Annie Bronson King.
It has sometimes been a matter of pious speculation with literary and dramatic circles what Shakespeare's personal views on art and literature would have been had the enterprise and liberality of "Great Eliza's Golden Days" induced him to formulate them. A simple and credulous few have been disposed to regret the absence of any authentic enunciation beyond the curt maxims and, as it were, fractions of canons scattered throughout his dramas.
These ardent hero-worshippers dream fondly of the light the master might have cast on many important points, which can now only be dimly descried in twilight or guessed at by mere inference, and sigh at the thought of what the world has lost. Others, rationally and soberly agnostic, have been saved the heartache and intranquillity of their brethren, by the very natural and not too profound reflection that it is entirely problematic whether the actor-lessee of the Blackfriar's playhouse could have expressed an opinion worth a pinch of salt on any vital æsthetic question, even supposing him as eager to give as we to receive. Assumption is dangerous; and the possession of the creative faculty by no means implies the possession of the critical.
True, for—
Nevertheless, in certain circumstances, "the high priori road is permissible to the adventurous traveller." With those happily constituted persons who can imagine Shakespeare writing anything quite worthless even in the abstruse and difficult domain of scientific criticism—where so many high qualities are required which are not held to be essential to the mere creative—I disclaim the remotest desire to provoke a quarrel. Rather let me frankly congratulate them on their force of imagination. But those of a simpler faith and a scantier imaginative endowment will probably incline to the belief that the brain which fashioned "Lear" and "Othello" could, under the golden stimulus so potent to-day, have given us pertinent, perhaps even canotic comments on—say, "Every Man in his Humor," or "A Mad World my Masters," or "The White Devil." Would it be heretical to suppose the author of "Macbeth" capable of dissecting an ancient play in as keen and true a scientific spirit as that in which the Saturday Review dissects a modern novel? The encumbrance of a conscience might, indeed, be a serious detriment, inasmuch as it would impair the pungency of his remarks. His fantastic notions of the quality of mercy might lead him to exaggerate merits, his lack of a sustaining sense of self-omniscience to a fatal diffidence in pronouncing on defects; so that his judgments would lack that fine Jeffreys-like flavor of judicial rigor which makes Saturday Review a synonym for sterling Jedburgh justice wherever the beloved and venerable name is known. He might prove a honey-bee without a sting; a grave defect at a time when the sting is esteemed more than the honey-bag. Yet, it is not improbable that, with a little judicious training and proper enlightenment on the foolishness of sentiment, he would have made a tolerable critic, for, as has been discriminatingly observed of Sophocles, the man is not without indications of genius. At any rate, in later and better appointed times, we have seen the German Shakespeare, and others of the lawless tribe of creators, enter the field of criticism and win approbation. It is true that Scott and Byron, if not exactly categorically related to Mr. Thomas Rymer, were still but indifferent critics; but we could readily tilt the scale by throwing Pope, Wordsworth, and Shelley into the other, and yet have Mr. Arnold, Mr. Swinburne, Mr. Lowell, and Mr. Lang in reserve.
And, in truth, as there are obvious reasons why lawyers make the best judges, ci devant thieves the best detectives, reformed drunkards the best temperance advocates, and the scared sinners (like John Bunyan) the best preachers, so there are obvious reasons why an artist's opinions of the productions of creative art, especially of the productions of that branch of it wherein he labors himself, should have peculiar value. His intimate acquaintance with the principles of art should not be detrimental to his perspicacity as a critic. Fielding's success with Parson Adams would not, I conceive, be any hindrance to his success in a criticism of the character of Lieutenant Lismahago, nor would the packed essences of "Esmond" prove Thackeray incapable of passing a competent judgment on "David Copperfield."
The fact is, practice has its advantages over theory. To the intelligent, experience is something more than mere empiricism, and some value must be conceded to personal experience. Theory is a wench of great personal attractions, with the coquette's knack of making the most of them; but she bears the same relation to her plainer, plodding elder sister Practice that Mark Twain bore to the invaluable Dan, when that doughty henchman was deputed to take exercise for the languid humorist. Mark might have the liveliest idea of the rugged grandeur of the Alps, but Dan knew the toils of the ascent and the glories of the higher prospects; and though Mark was an invincible theoretical mountain-climber, Dan would be apt to prove the more trustworthy guide.
It was with the view of securing the directions of practical guides for the reader, in another field of exploration, that the present paper was written. I may say at once that my object in seeking the notes—so kindly and courteously placed at my disposition—was not to gratify idle curiosity with any pungent mess of personal gossip. That dignified office I gladly leave to the accomplished purveyors of the Society papers. But I conceived that the curtest expression of the genuine artist concerning the productions of his own art could not fail to be valuable as well as interesting. The critics, like our creditors, we have always with us, to remind us we are still far from Zion, and the former are just as indispensable to us, in the present state of the world, as the latter. Unfortunately, neither enjoy immunity from the universal law of human imperfection. Creditors are not always generous nor critics always just. One grave difficulty with the latter is the insidiousness of personal predilection, which cannot be wholly excluded from the catholic judgment. Different judges have different tastes. One may have a preference for Burgandy and the other for champagne, while a third may prefer old port to either. The moral is obvious, and points to the prudence of occasionally bringing producers and consumers face to face; having done which I will withdraw for the present.
From Mr. Robert Buchanan.
Dear Sir: It is difficult to say off-hand what novel I consider my prime favorite. So much depends upon the mood of the moment and point of view. I should say, generally, that the "Vicar of Wakefield" surpassed all English tales, if I did not remember that Fielding had created Parson Adams; but again, I have got more pleasure out of Dickens' masterpiece, "David Copperfield," than all the others put together. Yes, I fix on "David Copperfield"—from which, you will gather that I do not solicit in fiction the kind of romance I have myself tried to weave.
Again, in all the region of foreign fiction, I see no such figure as Balzac, and no such pathetic creation as "Cousin Pons." That to me is a divine story, far deeper and truer, of course, than anything in Dickens, but alas! so sad. While I tremble at Balzac's insight, I have the childish faith of Dickens; he at least made the world brighter than he found it, and after all, there are worse things than his gospel of plum-pudding. When I am well and strong and full of life, I can bear the great tragedians, like the Elizabethan group, like Balzac; but when I am ill and wearied out with the world, I turn again to our great humorist to gain happiness and help.
Robert Buchanan.
From Mr. Hall Caine.
My Dear Sir: I am not a great reader of novels. My favorite reading is dramatic poetry and old ballads. Few novelists can have read fewer novels. During the last five years I have certainly not read a score of new ones. But I am constantly reading in the old ones. Portions of chapters that live vividly in my memory, scenes, passages of dialogue, scraps of description—these I read and re-read. I could give you a list of fifty favorite passages, but I would find it hard to say which is my favorite novel. The mood of the moment would have much to do with any judgment made on that head. When I am out of heart Scott suits me well, for his sky is always serene. When I am in high spirits I enjoy Thackeray, for it is only then that I find any humor in the odd and the ugly. Dickens suits me in many moods; there was not a touch of uncharity in that true soul. There are moments when the tenderness of Richardson is not maudlin, and when his morality is more wholesome than that of Goldsmith. Sometimes I find the humor of Sterne the most delicious thing out of Cervantes, and sometimes I am readier to cry than to laugh over "The Life and Deeds of Don Quixote." So that if I were to tell you that in my judgment this last book is on the whole the most moving piece of imaginative writing known to me,—strongest in epic spirit, fullest of inner meaning, the book that touches whatever is deepest and highest in me,—I should merely be saying that it is the last romance in which I have been reading with all the faculties of mind and heart.
I like, at all times and in all moods, the kind of fiction that gets closest to human life, and I value it in proportion as I think it is likely to do the world some good. Thus (to cite examples without method) I care very little for a book like "Vathek," and I loathe a book like "Madame Bovary," because the one is false to the real and the other is false to the ideal. I see little imagination and much inexperience in "Wuthering Heights," and great scenic genius and profound ignorance of human character in "Notre Dame." In Gogol's little story of the overcoat, and in Turgeneff's little story of the dumb porter I find tenderness, humor, and true humanity. I miss essential atmosphere in Godwin's masterpiece, and the best kind of artistic conviction almost throughout Charles Reade. It makes some deduction from my pleasure in Hawthorne that his best characters stand too obviously not for human beings only, but also for abstract ideas. I like George Eliot best in the first part of "Silas Marner," and least in the last part of "The Mill on the Floss." Perhaps I set the highest value on my friend Blackmore among English novelists now living. I find Tolstoï a great novelist in the sense in which his fellow-countryman, Verestchagin, is a great painter—a great delineator of various life, not a great creator. Björnson, the Norwegian novelist, in his "Arne" seems to me a more imaginative artist than Doré in his "Vale of Tears." I do not worship "Manon Lescaut," and I would rather read "Les Miserables" than "Germinal." In short, to sum it up in a word, I suppose I am an English idealist in the sense in which (if I may say so without presumption) George Sand was a French idealist. I think it is the best part of the business of art to lighten the load of life. To do this by writing mere "light literature," the companion of an idle hour, a panacea for toothache, a possible soporific, would seem to me so poor an aim that, if it were the only thing before me I think I would even yet look about for another profession. Fiction may lighten life by sterner means—by showing the baffled man the meanness of much success, and the unsuccessful man the truer triumphs of failure. To break down the superstitions that separate class from class, to show that the rule of the world is right, and that though evil chance plays a part in life, yet that life is worth living—these are among the functions of the novelist. In reaching such ends there are few or no materials that I would deny to him. He should be as free as the Elizabethan dramatists were, or even the writers of our early ballads. His work would be various in kind, and not all suited to all readers; but he would touch no filth for the distinction of being defiled. It would not trouble him a brass farthing whether his subject led him to a "good" or a "bad" ending, for he would have a better ambition than to earn the poor wages of a literary jester, and his endings would always be good in the best sense where his direction was good.
And so in some indirect way I have answered your question; and I would like to add that I foresee that the dominion of the novel must be extended. Fiction is now followed by appalling numbers with amazing fecundity and marvellous skill, which, though mainly imitative, is occasionally original; but its channels are few and very narrow. Already the world seems to be growing weary of feeble copies of feeble men and feeble manners. It wants more grit, more aim, more thought, and more imagination. But this is thin ice to tread, and I would not disparage by a word or a wink the few novelists now living who will assuredly rank with the best in literature. Dugald Stewart said that human invention, like the barrel organ, was limited to a specific number of tunes. The present hurdy-gurdy business has been going on a longish time. We are threatened with the Minerva press over again, and the class of readers who see no difference between Walter Scott and John Galt. But, free of the prudery of the tabernacle and the prurience of the boulevard, surely the novel has a great future before it. Its possibilities seem to me nearly illimitable. Though the best of the novel is nowhere a match for the best of the drama, yet I verily believe that if all English fiction, from Defoe downwards, including names conspicuous and inconspicuous, remembered and forgotten, were matched against all English poetry of whatever kind, from Pope to our own day, it would be found that the English novelist is far ahead of the English poet in every great quality—imagination, pathos, humor, largeness of conception, and general intellect. And I will not hesitate to go further and say that, the art of the novel is immeasurably greater than the art of the drama itself—more natural as a vehicle and less limited in its uses, more various in subject and less trammelled in its mechanism, capable of everything that the drama (short of the stage) can do, and of infinitely more resource.
Hall Caine.
From Mr. Wilkie Collins.
After pleading illness and arrears of literary work and correspondence in excuse of the brevity of his note, Mr. Collins says:
Besides, the expression of my opinion in regard to writers of fiction and their works will lose nothing by being briefly stated. After more than thirty years' study of the art, I consider Walter Scott to be the greatest of all novelists, and "The Antiquary" is, as I think, the most perfect of all novels.
Wilkie Collins.
From Mr. H. Rider Haggard.
Dear Sir: I think that my favorite novel is Dickens's "Tale of Two Cities." I will not trouble you with all my reasons for this preference. I may say, however, and I do so with humility, and merely as an individual expression of opinion, that it seems to me that in this great book Dickens touched his highest level. Of course, the greatness of the subject has something to do with the effect produced upon the mind, but in my view there is a dignity and an earnestness in the work which lift it above the rest. Also I think it one of the most enthralling stories in the language.
H. Rider Haggard.
From Mr. Joseph Hatton.
Dear Sir: You ask me to name my favorite novel, and if it should happen to be a work by a foreign author to mention my favorite English work of fiction also. I find it impossible to answer you. When I was a boy "The Last of the Mohicans" was my favorite novel; a young man and in love, "David Copperfield" became my favorite. When I grew to be a man "The Scarlet Letter" took the place of David and the North American Indian; but ever since I can remember I have always been reading "Monte Cristo" with unflagging delight. One's favorite book is a question of mood. Now and then one might be inclined to regard "Adam Bede" as the most companionable of fiction; there are other times when "Pickwick" appeals most to one's fancy, or when one is even in the humor for "L'Homme qui Rit." "Don Quixote" fits all moods, and there are moments when a page or two of "Clarissa" are to one's taste. But with Scott, Dickens, Thackeray, Hugo, Dumas, George Eliot, Hawthorne, Smollett, Balzac, Erckmann-Chatrian, Lytton, Lever, Ik Marvel, George Sand, Charles Reade, Turgeneff, and a host of other famous writers of fiction staring me in the face, don't ask me to say which of their works is my favorite novel.
Joseph Hatton.
From "Vernon Lee."
Dear Sir: I hasten to acknowledge your letter. I do not think, however, that I can answer in a satisfactory manner. I am very little of a novel reader, and do not feel that my opinion on the subject of novels is therefore of critical value. Of the few novels I know (comparing my reading with that of the average Englishman or woman) I naturally prefer some; but to give you the titles of them—I think I should place first Tolstoï's "War and Peace" and Stendhal's "Chartreuse de Parme"—would not be giving your readers any valuable information, as I could not find leisure to explain why I prefer them.
"Vernon Lee."
From Mr. George Moore.
Sir: Waiving the difficulty, if not the impossibility, of a complete and satisfactory answer to your question, I will come at once to the point. You ask me to name my favorite work of fiction, giving reasons for the preference. The interest of such a question will be found in the amount of naïve sincerity with which it is answered. I will therefore strive to be as naïvely sincere as possible.
Works of romance I must pass over, not because there are none that I appreciate and enjoy, but because I feel that my opinion of them would not be considered as interesting as my opinion of a work depicting life within the limits of practical life. The names of many works answering to this description occur to me, but in spirit and form they are too closely and intimately allied to my own work to allow me to select any one of them as my favorite novel. Looking away from them my thought fixes itself at once on Miss Austen. It therefore only remains for me to choose that one which appears to me to be the most characteristic of that lady's novels. Unhesitatingly I say "Emma."
The first words of praise I have for this matchless book is the oneness of the result desired and the result attained. Nature in producing a rose does not seem to work more perfectly and securely than Miss Austen did. This merit, and this merit I do not think any one will question, eternalizes the book. "L'Education Sentimentale," "The Mill on the Floss," "Vanity Fair," "Bleak House," I admire as much as any one; but I can tell how the work is done; I can trace every trick of workmanship. But analyse "Emma" as I will, I cannot tell how the perfect, the incomparable result is achieved. There is no story, there are no characters, there is no philosophy, there is nothing: and yet it is a chef-d'œuvre. I have said there are no characters; this demands a word of explanation. Miss Austen attempts only—and thereby she holds her unique position—the conventionalities of life. She presents to us man in his drawing-room skin: of the serpent that gnaws his vitals she cares nothing, and apparently knows nothing. The drawing-room skin is her sole aim. She never wavers. The slightest hesitation would be fatal; her system is built on a needle's point. We know that no such mild, virtuous people as her's ever existed or could exist; the picture is incomplete, but there lies the charm. The veil is wonderfully woven, figures move beneath it never fully revealed, and we derive pleasure from contemplating it because we recognize that it is the sham hypocritical veil that we see but feel not—the sham hypocritical world that we see is presented to us in all its gloss without a scratch on its admirable veneer. No writer except Jane Austen ever had the courage to so limit himself or herself. The strength and the weakness of art lies in its incompleteness, and no art was ever at once so complete and incomplete as Miss Austen's.
Every great writer invents a pattern, and the Jane Austen pattern is as perfect as it is inimitable. It stands alone. The pattern is a very slight one, but so is that of the rarest and most beautiful lace. And in all sincerity I say that I would sooner sign myself the author of "Emma" than of any novel in the English language—the novel I am now writing of course excepted.
George Moore.
From Mr. Justin McCarthy.
Dear Sir: I have so many favorites—even in English-written fiction alone: I am very fond of good novels. I couldn't select one. Let me give you a few, only a few! The moment I have sent off this letter I shall be sure to repent some omissions. Fielding's "Joseph Andrews;" Scott's "Antiquary," "Guy Mannering," "Heart of Midlothian," and "St. Ronan's Well;" Dickens's "Pickwick," "Barnaby Rudge," and "Tale of Two Cities;" Thackeray's "Vanity Fair," "Pendennis," and "Esmond;" Charlotte Brontë's "Jane Eyre;" George Eliot's "Mill on the Floss;" Hawthorne's "Blithedale Romance;" and George Meredith's "Beauchamp's Career."
And I had nearly forgotten in my haste two great favorites of mine—Miss Austen's "Pride and Prejudice," and Gerald Griffin's "Collegians;" and, again, surely Hope's "Anastasius."
I had better stop.
Justin McCarthy.
From Miss F. Mabel Robinson.
Sir: Your question is an extremely difficult one to answer. One likes some novels for one kind of excellence, others for another, and the favorite—the absolute favorite—is apt to depend a little upon the good novel one has read most recently, and a great deal more upon one's mood.
I do not think that I could name any one novel, either English or foreign, as my first favorite; there are at least four of Turgeneff's, the bare memory of which moves me almost to tears; but I could not choose between "Liza," "Virgin Girl," "Fathers and Sons," and "Smoke;" and, of course, Tolstoï's "War and Peace" is a masterpiece which every one will name as a favorite (I give the titles in English, as I have read all these in translations only, French or English), and indeed I think I ought almost to name it as the favorite among foreign novels.
To turn to English masterpieces, there are parts of Fielding's "Amelia," which for tenderness, sweetness, and rendering of character and of home life I think finer than anything more modern; but other parts of the book are so unpleasant that I cannot place it first. I think I must plead guilty to four equal favorites: "Amelia," "Esmond," "The Mill on the Floss," and "Villette;" but perhaps I might tell you to-morrow that I place "Vanity Fair" above "Esmond," and prefer "Middlemarch" to "The Mill on the Floss." Still I think to-day's choice is best, so I will stick to it.
It is impossible to know all one's reasons for preferring some books to others—the style, the diction, the subtle way in which the writer makes you feel many things he has left unsaid elude description; and one's own frame of mind when the book first became known may have a great deal to do with it. Unconsciously association has much to do with one's preferences. It is for the character of Amelia, and the charm of her relations with her husband, that I like this novel. Some of the scenes and dialogues between these two are to my mind perfect, absolutely true and beautiful and satisfying. "Esmond" is certainly very inferior to "Amelia" in point of illusion; one always is conscious that one is reading, and the characters are like people we have heard of, or who are at least absent from us; but Harry Esmond is, to my mind, the finest gentleman in English fiction, none the less noble for his little self-conscious air. I have always wondered why he is less popular than Col. Newcome. Except perhaps Warrington he is Thackeray's noblest male character; and "Esmond" is, I take it, the best constructed of Thackeray's novels, and exquisitely written. It is only because there is no woman worthy of the name of heroine that I cannot like this novel best of all. For the reverse reason, that there is no hero, I cannot place "The Mill on the Floss" quite first. Maggie is a beautiful creation, and the picture of English country-life inimitable; the Dodsen family in all its branches is truly masterly. But for deep insight into the heart and soul and mind of a woman where will you find Charlotte Brontë's equal? Her descriptive power and her style are unsurpassable, and Lucy Snowe can teach you more about the thoughts and griefs and unaccountable nervous miseries and heart-aches of the average young woman than any other heroine in fiction that I know of. There is no episode that I am aware of, of such heartfelt truth as that wretched summer holiday she passed alone at Madame Beck's. And every character in the book is excellent; and as for the manner of it, it seems wrung from the very heart of the writer.
F. Mabel Robinson.
From Mr. W. Clark Russell.
Dear Sir: I hardly know what to say in response to your question as to my favorite work of fiction. I am afraid I must go so far back as Defoe, of whose "Colonel Jack" and "Moll Flanders" I never weary. Amongst modern writers I greatly admire Blackmore, Hardy, and Besant. There is great genius and originality, too, in Christie Murray. But with Thackeray, Dickens, George Eliot, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mrs. Gaskell, and the Brontë's on my shelves, the indication of any one work of fiction as my favorite since the days of "Roxana," "Pamela," "Joseph Andrews," and "Humphrey Clinker," would prove an undertaking which I fear I have not the courage to adventure.
W. Clark Russell.
From Mr. J. Henry Shorthouse.
Sir: Your question seems to me to be a difficult, or I might almost say, an impossible one to answer. I do not see how a man of any carefulness of thought or decision can have one favorite work of fiction. To answer your question as simply as possible, I should say that of foreign books my favorites are "Don Quixote" and the novels of Goethe and Jean Paul Richter.
As regards English fiction, I should, I think, place George Eliot's "Silas Marner" first, both as a work of art and as fulfilling, to me, all the needs and requirements of a work of fiction; but I could not say this unless I may be allowed to bracket with this book Nathaniel Hawthorne's "House of the Seven Gables," Mrs. Gaskell's "Cranford," Jane Austen's "Persuasion," Mrs. Ritchie's "Story of Elizabeth," and William Black's "Daughter of Heth"—all of which books seem to me to stand in the very first rank, and not only to fulfil the requirements of the human spirit, but to stand the much more difficult test of being, each of them, perfect as a whole.
J. Henry Shorthouse.
From Mr. W. Westall.
Dear Sir: You ask for the title of my favorite work of fiction. I answer that I have no one favorite work of fiction. Among the myriad novels which I have read there is none of excellence so supreme that I prefer it before all others. On the other hand, I have favorite novels—a dozen or so; I have never reckoned them up. These I will enumerate as they occur to me: "Don Quixote," "Tom Jones," "Ivanhoe," "The Heart of Midlothian," "Jane Eyre," "David Copperfield," "Tale of Two Cities," "Esmond," "Vanity Fair," "Adam Bede," "Lorna Doone," "Crime and Punishment" (Dostoieffsky), "Monte Cristo," and "Froment Jeune et Risler Ainé."
I do not suggest that these novels are of equal literary merit. I merely say that they are my favorites, that I have read them all with equal pleasure more than once, and that, as time goes on, I hope to read them again.
W. Westall.
J. A. Stewart.
"And her chief charm was bashfulness of face."
Sarah M. B. Piatt.
"Papa, why does bread cost so much money?" asks a child, of its father. Perhaps if the father is indifferent, indolent, or ignorant, he may dodge the question and reply, "Because flour is so scarce." But if he is a thinking and observant man, willing to instruct an ignorant child asking a very natural question, he will not content himself with such a reply, for he must have observed that bread is sometimes high when wheat and flour are very plentiful.
By drawing on his experience he will not fail to recall the fact that, in a season when any particular article is in much demand, the price of that article will rise and will continue to rise until the demand for the article induces a supply of it from outside sources.
Let him recall Christmas and Thanksgiving times, when, for instance, turkeys are in demand. If the supply is light, up goes the price of turkeys; and, if the demand increases, the price will continue to rise unless some means are found of supplying the demand. If turkeys flow into the market of a city from the surrounding country, the rise in price is first checked, and then, as the supply increases, the price falls, and the demand being less than the supply, the price goes to its lowest figure. This is in accordance with the recognized law of supply and demand, the relation between the two always establishing the price.
If the demand is greater than the supply, the price will go up; if the supply is greater than the demand, the price will go down. But this state of things can exist only where the inflow of supply and the outflow of demand are free and unrestricted; for if, from any cause, restriction is placed on the inflow, the outflow will be restricted just in the same way. We may liken the operation of the law to what happens when a bent tube with the ends up is filled with water. If, now, more water is poured in at one end, that same amount will flow out at the other. If the whole capacity of the tube at one end is used to supply water, just that amount will run out at the other; but if one-half the tube at the supply end is plugged up, then only one-half the capacity of the tube will run out at the other.
Reverting to the question of the supply of turkeys in a market, let us suppose that a despot, ungoverned by anything but his own will, is in charge of the city when the turkey market is held, and of the surrounding country, and, wishing to have a plentiful supply of turkeys, he issues his ukase that every turkey within ten miles of the town shall, under severe penalties, be sent into market for sale. Is it not plain that the price of turkeys will at once fall, since the supply will at once become greater than the demand? But suppose this despot has turkeys of his own to sell, and hence desires to make his poor people pay the highest price for their turkeys, so that his coffers may be filled with gold. Now, instead of requiring all turkeys to come in under severe penalties, he does everything he can to keep them out, and issues his ukase that none shall come in, under penalty of death to the importer of turkeys. Is it not as plain as it was in the other case, that the price of turkeys will go up, up, up, until the vast majority of men cannot buy at all?
Suppose that, instead of placing an absolute prohibition upon the importation of turkeys, the despot, convinced that people must have turkeys, and having already arranged to buy all he wants himself, makes a law that every turkey coming into the market shall be taxed one dollar for the privilege of bringing it to market. Now, turkeys will come in if there is still a demand for them, but every one that comes in must pay a tax of a dollar; and, if there are any turkeys already in market, a dollar will be added to their price, as well as to the price of those coming in. For no importer proposes to lose the amount of the tax himself, and is bound to make the consumer pay that much additional for his turkey; and a resident turkey-dealer, seeing that imported turkeys are selling for a dollar above the market price, will at once add that to the price of his turkeys, since it is expecting too much of human nature to suppose any man is going to sell his property for less than he can get for it. The result of the despot's tax, therefore, is to raise the local price of turkeys by just the amount of that tax; and, the higher the tax, the higher the price of turkeys will be to the consumer.
In this way the price of any article in a market is established by the relation between the supply and the demand; and this law is inexorable. If the supply is restricted by taxing imports, the price, whilst higher, will still be fixed by the demand made for the article; and this applies to all articles which are salable—flesh and blood, muscle, labor, as well as to bread, meat, etc. In slavery times, when a great demand existed in the cotton-States for slave labor, slaves were imported from the more northern States, where labor was not so valuable, to the more southern ones, where it was more so; and this gave the border States the name of being the "slave-breeding States" of the Union. The increased demand for slaves threatened at one time to reopen the slave trade with Africa; and it is said that some negroes were, in fact, brought into the country. Under these circumstances, had the States (Mississippi, Louisiana, and others) where a demand for slaves existed possessed the power to lay a tax on slaves imported into them, the price of slaves in those States would have been very considerably increased.
The work of hands—labor—is a salable article, just as much as bread or meat, and its price is determined in the same way; not only as regards common labor, but also special kinds of labor. Reverting to the question at the head of this paper,—the price of bread,—let us suppose a community where all the elements of bread-making (flour, yeast, potatoes, etc.) exist in abundance, but where there is but one baker. If the demand for bread is so great that one baker will have to run his bakery night and day to supply the demand, and he can fix his own price, limited only by the number of his customers and their ability to pay (the "demand"), although he can buy his flour and other ingredients cheap, he must pay high wages to his assistants and work hard himself. As the demand for bread increases, its prices will rise until the attention of other bakers is attracted, other bakeries will be established, the supply will more nearly equal the demand, and the price of bread will fall, in accordance with the same law as governed in the case of turkeys; whilst bakers' wages, from the very fact of there being more bakers on the ground, will fall. If, notwithstanding the establishment of more bakeries, the demand still remains greater than the supply, the price of bread will still remain up, and an attempt may be made to import bread from without. If the bakers have influence enough with the law-making power, or with our supposed despot, they will have an import tax placed upon bread to keep up their prices, under the plea of "sustaining domestic industry;" but the amount of this import tax will go into the pockets of the owners of the bakeries, although the wages of their workmen will not be increased, for their wages depend, as has been shown, not on the price of bread, but upon the number of bread-making laborers available. If such laborers increase in number, the wages of the bread-makers may even go very low, though the price of bread (thanks to the import tax) may remain very high. These points are dwelt upon at length for the purpose of exposing the fallacy of a popular delusion—that....
It is a remarkable fact that, whilst many laboring-men are deluded with the idea that taxing articles which they consume or aid in producing tends to keep up their wages or to increase them, they entirely ignore the real reason for low wages, which is nothing more or less than the presence of plenty of labor. Once convinced of the fact that the price of everything, labor included, depends on the inexorable law of supply and demand, they will not be able to resist the conclusion that no importation tax can, by any possibility, affect the price of labor, except an importation tax on labor itself.
This fact seems almost to demonstrate itself; and yet there is no greater delusion in this country, where its falsity is demonstrated every day to anyone observant of the settlement of our vast Western territories. Let anyone go into a Western settlement and note the high price of labor of all kinds, and that it is almost impossible to get a man to do a day's work for love or money; and let him visit the same place a few years later, when perhaps a railroad is running through the place, which in the meantime has grown immensely in population. He will now note the decrease in wages of all kinds. And, if he will go to the same place still later, he will not fail to note a still further decline; for, if the demand continues, labor will, by means of the railroad, flow in to supply it, and the price of labor will fall—for no other reason than that there is plenty of labor to supply the demand. And this lesson is demonstrated over and over again wherever a new settlement is observed. If there is only one bricklayer in the place he can demand his own price, which cannot be affected by the presence of fifty or a hundred carpenters or blacksmiths, nor by a tax on bricks, mortar, or sand.
X.
Charles Prescott Shermon.
Vagabonds, vagrants, tramps,—the class has never been entirely confined to humanity,—those careless, happy-go-easy, dishonest, unterrified beings to whom the world is an oyster, and often such a one as is not worth the opening, sometimes possess an interest to the observer, entirely disconnected with pity. They always lead reprehensible lives, and usually die disgracefully. They are amusing because of the exaggerated obliquity of their careers, and are, beasts and men alike, droll with a drollery that is three-quarters original sin. Among animals, at least, there are few cases of actual misfortune, though sometimes there is that most pitiable and forlorn creature, a dog that has lost his master, or that bit of cruelty and crime which has its exemplification in an old horse that has been turned out to die. Ordinarily the cases of animal depravity one encounters are so by race and ineradicable family habit, and are beyond the pale of charity and outside the legitimate field of brotherly love. One does not care what becomes of them, and least of all thinks of trying to reform them. But they usually take care of themselves, after a fashion that excludes all thought of pity. Even among the higher animals there are, as with humanity, occasional cases of extraordinary depravity. I know at this moment of a beautiful horse, with a white hind foot, and the blood of a long line of aristocrats in his veins, who wears an iron muzzle and two halter-chains, whose stall is the cell of a demon, who has made his teeth meet in the flesh of two or three of his keepers, and who is yet sufficiently sane to try to beat all his competitors on the track, and to often succeed. I know a little gray family dog, terrier from the end of his nose to the tip of his tail, kind to all whom he knows, who is yet the veriest crank of his kind. He hates everything that wears trousers, will not come when called with the kindest intentions, attacks all other dogs, big and little, who intrude within his line of vision, and confines his friendships exclusively to people who wear skirts and bonnets. He wears his heavy coat all summer because he has said to the family collectively that he will not be clipped; and, when an attempt of that kind is made, shows his teeth, even to the little girl who owns him. He reminds one of the incorrigible youth of an otherwise God-fearing family, and has been let go in his ways because he is too ugly and plucky to spend the time upon. I know a cat, now not more than half-grown, with a handsome ash-colored coat and a little white neck-tie, who is already as much a tiger as though born in the wilds of Africa. His playful bites draw blood, and his unsheathed claws are a terror, even when one is stroking his back. His tail quivers and his eyes have a tigerish expression, even when he is but catching a ball of yarn. He was after mice, and caught them, in his early infancy, and he was crouching and skulking after things when he should have been lapping milk. It is plainly foreseen that he will never be a family cat, and will take to the alleys and back fences before he is grown. He has in him, more than other cats have, the vagabond and depraved instinct—not amenable to Christian influences.
But the two persons of whom I shall doubtless seem to have as full recollection here as their characters justify belong to the extensive family of natural vagabonds, and first dawned upon me in the days when there was a frontier. I was in those days perfectly hardened to a bed on the ground, and was amused with the companionship of pack-mules. I was dependent for mental stimulus upon the stories of the camp-fire, and for recreation upon the wild realm in which the only changes that could come were sunrise and evening, clouds, wind, storms. There was a lonely vastness so wide that it became second nature to live in it and almost to love it, and a silence so dense that it became companionship. There was then no dream of anything that was to come. The march of empire had not touched the uttermost boundary. We wondered why we were there. And the blindest of all the people about this wonderful empire were those who knew it best. I really expected then to watch and chase Indians for the remainder of my natural life; looked upon them and their congeners as permanent institutions; made it a part of business to know them as well as possible; and wondered all the while at the uselessness of the government policy in occupying, even with a few soldiers, so hopeless a territory. Very often there was nothing else to do. All the books had been committed to memory previous to being absolutely worn out. It was a world where newspapers never came. When the friendship of certain animals becomes obtrusive,—when they take the place to you of those outsiders whom you do not really wish to know, but who are there nevertheless,—you are likely to come to understand them very well indeed, and to find in after years that they seem to come under the head of persons rather than creatures—the casual wild creatures of whom one ordinarily catches a glimpse or two in the course of a lifetime.
There was a bushy and exalted tail often seen moving leisurely along above the taller grasses that lined the prairie trail. One might encounter it at any hour, or might not see it for many days. I finally came to look upon this plume with something more than the interest attaching to a mere vagrant polecat, and even ceased to regard the end that bore it as the one specially to be avoided, however common the impression that it is so. In civilization and in the books nobody had ever accused the parti-colored creature of other than a very odorous reputation; and the tricks of his sly life—such as rearing an interesting and deceptively pretty family under the farmer's corn-crib, and refusing to be ejected thence; visiting, with fowl intent, the hen-house; sucking eggs; catching young ducks; and forcing the pedestrian to go far around him upon the occasion of a chance meeting, were condoned as matters that could not be helped in the then condition of human ingenuity and invention. With us, on the plains, he had acquired another and more terrible reputation. Nobody knows how information becomes disseminated in the wilderness, but it seemed to be spread with a rapidity usually only known in a village of some three hundred inhabitants, with a Dorcas Society; and we came to know, from authentic instances, that his bite, and not his perfume, was dangerous. In 1873, the Medical Herald, printed at the metropolis of Leavenworth, stated that a young man sleeping in a plains camp was bitten on the nose by one of the beasts. Awaking, he flung his midnight visitor off, and it immediately bit his companion, upon whom it unfortunately alighted. Both of these unfortunates died of hydrophobia.
The same year a citizen came to the U. S. Army surgeon at Fort Harker, Kansas, having been bitten through the nose by a mephitis while asleep. He had symptoms of hydrophobia, and shortly afterwards died of that disease. The next case of which printed record was made was that of a young man who, while sleeping on the ground, was bitten through the thumb. The writer states that the "animal had to be killed before the thumb could be extracted." This man also died of hydrophobia in the town of Russell, in western Kansas. Other cases are recorded about this time, with less detail.
I mention these instances, substantiated in cold print in a medical journal, merely to show that what we thought we knew was not a mere frontier superstition. With a righteous hatred did we hate the whole mephitis family. The little prairie rattlesnake often crept into the blankets at night for the sake of warmth; and it is a noticeable fact that he did not "rattle" and did not bite anybody while enjoying their unintended hospitality, and that such things were not much thought of. But the sneaking presence of a skunk, usually considered merely a ridiculous and disagreeable creature, would always call out the force for his extermination, promptly, and by some means.
Yet mephitis has the air of seeming rather to like, than to seek to avoid, mankind. It is one of his curious traits. You cannot certainly tell whether he really does; but, if he does not, it is strange with what frequency he is encountered, exhibiting on such occasions a singular confidence, not in any case reciprocated. It is certain that he has crossed a railroad bridge to visit the bustling metropolis of the Missouri Valley, and been seen complacently ambling the streets there at midnight. If, in crossing a "divide" or threading a reedy creek-bottom, there is seen before you one of those imposing plumes before referred to, standing erect above the long grass, without any perceptible attachment, and moving slowly along, it will be prudent not to permit any curiosity concerning the bearer of it to tempt you to a nearer acquaintance. Indeed, should he discover you, in turn, it will be rather out of the usual line of his conduct if he does not at once come amiably ambling in your direction, intent upon making your personal acquaintance, or, as is more likely, of finding out if there is anything about you which he considers good to eat. There is something both amusing and fearful in this desire to make acquaintances regardless of all the forms of introduction and the usages of society; and no other animal possesses the trait. No one, so far as known, has ever waited to see what special line of conduct he would pursue after he came. The chances are that he would stay as long as he had leisure, and then go without offence; yet no one can foretell his possible caprices. He might conclude to spend the afternoon with one; and, as he is known to be a pivotal animal, reversing himself, upon suspicion arising in his mind, with a celerity perhaps not fully appreciated until afterwards, one might find it at least irksome to remain so long idle and quite still. I knew a soldier once who had such a visit while walking his guard-beat. He did not dare to fire his gun in time, for fear of the serious accusation of wishing to kill game while on duty. He could not scare away the cat, and dared not leave his beat. He stood stock-still for an hour or two, and then called the corporal of the guard in a subdued and whining voice. When that non-commissioned autocrat at last appeared, he considered twenty yards a convenient distance for communication, and declined to come any nearer. Mephitis was at the moment engaged in stroking his sides against the sentinel's trousers, while his host did not dare to either move or speak in a voice the corporal could hear. The latter went away and obtained permission from the officer of the day to shoot something, and returned with four more armed men. The visitor here saw an opportunity to make new acquaintances, and started to meet the latest arrivals half way. They all ran, while the sentinel took the opportunity to walk off in a direction not included in his instructions. The animal was finally partially killed by a volley at forty paces, leaving a pungent reminiscence that did not depart during the remainder of the summer, and necessitated some new arrangements for the lines of defence about the post.
In more recent times an entire company of hunters, with a dog to every man, have been driven from the field repeatedly by the persistency of the innocent gaze, or the foolish confidence of the approach, of this extraordinary bore; for one can't shoot him if he is looking—not because one can't, but because, if one did, a souvenir would be left, at least among the dogs, that would linger with them until the natural time for the shedding of hair should come again, and deprive their owners of the pleasure of their company for an indefinite period. And, in addition, the people with whom one might wish to stop for the night might make remarks accompanied by nasal contortions not usual in ordinary conversation, and would be likely to suggest the barn, or otherwheres out-of-doors, as being good and refreshing places to spend the night in. Even the hunter's own family will prove inhospitable to the verge of cruelty under such circumstances, and conduct unheard of before will become perfectly proper on the part of one's best friends. Such discomfitures have happened ere now to most sportsmen in Western preserves, and for some reason a crowning misfortune of the kind is apt to be considered a joke ever afterwards.
But an uncontrollable desire for human intimacy is only one item of the oddities of this little beast. As a vagabond of the wilderness he was like other vagabonds there, and got on well enough without any human association. Carnivorous entirely, he cannot be accused of looking for the well-filled granary of later times; he invades no cabbage-patch, and is entirely guiltless of succulent sweet potatoes and milky roasting-ears. His presence in increased numbers among the fields and farms of civilization is accounted for by the fact that he has simply declined to move on. He will not retire to the wilds of the pan-handle or the neutral strip, driven thither by the too copious outpour of civilization. His conduct indicates the just conclusion that he can endure all the vicissitudes of the school-house States if they can, in turn, endure him. Doubly armed, this autocrat of the prairies holds in unique dignity the quality of absolute fearlessness, and, aside from any hydrophobic endowments, is now the chiefest terror of the free and boundless West.
A figure-head seems to be necessary in the conduct of all the larger affairs of life. From this idea have come all the griffins, and the sphinxes, and the St. Georges and Dragons, the hideous caryatids, gnomes, gorgons, chimeras dire, the eyes of Chinese junks, and the wooden cherubs that until later years looked over the waste of unknown waters beneath the bows of every ship that sailed. On the seals of one-half of all the Western States and territories mephitis might figure as the chiefest animal of their natural fauna, and for him might the buffalo and the bear be properly discarded. They are gone: he remains and impresses himself upon the community unmistakably. But mottoes and great seals and epitaphs are things not expected to be governed in their making by anything like actual fact.
It will be conceded that no other beast approaches this in the particulars of his armament. So confident of his resources is he that the idea that he can be worsted never enters his elongated cranium. Though he never uses his phenomenal powers except upon what he considers an emergency, these supposed emergencies arise quite too frequently for the general comfort and piety of his neighborhood. It is said that the little western church never thrives greatly in a neighborhood that is for some reason peculiarly infested by him. Yet it is a remarkable fact that when he visits the farmer's hen-roost, which he often does, the owner, if he came from some timbered country, nearly always lays the blame upon the much-maligned "coon;" meaning, of course, that pad-footed and ring-tailed creature who is credited with a slyness verging upon intellect, but who never visited a prairie in his life. He does this because there is no penetrating and abiding savor left behind—except in case of accident—in any of these maraudings. It is a mere piece of cunning. He wishes to come again some other time. The victims of his appetite, comprising everything smaller than himself in that region, are never subjected to his caudal essences, and a good reason for this would be that he wishes to eat them himself. Those who know mephitis well, and also know this trait of his character, are impressed anew by the mercifulness of some of nature's instincts and freaks.
And here arises the question of a certain occult power apparently possessed by this creature alone. It seems to be established by undisputed testimony that he is the most skilful packer of meats, with the least trouble and expense, known in the annals of the art preservative. His hollow logs have been repeatedly split in his absence, and found full of dead fowls, killed in a neighboring farm-yard, squeezed in closely side by side for future use, and all untainted and fresh. How does he accomplish this? There are evidently various things to learn from the field of natural history which might be turned to the uses of man. To say nothing of the value of the patent, this would be a very useful household recipe if known. The inference is that there may be an occult quality in his strange and characteristic endowment not heretofore suspected.
Our western friend has an extensive family relationship. There are at least six varieties of him in various latitudes. No one branch of the family is believed to have any fellowship with any other branch, probably for weighty and sufficient family reasons; though to the ordinary human senses there is so little difference in the sachet that one cannot see reason for being so particular among themselves. Two of him are very common west of the Missouri—one as big as a poodle and variously striped, and the other of a smaller and more concentrated variety, more active also in his habits. It is the bigger of these two who goes about waving his plume and seeking new acquaintances, as though he contemplated going into the Bohemian oats business among the farmers, and who courts admiration while he spreads consternation. It is he who lies in ambush in the corn-shocks, in the early days of the yellow autumn, apparently for the express purpose, through the media of the farmer's boys and the district school, of informing the whole neighborhood, and especially the little girls, that he is still about. It is he who is borne oftenest, in spirit and essence, through the open windows of the settler's house, causing the mistress thereof to wish, and to often say that she wishes, that she had never come away from Ohio, or wherever she used to reside, and where she declares mephitis to have been a nuisance utterly unknown. It is he who lopes innocently along the railroad track, declining to retire, meeting death without a murmur, knowing, perhaps, that his dire revenge will follow the fleeting train, whose wheels have murdered him, for many a mile, even across the plains and into mountain passes, and perhaps return with it and add a little something, a piquant mite, to the loud odors of the Missouri River terminus. The passengers all know he has been killed, and know it for the remainder of the journey, or else they wonder at the pungency of the atmosphere apparently pervading a stretch of country as big as all New England, and which they will talk about as one of the western drawbacks after they have returned home. It is he who rather rejoices than otherwise at the number and ferocity of the farmer's dogs, and who is indirectly blessed if they have the habit of going into the house and lying under the beds. Then indeed may he fulfil his mission. When they at first, and through inexperience, attack him, he routs them all without excitement or anger on his part, causes an armed domestic investigation of them, and their banishment without extradition, and through them impresses himself upon the unappreciative western understanding.
The little one, the other common variety, is perhaps more rarely seen, but he is at least frequently suspected. Not much bigger than a kitten, and almost or quite black, he lacks the look of innocence and the appearance of docility so falsely worn by his relative. Once they both hibernated: at least the books say so. Now, as one of the changes wrought by the settlement of the country, this small one becomes a frequent all-the-year tenant of the farmer's out-buildings. His battery is quite as formidable as the other's is, and may, indeed, be considered as an improvement in the way of rapidity and concentration, like the Gatling gun. The barn is not always his residence; and without inquiring if it is entirely convenient he frequently takes up his domicile in or under the dwelling. A mephitis in the cellar is one of the Kansas things. He does not, while there, produce any of the mysterious noises that indicate ghosts. The house is known not to be haunted, for everybody understands quite well who is there. But the owner must not attempt ejectment. Peace and quiet he insists upon. You must bar him out some time when he is absent on business, wait until spring, or move to another house. It is the middle one of these remedies that is usually adopted, if any. While he stays, there are no joint occupants with him in the place he has pre-empted. He will catch mice like a cat, and the joy of his life is the breaking of a rat's back with one nip behind the head. He has a most formidable array of teeth, and eschews vegetables entirely. He is the foe of all the little animals who live in walls or basements, or in holes or under stones. Even the weazel, that slim incarnation of predatory instinct, declines to enter into competition with him, and goes when he comes, or comes when the other goes. One of them is suspected, from this fact, of eating the other, and mankind, with the only form of disinterestedness of which we can justly boast, does not care which of the two it is.
The biggest one of the mephitis family lives in Texas, and that empire is not disposed to boast itself withal on that account. He came there from Mexico, possibly on account of his being preposterously considered a table luxury in the latter country. But it is a land of which such eccentricities may be expected. They eat the ground-lizard there,—a variety of the celebrated "Gila monster,"—and some other creatures to our pampered notions not less repulsive; though they seem to avoid, by peculiar management, that quadrennial banquet of crow which constitutes our great national dish. Mephitis is, however, purely American wherever he comes from. Europe knows him not in quadrupedal form. He is one of the things got by discovery, though he may not take rank, perhaps, with the gigantic grass we call "corn," or with tobacco, or even with ginseng or sassafras, or the host of acquisitions which would distinguish us as a people even if we had him not at all. And now that we have got him, we must apparently cherish him; and with our usual thrift we have made many attempts to utilize him. He often appears in polite society under the name of sable, or some such thing, and no odor betrays him. Of the strange fluid, which is one of the most wonderful natural defences ever bestowed upon an animal, pharmacy has concocted a medicine, and the perfumers an odor for the toilet. Yet it must be admitted that one of his chiefest uses, so far, is to furnish the western editor with a synonym and comparative, and a telling epithet in time of trouble. He often caps the climax of a controversial sentence as long as one's arm, and if you take the county paper you need not be long in discovering that while we scientific may call him mephitis, he hath another name not often heard by ears polite, or frequently mentioned in the society in which the reader moves.
That other vagabond who may be considered as being vaguely referred to at the head of this chapter has no possible kinship with him who has been desultorily sketched. Yet the two stand together in my mind in a kind of vague relationship of character. I was not surprised at my first sight of a coyote, but he grew greatly upon me afterwards. It was his voice. He is but a degenerate wolf,—the weakest of his family save in the one respect referred to,—but he is an old and persistent acquaintance of every frontiersman, ten times as numerous and prominent in every recollection of that far time of loneliness and silence as any other beast.
If you visit Lincoln Park, at Chicago, you will find a special pen devoted to the comfort and happiness of this little gray outcast of the wilderness; and I may add that he does not appear there to any advantage whatever. On the wide plains where there was nothing, apparently, to eat, he was, for a coyote, usually in good condition. His coat was tolerably smooth sometimes, and he was industrious and alert. Here, where he is regularly fed at the public expense, he is so shabby that one hesitates to be caught looking at him as one goes by. There is that about an animal that expresses unhappiness as plainly as it is expressed by men, and the Lincoln Park coyote is unquestionably the most abject specimen of his entire disreputable family.
The reader will understand that in all I may have to say about the little reprobate I do not refer for any particulars to that incarcerated and unhappy vagabond just mentioned. On the contrary, he was the first sensation of my earliest border experiences. He came the first night, and every night thereafter, for several years. I grew to know him well, and have had many a brief and solitary interlude of mingled amusement and vexation on his account, when there was nothing else on earth to laugh at or be sorry about. I often have shot at him, usually at very long range, but never to my knowledge killed, or even scared him. It is well understood that he always knows whether or not you have with you a gun, and will be distant or familiar accordingly. But finally exasperated by a wariness so constant, I have sought revenge by a form of murder that I do not now claim, upon reflection, was entirely in self-defence or perfectly justifiable, and which to this day remains a red stain upon an otherwise fair reputation. I killed twenty odd of him in a single night with insidious strychnine and a dead mule, and in the morning was astonished not so much at the slaughter as at the fact that he had not suspected the somewhat worn expedient, and avoided the banquet.
The trouble with him is, that he does not avoid anything that may be imagined to be good to eat. If there was ever an animal preternaturally and continually hungry, it was the old-time coyote of the plains of western Kansas and the mountains and plateaux of southern New Mexico. Yet no one ever saw a starved coyote, or found a dead one. The odor of the camp-fire frying-pan reached him a long way off, and was irresistible. He crept nearer and nearer, as the evening passed, and finally the camp was surrounded by a gray cordon who crouched and licked their jaws, and kept still and waited. But when the little fire was dead and the voices had ceased, and every man lay wrapped in slumber and his blankets, the tuneful side of his nature would get the better of him, and he began to faintly whine. He was getting the key-note, and ascertaining the pitch. The first faint yelp, imprudently uttered, affected his companions as yawning does men, and now a still hungrier one gives utterance to a screech so entirely coyotish that the example is irresistible. Then pandemonium awakes. Each vagabond rises up, sits upon his tail, elevates his chin, and gives utterance to a series of yelps that rise in crescendo, regardless of time, or measure, or interval, or the lateness of the hour. Then, when the camp was new, and the men were beginners in that strange and lonely life that often kept its unexplained and indescribable charm for them ever afterwards, there would be responsive sleeplessness and profanity. The hardest ordeal was to become finally accustomed to this nightly pandemonium, which no effort could prevent, no vigilance avoid. The first effect was to be slightly, though privately, frightened. The next was to intensify the feeling of lonesomeness. One lay in torment, silent, sleepless, wondering if it was a common thing, and if it were possible to yelp a human creature to death in the course of time. Then one talked to his companions, and perhaps expressed himself in a couple of languages. The most futile of all toil would be an attempt to drive the singers away. Silent only for a moment, they would all come back again and make up for lost time. This is how the early wanderers in what is destined to be the garden of the Union first made the acquaintance of the most characteristic animal of the country, and this is why he dwells in the memory of every man who ever slept beneath the sparkling dome west of the Missouri the sweet sleep of toil and health—a sleep that by-and-by was uninterrupted by all the night-sounds the wilderness might invent except the stealthy footfall of some human stranger.
And when the gray vagabond had become an accustomed nuisance he began to exercise his real calling; for all his other modes of obtaining a livelihood are mere by-play to his actual business, which is stealing. In this line he is something preternatural. He had in those days a remarkable liking for harness, straps, raw-hide, saddles, boots. He chewed the lariat from the pony's neck, and would steal a saddle and gnaw it beyond use or recognition by the owner. He would walk backward and draw anything that had a rancid smell a mile or so from where he found it. He was accused of deliberately drawing the cork and spilling the horse liniment, and of then lapping the fluid from the ground regardless of consequences. He would chew a belt of cartridges for the sake of the tallow with which they were coated, and spit them out again in a dilapidated pile of sheet metal. Vagabond luck saved him from having the top of his head blown off during this meal; and I have known a Mexican youth to be killed in trying to straighten some of them out again. Whips and thongs were dainties, chewed, swallowed, and digested without danger or difficulty. The owner was under the necessity of looking after his boots more carefully when they were off than when they were on, and axle-grease was a precious commodity stored for safe-keeping with the teamster's spare shirt, in some arcanum of the equipage where the utmost diligence would not reveal it.
It was a most desolate country, whose silent leagues bore no sustenance, and whose creatures, save him, were few. He was everywhere, and the secret of his existence lay in his one virtue—industry. He gathered a livelihood from the things despised of all others, and he seasoned it with content and made it answer. Never a beetle or a lizard crossed his path unchased. Plainsmen said that when he encountered one of the little land-turtles or terrapins, then common, he staid with it until it died and the shell came off. He killed the virulent little prairie rattlesnake, also plentiful enough, by seizing it in the middle and snapping its head off with a single jerk, as one cracks a whip. But if he had been bitten he would always have recovered. He chased jackass rabbits in pairs, and while one ran straight after the rabbit the other would cut across the angle, and thus the two would run down an animal that, when really on business, is able to fling his heels derisively in the face of the best-bred greyhound. And when they had caught him there was always a controversy. No coyote ever divided honorably. That "honor among thieves," so often mentioned, was not in his education. He sucked eggs—all that he could find; and when anything died within ten miles or so he knew it. He was contemporary with the bison, and was the bison's assassin; for when age and decrepitude overtook the shaggy bull, and three or four lame and grizzled companions went off together, he and his companions literally nagged them to death one by one. If the veteran lay down, they bit him. As long as he remained on foot they followed and teased him. When he died, they fought over and ate him, denying even a morsel to the buzzards and ravens. They followed the Indian hunting-parties, thankful for the morsels that fell to them, which were not many; for the noble red man was himself no disdainer of viscera: he included the whole internal economy under the possible head of tripe, and if in haste ate it raw; and all he left of a dead buffalo was a hard-earned morsel even for a coyote, if he had come far to get it.