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  [Illustration: AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS FROM THE PAINTING BY ELLEN EMMET

  _Copyright, 1908, by Ellen Emmet_]




  McCLURE'S MAGAZINE

  VOL. XXXI      JUNE, 1908       No. 2

  MY FIRST APPEARANCE IN AMERICA
  THE DECREE MADE ABSOLUTE
  PRESIDENT JOHNSON AND HIS WAR ON CONGRESS
  THE CRYSTAL-GAZER
  BOB, DEBUTANT
  TWO PORTRAITS BY GILBERT STUART
  MARY BAKER G. EDDY
  HER FRUITS
  THE KEY TO THE DOOR
  THE WAYFARERS
  THE PROBLEMS OF SUICIDE
  PRAIRIE DAWN
  THE DOINGS OF THE DEVIL
  YOUNG HENRY AND THE OLD MAN
  EDITORIAL

       *       *       *       *       *

  Transcriber's Note: The Table of Contents was
                      added by the transcriber.

       *       *       *       *       *




MY FIRST APPEARANCE IN AMERICA[1]

BY

ELLEN TERRY


The first time that there was any talk of my going to America was, I
think, in 1874, when I was playing in "The Wandering Heir." Dion
Boucicault wanted me to go, and dazzled me with figures, but I expect
the cautious Charles Reade influenced me against accepting the
engagement.

When I did go, in 1883, I was thirty-five and had an assured position in
my profession. It was the first of eight tours, seven of which I went
with Henry Irving. The last was in 1907, after his death. I also went to
America one summer on a pleasure trip. The tours lasted three months at
least, seven months at most. After a rough calculation, I find that I
have spent not quite five years of my life in America. Five out of sixty
is not a large proportion, yet I often feel that I am half American.
This says a good deal for the hospitality of a people who can make a
stranger feel so completely at home in their midst. Perhaps it also says
something for my adaptableness!

"When we do not speak of things with a partiality full of love, what we
say is not worth being repeated." That was the answer of a courteous
Frenchman, who was asked for his impressions of a country. In any case
it is almost imprudent to give one's impressions of America. The country
is so vast and complex that even those who have amassed mountains of
impressions soon find that there still are mountains more. I have lived
in New York, Boston, and Chicago for a month at a time, and have felt
that to know any of these great towns even superficially would take a
year. I have become acquainted with this and that class of Americans,
but I realize that there are thousands of other classes that remain
unknown.

[Illustration: _Copyrighted by Window & Grove From the collections of
Miss Frances Johnson and Mrs. Evelyn Smalley_

ELLEN TERRY OPHELIA, AND HENRIETTA MARIA, THREE PARTS WHICH SHE PLAYED
ON THE FIRST AMERICAN TOUR]


_The Unknown Dangers of America_

I set out in 1883 from Liverpool on board the "Britannic" with the fixed
conviction that I should never, never return. For six weeks before we
started the word America had only to be breathed to me, and I burst into
floods of tears! I was leaving my children, my bullfinch, my parrot, my
"aunt" Boo, whom I never expected to see again alive, just because she
said I never would, and I was going to face the unknown dangers of the
Atlantic and of a strange, barbarous land. Our farewell performances in
London had cheered me up a little--though I wept copiously at every
one--by showing us that we should be missed. Henry Irving's position
seemed to be confirmed and ratified by all that took place before his
departure. The dinners he had to eat, the speeches he had to make and to
listen to, were really terrific! One speech at the Rabelais Club had, it
was said, the longest peroration on record. It was this kind of thing:
"Where is our friend Irving going? He is not going like Nares to face
the perils of the far North. He is not going like A---- to face
something else. He is not going to China," etc.--and so on. After about
the hundredth "he is not going," Lord Houghton, who was one of the
guests, grew very impatient and interrupted the orator with: "Of course
he isn't! He's going to New York by the Cunard Line. It'll take him
about a week!"


_New York Before the "Sky-scrapers"_

My first voyage was a voyage of enchantment to me. The ship was laden
with pig-iron, but she rolled and rolled and rolled. She could never
roll too much for me. I have always been a splendid sailor, and I feel
jolly at sea. The sudden leap from home into the wilderness of waves
does not give me any sensation of melancholy.

What I thought I was going to see when I arrived in America, I hardly
remember. I had a vague idea that all American women wore red flannel
shirts and bowie knives and that I might be sandbagged in the street!
From somewhere or other I had derived an impression that New York was an
ugly, noisy place.

Ugly! When I first saw that marvellous harbour I nearly cried--it was so
beautiful. Whenever I come now to the unequalled approach to New York I
wonder what Americans must think of the approach from the sea to London.
How different are the mean, flat, marshy banks of the Thames, and the
wooden toy light-house at Dungeness, to the vast, spreading harbour,
with its busy multitude of steam boats and ferry boats, its wharf upon
wharf, and its tall statue of Liberty dominating all the racket and
bustle of the sea traffic of the world!

That was one of the few times in America when I did not miss the poetry
of the past. The poetry of the present, gigantic, colossal, and
enormous, made me forget it. The "sky-scrapers," so splendid in the
landscape now, did not exist in 1883; but I find it difficult to divide
my early impressions from my later ones. There was Brooklyn Bridge,
though, hung up high in the air like a vast spider's web. Between 1883
and 1893 I noticed a great change in New York and other cities. In ten
years they seemed to have grown with the energy of tropical plants. But
between 1893 and 1907 I saw no evidence of such feverish increase. It is
possible that the Americans are arriving at a stage when they can no
longer beat the record! There is a vast difference between one of the
old New York brownstone houses and one of the fourteen-storied buildings
near the river, but between this and the Times Square Building or the
still more amazing Flatiron Building, which is said to oscillate at the
top--it is so far from the ground--there is very little difference. I
hear that they are now beginning to build downwards into the earth, but
this will not change the appearance of New York for a long time.

[Illustration: _From the collection of Miss Evelyn Smalley_

HENRY IRVING AS MATHIAS IN "THE BELLS"

THE PART IN WHICH IRVING MADE HIS FIRST APPEARANCE IN AMERICA]

I had not to endure the wooden shed in which most people landing in
America have to struggle with the custom-house officials--a struggle as
brutal as a "round in the ring" as Paul Bourget describes it. We were
taken off the "Britannic" in a tug, and Mr. Abbey, Lawrence Barrett, and
many other friends met us--including the much-dreaded reporters.

[Illustration: _Lent by The Century Co._

THE REJECTED DESIGN FOR A COLUMBIAN MEDAL MADE BY AUGUSTUS
SAINT-GAUDENS]

When we landed, I drove to the Hotel Dam, Henry to the Brevoort House.
There was no Diana on the top of the Madison Square Building then--the
building did not exist, to cheer the heart of a new arrival as the first
evidence of _beauty_ in the city. There were horse trams instead of
cable cars; but a quarter of a century has not altered the peculiarly
dilapidated carriages in which one drives from the dock, the muddy
sidewalks, and the cavernous holes in the cobble-paved streets. Had the
elevated railway, the first sign of _power_ that one notices after
leaving the boat, begun to thunder through the streets? I cannot
remember New York without it.

[Illustration: _Lent by The Century Co._

THE BAS-RELIEF PORTRAIT OF BASTIEN-LEPAGE MODELED BY AUGUSTUS
SAINT-GAUDENS. SAINT-GAUDENS GAVE A CAST OF THE PORTRAIT TO MISS TERRY]

I missed then, as I miss now, the numberless _hansoms_ of London plying
in the streets for hire. People in New York get about in the cars,
unless they have their own carriages. The hired carriage has no reason
for existing, and when it does, it celebrates its unique position by
charging two dollars for a journey which in London would not cost fifty
cents!

[Illustration: THE BAS-RELIEF PORTRAIT OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON MODELED
BY AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS FOR THE ST. GILES CATHEDRAL, EDINBURGH.
SAINT-GAUDENS GAVE A CAST OF THIS PORTRAIT TO MISS TERRY'S DAUGHTER,
EDITH CRAIG]


_Irving Brings Shakespeare to America_

There were very few theatres in New York when we first went there. All
that part of the city which is now "up town" did not exist, and what was
then "up" is now more than "down" town. The American stage has changed
almost as much. Even then there was a liking for local plays which
showed the peculiarities of the different States, but they were more
violent and crude than now. The original American genius and the true
dramatic pleasure of the people is, I believe, in such plays, where very
complete observation of certain phases of American life and very real
pictures of manners are combined with comedy almost childlike in its
naivete. The sovereignty of the young girl which is such a marked
feature in social life is reflected in American plays. This is by the
way. What I want to make clear is that in 1883 there was no living
American drama as there is now, that such productions of romantic plays
and Shakespeare as Henry Irving brought over from England, were unknown,
and that the extraordinary success of our first tours would be
impossible now. We were the first, and we were pioneers and we were
_new_. To be new is everything in America. Such palaces as the Hudson
Theatre, New York, were not dreamed of when we were at the Star, which
was, however, quite equal to any theatre in London, in front of the
footlights. The stage itself, the lighting appliances, and the
dressing-rooms were inferior.

[Illustration: HENRY IRVING AS HAMLET

FROM THE STATUE BY E. ONSLOW FORD, R. A., IN THE GUILDHALL OF THE CITY OF
LONDON]

[Illustration: ELLEN TERRY AS IMOGEN

DRAWN BY ALMA-TADEMA FOR MISS TERRY'S JUBILEE IN 1906]

[Illustration: ELLEN TERRY AS PORTIA

FROM THE PAINTING BY SIR JOHN MILLAIS, R. A.]


_Our First Appearance Before an American Audience_

Henry made his first appearance in America in "The Bells." He was not at
his best on the first night, but he could be pretty good even when he
was not at his best. I watched him from a box. Nervousness made the
company very slow. The audience was a splendid one--discriminating and
appreciative. We felt that the Americans _wanted_ to like us. We felt in
a few days so extraordinarily at home. The first sensation of entering a
foreign city was quickly wiped out.

[Illustration: WILLIAM WINTER--

ONE OF THE FIRST CRITICS TO WELCOME IRVING TO THIS COUNTRY]

On the second night in New York it was my turn. "Command yourself--this
is the time to show you can act!" I said to myself as I went on the
stage of the Star Theatre, dressed as Henrietta Maria. But I could not
command myself. I played badly and cried too much in the last act. But
the people liked me, and they liked the play, perhaps because it was
historical, and of history the Americans are passionately fond. The
audience took many points which had been ignored in London. I had always
thought Henry as Charles I. most moving when he made that involuntary
effort to kneel to his subject, Moray, but the Lyceum audiences never
seemed to notice it. In New York the audience burst out into the most
sympathetic, spontaneous applause that I have ever heard in a theatre.


_American Clothes_

My impression of the way the American women dressed in 1883 was not
favourable. Some of them wore Indian shawls and diamond ear-rings. They
dressed too grandly in the street and too dowdily in the theatre. All
this has changed. The stores in New York are now the most beautiful in
the world, and the women are dressed to perfection. They are as clever
at the _demi-toilette_ as the Parisian, and the extreme neatness and
smartness of their walking gowns is very refreshing after the floppy,
blowsy, trailing dresses, accompanied by the inevitable feather boa, of
which English girls, who used to be so tidy and "tailor-made," now seem
so fond. The universal white "waist" is so pretty and trim on the
American girl. It is one of the distinguishing marks of a land of the
free, a land where "class" hardly exists. The girl in the store wears
the white waist; so does the rich girl on Fifth Avenue. It costs
anything from seventy-five cents to fifty dollars!

London, when I come back from America, always seems at first like an
ill-lighted village, strangely tame, peaceful, and backward. Above all,
I miss the sunlight of America, and the clear blue skies of an evening.

"Are you glad to get back?" said an English friend.

"Very."

"It's a land of vulgarity, isn't it?"

"Oh, yes, if you mean by that a wonderful land--a land of sunshine and
light, of happiness, of faith in the future!" I answered. I saw no
misery or poverty there. Everyone looked happy. What hurts me on coming
back to England is the _hopeless_ look on so many faces; the dejection
and apathy of the people standing about in the streets. Of course there
is poverty in New York, but not among the Americans. The Italians, the
Russians, the Poles--all the host of immigrants washed in daily across
the harbour--these are poor, but you don't see them unless you go Bowery
ways and even then you can't help feeling that in their sufferings there
is always hope. Vulgarity? I saw little of it. I thought that the people
who had amassed large fortunes used their wealth beautifully. When a man
is rich enough to build himself a big, new house, he remembers some old
house which he once admired, and he has it imitated with all the
technical skill and care that can be had in America. This accounts for
the odd jumble of styles in Fifth Avenue, along the lake-side in
Chicago, in the new avenues in St. Louis and elsewhere. One
millionaire's house is modelled on a French chateau, another on an old
Colonial house in Virginia, another on a monastery in Mexico, another is
like an Italian _palazzo_. And their imitations are never weak or
pretentious. The architects in America seem to me to be far more able
than ours, or else they have a freer hand and more money.


_The Work of Augustus Saint-Gaudens_

It is sad to remember that Mr. Stanford White was one of the best of
these splendid architects. It was Stanford White with Saint-Gaudens,
that great sculptor, whose work dignifies nearly all the great cities in
America, who had most to do with the Exhibition buildings of the World's
Fair in Chicago in 1893. It was odd to see that fair dream city rising
out of the lake, so far more beautiful in its fleeting loveliness than
the Chicago of the stock-yards and the pit which had provided the money
for its beauty. The millionaires did not interfere with the artists at
all. They gave their thousands--and stood aside. The result was one of
the loveliest things conceivable. Saint-Gaudens and the rest did their
work as well as though the buildings were to endure for centuries
instead of being burned in a year to save the trouble of pulling down!
The World's Fair recalled to me the story of how Michelangelo carved a
figure in snow which, says the chronicler Vasari who saw it, "was
superb."

Saint-Gaudens gave me a cast of his medallion of Bastien-Lepage, and
wrote to a friend of mine: "Bastien had '_le coeur au metier_.' So has
Miss Terry, and I will place that saying in the frame that is to replace
the present unsatisfactory one." He was very fastidious about this frame
and took such a lot of trouble to get it right.

It must have been very irritating to Saint-Gaudens when he fell a victim
to that extraordinary official Puritanism which sometimes exercises a
petty censorship over works of art in America. The medal that he made
for the World's Fair was rejected at Washington because it had on it a
beautiful little nude figure of a boy--holding an olive
branch--emblematical of young America. I think a commonplace wreath and
some lettering were substituted.

Saint-Gaudens did the fine bas-relief of Robert Louis Stevenson which
was chosen for the monument in St. Giles' Cathedral, Edinburgh. He gave
my daughter a medallion cast from this, because he knew that she was a
great lover of Stevenson. The bas-relief was dedicated to his friend,
Joe Evans. I knew Saint-Gaudens first through Joe Evans, an artist who,
while he lived, was to me and to my daughter the dearest of all in
America. His character was so fine and noble--his nature so perfect.
Many were the birthday cards he did for me, original in design,
beautiful in execution. Whatever he did, he put the best of himself
into it. I wrote this in my diary the year he died:

     "I heard on Saturday that our dear Joe Evans is dangerously ill.
     Yesterday came the worst news. Joe was not happy, but he was just
     heroic, and this world wasn't half good enough for him. I wonder if
     he has gone to a better. I keep on getting letters about him. He
     seems to have been so glad to die. It was like a child's funeral, I
     am told, and all his American friends seem to have been
     there--Saint-Gaudens, Taber, etc. A poem about the dear fellow by
     Mr. Gilder has one very good line in which he says the grave'might
     snatch a brightness from his presence there.' I thought that was
     very happy, the love of light and gladness being the most
     remarkable thing about him, the dear sad Joe."


_Robert Taber_

Robert Taber, dear, and rather sad too, was a great friend of Joe's.
They both came to me first in the shape of a little book in which was
inscribed: "Never anything can be amiss when simpleness and duty tender
it." "Upon this hint I spake," the book began. It was all the work of a
few boys and girls who from the gallery of the Star Theatre, New York,
had watched Irving's productions and learned to love him and me. Joe
Evans had done a lovely picture by way of frontispiece of a group of
eager heads hanging over the gallery's edge, his own and Taber's among
them. Eventually Taber came to England and acted with Henry Irving in
"Peter the Great" and other plays.

Like his friend Joe, he too was heroic. His health was bad and his life
none too happy--but he struggled on. His career was cut short by
consumption and he died in the Adirondacks in 1904.

I cannot speak of all my friends in America, or anywhere, for the matter
of that, _individually_. My personal friends are so many, and they are
_all_ wonderful--wonderfully staunch to me! I have "tried" them so, and
they have never given me up as a bad job.


_Dramatic Criticism in America_

William Winter, poet, critic, and exquisite man, was one of the first to
write of Henry with whole-hearted appreciation. But all the criticism in
America, favourable and unfavourable, surprised us by the scholarly
knowledge it displayed. In Chicago the notices were worthy of the
_Temps_ or the _Journal des Debats_. There was no attempt to force the
personality of the writer into the foreground nor to write a style that
would attract attention to the critic and leave the thing criticised to
take care of itself. William Winter and, of late years, Alan Dale have
had their personalities associated with their criticisms, but they are
exceptions. Curiously enough, the art of acting appears to bore most
dramatic critics, the very people who might be expected to be interested
in it. The American critics, however, at the time of our early visits,
were keenly interested, and showed it by their observation of many
points which our English critics had passed over. For instance, writing
of "Much Ado about Nothing," one of the Americans said of Henry in the
Church Scene that "something of him as a subtle interpreter of doubtful
situations was exquisitely shown in the early part of this fine scene by
his suspicion of Don John--felt by him alone, and expressed only by a
quick covert look, but a look so full of intelligence as to proclaim him
a sharer in the secret with his audience."

"Wherein does the superiority lie?" wrote another critic in comparing
our productions with those which had been seen in America up to 1884.
"Not in the amount of money expended, but in the amount of brains; in
the artistic intelligence and careful and earnest pains with which every
detail is studied and worked out. Nor is there any reason why Mr. Irving
or any other foreigner should have a monopoly of either intelligence or
pains. They are common property and one man's money can buy them as well
as another's. The defect in the American manager's policy heretofore has
been that he has squandered his money upon high salaries for a few of
his actors; and in costly, because unintelligent, expenditure for mere
dazzle and show."


_William Winter and His Children_

William Winter soon became a great personal friend of ours, and visited
us in England. He was one of the few _sad_ people I met in America. He
could have sat upon the ground and "told sad stories of the deaths of
kings" with the best. In England he loved going to see graveyards, and
knew where every poet was buried. He was very familiar with the poetry
of the _immediate_ past--Cowper, Coleridge, Gray, Wordsworth, Shelley,
Keats, and the rest. He _liked_ us, so everything we did was right to
him. He could not help being guided entirely by his feelings. If he
disliked a thing, he had no use for it. Some men can say, "I hate this
play, but of its kind it is admirable." Willie Winter could never take
that unemotional point of view.

His children came to stay with me in London. When we were all coming
home from the theatre one night after Faust (the year must have been
1886), I said to little Willie:

"Well, what do you think of the play?"

"Oh my!" said he, "it takes the cake."

"Takes the _cake_," said his little sister scornfully. "It takes the
ice-cream!"

"Won't you give me a kiss?" said Henry to the same little girl one
night.

"No, I _won't_, with all that blue stuff on your face." (He was made up
for Mephistopheles.) Then, after a pause, "But why--why don't you _take_
it!" She was only five years old at the time!


_Discovering the Southern Darkey_

For quite a while during the first tour I stayed in Washington with my
friend, Miss Olive Seward, and all the servants of that delightful
household were. This was my first introduction to the <DW64>s,
whose presence in the country makes America seem more foreign than
anything to European eyes. They are more sharply divided into high and
low types than white people, and are not in the least alike in their
types. It is safe to call any <DW52> man "George." They all love it,
perhaps because of George Washington; and most of them are really named
George. I never met with such perfect service as they can give. _Some_
of them are delightful. The beautiful, full voice of the "darkey" is so
attractive--so soothing, and they are so deft and gentle. Some of the
women are beautiful, and all the young appeared to me to be well-formed.
As for the babies! I washed two or three little piccaninnies when I was
in the South, and the way they rolled their gorgeous eyes at me was "too
cute," which means, in British-English, "fascinating."

At the Washington house, the servants danced a cake-walk for me--the
<DW52> cook, a magnificent type, who "took the cake," saying, "That
was because I chose a good handsome boy to dance with, Missie." They
sang, too. Their voices were beautiful--with such illimitable power, yet
as sweet as treacle.

The little page boy had a pet of a woolly head--Henry once gave him a
tip, a "fee," in American-English, and said: "There, that's for a new
wig when this one is worn out," gently pulling the astrakhan-like hair.
The tip would have bought him many wigs, I think!

"Why, Uncle Tom, how your face shines to-night!" said my hostess to one
of the very old servants.

"Yes, Missie, glycerine and rose-water, Missie!"

He had taken some from her dressing-table to shine up his face in honour
of me! A shiny complexion is considered to be a great beauty among the
blacks. The dear old man! He was very bent and very old; and looked like
one of the logs that he used to bring in for the fire--a log from some
hoary, lichened tree whose life was long since past. He would produce
pins from his head when you wanted one; he had them stuck in his pad of
white woolly hair. "Always handy then, Missie," he would say.

"Ask them to sing 'Sweet Violets,' Uncle Tom."

He was acting as a sort of master of the ceremonies at the entertainment
the servants were giving me.

"Don't think they know dat, Miss Olly."

"Why I heard them singing it the other night!" And she hummed the tune.

"Oh, dat was 'Sweet Vio-_letts_,' Miss Olly!"


_American Women_

Washington was the first city I had seen in America where the people did
not hurry, and where the social life did not seem entirely the work of
women. The men asserted themselves here as something more than machines
in the background, untiringly turning out the dollars while their wives
and daughters give luncheons and teas at which only women are present.

Beautifully as the women dress, they talk very little about clothes. I
was much struck by their culture--by the evidence that they had read far
more and developed a more fastidious taste than most young Englishwomen.
Yet it is all mixed up with extraordinary naivete. Their vivacity, the
appearance, at least, of _reality_, the animation, the energy of
American women, delighted me. They are very sympathetic, too, in spite
of a certain callousness which comes of regarding everything in life,
even love, as "lots of fun." I did not think that they, or the men
either, had much natural sense of beauty. They admire beauty in a
curious way through their intellect. Nearly every American girl has a
cast of the winged Victory of the Louvre in her room. She makes it a
point of her _education_ to admire it.

There! I am beginning to generalize--the very thing I was resolute to
avoid. How silly to generalize about a country which embraces such
extremes of climate as the sharp winters of Boston and New York, and the
warm winds of Florida which blow through palms and orange groves!




THE DECREE MADE ABSOLUTE

BY MARIE BELLOC LOWNDES

ILLUSTRATIONS BY ARTHUR G. DOVE


James Tapster was eating his solitary, well-cooked dinner in his
comfortable and handsome house, a house situated in one of the half-moon
terraces which line and frame the more aristocratic side of Regent's
Park, and which may, indeed, be said to have private grounds of their
own, for each resident enjoys the use of a key to a portion of the Park
entitled locally the "Inclosure."

Very early in his life Mr. Tapster had made up his mind that he would
like to live in Cumberland Crescent, and now he was living there; very
early in his life he had decided that no one could order a plain yet
palatable meal as well as he could himself, and now for some months past
Mr. Tapster had given his own orders, each morning, to the cook.

To-night Mr. Tapster had already eaten his fried sole, and was about to
cut himself off a generous portion of the grilled undercut before him,
when he heard the postman's steps hurrying around the Crescent. He rose
with a certain quick deliberateness, and, going out into the hall,
opened the front door just in time to avoid the rat-tat-tat. Then, the
one letter he had expected duly in his hand, he waited till he had sat
down again in front of his still empty plate before he broke the seal
and glanced over the type-written sheet of note-paper:

    SHORTERS COURT,
    THROGMORTON ST.
    November 4, 190-.

    DEAR JAMES:

    In reply to your letter of yesterday's date, I have been to Bedford
    Row and seen Greenfield, and he thinks it probable that the Decree
    will be made Absolute to-day; in that case you will have received a
    wire before this letter reaches you.

    Your affect' brother,
    WM. A. TAPSTER.

In the same handwriting as the signature were added two holograph lines:
"Glad you have the children home again. Maud will be round to see them
soon."

Mr. Tapster read over once again the body of the letter, and there came
upon him an instinctive feeling of intense relief; then, with a not less
instinctive feeling of impatience, his eyes traveled down again to the
postscript: "Maud will be round to see them soon." Well, he would see
about that! But he did not exclaim, even mentally, as most men feeling
as he then felt would have done, "I'll be damned if she will!" knowing
the while that Maud certainly would.

His brother's letter, though most satisfactory as regarded its main
point, put Mr. Tapster out of conceit with the rest of his dinner; so he
rang twice and had the table cleared, frowning at the parlor-maid as she
hurried through her duties, and yet not daring to rebuke her for having
neglected to answer the bell the first time he rang. After a pause, he
rose and turned toward the door--but no, he could not face the large,
cheerless drawing-room up-stairs; instead, he sat down by the fire, and
set himself to consider his future and, in a more hazy sense, that of
his now motherless children.

But very soon, as generally happens to those who devote any time to that
least profitable of occupations, Mr. Tapster found that his thoughts
drifted aimlessly, not to the future where he would have them be, but to
the past--that past which he desired to forget, to obliterate from his
memory.

Till rather more than a year ago few men of his age--he had then been
sixty, he was now sixty-one--enjoyed a pleasanter and, from his own
point of view, a better filled life than James Tapster. How he had
scorned the gambler, the spendthrift,