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

Political Oratory of Emery A. Storrs, by Isaac E. Adams (Belford, Clarke & Co.). – The compiler of Mr. Storrs's political speeches begins his introductory chapter with some questionable generalizations which are belittling and somewhat unjust to the large class of true orators to which his hero belongs. He says: "Few examples of political oratory have been embalmed in literature. Men, too, remembered for oratorical power are easily reckoned, and tower conspicuously along the shores of time. There was once a Demosthenes, once a Cicero, once a Burke. The time will come when, looking back upon the centuries of American history, it will be said there was, also, once a Webster and once a Lincoln."

We must be permitted to observe that the line cannot be clearly drawn between political and other oratory. In a broad sense, all the great orators known to history have been political orators, because they gained their fame chiefly in discussing the great and absorbing public questions of their day.

To these belongs Emery A. Storrs. Let a few extracts from this volume of speeches suffice to show the style of his oratory. At Chicago, in the darkest hours of our civil war, he said: "I have no doubt but that this, the most wicked rebellion that ever blackened the annals of history, will be ground to powder. I have no doubt but that our national integrity will be preserved. I have no doubt but that the union of these States will be restored, and that the nation will emerge from the fiery trial through which it has passed, brighter and better and stronger than it has ever been before. It would be impossible, however, that a conflict mighty as that from which we are now, I trust, emerging should not leave its deep and permanent impress upon our future national character. It will give tone to our politics, our literature, and our feelings as a people, for ages to come."

At Cleveland, in the campaign of 1880, he said: "Have you seen any trouble with the pillars of the government? The trouble was not with the pillars – they did not rock; the trouble was with the gentlemen who were looking at the pillars of the government. They were like the gentleman who had been attending a lecture on astronomy. Going home loaded with a great deal of Democratic logic, with a step weary and uncertain, with the earth revolving a great many times upon its axis, he affectionately clasped a lamp-post and said, 'Old Galileo was right about it: the world does move.'"

The logic of Mr. Storrs's speeches on war topics, which were immensely popular, is embraced in the single sentence: "I think there can be nothing more suicidal than to intrust into the hands of these men, who sought the destruction of our national life, the direction of our national interests."

Hence the convenient 300-page volume under review will be valuable to political speakers and writers who want their party zeal warmed up by the earnest appeals of an impassioned, conscientious, and clear-minded orator. The diction of Mr. Storrs is admirable, his language is almost always felicitous, and in his logic there is a happy blending of grace and force. If his range was not wide, he was always able to concentrate learning and ability enough on any given occasion to show a masterful oratorical power over immense masses of men.

A STORM ASHORE. 5

By James H. Connelly

I.

WHERE THE DEED WAS DONE

Three quarters of a century ago, when Sag Harbor was an important whaling port, and before railroads were even dreamed of on that remote part of Long Island, there were dotted along the eastern shore only a few quaint little villages, already old, with a small population scattered in their vicinity, consisting almost entirely of a hardy race, who, though professedly cultivators of the soil, in reality drew most of their subsistence from arduous and often perilous toil upon the sea. Among the curiously inscribed tombstones in the graveyards, where even then six generations were lying, were not at all unfrequent those that bore the legend "killed by a whale." Of the younger men in the community, there were few who did not aspire to go abroad as whalers, and their elders, though settled agriculturists nominally, or even petty tradesmen, had generally "been a-whaling," loved to spin yarns about their cruises, and were still more than semi-nautical in speech, manners, and industries. They naturally spoke of "the bow" of a horse, or his "port-quarter," as occasion might require; belonged to shore whaling companies; fished for the New York market to a limited extent, and perhaps did some smuggling; as shore-living people, in those days, generally seemed to think they had an inherent right to. In their little "sitting-rooms" were many curious and interesting things, brought from far distant lands, such as broad branches of fan coral, stuffed birds of brilliant plumage, strange shells and sperm whales' teeth adorned with queer rude pictures scratched upon them by sailors whose thoughts of loved ones at home had prompted them to such artistic endeavor.

Between the villages were long reaches of woodland, or perhaps it would be more correct to say thicket-broken here and there, where the sandy soil seemed to give most promise, by tilled fields. Fierce gales, through the long hard winter months, dealt cruelly with the scrubby cedars and knotty little oaks in those woods, gnarling their boughs, twisting their trunks, and stunting their growth, so that not all the genial breath of spring, nor the ardent summer's sun could quite repair the damage wrought them in the season of ice and storm. But the hardy trees stood close together, as if seeking support and consolation from each other in their hours of trial, when they creaked and ground complaint to one another; so close that their interlaced foliage kept always damp the leaf-strewn ground beneath, where the fragrant trailing arbutus bloomed in earliest spring, and the tangled whortleberry bushes later bore their clusters of bluish-purple fruit. Here and there the dwarfed forest sloped gently down to broad expanses of salt meadow, where snipe and plover found their favorite feeding grounds among the rank rushes and long grass, or the soft marshy slime, except when the full moon tides came rushing through the little inlets between the white round sand dunes on the beach and, whelming the lowland, snatched brown-leaf trophies from the very edges of the wood. On the knolls between these meadows were favorite places for the location of the homes of the earlier settlers, among whom were the Van Deusts.

The Van Deust homestead was one of the oldest dwellings on that portion of the island, and those who at this time inhabited it were the direct descendants of other Van Deusts, whose remote existence and remarkable longevity were alike attested by the quaintly graven tombstones in the ancient graveyard of the village, a mile away.

It was a rambling one-story house, built of small logs covered with boards now warped and rusty from age, but both roomy and comfortable as well as picturesque. Those by whom it was erected loved better the sea than the land, for they had not only sought out this, the most commanding site they could obtain for its location, but had turned its back upon the forest and the lane, and reared its broad porch upon the side facing the ocean. Here, in the ample shade, the two old bachelor brothers, its present occupants, inheriting as well the feeling as the property of their ancestors, loved to linger. The ceaseless roar of the waves was in their ears a wild tumultuous music, and their eyes were never weary of the ever-changing beauty and glory of the world of billows, blushing with the dawn, laughing with the noon, and frowning beneath storm and night. Three broad and rugged elm trees shaded the porch, and one gable of the house was rasped by the boughs of the nearest tree of a thickly grown and badly cared for little orchard. Bats and swallows flitted undisturbed in the summer evenings to and from the low loft of the old homestead, through its various chinks and refts; native song-birds build their nests and reared their young under the eaves, and in the swinging branches of the venerable elms; bees buzzed among the thick honeysuckle, and clematis vines that twined about the pillar of the porch, and threw their long sprays in flowery festoons between; and when the busy hum of those industrious little toilers ceased at nightfall, the crickets' cheery chirp, from among the rough stones of the old-fashioned fireplace within, took up the refrain of insect melody. Neither insect, bird, nor beast feared the two kindly old men who inhabited that home. One of the brothers loved all living things, and was at peace with all, and the other was like unto him, with the sole exception that he liked not women, nor was willing to be at peace with them. Yet he had never been married!

Peter, the elder by a couple of years, was the woman hater, and to such an extent did he carry his antipathy toward the sex, that he would tolerate no other female servant about the house than old black Betsy, who was the daughter of a couple of slaves his grandfather had owned, and who thoroughly considered herself one of the family, as indeed her indulgent masters regarded her. The three old people occupied the house alone. Brother Jacob once hinted to Peter that perhaps it might be as well to get a young woman to assist old Betsy in her work, and his so doing brought on what was more like a quarrel between him and Peter than anything that had disturbed the monotony of their uneventful lives up to that time. A compromise was finally effected, by virtue of which a neighbor was engaged to come over for a couple of hours daily to do such chores about the house as the brothers felt beyond their strength, and to bring his wife along on Tuesdays to do the week's washing and scrubbing. But on Tuesdays Peter always went a-fishing, regardless of the weather, and was gone all day, so avoiding sight of the neighbor's wife. Whatever the secret cause for his bitter and contemptuous aversion to women may have been, he kept it to himself. That they were fair to look upon, he denied not. "But," said he, "they are wrecker lights, and the truer and better a man is, the brighter they shine to lure him to the breakers. And look at yourself, Jacob," he would add, when his brother ventured to mildly expostulate against the vigor of his denunciations of the sex; whereupon Jacob would turn away with a sigh, and the discussion would be at an end.

Back of the house a narrow lane, bordered by a neglected garden and a cornfield beyond, led out to the distant highway. The Van Deust brothers were not poor, as the humble style of their home might seem to indicate; indeed they had the reputation, in all the country around, of being wealthy, and were, at least, well off. The neglect and indifference of age in its owners was the sole cause that the surroundings of the old homestead, which might easily have been made charming, presented such a picture of disorder and decay.

Up the little lane, at a very early hour one bright summer morning, two men might have been seen, driving in a light gig, approaching the Van Deust mansion. One of them was a stout, ruddy-faced gentleman, of fifty, or thereabouts, known to everybody in the county as Squire Bodley. His companion, who held the reins, was a handsome young fellow of twenty-four or twenty-five years, rustic in personal appearance and garb, with a good frank open countenance that bore a pleasing expression of intelligence and good nature.

"Of course it's only a form, my going to be your security," said the older man, as they jogged along, "for the Van Deusts know you as well as I do, and knew your father, Dave Pawlett, before you, and a good man he was. But still, Lem, I don't know any young fellow in all the country round about that I'd take more pleasure in serving, even in a matter of form, than you."

"Thank you, sir," replied the young man warmly, with a grateful flush upon his sun-burnt cheeks. "It's very kind of you, I'm sure, and I can't tell you how much I feel it so. You know I want the lease of that lower farm, but you don't know how almightily much I want it; and nobody does but me and – one other person, perhaps."

"Aha!" responded the Squire, with a chuckle, "I can make a guess about who the other person is. And some day you and that other person will be coming to me for a little business in my line, I reckon, – a sort of mutual life lease, eh?"

"Well, maybe so, Squire. I hope so," answered Lem, confusedly, and with a little deeper flush, "But here we are at the gate. Wait a moment, while I jibe the bow wheels and make the horse fast."

As he spoke, he jumped lightly out of the vehicle, turned the horse a little to one side, so as to make the descent of his companion more convenient, and, after hitching the reins to a fence-post, accompanied the Squire to the door of the house. There was no sound, or sign, as yet, of any of the inmates of the old homestead being astir.

"Well, they must be late risers here," soliloquized the Squire, as Lem rapped and called at the door.

At the end of a few minutes, a voice answered indistinctly from within: "Who's there? What d'ye want?" And almost immediately after, the shutters on the window of a little extension of the house, at the end farthest from the orchard, were pushed open, and the head of an aged black woman appeared with the echoing query, "Who dah? Wha' dy'e wan'?"

"It's me – Squire Bodley," responded that gentleman, answering the first inquirer.

Presently the door opened and Peter Van Deust appeared in it; a weazened, thin little man, with a fringe of gray hair surrounding a big white bald place on the top of his head, with a well-formed nose and eyes still bright enough to suggest that he had been a good-looking young fellow in his day; with lips that quivered, and long lean fingers that trembled with the weakness of old age; but, withal, a pleasant smile and a cheery ring, even yet, in his cracked old voice.

"Why, Squire!" he exclaimed, as he threw open the door, "I'm real glad to see you. And Lem! You, too? Well, this is a pleasant surprise-party for us early in the morning!"

"It's not so very early, Peter," answered the Squire. "It is almost seven o'clock."

"Is that so? Well, I declare! I wonder why Jacob isn't up. He's mostly an early riser, and as he's the boy amongst us, why we old folks – Betsy and me – rely on him to wake us up in the mornings. Old people, you know, get back to being like babies again for wanting their good sleep. But Jacob has overslept himself this morning, sure. I'll soon roust him out, though."

As he spoke he went to a closed door at one side of the central sitting-room, which was flanked by the separate apartments of the brothers, and pounding upon it with his bony knuckles, called:

"Come, Jacob, bounce out, boy! You're late! It's breakfast time, and we've got visitors. Get up!"

There was no answering sound from within. He waited a moment, then knocked again, shouting: "Hello, Jacob! Jake! I say, get up! What' the matter with you?"

Still there was no response. The three men waiting, held their breath to listen, and a vague sense of uneasiness crept over them. The songs of the blue-birds, and the chirp of the martens; the humming of the bees; the stamping of the horse hitched to the gig, and the clatter old Betsy made in opening her door, were all sharply distinct in the quiet summer morning air; but from the closed room there was no sound whatever. Peter tried the door, but it did not yield.

"He's locked his door!" exclaimed the old man, with an intonation of surprise in his voice.

"Maybe something has happened to him," suggested Lem.

"What could happen to him? He was all right last night; never better in his life. And he's younger than me. But it's queer he should have locked his door. He don't mostly." He continued rapping and shouting "Jacob, wake up!" in a more and more anxious tone.

"The key isn't in the keyhole, I guess," he muttered half to himself, fumbling at the lock with a bit of stick he picked up from the floor, "but," stooping down and trying to peer through, "I can't see anything, because it's all dark inside."

"Haven't you some other key about the house that will fit the lock?" asked the Squire.

"Yes. Mine does, I guess. But I didn't think of it at first. I'll try it."

It fitted: the bolt was thrown back, and the door pushed open. The sunshine darted in and fell, broad and clear, upon a still and ghastly thing that laid in the middle of the floor – the corpse of an old man, surrounded by a pool of blood.

Peter gave a wild cry of horror, and fell back senseless into the arms of Lem Pawlett, who was close behind him. They laid him on the old hair-cloth sofa in the sitting-room, called Betsy to attend to him, and then passed into the chamber he had opened.

Murder had been done. Jacob Van Deust's skull had been beaten in by some heavy instrument. One terrible crushing blow had mashed in his left temple, and let out his little weak old life; but, as if for very lust of killing the assassin had struck again and again, and the skull was fractured in several places. The old man, it appeared, had risen from his bed to meet his murderer, and had been struck down before he could utter a cry of alarm. The window curtains were down, so that the room was as yet only lighted from the door; but when those in front were opened, and a flood of sunlight poured in, there were no evidences apparent that there had been any struggle between the slayer and his victim, nor were there at once visible any indications that robbery, the only cause readily conceivable for the brutal murder of such an inoffensive old man, had been the purpose instigating the crime. The contents of the bureau drawers were much tumbled and disordered, but it was presumable that they were so usually, through the careless habits of the occupant of the apartment. There were no marks of blood upon anything they contained, but it was evident that the murderer had made some attempt at least to wipe his crimsoned hands upon the old man's shirt after killing him, and that was probably before he searched the bureau, if indeed he had troubled himself to ransack it at all. On one pillow of the bed they found the mark of a bloody hand. Perhaps the assassin was in such haste for plunder that he groped where the old man's head had lain before thinking of his bloody hand. Beyond that nothing appeared to them to show that robbery had been done.

But when Peter Van Deust had sufficiently recovered to be able to speak coherently, he said that his brother habitually kept, somewhere in his room, a wallet containing something over three thousand dollars, and a bag of coin; how much he did not know. These were nowhere to be found.

Lem Pawlett was hastily dispatched by the Squire, soon after the discovery of the crime, to summon some near neighbors; and as he drove rapidly along the road, shouting to every person he saw – "Jacob Van Deust has been murdered!" – it was but a very little while before a dozen or more men were assembled at the scene of the crime. They were all innocent, simple-minded folks, who had never seen a murdered man before, had even been a little skeptical that such an awful thing as murder was ever really done, except in the big cities where extreme wickedness was naturally to be expected, and were actually stunned by the shock of finding themselves in the presence of the evidences of the perpetration of such a deed. From them, of course, no aid in finding a clue to the perpetrator of the crime, or divining its real motive, could have been expected. Yet every man of them was wise in his own conceit, and among them were furtively exchanged whispers of such hideous significance that the Squire, when they reached his ears, felt himself compelled to take notice of and reply to them.

"The old men have been all the time quarrelling for two months past," said one to another.

"Yes," replied he who was addressed. "I've heard 'em myself, cussing each other over the fortune that was left them."

"Sam Folsom," added a third, "told me that he'd heard that Peter had threatened to knock Jake's head off more than once."

"Oh! I've heard that myself," chimed in another. "And I did hear that they'd had a regular fight and Jake got the best of it."

"It's awful that two old men like them, on the edge of the grave, as you may say, and brothers at that, should quarrel about money."

"And one for to go and kill the other."

At this point the Squire, who had overheard much of the preceding conversation, interposed: "How do you know," he demanded abruptly, turning on the last speaker, "who killed him?"

"Well, I dunno exactly, of course," whined the fellow, hesitatingly, "but it looks mighty like it."

"Ah! And that pimpled nose of yours, Rufe Stevens, looks mightily like you were a hard drinker; but you are ready to take your Bible oath it's nothing but bad humors in your blood."

There were a few suppressed chuckles at the Squire's retort from those in the vicinity – for men will laugh even at the smallest things, and in the very presence of the King of Terrors – and Rufe moved away, muttering indistinctly. But the Squire's interference and well-intended reproof had only a momentary effect in diverting the attention of the neighbors from the evil bent of suspicion their minds had taken; and they continued exchanging, and possibly augmenting, the rumors they had heard of differences between the Van Deust brothers, until the sentiment was general among them that Peter Van Deust should be at once arrested for the murder of his brother.

II.

ON INFORMATION AND BELIEF

That the reader may be properly informed of certain antecedent events which, as will hereafter be seen, were intimately connected with, and indeed leading directly to the murder of Jacob Van Deust, it will be necessary for us to make a brief retrogression in our narrative and to introduce various other members of that little seaside community who bore their several important parts in the eventful drama of real life here in progress of recital.

Near the close of a day in earliest spring, when the sun, that had not yet sufficient power to melt the lingering patches of snow that still laid here and there among the thickets and on northern slopes, was throwing its last red rays upon the lowering, leaden-tinted masses of the western sky, two young girls wandered, with their arms about each other's waists, in the shadows of the woods not far distant from the village of Easthampton. One of them, somewhat above the medium height of women, possessed a slender and graceful figure, and a face that, seen under the large, crimson-lined hood of the cloak with which her head was covered, appeared almost pure Grecian in its regularity of feature and delicacy of outline. Her complexion was pale, but the clear roseate flush of her cheeks, and the brilliancy of youth and health sparkling in her eyes, demonstrated sufficiently that that pallidity was simply the added charm with which kindly nature at times enhances the loveliness of the most beautiful brunettes. The sentiment expressed by her countenance was serious and earnest, but not sad, for a faint smile, like the blossoming of some sweet hope, rested upon her small red lips. Her companion, who seemed to be of about the same age – not more than eighteen or nineteen years – was of a different mould; possibly less beautiful, but hardly less bewitching. She was somewhat shorter of stature and rounder of form, with a face in which vivacity and determination were happily blended. Her laughing lips were red and full, a merry mischievous light danced in her blue eyes, and her hood thrown back upon her neck, left bare a round head covered with a wavy wealth of brown hair.

"Now, Mary," said the brown-haired maid, bending forward and looking up archly in the face of her friend, "let us drop this nonsense of pretending to look for trailing arbutus, when you know, just as well as I do, that it will be a week, if not two, before there will be a sprig of it in bloom; and I know, just as well as you do, that you called me out for this walk to tell me something about Dorn Hackett, and for nothing else. Isn't that so, now?"

"Yes, you sharp little thing. You have guessed rightly, as usual. I have received another letter from Dorn."

"A letter from Dorn? The first for over a year, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"Well, dear, it must seem almost like getting one from a stranger."