 How to Mix the Mother Tongue, by Anonymous, from the Siren, University of Illinois at Urbana, Monthly Magazine. Read by Bologna Times. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. How to Mix the Mother Tongue. A few phrases and how to use them. We aim to please our readers. For this purpose we have secured a warm babe, a former East Cider, to interpret and illustrate a few of the latest fashions in slang. These will appear each month. I should worry. A very new and novel effect in saying one thing and meaning the other. This phrase should be delivered in a guttural yet jovial tone, and accompanied by an absolutely carefree, and if possible, inane expression of countenance. It means, literally, sweet essence of joy, the world sky blue. Nicks on that stuff. From nicks, small incisions, and stuffing, the Christmas intestines of a turkey, a late and pleasing perversion. It should be said in a nasal tone, and emitted from the corner of the mouth. An effective accompaniment is a curt flip of one's hand on a level with the hip. Practice this before the mirror. Translation. Jesus, kid, I'm curdling. String me, dear, I'm beans. From string. Get me going, and beans. Off my lid. Use this as a proposal speech. This best-setting is a dark and lonely porch, furnished with one small settee. Said in a low voice ringing with tenderness and pathos, this sentence is tremendously effective. Practice in the basement, or better still, try it on your sister. Editors note. We hope our readers will take advantage of this column each month to improve their grasp of the English idiom. How to Mix the Mother Tongue. Four Meaningless Expressions of Importance. I give a damn. Although not very naughty, still, not very nice. Said with a shrug of the shoulders, and a snap of the fingers, this sentence is a delightfully asinine substitute for its opposite. Blasey diffidence is regarded by some as the best policy. He aroused the anti-cow, from to cow, to subdue, and auntie, a donor of unforgettable scarves. A delicate and charming method of saying, shoot the olio. Accompany the speech with a sugary and confiding smile to assure your hostess that you simply adore the white extract of suet. Practice first on a spoonful of lard. Well kid, I'm tired of life. Or the midnight ride of Paul Revere. An absolutely irresistible invitation when used by a member of the feminine sex. This phrase originated in the soft depths of a taxicab, but although the setting cannot be bettered, a darkened room is a worthy substitute. The speaker should open her arms appealingly, but a pathetic droop in her voice and a sobbing catch in her throat. She offers observe the cooing of the rain-dove and rain, all's fair and war. Practice on your brother-in-law. The exact meaning of the command is, whoops skirts, how I love those eyes. Editors note, this is the second installment of A gumdrops, compendium of English idioms, watch and improve. How to Mix the Mother Tongue A Symposium of Cintillating Sentences Play with me, hon. I'm Kittnish. From the Persian cat and the Grecian play. To be used only by a member of the weaker sex. The weaker, the weaker. The perpetrator should smile coily and take two light and airy dance steps. The heavier she is, the more entertaining the phrase. Practice in low-heeled shoes. Try first on a barber's-pull. If it responds, the student may safely venture the phrase in public. O love, thou art a blushing rose. Derivation, unknown. This is a most effective sentence, when purred by a gentleman, to the accompaniment of a lustrous moon and the soft breezing of a lovelorn lass. Wait for a silence and break it with the above while gazing rapidly at the moon. This is extremely potent. Practice this on a punching bag. We do not guarantee immunity from personal injury. Punch me. I'm a member of the bovine union. From punch. Something humorous that the conductor does. And union. A species of garment. This is an invitation to physical combat. The occasion for its use may be safely left to the discretion of the student. If he be large, he can use it frequently. If small, he should use it only on members of the feminine sex, and then after deliberation. Try this on your roommate. He's kind, and may not hurt you. The exact translation is, Have some hair. I've got lots. Editors note, There are tricks in every trade. Learn to use your tongue by studying B. Happy's Symposium. Watch and improve. How to Mix the Mother Tongue. A Few Christmas Compounds. By C.A. Pornbroker. Sweet ringing chimes. Where is my purse? From ringer. An instrument for ringing most anything from anything. And parick. An epithet sometimes applied to human beings. This expression may be used most any time after December twenty-four. Its use is not limited by sex, age, politics, social position, matrimonial condition, nor the high cost of living. It is an utterance of deep despair and black despondency. Don't spoil a tragic moment by smiling, meaning Christmas lasts for half a year. Let these presents owe imaging of loveliness. From presents a legitimate something for next to nothing. And image something that looks like you, but isn't. The latest manner of expressing one's highest regards at this beautiful Christmas season. This bit of sentiment is never regarded as mockish and is very pleasing when delivered with proper accompaniment. If you lisp, hang a sprig of holly on your lower lip. The translation of this speech is approximately, Stick, kid, I'm syrupy. Oh, John, it's the nicest of all. Derivation unknown. John, in this sentence, is interchangeable with Bill, Jim, Reginald, or any other good spender. Used to best advantage by a member of the feminine sex. The pupil should clasp her hands over her breast and jump up and down in childish glee. If a cripple, or a perfect sixty-seven, the jumping may be omitted. Gratitude is the soul of Christmas. Great care should be taken not to insert the wrong name. These columns are not foolproof. Practice this expression on a chewing gum machine. If you make it give twice, you are an accomplished pupil. Merry Christmas, readers. We hope these swat knees will bring joy to many hearts. Watch and improve. And of How to Mix the Mother Tongue by Anonymous A Woman's Wrath by Isaac Lob Perez, translated by Helena Frank, from Yiddish Tales, reading by Bologna Times. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. A Woman's Wrath by Isaac Lob Perez. The small room is dingy, as the poverty that clings to its walls. There is a hook fastened to the crumbling ceiling, relic of a departed hanging lamp. The old, peeling stove is girded about with a coarse sack, and leans sideways towards its gloomy neighbor, the black, empty fireplace, in which stands an inverted cooking pot with a chipped rim. Besides it lies a broken spoon, which met its fate in unequal contest with its scraping of cold, stale porridge. The room is choked with furniture. There is a four-post bed with torn curtains. The pillows, visible through their holes, have no covers. There is a cradle with the large yellow head of a sleeping child, a chest with metal fittings, and an open padlock, nothing very precious left in there, evidently. Further, a table and three chairs, originally painted red, a cupboard, now somewhat damaged. Add to these a pail of clean water and one of dirty water, an oven rake with a shovel, and you will understand that a pen could hardly drop onto the floor. And yet the room contains him and her beside. She, a middle-aged joist, sits on the chest that fills the space between the bed and the cradle. To her right is the one grimy little window, to her left the table. She is knitting a sock, rocking the cradle with her foot, and listens to him reading the Talmud at the table, with a tearful, Wallachian singing intonation, and swaying to and fro with a series of nervous jerks. Some of the words he swallows, others he draws out, now he snaps at a word, and now he skips it. Some he accentuates and dwells on lovingly, others he rattles out with indifference, licked dried peas out of a bag, and never quiet for a moment. Once he draws from his pocket a once red and whole handkerchief, and wipes his nose and brow, then he lets it fall into his lap, and begins twisting his earlocks, or pulling at his thin, pointed, faintly grizzled beard. Again he lays a pulled-out hair from the same between the leaves of his book, and slaps his knees. His fingers coming into contact with the handkerchief, they seize it, and throw a corner in between his teeth. He bites it, lays one foot across the other, and continually shuffles with both feet. All the while his pale forehead wrinkles, now in a perpendicular, now in a horizontal direction, when the long eyebrows are nearly lost below the folds of skin. At times, apparently, he has a sting in the chest, for he beats his left side as though he were saying the alf sheds. Finally he leans his head to the left, presses a finger against his left nostril, and emits an artificial sneeze. Leans his head to the right, and the proceeding is repeated. In between he takes a pinch of snuff, pulls himself together, his voice rings louder, the chair creaks, the table wobbles. The child does not wake. The sounds are too familiar to disturb it. And she, the wife, shriveled and shrunk before her time, sets and drinks in delight. She never takes her eye off her husband. Her ear lets no inflection of his voice escape. Now and then, it is true, she sighs, were he as fit for this world as he is for the other world, she would have a good time of it here. To, here, to! Ma! She consoles herself. Who talks of honour? Not everyone is worthy of both tables. She listens. Her shriveled face alters from minute to minute. She is nervous too. A moment ago it was eloquent of delight. Now she remembers it is Thursday. There isn't a dryer to spend in preparation for Sabbath. The light in her face goes out by degrees, the smile fades, then she takes a look through the grimy window, glances at the sun. It must be getting late, and there isn't a spoonful of hot water in the house. The needles pause in her hand. A shadow has overspread her face. She looks at the child. It is sleeping less quietly, and will soon wake. The child is poorly, and there is not a drop of milk for it. The shadow on her face deepens into gloom. The needles tremble and move convulsively. And when she remembers that it is near Passover, that her earrings and the festive candlesticks are at the pond-strap, the chest empty, the lamp sold, then the needles perform murderous antics in her fingers. The gloom on her brow is that of a gathering thunderstorm. Lightning's play in her small gray sunken eyes. He sits and learns, unconscious of the charged atmosphere. Does not see her let the sock fall, and begin ringing her finger joints. Does not see that her forehead is puckered with misery, one eye closed, and the other fixed on him, her learned husband, with a look fit to send a chill through his every limb. Does not see her dry lips tremble at her jaw quiver. She controls herself with all her might, but the storm is gathering fury within her. The least thing, and it will, explode. That least thing has happened. He was just translating a Talmudic phrase with quick delight, and thence we derived that he was going on with three. But the word derived was enough. It was the lighted spark, and her heart was the gunpowder. It was a blaze in an instant. Her determination gave way. The unlucky word opened the flood-gates, and the waters poured through, carrying all before them. Derived, you say? Derived? Oh! Derived may you be, Lord of the world? She exclaimed, hoarse with anger. Derived you may be. Yes. You! She hissed like a snake. Pass over coming Thursday. And the child ill, and not a drop of milk, is there. Ha! Her breath gives out. Her sunken breast eaves. Her eyes flash. He sits like one turned to stone. Then pale and breathless, too, from fright, he gets up and edges toward the door. At the door he turns and faces her, and sees that hand and tongue are equally helpless from passion. His eyes grow smaller. He catches a bit of handkerchief between his teeth, retreats a little further, takes a deeper breath, and mutters. Listen, woman, do you know what betel-tora means, and not letting a husband study in peace, to be always worrying about livelihood, ha? And who feeds the little birds, tell me. Always this want of faith in God, this giving way to temptation, and taking thought for this world, foolish, ill-natured woman. Not to let a husband study. If you don't take care, you would go to Gahanan, receiving no answer. He grows bolder. Her face gets paler and paler, she trembles more and more violently. And the paler she becomes, and the more she trembles, the steadier his voice as he goes on. Gahanan, fire, hanging by it the tongue, for death penalty is inflicted by the court. She is silent. Her face is white as chalk. He feels that he is doing wrong, that he has no call to be cruel, that he is taking a mean advantage. But he has risen, as it were, to the top, and is boiling over. He cannot help himself. Do you know, he threatens her, what Skylo means? It means stoning, to throw into a ditch and cover up with stones. So if all burning, that is, pouring a spoon full of boiling lead into the inside. Better beheading, that means the cut of your head with a sword, like this. And he passes a hand across his neck. Then Chenok is strangling. Do you hear? To strangle. Do you understand? And all for, for making light of the Torah, for betel Torah. His heart is already sore for his victim. But he is feeling his power over her for the first time. And it has gone to his head. Silly woman. He had never known how easy it was to frighten her. That comes from making light of the Torah, he shouts, and breaks off. After all, she might come to her senses at any moment, and take up the broom. He springs back to the table, closes the Gemra, and hurries out of the room. I am going to the house of study. He calls out over his shoulder in a milder tone, and shuts the door after him. The loud voice and the noise of the closing door have waked the sick child. The heavy-litted eyes open, the wax-and-face puckers, and there is a peevish wail. But she, beside herself, stands rooted to the spot, and does not hear. Ah! comes coarsely at last out of her narrow chest. So that's it, is it? Neither this world nor the other. Hanging, he says, stoning, burning, beheading, strangling. Stoning by the tongue, boiling lead poured into the inside, he says, for making light of the Torah. Hanging, ha-ha-ha! In desperation. Yes, I'll hang, but here, here, and soon, what is there to wait for? The child begins to cry louder. Still, she does not hear. A rope, a rope! She screams, and stares wildly into every corner. Where is there a rope? I wish she meant find a bone of me left. Let me be rid of one gehena at any rate. Let him try it. Let him be a mother for once. See how he likes it. I've had enough of it. Let it be an atonement. An end, an end, a rope, a rope! Her last exclamation is like a cry for help from out of a conflagration. She remembers that they have a rope somewhere. Yes, under the stove. The stove was to have been tied round against the winter. The rope must be there still. She runs, and finds the rope, the treasure, looks up at the ceiling, the hook that held the lamp. She needs only climb to the table. She climbs. But she sees from the table that the startled child, weak as it is, has sat up in the cradle, and is reaching over the side. It is trying to get out. Mam, mam, it sobs feebly. A fresh paroxysm of anger seizes her. She flings away the rope, jumps off the table, runs to the child, and forces its head back into the pillow, exclaiming. Bother the child. It won't even let me hang myself. I can't even hang myself in peace. It wants to suck. What is a good? You will suck nothing but poison. Poison out of me. Tell you. There then, greedy, she cries in the same breath, and stuffs her dried-up breast into his mouth. There then, suck away, bite, end of a woman's wrath. The religious difficulty under home rule, the nonconformist view, by Reverend Samuel Prenter, M.A. D.D. Dublin. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. The religious difficulty under home rule, the nonconformist view, by Reverend Samuel Prenter, M.A. D.D. Dublin. Moderator of General Assembly of Presbyterian Church in Ireland in 1904-05. From Against Home Rule 1912. The Case for the Union. For obvious reasons, the religious difficulty under home rule does not receive much attention on the political platform in Great Britain. But in Ireland, a religious problem flames at the heart of the whole controversy. This religious problem creates the cleavage in the Irish population, and is the real secret of the intense passion on both sides with which home rule is both prosecuted and resisted. Irishmen understand this very well, but as home rule, on its face value, is only a question of a mode of civil government, it is almost impossible to make the matter clear to British electors. They say, what has religion got to do with home rule? Home rule is a pure question of politics, and it must be solved on exclusively political lines. Even if this were so, might not Englishmen remember that the nationalist members of Parliament have been controlled by the Church of Rome in their votes on the English education question? I mention this to show that under the disguise of pure politics, ecclesiastical authority may stock in perfect freedom through the lobbies of the House of Commons. It is, then, an absolutely incredible thing that what has been done in the English Parliament in the name of politics may be done openly and undisguised in the name of politics in a home rule Parliament. That such will be the case I shall now attempt to show. Let us begin with the most elementary facts. According to the official census of 1911, the population of Ireland is grouped as follows. Roman Catholics, 3,238,656, Irish Church, 575,489, Presbyterians, 439,876, Methodists, 61,806, all other Christian denominations, 57,718, Jews, 5,101, information refused, 3,305. I beg the electors of Great Britain to look steadily into the above figures and to ask themselves who are the home rulers and who are the Unionists in Ireland? Irish home rulers are almost all Roman Catholics, and the Protestants and others are almost all Stout Unionists. Does this fact suggest nothing? How is it that the line of demarcation in Irish politics almost exactly coincides with the line of demarcation in religion? Quite true, there are a few Irish Roman Catholics who are Unionists and a few Protestants who are home rulers, but they are so few and so uninfluential on both sides that the exception only serves to prove the rule. These exceptions, no doubt, have been abundantly exploited, and the very most has been made of them, but the great elementary fact remains that one fourth of the Irish people, mostly Protestant, are resolutely and even passionately opposed to home rule, and the remarkable thing is that the most militant Irish Unionists for the past 20 years have not been the members of the Irish Church who might be suspected of Protestant ascendancy prejudices, but they are the Presbyterians and Methodists who never belonged to the old Protestant ascendancy party. It is of Irish Presbyterians that I can speak with the most ultimate knowledge. Their record in Ireland requires to be made perfectly clear. In 1829 they were the champions of Catholic emancipation. In 1868 they supported Mr. Gladstone in his great Irish reforms. They have been, at all times, the advocates of perfect equality in religion and of unsectarianism in education. They stand firm and staunch on these two principles still, but they are the sternest and strongest opponents of home rule, and their reason is because home rule spells for Ireland a new religious ascendancy and a destruction of the unsectarian principle in education. I ask on these grounds that English and Scottish electors should pause for a moment and open their minds to the fact that there is a great religious problem at the heart of home rule. Irish Presbyterians claim that they know what they are doing and that they are not the blind dupes of religious prejudice and political passion. It is for a great something that they have embarked in this conflict they are determined to risk everything in this resistance, and in proportion, as the danger approaches, in like proportion does their hostility to the home rule claim increase. What then is the secret of this determination? It lies in a nutshell. A parliament in Dublin would be under the control and domination of the Church of Rome. Two facts in Irish life render this not only likely and probable, but inevitable and certain. The first fact is that three-fourths of the members would be Roman Catholic. The second fact is that the Irish people are the most devoted Roman Catholics at present in Christendom. No one disputes the first fact, but the second requires to be made clear to the electors of Great Britain. Let no one suppose that I am finding fault with Irishmen for being devoted Roman Catholics. What I wish to show is that the Church of Rome would be supreme in the new parliament, and that she is not a good guardian of Protestant liberties and interests. Ireland has been for the last two generations brought into absolute captivity to the principles of ultramontanism. When Italy asserted her nationality and fought for it in 1870, Ireland sent out a brigade to fight on the side of the Pope. When France, a few years ago, broke up in that land the bondage of ecclesiasticism, the streets of Dublin were filled Sunday after Sunday for weeks with crowds of Irishmen headed by priests shouting for the Pope against France. The Church first, nationality afterwards, is the creed of the ultramontane, and it is the avowed creed of the Irish people. But this would be changed in an Irish parliament. British electors affirm. Let us hear what Mr. John Dylan MP says on the point. Speaking about a year ago in the Free Trade Hall in Manchester, Mr. Dylan said, I assert, and it is the glory of our race, that we are today the right arm of the Catholic Church throughout the world. We stand today as we have stood throughout without abating one jot or tittle of that faith, the most Catholic nation on the whole earth." What Mr. Dylan says is perfectly true. The Irish parliament would be constituted on the Roman model. If there were none but Roman Catholics in Ireland, Ireland would rapidly become a state of the Church. But how would Protestants fare? Just as they fared in old papal days in Italy under the temporal rule of the Vatican. But it may still be said that Irishmen themselves would curb the ecclesiastical power. This is one of the delusions by which British electors conceal from themselves the peril of home rule to Irish Protestants. They forget that Irishmen are, if possible, more Roman than Rome itself. I take the following picture of the Romanized condition of Ireland from a Roman Catholic writer. Quote, Mr. Frank Hugh O'Donnell, who believes in the papal Church at every point, who accepts her teaching from Nikea to Trent, and from Trent to the Vatican, says, While the general population of Ireland has been going down by leaps and bounds to the Abyss, the clerical population has been mounting by cent, per cent, during the same period. A short time ago, when an Austrian cabinet was being heckled by some anti-clerical opponents upon its alleged encouragement of an excessive number of clerical persons in Austria, the minister replied, If you want to know what an excessive number of the clergy is like, go to Ireland. In proportion to their population, the Irish have got ten priests and nuns to the one who exists in Austria. I do not prejudge the question. They may be wanted in Ireland, but let not honourable members talk about over-clericalism in Austria until they have studied the clerical statistics of Ireland, a Jesuit visitor to Ireland, on returning to his English acquaintances, and being asked how did he find the priest in Ireland replied, The priest in Ireland? There is nobody but priest in Ireland. Over there they are treading on one another's heels. While the population of Ireland has diminished one-half, the population of the Presbyteries and Convents has multiplied threefold or more. Comparisons are then instituted between the sacerdotal census of Ireland and that of the European papal countries. I shall state results only. Belgium has only one archbishop and five bishops, but if it were staffed with prelates on the Irish scale it would have nine or ten archbishops and some sixty bishops. I suppose the main army of ecclesiastics in the two countries is in the same grossly incongruous proportions, ten or twelve priests in Ireland for everyone in Belgium. The German Empire, with its twenty-one million Roman Catholics, has actually fewer mitered prelates than Ireland, with its three million of Roman Catholics. The figures of Austria-Hungary, with its Roman Catholic population of thirty-six million are equally impressive. It has eleven archbishops, but if it were staffed on the Irish scale it would have forty-eight. It has forty bishops, but if it were like Ireland it would have two hundred and eighty-eight. Mr. O'Donnell goes on, quote, this enormous population of churchmen, far beyond the necessities and even the luxuries of religious worship and service, would be a heavy tax upon the resources of great and wealthy lands. What must it be for Ireland to have to supply the Episcopal villas, the new cathedrals, the handsome presbyteries, and the handsome incomes of this enormous and increasing host of reverend gentlemen who, as regards five-six of their number, contribute neither to the spiritual nor temporal felicity of the island? They are the despotic managers of all primary schools, and can exact what homage they please from the poor serf teachers, whom they dominate and whom they keep eternally under their thumb. They absolutely own and control all the secondary schools with all their private profits and all their government grants. In the university what they do not dominate they mutilate. Every appointment from dispensary doctors to members of parliament must acknowledge their ownership and pay toll to their despotism. The county councils must contribute patronage according to their indications. The parish committees of the congested districts supplement their pocket money. They have annexed the revenues of the industrial schools. They are engaged in transforming the universal proprietary of Ireland in order to add materials for their exactions from the living and the moribund. I am told that not less than seventy-five million are lifted from the Irish people every year by the innumerable agencies of clerical suction which are at work upon all parts of the Irish body, politic and social. Nor can it be forgotten that the material loss is only a portion of the injury. The browbeaten and an intimidated condition of the popular action and intelligence which is necessary to the state of things necessarily communicates its want of will and energy to every function of the community." Of course Mr. F. H. O'Donnell has been driven out of public life in Ireland for plain speaking like this, and so would every man be who ventured to cross swords with his church. It aggravates the situation immensely when we take another fact in Irish life into account. In quite recent months Mr. Devlin MP has brought into prominence a society called the Ancient Order of Hibernians, sometimes called the Molly McGuire's, which according to the late Mr. Michael Davit is, quote, the most wonderful pro-Celtic organization in the world. This is a secret society which at one time was under the ban of the church, but quite recently the ban has been removed and priests are now allowed to join the Order. The present Pope is said to be its most powerful friend. It has branches in many lands, and it is rapidly gathering into it all the great mass of the Irish-Roman Catholic people. This is the most wonderful political machine in Ireland. Mr. William O'Brien MP has recently given an account of the society which has never been seriously questioned, quote, the fundamental object of the Hibernian society is to give preference to its own members first and Catholics afterwards, as against Protestants on all occasions. Whether it is a question of custom, office, public contracts, or positions on public boards, Molly McGuire's are pledged always to support a Catholic as against a Protestant. If Protestants are to be robbed of their businesses, if they are to be deprived of public contracts, if they are to be shut out of every office of honor or emoliment, what is this but extermination? The domination of such a society would make this country a hell. It would light the flame of civil war in our midst and blight every hope of its future prosperity, unquote. And now we reach the core of the question. It is perfectly clear that home rule would create a Roman Catholic ascendancy in Ireland, but still it might be said that the Church of Rome would be tolerant. On that point we had best consult the Church of Rome herself. Has she ever said that she would practice toleration towards Protestants when she was in power? Never. On the contrary, she declares most clearly that toleration of error is a deadly sin. In this respect the Church of Rome claims to differ totocoleo from the Churches of the Reformation. In Ireland she has passed through all the stages of ecclesiastical experience from the lowest form of disability to the present claim of supremacy. In the dark days of her suffering she cried for toleration, and as the claim was just in Protestant eyes she got it. Even as she grew in strength she stretched forth her hands for equality, and as this too was just she gradually obtained it. At present she enjoys equality in every practical right and privilege with her Protestant neighbors. But in the demand for home rule there is involved the claim of exerting an ecclesiastical ascendancy not only over her own members but over Irish Protestants, and this is the claim which is unjust and which ought not to be granted. Green, the historian, points out that William Pitt made the Union with England the ground of his plea for Roman Catholic emancipation, as it would effectually prevent a Romish ascendancy in Ireland. Home rule in practice will destroy the control of Great Britain, and therefore involves the removal of the bulwark against Roman Catholic ascendancy. The contention of the Irish Protestants is that neither their will nor their religious liberties would be safe in the custody of Rome, and an Irish Parliament civil allegiance to the Holy See would be the test of membership and would make every Roman Catholic member a civil servant of the Vatican. That Parliament would be compelled to carry out the behest of the Church. The Church is hostile to the liberty of the press, to liberty of public speech, to modernism in science, in literature, in philosophy, is bound to exact obedience from her own members and to extirpate heresy and heretics. Claims to be above civil law, and the right to enforce canon law wherever she is able. There are simply no limits, even of life or property, to the range of her intolerance. This is not an indictment. It is the boast of Rome. She plumes herself upon being intolerant because she is an infallible Church, and her Irish claim, symbolized by the papal tiara, is supremacy over the Church, supremacy over the State, and supremacy over the invisible world. Being obedience is her law towards her own subjects, and intolerance tempered with prudence is her law towards Protestants. It is a strange hallucination to find that there are politicians today who think that Rome will change her principles at the bidding of Mr. Redmond, or to please hard-driven politicians or to make Rome attractive to a Protestant empire. Rome claims supremacy, and she tells us quite candidly what she will do when she gets it. Here is our difficulty under home rule. Irish Protestants see that they must either refuse to go into an Irish parliament or else go into it as a hopeless minority, and turn it into an arena for the maintenance of their most elementary rights. In which case the Irish parliament would be simply a cockpit of religious political strife. But it would be a great mistake to suppose that the religious difficulty is confined to Irish Protestants. It is a difficulty which would become in time a crushing burden to Roman Catholics themselves. The yoke of Rome was found too heavy for Italy, and in a generation or two it would be found too heavy for Ireland. But for the creation of the papal ascendancy in Ireland, the responsibility must rest in the long run on Great Britain herself. England and Scotland, the most favored lands of the Reformation, by establishing home rule in Ireland, will do for Rome what no other country in the world would do for her. They would entrust her with a legislative machine which she could control without check, send over to her tender mercies a million of the best Protestants of the Empire, and establish at the heart of the Empire a power altogether at variance with her own ideals of government fraught with danger, and a good base of operations for the conquest of England. Can this be done with impunity? Can Great Britain divest herself of a religious responsibility in dealing with home rule? Is there not a God in heaven who will take note of such national procedure? Are electors not responsible to him? For the use they make of their votes? If they sow to the wind, must they not reap the whirlwind? In brief compass I hope I have made it quite clear what the religious difficulty in Ireland under home rule is. It is not a mere accident of the situation. It does not spring from any question of temper or of prejudice or of bigotry. The religious difficulty is created by the essential and fundamental genius of Romanism. Her whole ideal of life differs from the Protestant ideal. It is impossible to reconcile these two ideals. It is impossible to unite them in any amalgam that would not mean the destruction of both. Under imperial rule these ideals have discovered a decently working modus vivendi. Mr. Pitt's contention that the union with Great Britain would be an effectual barrier against Romanism has held good. But if you remove imperial rule then you create at a stroke the ascendancy of Rome, and under that ascendancy the greatest injustice would be inflicted on the Protestant minority. Questions of public situations and of efficient patronage are of very subordinate importance indeed. Mr. Redmond demands that Irish Protestants must be included in his home rule scheme and threatens that if they object they must be dealt with quote by the strong hand unquote, and his home rule parliament would be subservient to the Church of Rome. Does anyone suppose that a million of the most earnest Protestants in the world are going to submit to such an arrangement? Neither Englishman nor Scotsman would be willing themselves to enter under such a yoke, and why should they ask Irishmen to do so? It is contended indeed that the power of the priest in Ireland is on the wane. This is partly true and partly not true. It is true that he is not quite the political and social autocrat that he once was. But it is not true that the Church of Rome is less powerful in Ireland than she was. On the contrary, as an ecclesiastical organization Rome was never so compact in organization, never so ably manned by both regular and secular clergy, never so wealthy nor so full of resource, never so obedient to the rule of the Vatican as at the present moment. Give her an Irish parliament, and she will be complete. She will patiently subdue all Ireland to her will. Emigration has drained the country of the strong men of the Laity who might be able to resist her encroachments. Dr. Horton truly says, quote, the Roman Church dominates Ireland and the Irish as completely as Islam dominates Morocco, unquote. By Ireland and the Irish, Dr. Horton, of course, means Roman Catholic Ireland. Are you now going to place a legislative weapon in her hand, whereby she will be able to dominate Protestants also? It is bad statesmanship, bad politics, bad religion. For Ireland it can bring nothing but ruin, and for the Empire nothing but terrible retribution in the future. End of THE RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTY UNDER HOME RULE, THE NON-CONFORMERS VIEW By Reverend Samuel Printer, MA DD Dublin. The Art of Denmark, an epistolary preface by Carl Madsen, director of the Royal Gallery at Copenhagen. From exhibition of contemporary Scandinavian art under the auspices of the American Scandinavian Society. Reading by Bologna Times. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. The Art of Denmark. By Carl Madsen. My dear Christian Brenton. Surely you still remember the pavilion on Langolinning. Where two or three times we lunched so congenially together. Through the great windows of the restaurant we had an outlook eastward over the sound, and the ships westward over the tranquil moat to the green trees of the citadel, where we heard at times a blackbird's whistle. In the restaurant near the entrance sat loyal German tourists with beer mugs and souvenir postcards. At other tables my countrymen were laughing at their own jokes. We Danes are, as you correctly observed, a people who are fond of amusing ourselves, and who do not think very much about the morrow. Indeed, altogether, too little. Sometimes, however, on beautiful summer evenings you will meet people here who, silent and dreaming, gaze out over the sea. This also is perhaps characteristic of our nation. We have grown up with Anderson's fairy tales, and have had other good authors with whom you are doubtless familiar. Even from Lange Linne I see the beautiful clouds floating over a gently rocking sea. I often find myself recalling an artist who, near a hundred years ago, long before the pavilion was built, and souvenir postcards were invented, went modestly on his evening walks from his professor's quarters in the academy of congenes-nitorv out to the spot. He was neither poet nor dreamer. His sharp eyes made purely scientific observations upon the formation of clouds. He examined the construction of ships with the eye of a professional, and sought to explain the laws governing the perspective of these shifting waves. The artistic ambition of this upright soul was to give the most precise picture possible of nature as true as a mirror. His canvases are old-fashioned. All objects present themselves as those seen through a strong-filled glass, but the tones are fine and clear as day. When I now look from Lange Linne out across the sea, Danish painting in later years does not seem to have produced works that, in striking fidelity to nature, surpass those of Ekersberg. And over there, in the citadel behind the tranquil moat, his pupil, Kopke, had his home. Even today, both in fact and in the art of Kopke, these old fortifications are an idyllic spot. His sister's pink dress against the green trees of the rampart, the sunshine on an empty wagon in the citadel bakery-yard, the Danenbrog flying over a boat-landing, or a pair of poplars in the twilight, were for Kopke motives sufficiently rich in interest. You, dear Mr. Brenton, at once understood how to value his pictures from these realms of peace, his portraits of relatives, friends, and plain townsfolk, they are as modest and unpretentious as the violets on the citadel terrace. When Marstrand, Kopke's contemporary, and fellow pupil, Imdur Ekersberg, walked here on Lange Linne, he looked, I fancy, with greater interest upon the promenaders than on the sea and the citadel. Here he must have met young girls, whose graceful necks, blushing cheeks, and bright eyes, reminded him of the beautiful women of Rome, unforgettable memories of his youthful student days. Here, too, he met droll, Copenhagen types, who served as capital models for his character figures from Holberg's comedies, and, perhaps, also the tall, gaunt officers he may have used for his representations of Don Quixote. Marstrand, the most richly endowed and many-sided of our older painters, had himself the noble knight's thirst for lofty deeds. His sketches and drawings show a vast range of happy inspiration. But when he had to carry out his work, according to the demands of the time, evil and invincible forces paralyzed his hand. The coloring became crude, the form characterless. The features rigid, and life itself had departed. During this entire period, exact execution was regarded as the hallmark of respectable painting. In all of our art, from Eckersburg down, this was held in highest honor. It was the flowering time of the so-called national art. Poets had sung the praises of the Fatherland, and an eloquent critic pointed out the importance of purely native themes. Landscape painters sought to epitomize the peculiar beauty of Danish nature. Genre painters glorified the Danish peasantry. Art, they held, should be Danish, inform as well as content, and borrow nothing from other nations. In our separation from the world, many virtues flourished, but also many vices. For of course men ought to strive to be themselves, yet, as Henrik Ibsen says, only the devil is self-sufficient. And so, when Danish painting came to be exhibited at the World's Exposition at Paris in 1878, it made such a sorry showing that an old Danish artist seriously believed that the canvases were covered with dust, which had been overlooked in cleaning. It stuck so tight and so thick that they seemed lusterless, poor in color, and strangely antiquated. For this reason several young Danish painters went to school in Paris, and in due course brought home new conceptions of the aim of painting. Later other Danish artists, when they had opportunity, have looked about in the world, though it cannot be said that they have learned over much from foreign art. We are a little nation, and our national independence is for us the most precious quality we possess. A local newspaper has recently given some solid advice regarding the forthcoming exhibition of Danish art in America. Here for the purely artistic merit of the canvases ought, as a matter of principle, to be subordinated. It is far more important that the pictures bear the familiar national stamp. As yet I do not definitely know how the exhibition, which is shortly to be placed before the Tribunal of America, will be constituted. But I know that you, dear Mr. Brenton, have wished that it might be free from banalities. You have preferred the characteristic to the commonplace, the fresh to the dusty, the vigorous to the vapid. You have sought to combine that which in your opinion is good art, with that which recommends itself as national. And in any event the exhibition would not have lacked the national impress. This factor does not depend upon a peculiar manner of treatment or style of painting. The epilogue is just as Italian as Botticelli. Nor does the national note depend upon subject. Every good artist expresses his nationality in new forms. The invited painters are all legitimate children of their land, and many of them have inherited some of their best qualities from those same artists who, beside the sound and in the citadel, founded the Danish school of painting. This is quite as precious to Ring as to Beckersburg. And Wilhelm Hammerschei has seen, just as Kebke, that the most unobtrusive lives and the simplest scenes and incidents can contain a world of marvelous poetry. But the individual characterization of these painters I resign to you, my dear Mr. Brenton. You have studied our art with a sympathetic interest and understanding, for which I offer you my heartfelt thanks. Your sincerity, Carl Madsen. End of The Art of Denmark, An Epistolary Preface by Carl Madsen A Railway Journey from The Day Before Yesterday by Richard Middleton This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. Reading by Bologna Times A Railway Journey by Richard Middleton I suppose that when little boys made their journeys by coach, with David Copperfield, or Tom Brown, and his pea-shooting comrades, they did in truth find adventure easier to achieve than we who were born in an age of railways. But though the rarer joys of far travel by road were denied us, it did not need Mr. Rudyard Kipling in a didactic mood to convince us that there was plenty of romance in railway journeys if you approached them in the right spirit. We were as fond as playing at trains as most small boys, and a stationary engine with the light of the furnace glowing on the grim face of the driver was a disquieting feature of all my nightmares. So when the grown-up people announced that one of us was to make a long journey, young Ulysses became, for the moment, an envied and enchanted figure. Our periodical excursions to London were well enough in their way, noisy, jolly parties, and reserved carriages to pantomimes and the Lord Mayor's show, or matter-of-fact visits to the dentist or the shops. But we all knew the features of the landscape on the way to London by heart, and it was the thought of voyaging through the unknown that fired our lively blood, our hazy sense of geography enabling us to believe that all manner of marvels were to be seen by young eyes from English railway carriages. Also we did not feel that we were real travellers until we had left all our own grown-ups behind, though in such circumstances we had to put up with the indignity of being confided to the care of the guard. Until children have votes they will continue to suffer from such slights as this. One morning in early spring I left London for the north. The adult who saw me off performed his task on the whole very well. True he introduced me to the guard, a bearded and sinister man. But on the other hand he realized the importance of my having a corner seat, and only once or twice committed the error of treating me as if I were a parcel. For my part I was at pains to conceal my excitement beneath the mannerisms of an experienced traveller. I put the windows up and down several times, and read aloud all the notices concerning luncheon baskets and danger signals. Then my companion shook hands with me in a sensible manly fashion, and the train started. I sat back and examined my fellow travellers, and found them rather disappointing. There were three ladies, manifestly of the aunt kind, and a stiff, well-behaved little girl who might have stepped out of one of my sister's story books. She was reading a book without pictures, and when I turned over the pages of my magazines she displayed no interest in them whatever. I could never read in the train, so with a tentative effort at good manners I pushed them towards her, but she shook her head. To show her that I did not think this was a snub, I pulled out my packet of sandwiches and had my lunch. After that I played with the blind, which worked with the spring, until one of the aunts told me not to fidget, although she was no aunt of mine. Then I looked out of the window, a prey to voiceless wrath. By now we had left London far behind, and when I had finished composing imaginary retorts to the unscrupulous aunt, I was quite content to see the wonders of the world flit by. There were hills and valleys decked with romantic woods and set with fascinating and secretive ponds. To my eyes the hills were mountains, and the valleys perilous hollows, the accustomed lairs of tremendous dragons. I saw little thatched houses wherein swart witches awaited the coming of Hansel and Gretel, and fairy children waved to me from cottage gardens and the gates of level crossings, greetings which I dutifully returned until the aunt made me pull up the window. After a while a change came over the scenery. The placid greens and browns of the countryside blossomed to gold and purple and crimson. I saw a rock float across the arching sky on sluggish wings, and my eyes were delighted with visions of deserts and mosques and palm trees. That my fellow passengers would not raise their heads to behold these marvels did not trouble me. I beat on the window with delight, until, like little Billy in Thackeray's ballad, I saw Jerusalem and Madagascar and North and South Americae. Then something surprising happened. I saw the earth leap up and invade the sky, and the sky dropped down and blot out the earth, and I felt as though my wings were broken. Then the sides of the carriage closed in and squeezed out the door like a pip out of an orange, until there was only a three-cornered gap left. The air was full of dust, and I sneezed again and again, but could not find my pocket handkerchief. Presently a young man came and lifted me out through the hole, and seemed very surprised that I was not hurt. I realized that there had been an accident, for the train was broken into pieces and the permanent way was very untidy. Close at hand I saw the little girl sitting on a bank, and a man kneeling at her feet, taking her boots off. I would have liked to speak to her, but I remembered how she had refused the offer of my magazines, and was afraid she would snub me again. The place was very noisy, where people were calling out, and there was a great sound of steam. I noticed that everybody's face was very white, especially the guards, which made his beard seem as black as soot. The young man took me by the hand, and led me along the uneven ground, and there was so much to see that my feet kept stumbling over things, and he had to hold me up. On the way we passed the body of a man lying with a rug over his head. I knew that he was dead, but I had seen drunken men in the streets lie like that, and I could not help looking about for the policeman. Then we came to a little station, and the platform was crowded with people who would not stand still, but it walked round and round, making noises. When I climbed up on the platform a woman caught hold of me, and cried over me. One of her tears fell on my ear, and tickled me, but she held me so tightly that I could not put up my hand to rub it. Her breath was hot on my head. Then I heard a detested voice say, Poor little boy, so tired! And I shuddered back into consciousness of the world that was least interesting of all the worlds I knew. I need not have opened my eyes to be sure that the aunts were at their fell work again, and that the little girl's snub nose was tilted to a patronizing angle. Had I awakened a minute later, she, too, would have joined in the auntish chorus of compassion for my weakness. As it was, I looked at her with drowsy pity, finding that she was one of those luckless infants who might as well stay at home for all the fun they get out of traveling. She knew no better than to scream when the train ran into a tunnel. What would she have done if she had seen my rock? The train ran on and on, and still I throned it in my corner, awake or dreaming, indisputably, master of all the things that counted. The three aunts faded into antimacassars. The little girl endured her uninteresting life and became an aunt and an antimacassar in her turn, and still I swung my legs in my corner seat, a boy errant in the strange places of the world. I do not remember the name of the station at which the bearded guard ultimately brought me out of my dreams. I do remember standing stiffly on the platform and deciding that I had been traveling night and day for three hundred years. When I communicated this fact to the relatives who met me, they were strangely unimpressed. But I knew that when I returned home to my brothers they would display a decent interest in the story of my wanderings. After all, you can't expect grown-up people to understand everything. End of A Railway Journey by Richard Middleton The sinking of the Titanic, seen from a lifeboat, from the loss of the SS Titanic, its story and its lessons, by Lawrence Beasley. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. Reading by Bologna Times The sinking of the Titanic, seen from a lifeboat. Looking back now on the descent of our boat down the ship's side, it is a matter of surprise, I think, to all the occupants to remember how little they thought of it at the time. It was a great adventure, certainly. It was exciting to feel the boats sank by jerks, foot by foot, as the ropes were paid out from above and shrieked as they passed through the pulley blocks. The new ropes and gear creaking under the strain of a boat laden with people, and the crew calling to the sailors above as the boat tilted slightly, now at one end, now at the other. Lower aft, lower stern, and lower together, as she came level again, but I do not think we felt much apprehension about reaching the water safely. It certainly was thrilling to see the black hull of the ship on one side and the sea, seventy feet below, on the other, or to pass down by cabins and saloons brilliantly lighted. But we knew nothing of the apprehension felt in the minds of some of the officers, whether the boats and lowering gear would stand the strain of the weight of our sixty people. The ropes, however, were new and strong, and the boat did not buckle in the middle as an older boat might have done. Whether it was right or not to lower the boats full of people to the water, and it seems likely it was not, I think there can be nothing but the highest praise given to the officers and crew above for the way in which they lowered the boats one after the other safely to the water. It may seem a simple matter to read about such a thing, but any sailor knows, apparently, that it is not so. An experienced officer has told me that he has seen a boat lowered in practice from a ship's deck with a trained crew and no passengers in the boat with practiced sailors paying out the ropes in daylight and calm weather with the ship lying in dock and has seen the boat tilt over and pitch the crew headlong into the sea. Perhaps these conditions with those obtaining that Monday morning at twelve forty-five a.m. and it is impossible not to feel that, whether the lowering crew were trained or not, whether they had or had not drilled since coming on board, that they did their duty in a way that argues the greatest efficiency. I cannot help feeling the deepest gratitude to the two sailors who stood at the ropes above and lowered us to the sea. I do not suppose they were saved. Perhaps one explanation of our feeling little sense of the unusual in leaving the Titanic in this way was that it seemed the climax to a series of extraordinary occurrences. The magnitude of the whole thing, dwarfed events, that in the ordinary way would seem to be full of imminent peril. It is easy to imagine it, a voyage of four days on a calm sea without a single untoward incident. The presumption perhaps already mentally half realized that we should be ashore in forty-eight hours and so complete a splendid voyage, and that to feel the engine stop, to be summoned on deck with little time to dress, to tie in a life-belt, to see rockets shooting aloft and call for help, to be told to get into a lifeboat. After all these things it did not seem much to feel the boat sinking down to the sea. It was the natural sequence of previous events, and we had learned in the last hour to take things just as they came. At the same time, if anyone should wonder what the sensation is like, it is quite easy to measure seventy-five feet from the windows of a tall house or a block of flats, look down to the ground, and fancy himself with some sixty other people crowded into a boat so tightly that he could not sit down or move about, and then picture the boat sinking down in a continuous series of jerks as the sailors pay out the ropes through cleats above. There are more pleasant sensations than this, how thankful we were that the sea was calm and the Titanic lay so steadily and quietly as we dropped down her side. We were spared the bumping and grinding against the side which so often accompanies the launching of boats. I do not remember that we even had to fend off our boat while we were trying to get free. As we went down, one of the crew shouted, We are just over the condenser exhaust. We don't want to stay in that long or we shall be swamped. Feel down on the floor and be ready to pull up the pen which lets the ropes free as soon as we are afloat. I had often looked over the side and noticed the stream of water coming out of the side of the Titanic just above the waterline. In fact, so large was the volume of water that as we plowed along and met the waves coming towards us, the stream would cause a splash that sent spray flying. We felt as well as we could in the crowd of people on the floor along the sides, with no idea where the pen could be found, and none of the crew knew where it was only of its existence somewhere, but we never found it. And all the time we got closer to the sea, and the exhaust roared nearer and nearer, until finally we floated with the ropes still holding us from above, the exhaust washing us away, and the force of the tide driving us back against the side, the latter not of much account in influencing the direction, however. Thinking over what followed, I imagine we must have touched the water with the condenser stream at our bows, and not in the middle, as I thought at one time. At any rate, the resultant of these three forces was that we were carried parallel to the ship, directly under the place where boat fifteen would drop from her davits into the sea. Looking up, we saw her already coming down rapidly from B-deck. She must have filled almost immediately after hours. We shouted up, Stop lowering fourteen, footnote, in an account which appeared in the newspapers of April 19. I have described this boat as fourteen, not knowing they were numbered alternately. And the crew and passengers in the boat above, hearing us shout and seeing our position immediately below them, shouted the same to the sailors on the boat deck. But apparently they did not hear, for she dropped down foot by foot, twenty feet, fifteen, ten, and a stoker and eye in the bowels reached up and touched her bottom, swinging above our heads, trying to push away from our boat from under her. It seemed now as if nothing could prevent her dropping on us, but at this moment another stoker sprang with his knife to the ropes that still held us, and I heard him shout, One, two, as he cut them through. The next moment we had swung away from underneath fifteen, and were clear of her as she dropped into the water, in the space we had just before occupied. I do not know how the bowel ropes were freed, but imagine that they were cut in the same way, for we were washed clear of the Titanic at once by the force of the stream and floated away as the oars were got out. I think we all felt that that was quite the most exciting thing we had yet been through, and a great sigh of relief and gratitude went up as we swung away from the boat above our heads. But I heard no one cry aloud during the experience. Not a woman's voice was raised in fear or hysteria. I think we all learned many things that night about the bogey called fear, and how the facing of it is much less than the dread of it. The crew was made up of cooks and stewards, mostly the former, I think. Their white jackets showing up in the darkness as they pulled away, two to an hour. I do not think they can have had any practice in rowing for all night long their oars crossed and clashed. If our safety had depended on speed or accuracy and keeping time, it would have gone hard with us. Shouting began from one end of the boat to the other as to what we should do, where we should go, and no one seemed to have any knowledge how to act. At last we asked, who is in charge of this boat? But there was no reply. We then agreed by general consent that the stoker, who stood in the stern with the tiller, should act as captain. And from that time he directed the course, shouting to other boats, and keeping in touch with them. Not that there was anywhere to go or anything we could do. Our plan of action was simple, to keep all the boats together as far as possible, and wait until we were picked up by other liners. The crew had apparently heard of the wireless communications before they left the Titanic. But I never heard them say that we were in touch with any boat, but the Olympic. It was always the Olympic that was coming to our rescue. They thought they knew even her distance, and making a calculation, we came to the conclusion that we ought to be picked up by her about two o'clock in the afternoon. But this was not our only hope of rescue. We watched all the time the darkness lasted for steamers' lights, thinking there might be a chance of other steamers coming near enough to see the lights which some of our boats carried. I am sure there was no feeling in the minds of anyone that we should not be picked up next day. We knew that wireless messages would go out from ship to ship. And as one of the stokers said, the sea will be covered with ships tomorrow afternoon. They will race up from all over the sea to find us. Some even thought that fast torpedo boats might run up ahead of the Olympic. And yet the Olympic was, after all, the farthest away of them all. Eight other ships lay within 300 miles of us. How thankful we should have been to know how near help was, and how many ships had heard our message, and were rushing to the Titanic's aid. I think nothing has surprised us more than to learn so many ships were near enough to rescue us in a few hours. Almost immediately after leaving the Titanic, we saw what we all said was a ship's lights down on the Titanic's portside, two lights one above the other, and plainly not one of our boats. We even rode in that direction for some time, but the lights drew away and disappeared below the horizon. But this is rather anticipating. We did none of these things first. We had no eyes for anything but the ship we had just left. As the oarsmen pulled slowly away, we all turned and took a long look at the mighty vessel towering high above our midget boat. And I know it must have been the most extraordinary sight I shall ever be called upon to witness. I realize now how totally inadequate language is to convey to some other person who is not there any real impression of what we saw. But the task must be attempted. The whole picture is so intensely dramatic that, while it is not possible to place on paper for eyes to see the actual likeness of the ship as she lay there, some sketch of the scene will be possible. First of all, the climatic conditions were extraordinary. The night was one of the most beautiful I have ever seen. The sky, without a single cloud to mar, the perfect brilliance of the stars clustered so thickly together that in places there seemed almost more dazzling points of light set in the black sky than background of sky itself. And each star seemed, in the keen atmosphere, free from any haze, to have increased its brilliance tenfold and to twinkle and glitter with a staccato flash that made the sky seem nothing but a setting made for them in which to display their wonder. They seemed so near and their light so much more intense than ever before that fancy suggested they saw this beautiful ship in dire distress below and all their energies had awakened to flash messages across the black dome of the sky to each other, telling and warning of the calamity happening in the world beneath. Later when the Titanic had gone down and we lay still on the sea waiting for the day to dawn or a ship to come, I remember looking up at the perfect sky and realizing why Shakespeare wrote the beautiful words he puts in the mouth of Lorenzo. Jessica, look how the floor of heaven is thick and laid with patins of bright gold. There's not the smallest orb which thou beholdest, but in his motion like an angel sings, still quiring to the young eyed cherubims. Such harmony is in immortal souls, but whilst this muddied vesture of decay doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it. But it seemed almost as if we could, that night. The stars seemed really to be alive and to talk. The complete absence of haze produced a phenomenon I had never seen before, where the sky met the sea, the line was as clear and definite as the edge of a knife, so that the water and the air never merged gradually into each other and blended to a soft and rounded horizon, but each element was so exclusively separate that where a star came low down in the sky near the clear-cut edge of the waterline, it still lost none of its brilliance. As the earth revolved and the water edge came up and covered partially the star, as it were, it simply cut the star in two, the upper half continuing to sparkle as long as it was not entirely hidden, and throwing a long beam of light along the sea to us. In the evidence before the United States Senate committee, the captain of one of the ships nearest that night said the stars were so extraordinarily bright near the horizon that he was deceived into thinking that they were ships' lights. He did not remember seeing such a night before. Those who were afloat will all agree with that statement. We were often deceived into thinking they were lights of a ship. And next, the cold air. Here again was something quite new to us. There was not a breath of wind to blow keenly round us as we stood in the boat, and because of its continued persistence to make us feel cold, it was just a keen, bitter, icy, motionless cold that came from nowhere, and yet was there all the time. The stillness of it, if one can imagine cold being motionless and still, was what seemed new and strange. And these, the sky and the air, were overhead, and below was the sea. Here again something uncommon. The surface was like a lake of oil, heaving gently up and down with a quiet motion that rocked our boat dreamily to and fro. We did not need to keep our head to the swell. Often I watched her lying broadside onto the tide. And with a boat loaded as we were, this would have been impossible with anything like a swell. The sea slipped away smoothly under the boat, and I think we never heard it lapping on the sides, so oily an appearance was the water. So when one of the Stokers said he had been to sea for twenty-six years, and never yet seen such a calm night, we accepted it as true without comment. Just as expressive was the remark of another, it reminds me of a bloomin' picnic. It was quite true. It did, a picnic on a lake, or a quiet inland river, like the cam, or a backwater on the Thames. And so in these conditions of sky and air and sea, we gazed broadside on the Titanic from a short distance. She was absolutely still. Indeed from the first it seemed as if the blow from the iceberg had taken all the courage out of her, and she had just come quietly to rest, and was settling down without an effort to save herself, without a murmur of protest against such a foul blow. For the sea could not rock her. The wind was not there to howl noisily around the decks and make the ropes hum. From the first what must have impressed all as they watched was the sense of stillness about her, and the slow insensible way she sank lower and lower in the sea, like a stricken animal. The mere bulk alone of the ship, viewed from the sea below, was an awe-inspiring sight. Imagine a ship nearly a sixth of a mile long, 75 feet high to the top decks, with four enormous funnels above the decks, and mass again high above the funnels, with her hundreds of portholes, all her saloons, and other rooms brilliant with light, and all round her little boats filled with those who, until a few hours before, had trod her decks and read in her libraries, and listened to the music of her band in happy content, and who were now looking up in amazement at the enormous mass above them, and rowing away from her because she was sinking. I had often wanted to see her from some distance away, and only a few hours before, in conversation at lunch with a fellow passenger, had registered a vow to get a proper view of her lines and dimensions when we landed at New York, to stand some distance away to take in a full view of her beautiful proportions, which the narrow approach to the dock at Southampton made impossible. Little did I think that the opportunity was to be found so quickly, and so dramatically. The background, too, was a different one from what I had planned for her. The black outline of her profile against the sky was bordered all round by stars studded in the sky, and all her funnels and mass were picked out in the same way. Her bulk was seen where the stars were blotted out, and one other thing was different from expectation. The thing that ripped away from us instantly, as we saw it, all sense of the beauty of the night, the beauty of the ship's lines, and the beauty of her lights, and all these taken in themselves were intensely beautiful. That thing was the awful angle made by the level of the sea, with the rows of porthole lights along her side, in dotted lines, row above row. The sea level and the rows of lights should have been parallel, should never have met, and now they met at an angle inside the black hull of the ship. There was nothing else to indicate she was injured, nothing but this apparent violation of a simple geometrical law that parallel lines should never meet, even if produced ever so far both ways. But it meant the Titanic had sunk by the head until the lowest portholes in the bowels were under the sea, and the portholes in the stern were lifted above the normal height. We rode away from her in the quietness of the night, hoping and praying with all our hearts that she would sink no more, and the day would find her still in the same position as she was then. The crew, however, did not think so. It has been said frequently that the officers and crew felt assured that she would remain afloat even after they knew that extent of the damage. Some of them may have done so, and perhaps from their scientific knowledge of her construction, with more reason at the time than those who said she would sink, but at any rate the stokers in our boat had no such illusion. One of them, I think he was the same man that cut us free from the pulley ropes, told us how he was at work in the stoke-hole and in anticipation of going off duty in a quarter of an hour, thus confirming the time of the collision as 1145, had near him a pan of soup keeping hot on some part of the machinery. Suddenly the whole side of the compartment came in, and the water rushed him off his feet. Picking himself up, he sprang for the compartment doorway, and was just through the aperture when the watertight door came down behind him, like a knife, as he said. They worked them from the bridge. He had gone up on deck, but was ordered down again at once, and with others was told to draw the fires from under the boiler, which they did, and were then at liberty to come on deck again. It seems that this particular knot of stokers must have known almost as soon as any one of the extent of injury. He added mournfully, I could do with that hot soup now, and indeed he could. He was glad at the time of the collision, he said, and trousers and singlet, both very thin on account of the intense heat in the stoke-hole, and although he had added a short jacket later his teeth were chattering with the cold. He found a place to lie down underneath the tiller on the little platform where our captain stood, and there he lay all night with a coat belonging to another stoker thrown over him, and I think he must have been almost unconscious. A lady next to him, who was warmly clad with several coats, tried to insist on his having one of hers, a fur-lined one thrown over him, but he absolutely refused while some of the women were insufficiently clad, and so the coat was given to an Irish girl with pretty auburn hair standing near, leaning against the gun-well, with an outside berth, and so more exposed to the cold air. This same lady was able to distribute more of her wraps to the passengers, a rug to one, a fur boa to another, and she has related the amusement that at the moment of climbing up the Carpathia side, those to whom these articles had been lent, offered them all back to her, but as, like the rest of us, she was encumbered with a life-belt. She had to say she would receive them back at the end of the climb. I had not seen my dressing gown since I dropped into the boat, but sometime in the night a steerage passenger found it on the floor and put it on. It is not easy at this time to call to mind who were in the boat, because in the night it was not possible to see more than a few feet away, and when dawn came we had eyes only for the rescue ship and the icebergs. But so far as my memory serves, the list was as follows. No first-class passengers, three women, one baby, two men from the second cabin, and the other passengers' steerage, mostly women. A total of about thirty-five passengers. The rest, about twenty-five and possibly more, were crew and stokers. Near to me all night was a group of three Swedish girls, warmly clad, standing close together to keep warm and very silent. Indeed there was very little talking at any time. One conversation took place that is, I think, worth repeating. One more proof that the world, after all, is a small place. The ten-month-old baby, which was handed down at the last moment, was received by a lady next to me, the same who shared her wraps and coats. The mother had found a place in the middle and was too tightly packed to come through to the child, and so it slept contentedly for about an hour in a stranger's arms. It then began to cry, and the temporary nurse said, Will you feel down and see if the baby's feet are out of the blanket? I don't know much about babies, but I think their feet must be kept warm. Riggling down as well as I could, I found its toes exposed to the air and wrapped them well up, when it ceased crying at once. It was evidently a successful diagnosis. Having recognized the lady by her voice, it was much too dark to see faces. As one of my vis-à-vis at the pursers' table, I said, Surely you are Miss—yes, she replied, and who must be Mr. Beasley? How curious we should find ourselves in the same boat. Remembering that she had joined the boat at Queenstown, I said, Do you know Clonmail, a letter from a great friend of mine who was staying there at—giving me address—came aboard at Queenstown? Yes, it is my home, and I was dining at just before I came away. It seemed that she knew my friend, too, and we agreed that of all places in the world recognize mutual friends, a crowded lifeboat afloat in mid-ocean at 2 a.m., twelve hundred miles from our destination was one of the most unexpected. And all the time as we watched, the Titanic sank lower and lower by the head, and the angle became wider and wider as the stern porthole lights lifted and the bow lights sank, and it was evident she was not to stay afloat much longer. The captain Stoker now told the oarsmen to row away as hard as they could. Two reasons seemed to make this a wise decision. One that as she sank she would create such a wave as suction that boats, if not sucked under by being too near, would be in danger of being swamped by the wave her sinking would create. And we all knew our boat was in no condition to ride big waves, crowded as it was, and manned with untrained oarsmen. The second was that an explosion might result from the water getting to the boilers and debris might fall within a wide radius, and yet as it turned out, neither of these things happened. At about 2.15 a.m. I think we were any distance from a mile to two miles away. It is difficult for a landsman to calculate distance at sea, but we had been afloat an hour and a half. The boat was heavily loaded, the oarsmen unskilled, and our course erratic. We now one light and now another, sometimes a star and sometimes a light from a port light boat which had turned away from the Titanic in the opposite direction and lay almost on our horizon so we could not have gone very far away. About this time the water had crept up almost to her side light and the captain's bridge, and it seemed a question only of minutes before she sank. The oarsmen lay on their oars, and all in the lifeboat were motionless as we watched her in absolute silence, save some who would not look and buried their heads on each other's shoulders. The lights still shone with the same brilliance, but not so many of them. Many were now below the surface. I have often wondered since whether they continued to light up the cabins when the portholes were under water they may have done so. And then, as we gaze awestruck, she tilted slowly up, revolving apparently about a center of gravity just a stern of midships until she attained a vertically upright position, and there she remained motionless. As she smugged up, her lights, which had shone without a flicker all night, went out suddenly, came on again for a single flash, then went out altogether. And as they did so, there came a noise which many people, wrongly, I think, have described as an explosion. It has always seemed to me that it was nothing but the engines and machinery coming loose from their bolts and bearings, and falling through the compartments, smashing everything in their way. It was partly a roar, partly a groan, partly a rattle, and partly a smash. And it was not a sudden roar as an explosion would be. It went on successively for some seconds, possibly fifteen to twenty, as the heavy machinery dropped down to the bottom, now the bows, of the ship. I suppose it fell through the end and sank first, before the ship. But it was a noise no one had heard before, and no one wishes to hear again. It was stupefying, stupendous, as it came to us along the water. It was as if all the heavy things one could think of had been thrown downstairs from the top of the house, smashing each other and the stairs and everything in the way. Several apparently authentic accounts have been given, in which definite stories of explosions have been related, in some cases even with the wreckage blown up and the ship broken in two. But I think such accounts will not stand close analysis. In the first place the fires had been withdrawn, and the steam allowed to escape some time before she sank, and the possibility of explosion from this cause seems very remote. Then as just related, the noise was not sudden and definite, but prolonged, more like the roll and crash of thunder. The probability of the noise being caused by engines falling down will be seen by referring to figure two, page 116, where the engines are placed in compartments three, four, and five. As the Titanic tilted up they would almost certainly fall loose from their bed and plunge down through the other compartments. No phenomenon like that pictured in some American and English papers occurred, that of the ship breaking in two, and the two ends being raised above the surface. I saw these drawings in preparation on board the Carpathia, and said at the time that they bore no resemblance to what actually happened. When the noise was over the Titanic was still upright like a column. We could see her now only as the stern and some 150 feet of her stood outlined against the star-specked sky, looming black in the darkness, and in this position she continued for some minutes. I think as much as five minutes, but it may have been less. Then first sinking back a little at the stern, I thought, she slid slowly forwards through the water and dived slantingly down. The sea closed over her, and we had seen the last of the beautiful ship on which we had embarked four days before at South Hampton. And in place of the ship on which all our interest had been concentrated for so long, and towards which we looked most of the time, because it was still the only object on the sea which was a fixed point to us, in place of the Titanic we had the level sea now stretching in an unbroken expanse to the horizon, heaving gently, just as before, with no indication on the surface that the waves had just closed over the most wonderful vessel ever built by man's hand. The stars looked down just the same, and the air was just as bitterly cold. There seemed a great sense of loneliness when we were left on the sea and a small boat without the Titanic. Not that we were uncomfortable except for the cold, nor in danger. We did not think we were either, but the Titanic was no longer there. We waited head-on for the wave which we thought might come, the wave we had heard so much of from the crew and which they said had been known to travel for miles, and it never came. But although the Titanic left us no such legacy of a wave as she went to the bottom, she left us something we would willingly forget forever, something which is well not to let the imagination dwell on. The cries of many hundreds of our fellow passengers struggling in the ice-cold water. I would willingly omit any further mention of this part of the disaster from this book, but for two reasons it is not possible. First, that as a matter of history it should be put on record. And secondly, that these cries were not only an appeal for help in the awful conditions of danger in which the drowning found themselves, an appeal that could never be answered, but an appeal to the whole world to make such conditions of danger and hopelessness impossible ever again, a cry that called to the heavens for the very injustice of its own existence, a cry that clamored for its own destruction. We were utterly surprised to hear this cry go up as the waves closed over the Titanic. We had heard no sound of any kind from her since we left her side, and as mentioned before, we did not know how many boats she had or how many rafts. The crew may have known, but they probably did not, and if they did, they never told the passengers. We should not have been surprised to know all were safe on some life-saving device. So that unprepared as we were for such a thing, the cries of the drowning floating across the quiet sea filled us with stupid faction. We longed to return and rescue at least some of the drowning, but we knew it was impossible. The boat was filled to standing-room, and to return would mean the swapping of us all, and so the captain Stoker told his crew to row away from the cries. We tried to sing to keep all from thinking of them, but there was no heart for singing in the boat at that time. The cries, which were loud and numerous at first, died away gradually, one by one, but the night was clear, frosty and still, the water smooth, and the sounds must have carried on its level surface free from any obstruction for miles, certainly much farther from the ship than we were situated. I think the last of them must have been heard nearly forty minutes after the Titanic sank. Lifebelts would keep the survivors afloat for hours, but the cold water was what stopped the cries. There must have come to all those safe in the lifeboats scattered round the drowning at various distances, a deep resolve that if anything could be done by them in the future to prevent the repetition of such sounds they would do it, at whatever cost of time or other things. Not only to them are those cries an imperative call, but to every man and woman who has known of them. It is not possible that ever again can such conditions exist. But it is a duty imperative on one and all to see that they do not. Think of it, a few more boats, a few more planks of wood nailed together in a particular way at a trifling cost, and all those men and women whom the world can so ill afford to lose would be with us today. There would be no mourning in thousands of homes which now are desolate, and these words need not have been written. End of The Sinking of the Titanic, Seen from a Lifeboat by Lawrence Beasley