In October, 1855, Mr. William B. Astor, son of the founder, conveyed to the trustees the lot, eighty feet front by one hundred and twenty deep, adjoining the library on the north, and proceeded to erect upon it an addition similar in all respects to the existing structure, the library thus enlarged being opened September 1, 1859, with one hundred and ten thousand volumes on its shelves. The addition led to a rearrangement of the material, the old hall being devoted to science and the industrial arts, and the new to history and general literature. In 1866 Mr. Astor further signified his interest in the library by a gift of fifty thousand dollars, twenty thousand dollars of it to be expended in the purchase of books, and on his death in 1875 left it a bequest of two hundred and forty-nine thousand dollars. In 1879 Mr. John Jacob Astor, grandson of the founder, added to this enduring monument of his family by building a second addition, seventy-five feet front and one hundred and twenty feet deep, on the lot adjoining on the north, making the entire building two hundred feet front by one hundred deep. At the same time an additional story was placed on the Middle Hall, and a new entrance and stairway constructed. The enlarged building, the present Astor Library, was opened in October, 1881, with two hundred thousand volumes and a shelf-capacity of three hundred thousand. Its present contents are estimated at two hundred and twenty thousand volumes, exclusive of pamphlets. The shelves are ranged in alcoves extending around the sides of the three main halls and subdivided into sections of six shelves each, each section being designated by a numeral. Each shelf is designated by a letter of the alphabet, beginning at the bottom with A. The alcoves have no distinguishing mark, the books being arranged therein by subjects which the distributing librarian is expected to carry in his mind. The first catalogue, in four volumes, was compiled by Dr. Cogswell and printed in 1861. This was followed in 1866 by an index of subjects from the same hand. Recently a catalogue in continuation of Dr. Cogswell's, bringing the work down to the end of 1880, has been prepared, and is being printed at the Riverside Press, Boston. The current card catalogue is arranged on the dictionary plan, giving author and subject under one alphabet. Opposite each title is written the number of the alcove and the letter designating the shelf. By the regulations the reader is required to find the title of the book desired in the catalogue, write it with the number and letter on a slip of paper provided for the purpose, and give it to the distributing librarian, who despatches one of his boy Mercuries to the shelf designated for the work. More often than not, however, the reader asks directly for the book desired, without consulting the catalogue, and it is rarely that the librarian cannot from memory direct his messenger to the section and shelf containing it. In the matter of theft and mutilation of books the library depends largely on the honor of readers, although some safeguards are provided. All readers are required to enter their names and addresses in a book, and the volume on being given out is charged to them, to be checked off on its return: it would be difficult, too, for a thief to purloin books without being detected by the employees or the porter in the vestibule. Yet books are stolen occasionally. In June, 1881, a four-volume work by Bentley on "Medicinal Plants," valued at sixty dollars, was taken from the library. It was soon missed, and search made for it without avail. A few weeks later, however, it was discovered by the principal librarian in a Broadway book-stall and recovered.
Few strangers in the city depart without paying a visit to the Astor Library, and it is one of the few lions of the city that do not disappoint. The main entrance is approached by two flights of stone steps, from the north and south, leading to a brownstone platform enclosed by the same material. From this, broad door-ways give entrance to the vestibule, sixty feet by forty, paved in black and white marble, and wainscoted four feet above the floor with beautifully variegated marble from Vermont. The panelled ceiling is elaborately frescoed, as well as the upper part of the walls. Busts of the sages and heroes of antiquity adorn the hall. From the vestibule a stairway of white marble, with massive newels of variegated marble, leads up to the library proper. The visitor enters this in the centre of Middle Hall. Before him, separated by a balustrade, are the desks and tables of the distributing librarian and his assistants. The ladies' reading-room is in the rear. On the left and right arched passages give access to the North and South Halls, in which the main reading-rooms are situated. The ceiling above is the skylight of the roof, and the alcoves, filled with the wealth of learning of all ages and peoples, rise on either hand quite to the ceiling. At long, green-covered tables, ranged in two parallel lines through the halls, are seated the readers, in themselves an interesting study. Scientists, artists, literary men, special students, inventors, and dilettante loungers make up the company. They come with the opening of the doors at nine in the morning, and remain, some of them, until they close at five in the evening. There are daily desertions from their ranks, but always new-comers enough to fill the gaps. Their wants are as various as their conditions. This well-dressed, self-respectful mechanic wishes to consult the patent-office reports of various countries, in which the library is rich. His long-haired Saxon neighbor is poring over a Chinese manuscript, German scholars being the only ones so far who have attacked the fine collection of Chinese and Japanese works in the library. Next him is a dilettante reader languidly poring over "Lothair:" were the trustees to fill their shelves with trashy fiction, readers of his class would soon crowd out the more earnest workers. Here is a student with the thirty or more volumes of the "New England Historic Genealogical Register" piled before him, flanked on one side by the huge volumes of Burke's "Peerage" and on the other by Walford's "County Families." There are many readers of this class, the library's department of Genealogy and Heraldry being well filled. There is a lady here and there at the tables working with a male companion, but, as a rule, they are to be found at the ladies' tables in the Middle Hall. There seem to be but two classes of readers here,—the lady in silken attire, engaged in looking out some item of family history or question of decorative art, and the brisk business-like literary lady, seeking material for story or sketch. Any student or literary worker who can show to the satisfaction of one of the trustees that he is engaged in work requiring free access to the library receives a card from the superintendent which admits him to the alcoves and places all the treasures of the library at his command. A register is placed near the distributing librarian's desk, in which on entering each visitor to the alcove is required to sign his name, and in this register each year is accumulated a roll of autographs of which any institution might be proud. Famous scholars, scientists, authors, journalists, poets, artists, and divines, both of this country and of Europe, are included in the lists.
Of its treasures of literary and artistic interest it is impossible to give categorical details. Perhaps the library prizes most the magnificent elephant folio edition, in four volumes, of Audubon's "Birds and Quadrupeds of North America," with its colored plates, heavy paper, and general air of sumptuousness. The work is rare as well as magnificent, and, though the library does not set a price upon its books, it is known that three thousand dollars would not replace a missing copy. In an adjoining alcove is an equally sumptuous but more ancient volume, the Antiphonale, or mammoth manuscript of the chants for the Christian year. This volume was used at the coronation of Charles X., King of France. The covers of this huge folio are bound with brass, beautiful illuminations by Le Brun adorn its title-pages, and then follows, in huge black characters, the music of the chants. In its immediate vicinity are many of the treasures of the library,—Zahn's great work on Pompeii, three volumes of very large folios, containing splendidly-colored frescos from the walls of the dead city; Sylvester's elaborate work of "Fac-Similes of the Illuminated Manuscripts of the Middle Ages," in four large folios; and also Count Bastard's great work on the same, seeming more sumptuous in gold, silver, and colors. Another notable work is Count Littar's "Genealogies of Celebrated Italian Families," in ten folio volumes, emblazoned in gold, and illustrated with richly-colored portraits finished like ivory miniatures. There are whole galleries of European art,—Versailles, Florence, Spain, the Vatican, Nash's Portfolio of Colored Pictures of Windsor Castle and Palace, the Royal Pitti Gallery, Munich, Dresden, and others. A work on the "Archæology of the Bosphorus," presented by the Emperor of Russia to the library, is in three folio volumes, printed on thick vellum paper, with two folding maps and ninety-four illuminated plates: but two hundred copies of the book were printed, for presentation solely. Other notable gifts are the publications of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences, in seventeen volumes, catalogue of antiquities, chiefly British, at Alnwick Castle, and one of Egyptian antiquities at the same, from the Duke of Northumberland, a complete file of the "Liberator," from Mr. Wendell Phillips, numerous works on Oriental art, from the imperial governments of Japan and China, and many thousand folio volumes of Parliamentary papers and British patents, from the British government. Of its Orientalia and its department of Egyptology the library is especially proud. The latter so good an authority as Professor Seyffarth pronounces second only to that of the British Museum.
In addition to the large collection of costly books of art with which this library is enriched, there are some of the rarest manuscripts and earliest printed books to be seen kept in glass cases in the Middle Hall. Among these may be mentioned the superbly illuminated manuscript of the ninth century entitled "Evangelistarium,"—one of the finest existing productions of the revival of learning under Charlemagne; the "Sarum Missal," a richly-emblazoned manuscript of the tenth century; some choice Greek and Latin codices once belonging to the library of Pope Pius VI.; and the Persian manuscripts recently acquired, which formerly were in the library of the Mogul emperors at Delhi, bearing the stamp of Shah Akbar and Shah Jehan. The writing is by the famous calligrapher Sultan Alee Meshedee (896 a.h., or 1518 a.d.).
There is as great a popular misconception of the character and purpose of the Lenox Library as of the Astor. The two are like and yet unlike,—alike in the rich treasures which they contain, but quite unlike in their scope and purposes. In reality the Lenox is a museum of art rather than a library: its books are, with few exceptions, rarities, "first editions," illuminated manuscripts, specimens showing the advance of the typographic art from the beginning, books of artistic interest, and works not to be found in this country, and sometimes not in Europe. Its collection of paintings and sculpture is important as well as its literary treasures. It is not a library of general reference, though many of its works will be sought by scholars for the value of their contents: it is, in short, a private art-gallery and library thrown open at stated times and under certain restrictions to the public. The library owes its existence to the munificence of Mr. James Lenox, a wealthy and educated gentleman of New York, who determined to establish permanently in his native city his fine collection of manuscripts, printed books, engravings and maps, statuary, paintings, drawings, and other works of art, by giving the land and money necessary to provide a building and a permanent fund for the maintenance of the same. In January, 1870, the legislature of New York passed an act "creating a body corporate by the name and style of 'The Trustees of the Lenox Library.'" Nine trustees were named, and these gentlemen organized by electing Mr. Lenox president and Mr. A.B. Belknap secretary. In the succeeding March Mr. Lenox conveyed to the trustees three hundred thousand dollars in stocks of the county of New York and bonds and mortgage securities, and also the ten lots of land fronting on Fifth Avenue on which the library-building now stands. One hundred thousand dollars were set apart for the formation of a permanent fund, and two hundred thousand dollars for a building-fund. Contracts for a library-building were made early In 1872, and work on it was begun in May of the same year,—the structure being finished in 1875. It has a frontage of one hundred and ninety-two feet on Fifth Avenue, overlooking the Park, and a depth of one hundred and fourteen feet on both Seventieth and Seventy-first Streets. The general plan is that of a central structure connecting two turreted wings which enclose a spacious entrance-court. From the court the visitor enters a grand hall or vestibule, from which every part of the building is reached. At either end is a spacious library-room. Stone stairways lead from each end of the vestibule to the mezzanine, or half-story, and the second-story landings. From the latter one enters the principal gallery, ninety-six by twenty-four, devoted to sculpture, and opening on the east into the picture-gallery. At either end of the hall of sculpture are library- and reading-rooms similar to those on the first floor. The stairway on the north continues the ascent to an attic or third-floor gallery. The building throughout is fitted up in a style befitting a shrine of the arts. The first-floor library-rooms are one hundred and eight feet long by thirty feet wide and twenty-four feet high, with level ceilings, beautifully panelled and corniced. The sides of the hall of sculpture are divided by five arcades, resting on piers decorated with niches, pilasters, and other architectural ornaments; the ceiling has deep panels resting on and supported by the pilasters; the walls are wainscoted in oak to the height of the niches. The picture-gallery is forty by fifty-six, well lighted from above by three large skylights. Iron book-cases, with a capacity for eighty thousand volumes, are arranged in two tiers on the sides of the galleries. The whole structure is as nearly fire-proof as it could possibly be made, and its massive walls and stone towers make it one of the prominent architectural features of the avenue. While the building was in progress, several benefactions of interest had accrued to the library. Mr. Lenox had given an additional one hundred thousand dollars, and in 1872 one hundred thousand dollars more, and Mr. Felix Astoin had promised to bestow his fine collection of some five thousand rare French works. On the 15th of January, 1877, the first exhibition of paintings and sculptures was opened to the public, and continued on two days of the week to the end of the year, and on the 1st of the following December an apartment for the exhibition of rare works and manuscripts was also opened to the public. Fifteen thousand people visited the library during this first year, thus indicating the popular appreciation of a collection of this kind. In 1881 nineteen thousand eight hundred and thirty-three admission-tickets were issued,—the largest number of visitors on any one day being eleven hundred, on the anniversary of Washington's birthday.
The scope and objects of this unique institution are so admirably set forth by the trustees in their report to the legislature for 1881 that we append an extract. "The library," they observe, "differs from most public libraries. It is not a great general library intended in its endowment and present equipment for the use of readers in all or most of the departments of human knowledge.... Beyond its special collections it should be regarded as supplementary to others more general and numerous and directly adapted to popular use. It is not like the British Museum, but rather like the Grenville collection in the British Museum, or perhaps still more like the house and museum of Sir John Soane in Lincoln's Inn's Fields, in London, both lasting monuments of the learning and liberality of their honored founders. Thus, while the library does not profess to be a general or universal collection of all the knowledge stored up in the world of books, it is absolutely without a peer or a rival here in the special collections to which the generous taste and liberal scholarship of its founder devoted his best gifts of intellectual ability and ample resources of fortune. It represents the favorite studies of a lifetime consecrated after due offices of religion and charity to the choicest pursuits of literature and art. It would be difficult to estimate the value or importance of these marvellous treasures, whose exhibition hitherto only in part has challenged the admiration of all scholars and given a new impulse to those studies for which they furnish an apparatus before unseen in America.... The countless myriads of volumes produced in the past four centuries of printing with movable types have left in all the libraries of all the nations comparatively few monuments, or even memorials, of so many eager, patient, or weary generations of men whose works have followed them when they have rested from their labors. The Lenox Library was established for the public exhibition and scholarly use of some of the most rare and precious of such monuments and memorials of the typographic art and the historic past as have escaped the wreck and been preserved to this day. That exhibition and use must be governed by regulations which will insure to the fullest extent the security and preservation of the treasures intrusted to our care, in the enforcement of which the trustees anticipate the sympathy and co-operation of all scholars and men of letters, through whose use and labors alone the public at large must chiefly derive real and permanent benefit from this and all similar institutions." The "regulations" adopted by the trustees for the preservation of their treasures do not seem unreasonable. Admission is by ticket, which may be procured of the librarian by addressing him by mail. We have space for but the briefest possible glimpses at these treasures. The chief rarities in typography are found in the north and south libraries on the first floor. In "first editions" it would be difficult to say whether the library prides itself most on its Bibles, its Miltoniana, or its Shakesperiana. In Bibles the whole art of printing with movable types is fully portrayed, the series beginning with the "Mazarin," or Gutenberg, Bible, the first book ever printed with movable types. There are Bibles in all languages. There is the first complete edition of the New Testament in Greek ever published, its title-page dated Basle, 1516. In a glass case in the north library are the four huge "Polyglot" Bibles, marvels of typography, known as the Complutensian, Antwerp, Paris, and English Polyglots. In the same case repose the Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Alexandrinus, and Codex Vaticanus,—three great folios, in the original Greek and Hebrew, sacred to scholars as the works on which all authority for the Scriptures rests. Tyndale's New Testament, the first ever printed on English ground, dated London, 1536, is here, and that rare copy of the King James version known as the "Wicked Bible." In this copy the printer, as a satire on the age, omitted the word "not" from the seventh commandment, and for this piece of waggery was heavily fined, the money going, it is said, to establish the first Greek press ever erected at Oxford. Among its "first editions" the library has that of Homer, 1488, and that of Dante, 1472. The Milton collection deserves special notice: in addition to the first editions of the poet's various works, it contains a folio volume of letters and documents pertaining to Milton and his family, with autograph manuscripts giving exceedingly interesting details of the poet's private life and fortunes. One of these is a long original letter from Milton himself to his friend Carlo Dati, the Florentine, with the latter's reply; there are also three receipts or releases signed by Milton's three daughters, Anne Milton, Mary Milton, and Deborah Clarke, a bond from Elizabeth Milton, his widow, to one Randle Timmis, and several other agreements and assignments, with the autographs of attesting witnesses. In folio editions of Shakespeare, and in commentaries, glossaries, and dissertations, the library is also exceedingly rich. Its collection of Americana is the wonder and delight of scholars. We must mention the first publication of the printed letter of Columbus, one in each of its four editions, giving the first account of his discoveries in the West, with three autograph letters of Diego Columbus, his son; the "Cosmographia Introductio," printed at St. Dié, 1507,—the first book in which a suggestion of the name "America" occurs; and also the first map, printed in 1520, in which the name appears. Here is the first American book printed,—a Mexican work, dated 1543-44; the Bay Psalm-Book, 1640, the first work printed in New England; and the first book printed in New York,—the Laws of the Province, by Bradford, issued in 1691: the Puritan evidently placing the gospel first, and the Knickerbocker the law.
Leaving the typographical treasures of the library, we ascend the broad marble stairway to the floor above, for a brief glance at the paintings and statuary. In the hall devoted to sculpture are many noble and beautiful works of art in marble, the most noticeable perhaps being Powers's "Il Penseroso," the bust of Washington and the "Babes in the Wood" by Crawford, and the statue of Lincoln by Ball. In the picture-gallery on the east are a hundred and fifty subjects. On the south wall hangs a canvas which is at once recognized as the masterpiece. It is Munkácsy's "Blind Milton dictating 'Paradise Lost' to his Daughters." This painting is fitly supported on one side by a portrait of Milton owned for many years by Charles Lamb, and on the other by a copy of Lely's fine portrait of Cromwell.
The Mercantile is the popular library of the city; in no sense a public library, however, for the student or stranger must advance a pretty liberal entrance-fee before he can avail himself of its benefits. This institution is a pleasing example of what can be done by many hands, even though there be little in them: it has reached its present proportions without endowment or State aid, chiefly through the steady, continuous efforts of the merchants' clerks of the city. They have always managed it, one generation succeeding another, and they have in it to-day the largest circulating library in America. Mr. William Wood, a benevolent gentleman who devoted many of his later years to improving the condition of clerks, apprentices, and sailors, is regarded as the founder. Mr. Wood was a native of Boston, and in business there during early life, but later removed to London. After distributing much dole to the poor of that city, he founded a library for clerks in Liverpool, and subsequently one in Boston, the latter being the first of its kind in this country. The various mercantile libraries at Albany, Philadelphia, New Orleans, and other places are said to have been founded on the plan of this. In 1820 Mr. Wood began interesting the merchants' clerks of New York in the project of a library for themselves. The first meeting to consider it was held at the Tontine Coffee-House, in Wall Street, on November 9 of that year; and at an adjourned meeting on the 27th of the same month a constitution was formed and officers elected. The young men contributed a little money for the purchase of books, the merchants more, many books were begged or purchased by Mr. Wood, and on the 12th of February, 1821, the library was formally opened, with seven hundred volumes, in an upper room at No. 49 Fulton Street. The first librarian was Mr. John Thompson, who received, it is remembered, one hundred and fifty dollars a year as salary. It was not long before the library, like its fellows, began its migrations up town, Harpers' Building, on Cliff Street, being its second abode. This removal occurred in 1826, and the association had then become so strong that it was able to open a reading-room in connection with its library. Old readers remember that there were four weekly newspapers and seven magazines in this first reading-room. Its membership at that time numbered twelve hundred, there were four thousand four hundred volumes on its shelves, and its annual income amounted to seventeen hundred and fifty dollars.
In 1828 the library was desirous of building: many of the merchants and substantial men of the city were willing to aid it, but doubted the wisdom of trusting such large property interests to the management of young men. They formed, therefore, the Clinton Hall Association, to hold and control real estate for the benefit of the library, with fund shares of one hundred dollars each. The first year thirty-three thousand five hundred dollars had been subscribed, and the corporation began erecting the first Clinton Hall, at the corner of Nassau and Beekman Streets. Here the library remained for nearly a score of years, or until 1853, when a brisk agitation was begun for its removal up-town. A small but determined party favored its removal. The more conservative objected. At length, in January, 1853, the question was put to the vote, and lost by a large majority. But while the excitement was still at its height it was learned that the association had sold Clinton Hall and had purchased the old Italian Opera-House in Astor Place. Here, in May, 1855, the library opened, and here it has since remained, although for several years past the question of a farther removal up-town has been agitated. The constitution of this excellent institution provides that it shall be composed of three classes of members,—active, subscribing, and honorary. Any person engaged on a salary as clerk may become an active member, if approved by the board of directors, on subscribing to the constitution and paying an initiation-fee of one dollar, and two dollars for the first six months, his regular dues thereafter being two dollars semi-annually, in advance. Active members only may vote or hold office. Subscribing members may become such by a payment of five dollars annually or three dollars semi-annually. Persons of distinction may be elected honorary members by a vote of three-fourths of the members of the board of direction. The board of direction is composed of a president, vice-president, treasurer, secretary, and eight directors, the former elected annually, the directors four for one year and four for two years. There is also a book committee, which reports one month previous to each annual meeting. From the last annual report of the board it appears that in April, 1883, there were 198,858 books in the library. The total number of members at the same time was 3136, and the honorary members (71), the editors using the library (54), and the Clinton Hall stockholders (1701) swelled the total number of those availing themselves of its privileges to 4962. The total circulation for the year was 112,375 volumes, of which 27,549 were distributed from the branch office, No. 2 Liberty Place, and 1695 books were delivered by messengers at members' residences. In 1870 the circulation was 234,120, the large falling off—over one-half—being due to the era of cheap books. The department of fiction, of course, suffers most. This in 1870 formed about seventy per cent. of the circulation. In 1883 the number of works of fiction circulated was 53,937,—not quite fifty per cent.
To gain a fair idea of the popularity of the library one should spend a mid-winter Saturday afternoon and evening with the librarian and his busy assistants. Early in the afternoon numbers of young ladies leave the shopping and fashionable thoroughfares up-town and throng the library-room. The attendants, all young men, work with increased animation under the stimulus. Books fly from counter to alcoves and return, messenger-boys dart hither and thither, the fair patrons thumb the catalogues and chatter in sad defiance of the rules. They are long in making their selections, and appeal for aid to the librarians. But the last of this class of visitors departs before the six-o'clock dinner or tea, and the attendants have a respite for an hour. At seven the real rush begins, with the advent of the clerks and other patrons employed in store or office during the day, each intent on supplying himself with reading-matter for the next day. From this hour until the closing at nine the librarians are as busy as bees: there is a continual running from counter to alcove and from gallery to gallery. In some of the reports of the librarian interesting data are given of the tastes of readers and the popularity of books. Fiction, as we have seen, leads; but there is a growing taste for scientific and historical works. Buckle, Mill, and Macaulay are favorites, and Tyndall, Huxley, and Lubbock have many readers. The theft of its books is a serious drain on the library each year, but the destruction of its rare and valuable works of reference is still more provoking. Common gratitude, it might seem, would deter persons admitted to the privileges of its alcoves from injuring its property. What shall we think, then, of the vandals who during the past year twice cut out the article on political economy in "Appletons' Cyclopædia," so mutilated Thomson's "Cyclopædia of the Useful Arts" as to render it valueless, and bore off bodily Storer's "Dictionary of the Solubilities," the second volume of the new edition of the "Encyclopædia Britannica," Andrews's "Latin Dictionary," and several other valuable works?
There is a library in the city, the Apprentices', on Sixteenth Street, whose existence is hardly known even to New-Yorkers, which is exceedingly interesting to the student as an instance of the good a trades' union may accomplish when its energies are rightly directed. Here is a library of about sixty thousand volumes, with a supplementary reference library of forty thousand seven hundred and fifty works, and a well-equipped reading-room, free of debt, and free to its patrons, and all the result of the well-directed efforts of the "Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen." This society first organized for charitable purposes in 1792, receiving its first charter on the 14th of March of that year. In January, 1821, its charter was amended, the society being empowered to support a school for the education of the children of its deceased and indigent members and for the establishment of an "Apprentices' Library for the use of the apprentices of mechanics in the City of New York." A small library had been opened the year before at 12 Chambers Street, and there the library remained, constantly growing in number of volumes and patrons, till 1835, when it was removed to the old High-School Building, at 472 Broadway, which the society about that time purchased. It remained there until 1878, when it followed the march of population up-town, removing to its present spacious and convenient rooms in Mechanics' Hall, in Sixteenth Street. Strange as it may seem, the Apprentices' is the nearest approach to a public library on a large scale that the city can boast. It is absolutely free to males up to the age of eighteen; after that age it is required of the beneficiaries that they be engaged in some mechanical employment. Ladies who are engaged in any legitimate occupation may partake of its benefits. Books are loaned, the applicants, besides meeting the above conditions, being only required to furnish a guarantor. The total circulation of this excellent institution for 1881-82 was 164,100 volumes, and its beneficial influence on the class reached may be imagined. It is nevertheless a class library; and the fact still remains that New York, with her vast wealth and her splendid public and private charities, has yet to endow the great public library which will place within reach of her citizens the literary wealth of the ages. There is scarcely a disease, it is said, but has its richly-endowed hospital in the city, the number of eleemosynary institutions is legion, but the establishment of a public library, which is usually the first care of a free, rich, intelligent community, has been unaccountably neglected. The subject is now receiving the earnest thought of the best people of the city. Considerable difference of opinion exists as to the best method of founding and supporting such an institution. Some argue that this should be done by the city alone, holding that the self-respecting workingman and workingwoman will never patronize a free library instituted solely by private charity. Others urge that such an institution to be successful should be free from city control and entirely the result of private munificence. The latter gentlemen have added to the cogency of their arguments by a practical demonstration. Early in 1880 they organized on a small scale a free circulating library which should exist solely by the benefactions of the public, with the object of furnishing free reading at their homes to the people. The general plan adopted was a central library, with branches in the various wards, by this means bringing the centres of distribution within easy reach of the city's homes. The success of the institution has been such that its development should be carefully followed. It began operations by leasing two rooms of the old mansion, No. 36 Bond Street, and in March, 1880, "moved in," opening with a few hundred volumes donated chiefly from the libraries of its projectors. The first month—March—1044 volumes were circulated. By October this had grown to 4212. The next year—1881-82—the circulation reached 69,280, and it continued to increase until in 1883 it reached 81,233,—an increase of nearly 10,000 over the preceding year. In May, 1883, the library was removed to the comfortable and roomy building, No. 49 Bond Street, which had been purchased and fitted up for it by the trustees. Early in December, 1884, the Ottendorfer Library, at 135 Second Avenue, the first of the projected branch libraries, was opened with 8819 volumes, 4784 of which were in English and 4035 in German, the whole, with the library building, being the gift of Mr. Oswald Ottendorfer, of New York. The branch proved equally popular, having circulated during the past year—1885—97,000 volumes, while the circulation of the main library has increased to 104,000 volumes, the combined circulation of both libraries exceeding that of any other in the city. The percentage of loss has been only one book for 31,768 circulated. The report of the treasurer shows that the annual expenses of the library—about twelve thousand dollars—have been met by voluntary contributions, and that it has a permanent fund of about thirty-two thousand dollars besides its books. These figures prove that libraries of this character will be appreciated, and used by the people. The library committee say, in their last report, that after four years' experience they feel competent to begin the establishment of branch libraries, and observe that at least six of these centres of light and intelligence should be opened in various quarters of the city. It is understood that lack of funds alone prevents the institution from entering on this wider field. When one considers the liberal and too often indiscriminate charities of the metropolis, and reflects that the need and utility of this excellent enterprise have been demonstrated, it seems impossible that pecuniary obstacles will long be allowed to stand in the way of its legitimate development.
A Darwinian might find evidence of the pedigree of our species in the inherent taste for mimicry which we share, at all events, with the anthropoid apes. This instinct of mimicry I take to be the humble beginning from which dramatic art has sprung, and it appears in the individual at a very early stage. Perhaps it is even expressed in the first squalls of infancy, though this possibility has been overlooked or obscured by philosophic pedantry. Now anent these squalls. Hegel gravely declares that they indicate a revelation of the baby's exalted nature (oh!), and are meant to inform the public that it feels itself "permeated with the certitude" that it has a right to exact from the external world the satisfaction of its needs. Michelet opines that the squalls reveal the horror felt by the soul at being enslaved to nature. Another writer regards them as an outburst of wrath on the part of the baby at finding itself powerless against environing circumstances. Some early theologians, on the other hand, pronounced squalling to be a proof of innate wickedness; and this view strikes one as being much nearer the mark. But none of these accounts are completely satisfactory. Innate wickedness may supply the conception; it is the dramatic instinct that suggests the means. Here is the real explanation of those yells which embitter the life of a young father and drive the veteran into temporary exile. It happens in this wise. The first aim of a baby—not yours, madam; yours is well known to be an exception, but of other and common babies—is to make itself as widely offensive as possible. The end, indeed, is execrable, but the method is masterly. The baby has an a priori intuition that the note of the domestic cat is repulsive to the ear of the human adult. Consequently, what does your baby do but betake itself to a practical study of the caterwaul! After a few conscientious rehearsals a creditable degree of perfection is usually reached, and a series of excruciating performances are forthwith commenced, which last with unbroken success until the stage arrives when correction becomes possible. This process may check the child's taste for imitating the lower animals in some of their less engaging peculiarities, but his dramatic instincts will be diverted with a refreshing promptness to the congenial subjects of parent or nurse.
No sooner is your son and heir invested with the full dignity of knickerbockers than he begins to celebrate this rise in the social scale by "playing at being papa." The author of "Vice Versa" has drawn an amusing picture of the discomforts to papa which an exchange of environment with his school-boy son might involve. But there is another side to the question; and at Christmas-time, for instance, most papas would probably be glad enough to exchange the joys and responsibilities of paternity for the simple taste which can tackle plum-pudding and the youthful digestion for which this delicacy has no terrors. However, while it is impossible, or at least inexpedient, for papa to play at being his own urchin, the latter is restrained by no considerations, moral or otherwise, from attempting to personate his papa.
It is often said sententiously that the child is the father of the man. In this case most of us should blush for our parentage. It will be conceded at once (subject, of course, to special reservations in favor of individual brats) that the baby is the most detestable of created beings. But its physical impotence to some extent neutralizes its moral baseness. In the child the deviltries of the baby are partially curbed, but this loss is compensated for by superior bodily powers. Now, the virtuous child—if such a conception can be framed—when representing papa would delight to dwell on the better side of the paternal character, the finer feelings, the flashes of genius, the sallies of wit, the little touches of tenderness and romance, and so forth. Very likely; but the actual child does just the reverse of this. Is there a trivial weakness, a venial shortcoming, a microscopic spot of imperfection anywhere? The ruthless little imp has marked it for his own, and will infallibly reproduce it, certainly before your servants, and possibly before your friends.
"Now we'll play at being in church," quoth Master George in lordly wise to his little sisters. "I'm papa." Whereupon he will twist himself into an unseemly tangle of legs and arms which is simply a barbarous travesty of the attitude of studied grace with which you drink in the sermon in the corner of your family pew.
"Master George, you mustn't," interposes the housemaid, in a tone of faint rebuke, adding, however, with a thrill of generous appreciation, "Law, 'ow funny the child is, and as like as like!" Applause is delicious to every actor, and under its stimulus your first-born essays a fresh flight. Above the laughter of the nurses and the admiring shrieks of his sisters there rises a weird sound, as of a sucking pig in extremis. Your son, my unfortunate friend, is attempting, with his childish treble pipes, to formulate a masculine snore. This is a gross calumny. You never—stop!—well, on one occasion perhaps—but then there were extenuating circumstances. Very likely; but the child has grasped the fact without the circumstances, and has framed his conclusion as a universal proposition. It is a most improper induction, I admit; but logic, like some other things, is not to be looked for in children.
Next comes mamma's turn. Perhaps she has weakly yielded on some occasion to young hopeful's entreaties that he might come down to the kitchen with her to order dinner. By the perverse luck that waits on poor mortals, there happened on that very day to be a passage of arms between mistress and cook. Rapidly forgotten by the principals, it has been carefully stored up in the memory of the witness, who will subsequently bestow an immense amount of misguided energy in teaching a young sister to reproduce, with appropriate gesture and intonation, "Cook, I desire that you will not speak to me in that way. I am extremely displeased with you, and I shall acquaint your master with your conduct."
Small sisters, by the way, may be made to serve a variety of useful purposes of a dramatic or semi-dramatic nature. They may safely be cast for the unpleasant or uninteresting characters of the nursery drama. They form convenient targets for the development of their brothers' marksmanship; and they make excellent horses for their brothers to drive, and, it may be added, for their brothers to flog.
When the subjects afforded by its immediate surroundings are exhausted, Theatre Royal Nursery turns to fiction or history for materials. And here, too, the perversity of childhood is displayed. It is not the virtuous, the benevolent, the amiable, that your child delights to imitate, but rather the tyrant and the destroyer, the ogre who subsists in rude plenty on the peasantry of the neighborhood, or the dragon who is restricted by taste or convention to one young lady per diem, till the national stock is exhausted, or the inevitable knight turns up to supply the proper dramatic finale.
The varied incident of the "Pilgrim's Progress," its romance, and the weird fascination of its goblins and monsters, make it a favorite source of dramatic adaptations. And here, if any man doubt the doctrine of original sin, let him note the fierce competition among the youngsters for the part of Apollyon, and put his doubts from him. With a little care a great many scenes may be selected from this inimitable work. Christian's entry into the haven of refuge in the early part of his pilgrimage can be effectively reproduced in the nursery. It will be remembered that the approach was commanded by a castle of Beelzebub's, from which pilgrims were assailed by a shower of arrows. It is this that gives the episode its charm. One child is of course obliged to sacrifice his inclinations and personate Christian. The rest eagerly take service under Beelzebub and become the persecuting garrison. The "properties" required are of the simplest kind. The nursery sofa or settee—a position of great natural strength—is further fortified with chairs and other furniture to represent the stronghold of the enemy. Christian should be equipped with a wide-awake hat, a stick, and a great-coat (papa's will do, or, better still, a visitor's), with a stool wrapped up in a towel and slung over his shoulders to do duty as the bundle of sins. He is then made to totter along to a "practical" gate (two chairs are the right thing) at the far end of the room, while the hosts of darkness hurl boots, balls, and other suitable missiles at him from the sofa. Sometimes the original is faithfully copied, and bows and arrows are employed; but this is, on the whole, a mistake: there is some chance of Christian being really injured, and this, though of course no objection in itself, is apt to provoke a summary interference by the authorities. Christian's passage through the Valley of the Shadow of Death is another favorite piece. Here, too, there are great opportunities for an enterprising demon. It will be necessary, however, for the success of the performance that Christian should abandon his strictly defensive attitude in the narrative and lay about him with sufficient energy to produce a general scrimmage.
"Robinson Crusoe" is a treasure-house of situations, some of which gain a piquancy from the dash of the diabolical with which Crusoe's terrors invested them. Even where this is wanting there is plenty of bloodshed to take its place, and a happy combination of horrors is supplied by the cannibal feast which Crusoe interrupts. The youngest member of the troupe is, on the whole, the best victim; but, failing this, any pet animal sufficiently lazy or good-tempered to endure the process makes a tolerable substitute. "Masterman Ready," "The Swiss Family Robinson," and other cognate works, together with appropriate selections from sacred and profane history, are adapted with a shamelessness which would make a dramatic author's blood run cold.
Lions, tigers, and wild beasts generally are common objects of nursery imitation, either from a genuine admiration of their qualities or from the mysterious craving for locomotion on all-fours with which children seem possessed. This branch of the art, however, struggles under some difficulties. It has, of course, to contend with the undisguised opposition of authority. This is hardly a matter for marvel, and perhaps not even a matter for regret. A prudential regard for the knees of puerile knickerbockers and the corresponding region of feminine frocks may explain a good deal of parental discouragement in the matter; and there is little public sympathy to counteract this, for it is felt that the total decay of these mimes would not be a serious loss either to dramatic art or to peace and quietness.
In one sense, no doubt, these amusements of childhood are matters of little moment; but, in spite of their seeming triviality, they have a genuine importance which should not be overlooked. The spontaneous exhibitions of children at play often reveal latent tastes, tendencies, or traits of character to one who is able to interpret them aright. If this be so,—and it is no longer open to doubt,—it is clear that even infant acting may furnish hints and assistance of the highest value to an intelligent system of education. It is true, no doubt, that till quite lately any such possibility was steadily ignored; but it is only quite lately that anything like an intelligent system of early education has been attempted. The idiosyncrasies of a child, instead of being carefully observed, were either disregarded as meaningless or repressed as being naughty. No greater mistake could be possible; and this at last is beginning to be understood. The first struggles of a young consciousness to express itself externally are nearly always eccentric, and often seem perverse. But this is nothing more than we ought to expect. The oddities of a child's conduct are in reality nothing else than direct expressions of character, uncurbed by the conventions which regulate the demeanor of adults, or direct revelations of some taste or aptitude, which education may foster, but which neglect will hardly crush. The world contains a woful number of human pegs thrust forcibly into holes which do not fit them, and the world's work suffers proportionately from this misapplication of energy. The mischief is abundantly clear, but the remedy, if we do not shut our eyes to it, is tolerably clear also. Just as this condition of things is largely due to our unscientific neglect of variations in character and the wooden system of education which this neglect has produced, so we may expect to see its evils disappear by an abolition of the one and a reform of the other. If the world be indeed a stage, with all humanity for its corps dramatique it must surely be well for the success of the performance that the cast should take account of individual aptitudes, and that to each player should be allotted the part which he can best support in the great drama of Life.
The degree of culture and good breeding which a man possesses may be very correctly determined by the way he laughs. The primeval savage, from whom we trace descent, was distinguished above everything else by his demonstrativeness; and there is much in our present type of social manners and conduct which betrays our barbarous origin. The brute-like sounds that escape from the human throat in the exercise of laughter, the coarse guffaw, the hoarse chuckle, and the high, cackling tones in which many of the feminine half of the world express their sense of amusement, attest very painfully the animal nature within us. It was Emerson, I believe, who expressed a dislike of all loud laughter; and it is difficult to imagine the scene or occasion which could draw from that serene and even-minded philosopher a broader expression of amusement than that conveyed in the "inscrutable smile" which Whipple describes as his most characteristic feature. Yet Emerson was by no means wanting in appreciation of the comic. On the contrary, he had an abiding sense of humor, and it was this—a keen and lively perception of the grotesque, derived as part of his Yankee inheritance—that kept him from uniting in many of the extravagant reform movements of the day. Few of us, however, even under the sanction of an Emerson, would wish to dispense with all sound of laughter.
The memory of a friend's voice, in which certain laughing notes and tones are inextricably mingled with the graver inflections of common speech, is almost as dear as the vision of his countenance or the warm pressure of his hand. Yet among such remembrances we hold others, of those from whom the sound of open laughter is seldom heard, the absence of which, however, denotes no diminished sense of the humorous and amusing. A quick, responsive smile, a flash or glance of the eye, a kindling countenance, serve as substitutes for true laughter, and we do not miss the sound of that which is supplied in a finer and often truer quality.
The freest, purest laughter is that of childhood, which is as spontaneous as the song of birds. It is impossible that the laughter of older people should retain this sound of perfect music. Knowledge of life and the world has entered in to mar the natural harmonics of the human voice, which not all the skill and efforts of the vocal culturists can ever again restore. It is only those who in attaining the years and stature of manhood have retained the nature of the child, its first unconscious truth and simplicity, whose laughter is wholly pleasant to hear. I recall the laugh of a friend which corresponds to this description, a laugh as pure and melodious, as guiltless of premeditated art or intention, as the notes of the rising lark; yet its owner is a man of wide worldly experience. It is natural that I, who know my friend so well, should find in this peculiarly happy laugh of his the sign and test of that type of high, sincere manhood which he represents; but it is a dangerous business, this attempting to define the character and disposition of people by the turn of an eyelid, the curve of a lip, or a particular vocal shade and inflection. Not only has Art learned to imitate Nature very closely, but Nature herself plays many a trick upon our credulity in matters of this kind. Upon a woman who owns no higher motive than low and selfish cunning she bestows the musical tones of a seraph, as she sheathes the sharp claws of all her feline progeny in cases of softest fur. Rosamond Vincy is not the only example which might be furnished, either in or out of print, in proof that a low, soft voice, that excellent thing in woman, may have a wrongly persuasive accent, luring to disappointment and death, like the Lorelei's song, to which the harsh tones of the most strong-minded Xantippe are to be preferred.
Still, it does seem that, however right Shakespeare was when he said a man may smile and smile and be a villain still, no real villain could indulge in hearty, spontaneous laughter. Much smiling is one of the thin disguises in which a certain kind of knavery seeks to hide itself, but it is easy to conjecture that the low ruffian type of villain, like that seen in Bill Sykes and Jonas Chuzzlewit, neither laughs nor smiles, being as destitute of the courage to listen to the sound of its own voice as of the wit that summons artifice to its aid in protection of its guilty devices.
The ghastly effect of guilt laughing with constrained glee to hide suspicion of itself from the eyes of innocence is vividly portrayed in Irving's performance of "The Bells," in the scene where Mathias, by a supreme effort of will, joins in Christian's laugh over the supposition that it might have been his, the respected burgomaster's, limekiln in which the body of the Polish Jew was burned. Genuine laughter must spring from a pure and undefiled source. It may not always be of tuneful quality, but it must at least contain the note of sincerity. I have in mind the outbursts of deep-chested sound with which another friend evinces his appreciation of a humorous remark or incident, a laugh which many fastidious people would pronounce too hard and rough by half, bending their heads and darting from under, as if suddenly assailed by some rude nor'wester. But I like the pleasant shock bestowed in those strong, breezy tones, and the feeling of rejuvenation and new expectancy which it imparts.
Another laugh echoes in memory as I write, a girl's laugh this time, not "idle and foolish and sweet," as such have been described, but clear, and strong, and odd almost to the point of the ludicrous, yet charmingly natural withal. A young woman's laugh is apt to begin at the highest note, and, running down the scale, to end in a sigh of mingled relief and exhaustion an octave or so lower down. This particular girl, however, takes the other way, and, running her chromatic neatly up from about middle C, pauses for a breath, and then astonishes her audience by striking off two perfectly attuned notes several degrees higher up, hitting her mark with the ease and deftness of a prima donna. So odd and surprising a laugh is sure to be quickly infectious, and its owner is never at a loss for company in her merriment, while a cheerful temper, unclouded by a shade of envy or suspicion, is not in the least disturbed by the knowledge that others are laughing at as well as with her.
The question of what we shall laugh at deserves more attention than our manner of laughing. "There is nothing," says Goethe, "in which people more betray their character than in what they find to laugh at," adding, "The man of understanding finds almost everything ridiculous, the man of thought scarcely anything." This last corresponds somewhat to a sentiment found in Horace Walpole: "Life is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel."
With many people laughter seems to be an appetite, which grows by what it feeds on, until all power of discrimination between the finer and the more vulgar forms of wit is lost. Certain it is that the habit of laughter is as easy to fall into as it is dangerous to all social dignity. The muscles of the mouth have a natural upward curve,—a fact which speaks well for the disposition of Mother Nature who made us, and may also be held to signify that there are more things in the world deserving our approval than our condemnation. But the hideous spectacle presented in the contorted visage of Hugo's great character contains a wholesome warning even for us of a later age; for there is a social tyranny, almost as potent as the kingly despotism which ruled the world centuries ago, that would fain shape the features of its victims after one artificial pattern. We laugh too much, from which it necessarily follows that we often laugh at the wrong things, a fault which betrays intellectual weakness as well as moral cupidity. The determining quality in true laughter lies in the degree of innocent mirth it gives expression to; and when jealous satire, envy, or malice add their dissonant note to its sound, its finest effect is destroyed and its opportunity lost.
In the last years of his life the venerated Emerson lost his memory of names. In instance of this many will remember the story told about him when returning from the funeral of his friend Longfellow. Walking away from the cemetery with his companion, he said, "That gentleman whose funeral we have just attended was a sweet and beautiful soul, but I cannot recall his name." The little anecdote has something very touching about it,—the old man asking for the name of the life-long friend, "the gentleman whose funeral we have just attended."
When I saw Mr. Emerson a year prior to his own death, this defect of memory was very noticeable, and extended even to the names of common objects, so that in talking he would use quaint, roundabout expressions to supply the place of missing words. He would call a church, for instance, "that building in the town where all the people go on Sunday."
This loss of memory of names is very common with old people, but it is not confined to them. Almost every one has at some time experienced the peculiar, the almost desperate, feeling of trying to recall a name that will not come. It is at our tongue's end; we know just what sort of a name it is; it begins with a B; yet did we try for a year it would not come. One curious fact about the phenomenon is that it seems to be contagious. If one person suddenly finds himself unable to recall a name, the person with whom he is talking will stick at it also. The name almost always gets the best of them, and they have to say, "Yes, I know what you mean," and go on with their talk.
I have never seen an explanation of this name-forgetfulness; but it is not difficult to find a reason for it. What needs explaining is that names are so obstinate, and grow more obstinate the harder we try, while other things we have forgotten and are trying to recall generally yield themselves to our efforts. Moreover, in other cases of forgetfulness we never experience that peculiar and most exasperating feature of name-forgetfulness,—the feeling that we know the word perfectly well all the time. This last fact, indeed, seems to show that we have not forgotten the name at all, but have simply lost the clue to it.
Now, let us inquire why this clue is so hard to find. Scientific men who study the human mind and make a business of explaining thought, emotion, memory, and the like, have an expression which they use frequently, and which sounds difficult, but which really it is very easy as well as interesting to understand. They speak of the association of ideas. The association of ideas means simply the fact which every one has noticed, that one thing tends to call up another in the mind. When you recall a certain sleigh-ride last winter, you remember that you put hot bricks in the sleigh; and this reminds you that you were intending to heat a warming-pan for the bed to-night; and the thought of warming the bed makes you think of poor President Garfield's sickness, during which they tried to cool his room with ice. Each of these thoughts (ideas) has evidently called up another connected—associated—with it in some way. This is the association of ideas: it is a law that governs almost all our thinking, as any one may discover by going back over his own thoughts. Perhaps an easier way to discover it will be to observe the rapid talk of an afternoon caller on the family, and see how the conversation skips from one subject to another which the last suggested, and from that to another suggested by this, and so on.
Just this association of ideas it is which enables us to recall things we have forgotten. Our ideas on any subject—say that sleigh-ride last winter—resemble a lot of balls some distance apart in a room, but all connected by strings. If there is any particular ball we cannot find,—that is, some fact we cannot remember,—then if we pull the neighboring balls it is likely that they by the connecting strings will bring the missing ball into sight. To illustrate this, suppose that you cannot remember the route of that sleigh-ride. You recall carefully all the circumstances associated with the ride, in hopes that some one of them will suggest the route that was taken. You think of your companions, of the moon being full, of having borrowed extra robes, of the hot bricks—Ah, there is a clue! The bricks were reheated somewhere. Where was it? They were placed on a stove,—on a red-hot stove with a loafers' foot-rail about it. That settles it. Such stoves are found only in country grocery-stores; and now it all comes back to you. The ride was by the hill road to Smith's Corners. It is as if there were a string from the hot-bricks idea to the idea that the bricks were reheated, to this necessarily being done on a stove, to the peculiar kind of stove it was done on, to the only place in the neighborhood where such a stove could be, to Smith's Corners; and this string has led you, like a clue, to the fact you desired to remember.
We can now return to the question asked above: In trying to recall names, why is it so difficult to find a clue? After what has been said, the question can be put in a better form: Why does not the association of ideas enable us to recall names as it does other things? The answer is, that names (proper names) have very few associations, very few strings, or clues, leading to them. It is easy to see this; for suppose you moved away from the neighborhood of that sleigh-ride many years before, and in thinking over past times find yourself unable to recall the name of the Corners where the store stood. The place can be remembered perfectly, and a thousand circumstances connected with it, but they furnish no clue to the name: the circumstances might all remain the same and the name be any other as well. The only association the name has is with an indistinct memory of how it sounded. It was of two words: the second was something like Hollow, or Cross roads, or Crossing; the first began with an S. But it is vain to seek for it: no clue leads to it. Were it the ride you sought to remember, many of its details could be recalled, some of which might lead to the desired fact; but a name has no details, and it is only possible to say of it that it sounded so and so, if it is possible to say that.
It may be asked, how, then, is it that we do remember some names, as those in use every day? Just as the multiplication-table is remembered,—by force of familiarity. Constant repetition engraves them in the mind. When in old age the vigor of the mind lessens, the engraving wears out and names are hard to recall, since there is no other clue to them than this engraved record.
There may be mentioned one slight help in recalling names when the case is important or desperate. It consists in going back to the period when the name was known and deliberately writing out a circumstantial account of all the connected incidents, mentioning names of persons and places whenever they can be remembered. If this is done in a casual way, without thinking of the purpose in view,—as if one were sending a gossipy letter of personal history to a friend,—the mind falls into an automatic condition that may result in producing the desired name itself. Every one must have observed that it is this automatic activity of the mind, and not conscious effort, which recovers lost names most successfully. We "think of them afterwards."
It is more than fifty years since I, a mere child, spent a summer with my parents in a sandy young city of Indiana. Eight or nine hundred souls, perhaps more, were already anchored within its borders. Chicago, a lusty infant just over the line, her feet blackened with prairie mud, made faces, called names, and ridiculed its soil and architecture. Nevertheless it was a valiant little city, even though its streets were rivers of shifting sand, through which "prairie-schooners" were toilsomely dragged by heavy oxen or a string of chubby ponies,—these last a gift from the coppery Indian to the country he was fast forsaking. Clouds of clear grit drifted into open casements on every passing breeze, or, if a gale arose, were driven through every crevice. Our little city was cradled amid the shifting sand-hills on Michigan's wave-beaten shore. Indeed, it had received the name of the grand old lake in loving baptism, and was pluckily determined to wear it worthily. Its buildings were wholly of wood, and hastily constructed, some not entirely unpretentious, while others tilted on legs, as if in readiness at shortest notice to take to their heels and skip away. In those early days there was only the round yellow-bodied coach swinging on leathern straps, or the heavy lumber-wagon, to accommodate the tide of travel already setting westward. It was a daily delight to listen to the inspiring toot of the driver's horn and the crack of his long whip, as, with six steaming horses, he swung his dusty passengers in a final grand flourish up to the hospitable door of the inn.
One memorable morning brought to the unique little town a literary lion,—a woman of great heart, clear brain, and powerful pen,—in short, Harriet Martineau. Her travelling companions were a professor, his comely wife, and their eight-year-old son. The last-named was much petted by Miss Martineau, and still flourishes in perennial youth on many pages of her books of American travel. Michigan City felt honored in its transient guest. The whisper that a real live author was among us filled the inn hall with a changing throng eager to obtain a glimpse of the celebrity. Not among the least of these were "the two little girls" she mentions in her "Society in America," page 253. At breakfast the party served their sharpened appetites quite like ordinary folk,—Miss Martineau in thoughtful quiet, broken now and again by a brisk question darted at the professor, who answered in a deliberate learned way that was quite impressive. A shiver of disgust ruffled his plump features at the absence of cream, which the host excused by the statement that, the population having outgrown its flocks and herds, milk was held sacred to the use of babes. Miss Martineau listened to the professor's complaints with a twinkle of mirth in her eyes, while that indignant gentleman vigorously applied himself to the solid edibles at hand. Shortly after breakfast the strangers sallied forth in search of floral treasures, over the low sand-hills stretching toward the lake (a spur of which penetrated the main street), where in the face of the sandy drift nestled a shanty quite like the "dug-out" of the timberless lands in Kansas and New Mexico. The tomb-like structure, half buried in sand, only its front being visible, seemed to afford Miss Martineau no end of surprised amusement as she climbed to its submerged roof on her way to the summit of the hill. A window-garden of tittering young women merrily watched the progress of the quick-stepping Englishwoman, and, really, there was some provocation to mirth, from their stand-point. Anything approaching a blanket, plain, plaided, or striped, had never disported itself before their astonished gaze as a part of feminine apparel, except on the back of a grimy squaw. Of blanket-shawls, soon to become a staple article of trade, the Western women had not then even heard; and here was a civilized and cultivated creature enveloped in what seemed to be a gay trophy wrested from the bed-furniture! Then, too, the "only sweet thing" in bonnets was the demure "cottage," fashioned of fine straw, while the woman in view sported a coarse, pied affair, whose turret-like crown and flaring brim pointed ambitiously skyward. Stout boots completed the costume criticised and laughed over by the merry maidens who yet stood in wholesome awe of the presence of the wearer. With what a wealth of gorgeous wild flowers and plumy ferns the pilgrims came laden on their return! Quoting from "Society in America," page 253, Miss Martineau says, "The scene was like what I had always fancied the Norway coast, but for the wild flowers, which grew among the pines on the slope almost into the tide. I longed to spend an entire day on this flowery and shadowy margin of the inland sea. I plucked handfuls of pea-vine and other trailing flowers, which seemed to run all over the ground."
Miss Martineau piled her treasures on a table and culled the specimens worthy of pressing, and it seemed to pain her to reject the least promising of her perishable plunder. She must have had a passion for flowers, judging from the tenderness with which she handled the lovely fronds and delicate petals under inspection, while her mouth was continually open in admiring exclamation.
And now came what I still fondly remember as the Musicale. A little comrade came in the twilight to sing songs with me. With arms interlaced, we paced the upper hall, vociferously warbling as breath was given us, when a door opened, and the gifted, dark-faced woman, with kindly eyes, beamed out on us. "Come," she called, "come in here, children, and sing your songs for me: I am very fond of music." Very bashfully we signified our willingness to oblige,—indeed, we dared not do otherwise,—and sidled into the room. Closing the door, our hostess curled herself comfortably on a gayly-cushioned lounge, and proceeded to adjust a serpent-like, squirming appendage to her ear. With an encouraging nod, she bade us commence, closing her eyes meanwhile with an air of expectant rapture. But the vibrating trumpet stirred our foolish souls to explosive laughter, partially smothered in a simultaneous strangled cough. Wondering at the double paroxysm and subsequent hush of shame, she unclosed her eyes, softly murmuring, "Don't be bashful nor afraid, my dears. I am very far from home, and you can make me very happy, if you will. Pray begin at once, and then I will also sing for you." Taking courage, we piped as bidden, rendering in a childish way the strains of "Blue-Eyed Mary," "Comin' through the Rye," "I'd be a Butterfly," and "Auld Lang Syne," Our audience, with bright, attentive looks, regarded the performance in pleased approval, softly tapping time on her knee with a slender finger.
"Now it is my turn," said Miss Martineau. Straightening herself and casting aside the trumpet, primly folding her hands and pursing her mouth curiously, she began, in a high, quavering voice, a song whose burden was the fixed objection on the part of a certain damsel to forsaking the pleasures of the world for the seclusion and safety of a convent: