host of engines.

"Let's go home now," again murmurs the helpless creature at my side, shaking so on the limb that I am compelled to strap him there by his suspenders.

"Ain't we going home?" he chatters. "I want a good supper, and then a bed —bed," lingering on the last word with soothing emphasis.

"Oh, you'd like a nice supper, would you?" I growl. "Well, those bloodhounds are after the same thing. Perhaps you had better slide down the tree and interview them on the chances. Then one or the other of you would be satisfied."

"But they've gone away."

"Well, you needn't think you have been forgotten, just the same. Don't you see, wretched man, that the morning is breaking," pointing to the east, where the sun had begun "paintin' 'er red." "Once in the high road we should be discovered at once; here at least we are safe – uncomfortably safe," as I moved across the limb and impaled myself on a long two-inch splinter with spurs on it.

He fell into a doze after that, only rousing himself now and then to utter strange croaking sounds that frightened me almost as much as the baying of the bloodhounds. I think I fell asleep too for a few moments, for when I was roused by an awful yell proceeding from my companion I found that he had burst his bonds and fallen out of the tree, while the bright sun was shining in my eyes.

Visions of Ethel's face over our charming breakfast-table rose before me, and I seemed to scent afar off the steam of fragrant mocha in a dainty Sèvres cup as she held it towards me. The thought of that morning libation settled the business.

I would march stalwartly home – yea, though a thousand bloodhounds with dangerous appetites barred my way!

I slid down the tree and found Vandeleur still asleep. I don't believe that even the fall had waked the poor fellow up.

I had only to whisper the word "Breakfast" in his ears to have him start as if he had received a galvanic shock.

"Where?" he asked, with tears in his eyes.

"Home."

We crawled along through the bushes in the wildest haste our poor disjointed and almost dismembered bodies would carry us; like a pair of mud-turtles who had seen better days did we take to all-fours.

Fortunately, my place was not far away, and we had just strength enough to crawl up on the porch and fall against the door heavily.

"Breakfast," I gasped, as Ethel's lovely face appeared suddenly at my side like a benignant angel's.

"What – what can I get you?" murmured the dear girl, in an agony of mind, hurrying here and there, her eyes suffused with tears.

"Bloodhounds!" murmured Vandeleur, relapsing into idiocy.

SCARE THE THIRD

If you have ever had the fortune to be married to a Vassar graduate of the gushing and kittenish order, between nineteen and twenty, you will understand how difficult it was to explain my dilapidated appearance that memorable morning.

The ingenuity of my fabrications would have stocked a popular romance writer with all the modern conveniences; and I am sure the recording angel must have had difficulty in keeping pace with my transgressions unless he or she understood short-hand.

Vandeleur took an early opportunity to escape to the city, knowing very well that he would be held accountable for my degraded and dilapidated condition. The friends of a married man always are held responsible by his wife for any of his moral lapses, no matter when or where they may occur.

If I had only succeeded in my undertaking I might have viewed even my wounds – of which there were many – with some equanimity. But to have suffered in vain was enough to try the strongest soul; and I am afraid I was unnecessarily brusque to Ethel when she insisted on soaking me hourly in the most horrible liniments of her mother's decoction. I was pickled for about a week by her fair hands, and had become so impregnated with camphor and aromatic compounds that I exhaled spices like an Eastern mummy or a shopworn sachet-bag, and longed to get away from myself and the drugstore smell that clung to me closer than I ever want my brother to cling. I consented to the embalming process, because I wanted to look respectable when Ethel's mother, Mrs. McGoozle, put in an appearance. I knew I could not so easily satisfy her mind regarding that night of folly without the sworn affidavits of half-a-dozen reputable citizens. She said I wrote so much fiction that it had become a habit with me never to tell the truth.

My eyes had just begun to lay aside mourning when I received at the dinner-table one stormy night the local paper. I took it for my wife, who had a penchant for reading the patent-medicine advertisements; but on the present occasion I displayed an unholy eagerness to get at its contents. More misery! More horrible complications!

Almost the entire sheet was given up to a description of the burglary. There was a picture of Bella's house and of Bella herself; of the cook, of the coachman – yes, and even of the bloodhounds.

I had puzzled my brain since that night in trying to imagine why the hounds had sped past our tree, our noble tree, instead of gathering in convention at its base and talking the matter over among themselves while we starved to death upstairs. The paper gave the solution of the problem. They were pursuing the trail that led to our milkman's farm – the poor creature of whom I had basely borrowed our suits and overshoes.

The worthy man had been arrested and haled before the nearest justice of the peace, and had he not been able to prove an alibi to the effect that he was watering his cows at the time, he would have been summarily dealt with.

But he had held his peace about my share in the transaction – bless him! and being a thrifty man, had brought a suit against Bella for threatening his life with her dogs.

Yet I had no cause for congratulation, for now I was in the milkman's power as well as Bella's; and the very next day the honest fellow put in an appearance, very humble and yet very decided, and insisted that I should present him with Ethel's prize Frisian cow as a premium on his silence.

And I had to consent, though my wife had hysterics in parting with the animal, and sobbed out her determination to tell Mrs. McGoozle everything when that lady arrived in a few days.

This may not sound very terrible to you, but I knew the dreadful import of her words.

There was a flash of light through the gloom of my suicidal thoughts the next morning that made my heart beat high with hope.

I read in the morning paper that Bella, the cause of all my trouble, was dead, and that there was to be a sale of her effects at a New York auction-room the next day.

Of course that dreadful bureau was in the lot, and I knew that if it fell into unscrupulous hands there was enough material in that little drawer to stock a blackmailing establishment for years and years.

I took the first train for the city on the day of the sale. The bureau – Bella's bureau – was just being put up as I entered the place.

I had a thousand dollars in my pocket, so I felt rather contented in mind. The bidding on the bureau began in a discouraging way. The hunger of the crowd had been appeased before I came, and they displayed a lukewarm interest in the bureau. I bid two hundred dollars finally to settle the argument. I was tired of the delay. I wanted to settle forever the incubus that preyed upon my spirits. "Two hundred," I cried exultantly.

"Three hundred dollars," came in quiet tones from the corner of the room. The words seem to ripple in an icy stream down the back of my neck. Could it have been the echo of my voice that I heard?

"Four hundred," I cried uneasily. The terrible thought flashed over me, that perhaps another lover had turned up, who believed that his letters were in the bureau, and was just as anxious to get it as I. Horrible!

"Four hundred is bid for this beautiful Louis Fourteenth bureau," howled the auctioneer, repeating my bid. "Why, gents, this is a shame: it's – "

"Five hundred," said the voice from the corner, in calm, cold tones.

Ah, if I could slip through the crowd and throttle his utterance forever.

"Six hundred," I screamed, in desperation.

Then my unseen foe woke up and we began to bid in earnest. Six, seven, eight hundred, ran the bids.

In one of the lulls of the storm, when the auctioneer began to wax loquacious regarding the beauties of that bureau, I slipped secretly around to the cashier's desk.

Would he take a check? I implored. No, he would not; and I thought he wore a triumphant glitter in his fishy eyes. The terms of the sale were cash: it was to conclude that day. I turned away, sick at heart.

"A thousand!" I cried, in desperation, staking my last dollar. There was a moment's ominous silence. I began to feel encouraged. I watched the fateful gavel poised in the air, with my heart in my teeth. It wavered a moment, then began to slowly descend. Never had I seen such a graceful gesture defined by man as the freckled fist of the auctioneer described at that moment of hope.

"Twelve hundred," croaked the demon in the corner.

The crowd blended into a pulp of color. I fainted.

I lingered about the city all that night, searching in vain for a lethean draught at the haunts where consolation is retailed at two hundred per cent profit. I did not find the nepenthe I sought for anywhere on draught, so I went home in disgust.

Ethel received me in her usually effusive manner. She knows I object to being hugged at all hours of the day, yet I have never been able to cure her of that affection-garroting process so much in vogue with young wives of the gushing order.

"What do you think?" she chirped, when I had staggered to a chair in a half-strangled condition. "Dear mother has just sent us the most beautiful present – "

"Oh, I suppose so," I sneer savagely. "She generally does present us with something beautifully useless. Perhaps this time it's a dancing-bear, or a tame codfish" – with a wild laugh.

"Oh, how can you talk so!" lifting a dab of cambric to her nose with a preliminary sniff that is generally the signal of tears, according to our matrimonial barometer. "You know dear mother is so fond of you."

"Well, it's a case of misplaced affection," I growl, lounging out of the room just in time to avoid the rising storm.

I dash upstairs and smoke a cigar in my own room. Then I feel better, and stroll into Ethel's boudoir, resolved to pitch her mother's present in the fire if it doesn't suit me. She ought to be suppressed in this particular. "Wha – what! No – yes, it is!" The bureau, Bella's bureau, stands in the chaste confines of Ethel's satin-lined nest. I fling myself upon it, tear the little drawer open – hurl the bundle of letters into the grate with a cackling laugh.

Ethel enters timidly just then, and looks first at me and then at the burning papers with doubt and wonderment in her blue eyes.

"I have been paying some old debts," I say, with an uneasy laugh. "These are some of the I.O.U.'s you see burning."

She lays a soft little arm around my neck and a curly head on my immaculate shirt-front. Oh, spotless mask for such a darksome heart! I wonder she cannot catch the sound of its wicked beating.

"I have been worried about you lately, dear," she whispers, with a tender tremor in her voice. "I thought perhaps you might – you might – have become entangled with some other – other – " Then she burst into tears.

"How often must I tell you, darling," patting her cheek softly, "that you are the only woman I ever loved?"

"Oh, Jack!"

Ernest De Lancey Pierson.

A SHOT ON THE MOUNTAIN

An eagle drifting to the skiesTo gild her wing in sunset dies,To float into the golden,To swing and sway in broad-winged might,To toss and heel in free-born right,High o'er the gray crags olden.A dark bird reaching on aloft,Till far adown her rugged croftLies limned in misty tracing —Till, riding on in easy pride,Her cloud-wet wings are ruby pied,Are meshed in amber lacing.An eagle dropping to her caveOn dizzy wing through riven air,A bolt from heaven slanted;A startled mother, arrow-winged,A mountain copestone, vapor-ringed,An eyry danger-haunted.An eagle slanting from the skiesTo stain her breast in crimson dyesBeneath the gilt and golden;A shred of smoke – the gray lead's might —A folded wing – the dead bird's right —Abreast the gray crags olden.The blush light fades along the west,The night mist rolls to crag, to crest,To cowl the ghostly mountain;Black shadows hush the eyry's calls;Below, a broad brown pinion falls —The last light from the fountain.J. W. Rumple.

EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT

PURIFYING THE POLLS BY LAW

The edifying efforts made by Congress to throw guards about the ballot would be encouraging were they based on a little knowledge of the fact, and the reason for it. As it is, the be-it-enacted agreed on is little better than a solemn protest. Our learned law-makers would enjoy greater progress if they would remember that we have had for a century all the law necessary to punish such corruption, and that the trouble lies in our inability to enforce its provisions.

What is really wanted is a tribunal to try and enforce the stringent enactments already in existence. This does not now exist. When a candidate for Congress corruptly purchases enough votes to secure his return to either House, he knows that such Chamber, being the judge of such applicant's qualifications, forms a court without a judge to give the law or an impartial jury to render a verdict. The Committee on Elections in either House is made up of the Democratic or Republican party, and so the jury is packed in advance.

This is not, however, the only evil feature in the business. There is probably no organized body so ill-fitted for adjudication upon any subject as Congress. Returned to place by parties, the members are necessarily partisans. Their tenure of office is so brief that they have no time in which to learn their legitimate duties through experience, and these duties are so numerous, to say nothing of being encroached upon by services entirely foreign to their positions, that they have no opportunities for study. The consideration then of any subject from a judicial point of view is simply impossible. It is "touch and go" with them, and the touch is feeble, and the go hurried. It seems that a case of purely judicial sort has no place in Congress; and yet we have seen an instance – for example, in the New Idria contention – where the courts had been exhausted, from an Alcalde to the Supreme Court of the United States, and yet the complainant, worsted in every one of these tribunals, came through the lobby into Congress, and for over ten years kept that body in a tumult. Of course this was kept alive by the corrupt use of stock to the extent of ten millions, based on the credit of a company that would be such when Congress gave its illegal approval. This fact alone proves the dangerous and uncertain character of a legislative body that takes on judicial functions.

When a contested election goes before the standing committee called into existence as a court, it passes into a secret committee-room, where the so-called evidence, put on paper, is supposed to be considered. What would be said of a jury impanelled avowedly from the party of one side, and then made into a court to sit and deliberate with closed doors against the public?

It is true that the finding is shaped into a report and goes before the House. But no member of that body, especially of the House of Representatives, has either time or opportunity to read the evidence, or even to listen to the arguments made by contestants upon the floor. That tribunal has lost all power in its loss of public confidence. It not only brings the law into contempt, but itself into such disrepute that its findings are worthless. This is the condition of Congress in public opinion. So far as contested elections are concerned, it is regarded with contempt. To make matters worse, and pay a premium on vice, the losing party is allowed the same mileage and pay given his successful competitors.

If all contests were turned over to the United States courts, to be tried in the locality where the wrong complained of was done and the witnesses live, there would be few contested elections, and some chance given to punish bribery and other corruption.

Again, the prohibition against the subscription or payment of money has exceptions that open wide the doors to corruption. To say that money may be used for any purpose is to leave the evil precisely where the law-makers found it. It were better to have the government furnish the tickets, as the government supplies the ballot-boxes, rents the polling-places, and pays the officials for their services. The ballot is as much a necessity to the machinery of election as the boxes; and because it would be difficult and troublesome to supply them is far from saying that it is impossible.

Then, to punish both bribe-giver and bribe-taker in the same way is to throw a guard about the iniquitous transaction. The bribe-taker should go acquit. Of course this would be in a measure opening a door to blackmailers, and make the candidacy extremely dangerous. Such it ought to be. The sooner we put a check on the shameless solicitations for office the better it will be for the Republic. Let the offices, as of old, in the purer days of the fathers, seek the man – and not the man, as now, the offices. If the effect of this would be to drive timid, decent men from office, it would not be worse than the present system. A candidate for the House of Representatives must not only pay his two years' salary in advance to "heelers," as they are called, but must get drunk in every saloon in his district. We cannot make matters worse, and there is a chance in a change for an improvement.

True reform to be effectual must be radical. A compromise with evil is a surrender to hell. To cut a poisoned shrub even to the ground relieves the eye for a time, but the root is made more vigorous by the trimming. The constitutional governments of Europe have rid themselves of bribery and other corruption by digging out the roots. This is the only course open to us. When members of the House can bribe their way to place, when Senate chairs are sold in open court, when it calls for only two millions to purchase the Presidency, and all done by men of high social position, we have reached the lowest level, and our great Republic is a mere sham and a delusion. We are not menaced with the loss of liberty and guaranteed rights. They are gone.

THE MUGWUMP ELEMENT

The purchase of the Presidency in open market, now generally recognized, is less disheartening than the apathetic indifference in which such corruption is regarded by the people. In all communities men may be found to buy, and men to sell, the sacred privilege upon which our great Republic rests; but it is rare – so rare that this experience is almost without precedent – that good citizens, knowing the nature of their free institutions, are willing to have them destroyed without an effort in behalf of their preservation.

To get at not only the fact but the reason of it we must remember that politics to the average citizen has all the fanaticism of religion, and all the fascination of gambling. We have the country divided in two hostile camps, and in these organizations themselves we have lost the objects for which they were organized. This is the tendency of poor human nature the world over. It is probably more pronounced in religion than in any other form. A man will not only fight to the bitter end, but die as a martyr, for a sect whose dogmas he has never read, or, if read, fails to comprehend. Politics is our popular religion. Taking the great mass of our citizens, we are pained to write that it is about our only religion.

We say that we have two hostile camps, in both of which the objects for which they were organized have been entirely lost. The ordinary Republican can give no reason for being such save that he is not a Democrat, and the Democrat has the same reason, if it may be called such. Each will avow, without hesitation, that the other camp is made up of knaves and fools. The folly of thus designating over half our entire voting population does not strike the partisan.

Parties, however, are not called into existence and held together through intellectual processes. They are founded on feeling. For years and years the brightest minds and purest characters preached, with burning eloquence, upon the wrongs of negro slavery, and got ugly epithets and foul missiles in return, if indeed they were listened to at all. At a moment of wild frenzy an armed mob at Charleston shot down our flag. In an instant the entire people of the North rose to arms, and a frightful war was inaugurated. The flag sentiment outweighed the Abolition arguments.

It is not our purpose to give the philosophical view of that contest. We use it only, so far, in illustration. The sectional feeling that brought on that armed contest continues in another direction, and divides the two great parties. It is so intense that each is willing to see the republic under which we live utterly destroyed, so that one may be conquered or the other defeated.

We are all agreed that the ballot is the foundation-stone of our entire political structure. On this was built the form of government given us by the fathers, and was the grand result of all the blood and treasure, of life and property, so patriotically poured out in the Revolution that made us independent. Yet this ballot is openly assailed, its processes corrupted with money, and its usefulness entirely destroyed, without arousing the indignation of an outraged public. Men of wealth, of high social position, members of churches, and leaders in what are called the better classes, subscribe and pay the money knowingly that is to be used in the purchase of "floaters in blocks of five" or more, while voters, well-to-do farmers, and so-called honest laborers are organized willingly into blocks and shamelessly sell that upon which they and their children depend for life, liberty, and a right to a recompense for toil. When the result is announced bonfires are burned, and loud shouts go up amid the roar of artillery, expressive of the joy felt in such a triumph.

These men of means – it makes no odds how the means are accumulated – are not aware that in this they are cutting away the foundations under their feet, and that, too, with ropes about their necks. Their only security, not only to the enjoyment of their property but to their lives, lies in the very government they are so eager to destroy. We have called attention to the fact that humanity suffers more from an inequality of property than from an inequality of political rights. These last are rapidly getting to be recognized and secured in constitutions throughout the civilized world. Kings and emperors have come to be mere figure-heads above constitutions, and the political dignity of the poor man is generally acknowledged. But the poor man remains, and the castle yet rears its lofty front above the hovels of the suffering laborers. Humanity is yet divided between the many who produce all and enjoy nothing, and the few who produce nothing and enjoy all. This is the inequality of property, and governments yet hold the sufferers to their hard condition. It is called "law and order," as sacred in the eyes of the Church as it is potent in courts of justice.