Imatges de pàgina
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said. "I never knew that Sydney had an experience."

"But you must have done," said Geraldine, "or how could you have described it?"

After such logic as this I felt powerless to say more. The climax to my literary experiences was however reached the next day when Adelaide came to me in great excitement.

"I have just been to see Cousin Susan," she said with what I could not help thinking an air of rather malicious triumph. "She is very angry about the portrait of herself in your story, and Temple Bar.

says you are an impudent minx, and that you shall not have a penny of the hundred pounds she was going to leave to you in her will."

When I added up the results of my story, I found I had gained much reproach, some misplaced sympathy, several enemies, and five pounds. Against this I had lost the hundred pounds left me by Cousin Susan. I came to the conclusion that it was hardly good enough.

This was how I didn't become an Author.

Norley Chester.

EVENING SONG OF THE BRETON FISHERMAN.

A singing breeze in the yellow sail,
Crisp white foam on the summer sea;
Sunset shadows and moonlight pale

On yonder haven, where I would be.
The toils of the day are over and past,
The fisherman comes to his rest at last!

The bells are ringing the vesper chime

In buried cities beneath the sea;

And the calm of the holy eventime

Has wrought its peace on the world and me.
Ave Maria! In mercy keep

The resting land and the restless deep.

The lighthouse flashes the beacon high,

A golden path on the dark'ning sea;

A star shines out in the dusky sky,

And faint lights glimmer along the quay.
And I know what the Star of Home is worth

When the heart of heaven beats close to earth.
E. E. Ohlson.
Chambers's Journal.

THE SOUL OF THE ASSASSIN.

What quarrel had Angelo Bresci against Humbert of Savoy, that his treacherous act should have hurried another European sovereign, "unhousel'd, disappointed, unaneal'd," into the darkness? Simply this; the victim was a King, and the other is called an anarchist. The crime, it seems, is one of a series already long enough to form a category apart, and the type of regiIcide to which the assassin of Monza professes to belong may be distinguished from the regicides of history by certain common features.

There is nothing new in the assassination of princes; but the familiar examples, if we except those of quite recent date, were either the wild and improbable outrages of casual lunacy, or were so far rational that an immediate object might be guessed in the choice of their victims, marked out to die by private vengeance, the discontent of a faction, or the interest of a rival or an heir. Caserio, Luccheni, Sipido, Bresci, had it is believed, no such motive. Like Ravachol and Vaillant, and other authors of murderous outrages aimed at no particular personage, they looked beyond their victims, and sought, by the suddenness and audacity of the deed, to strike terror into the hearts of the survivors. The method, before it was used by men at war with every form of government existing, was known in Europe as the last abominable weapon of desperate patriots and reformers. The Irish Fenians and the Russian Nihilists served causes which could enlist the sympathies of moderate men; their hopes were definite, and the field of their infernal activity was limited. Whether they succeeded to any extent in extorting by murder what they had failed to win by lawful means is not

quite certain; but their imitators, with ulterior designs less clearly expressed and, perhaps, never clearly conceived, have in a few years undeniably created a consciousness of personal and universal insecurity throughout Europe.

It

The attempts at indiscriminate destruction which were almost frequent not so long ago are lately grown out of favor with militant Anarchism. The fatal effects were rarely on a par with the nefarious design, for both the opportunity and the efficacy of the instrument depended far more on accident than is the case when the victim is single and the weapon a poignard or a firearm. Other reasons occur readily. Anarchists are men, and the slaughter of an uncertain number of nameless innocent people may have seemed an outrage too inhuman to be executed even in vindication of theories that imply an utter contempt for human society. is natural to suppose, also, that they have found the process of universal intimidation tedious and uncertain. Even if every plot succeeded, there is no logical conclusion from the panic of whole populations to the deliberate abandonment of all systems of control. It is inconceivable-wars of extermination apart-that government should die for want of subjects; but it is not inconceivable that monarchy should die for want of kings, or republics for want of magistrates willing to run the risk of assassination. But it is above all with the Anarchist's imagination we must reckon, as in a clumsy fashion he reckons doubtless with ours. Infinitely more terrible as is the menace of wholesale incalculable massacre, the violent death of a ruler-inviolable, inaccessible, the symbol of national power and security-makes more noise

in the world than the explosion of an infernal machine in the centre of a crowded city. And for the enemy of society the mildest figurehead that wears a crown is an arch-tyrant, and the name of regicide has a glorious sound. He sees himself a single-handed hero, assailing the master of legions, over-matching the vigilance of the breastplated myrmidons of sovereignty with his obscurity, his cold enthusiasm, and his carelessness of death. We call him by tradition cowardly. It is a useful opprobrium where we want words to mark our detestation of such cruel murders as those of President Carnot, of the Empress Elizabeth, and of King Humbert. The assassins however are rarely men who value their lives; their business is with those who do. Death or worse is for these malefactors not a risk, but a certainty. Even the child Sipido must have expected the utmost penalty if he had been successful. This is the most appalling consideration we have to face when we devise perfect protecton and effective punishment. A man who is determined to kill another man, and has no fear for himself, is almost sure to accomplish his purpose. The assassin ought to be destroyed or caged like a dangerous wild beast; but deterrents there can be none; and it is vain to talk of making an example.

The remedy, if a remedy exists, must be other. If more were known of Anarchical doctrines, the secret of their attraction and the manner of their propagation, if more were known about the character of the culprits and the complex influences which cause the murderous idea to germinate in their brains, there would be something to go on. But nobody takes Anarchism seriously; and public opinion, periodically startled, persists in treating the militant Anarchist as an ordinary criminal

The Speaker.

whom the gallows will deter or as a homicidal maniac such as may be met with anywhere, at any moment. The materials of knowledge are scanty; but it is plain at any rate that in most cases the perpetrators of these infamous crimes are young men, by no means conspicuously "degenerate." They are rarely thieves, drunkards, or turbulent. They are excitable, however, capable of enthusiasm, courageous and over-educated for their mental capacity. They are filled to the point of obsession with the idea of their personal mission, and vain of the part they play. They have read books, pamphlets and journals which describe a state of perfect happiness for all men, attainable by a resolute assault upon the whole social fabric, recall the injustice possible under every system of government, and draw the inference that all systems are evil in themselves. If in some cases the Anarchist propaganda may be discovered to have a definite positive side, and to preach collectivism as a social panacea, it is naturally to the work of destruction that the young "companion" is urged to devote himself.

Perhaps these young men are the dupes of men less single-hearted and less courageous than themselves. At least it is difficult to believe that the militant Anarchist or his passive inspirers have ever anything to gain. Discount the element of imitation, the itch for notoriety, and we have still to explore, to account for and to combat a vague, but, apparently, an attractive doctrine, disseminated among the lower classes of many cities, and a type of impressible subject which it would be possible to contemplate with less horror if it diverged more obviously from a normal standard of intelligence and character.

O. P.

BY THE SEA.

A FRAGMENT.

That is the lighthouse, looking o'er the bay,

A pillar of cloud by day,

By night of fire.

Let us go thither down this sea girt way,

And should'st thou chance to tire,

This stranded boat will serve us as a seat

Where we may rest and watch the waves at play,

While soft beneath our feet

The smooth sands slip away,

And pungent odors greet

Our thirsting senses after city heat.

Strong saline odors of the boundless sea,

Drawn upward from its vast immensity.

How the waves tumble and roar!

Their green transparent crests all flecked with spray And one advancing higher than before,

Falls with a thunderous might,

Broken and frothy white,

On the resounding shore

To cream about our feet with silver glide,

Then backward slide,

In swift retreat.

With ripple and gurgle once more, once more,

To be caught in the maw

Of the restless, insatiable tide.

A lovely sight I saw

This morning in an angle of the beach.

Safe from the water's reach,

Certes there thrives and grows

A little wilderness of the wild rose,

So sweet it blooms and blows.

A myriad petals pink,

Clustered upon the brink

Of the ocean broad and deep

Beyond the line

So fixed and fine

Where the hungry waves may creep.

Last night with glimmer and dip

And the shimmer of light, o'er the lip

Of the surging cup

Of the purple wine-tinted sea,

The moon peeped up.

Quiet and calm and benign,

With a stillness holy, divine,

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