 Alexander at Gordium, from the Anabasis of Alexander, by Arian of Nicodemia, 86 to 160 A.D. This is a LibriVox recording, all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Alexander at Gordium. When Alexander arrived at Gordium, he was seized with an ardent desire to go up into the Citadel, which contained the palace of Gordius and his son Midas. He was also desirous of seeing the wagon of Gordius and the cord which bound the yoke to the wagon. There was a great deal of talk about this wagon among the neighboring population. It was said that Gordius was a poor man among the ancient Fergians, who had a small piece of land to till and to yoke of oxen. He used one of these in plowing and the other to draw the wagon. On one occasion while he was plowing an eagle settled upon the yoke and remained sitting there until the time came for on yoking the oxen. Being alarmed at the site, he went to the Taumisian soothsayers to consult them about the sign from the deity. For the Taumisians were skilful in interpreting the meaning of divine manifestations and the power of divination had been bestowed not only upon the men, but also upon their wives and children from generation to generation. When Gordius was driving his wagon near a certain village of the Taumisians, he met a maiden fetching water from the spring, and to her he related how the sign of the eagle had appeared to him. As she herself was of the prophetic race, she instructed him to return to the very spot and offer sacrifice to Zeus the king. Gordius requested her to accompany him and direct him how to perform the sacrifice. He offered the sacrifice in the way the girl suggested, and afterwards married her. The son was born to them named Midas, who when he arrived at the age of maturity was both handsome and valiant. At this time the Phyrgians were harassed by civil discord, and, consulting the oracle, they were told that a wagon would bring them a king who had put an end to their discord. While they were still deliberating about this very matter, Midas arrived with his father and mother and stopped near the assembly with the very wagon in question. They, interpreting the oracular response to refer to him, decided that this was the person whom the god told them the wagon would bring. They therefore appointed Midas king, and he, putting an end to their discord, dedicated his father's wagon in the citadel as a thank offering to Zeus the king for sending the eagle. In addition to this, the following report was current concerning the wagon, that whosoever should loosen the cord with which the yoke of the wagon was tied was destined to be the ruler of Asia. The cord was made of cornell bark, and neither end nor beginning to it could be seen. It is said by some that when Alexander could find out no way to loosen the cord and yet was unwilling to allow it to remain unloosened, lest it should exercise some disturbing influence upon the multitude, he struck the cord with his sword and cut it through, saying that it had been untied by him. But Aristobulus says that he pulled out the pin of the wagon pole, which was a wooden peg driven right through it, holding the cord together. Having done this, he drew out the yoke from the wagon pole. How Alexander performed the feat in connection with this cord, I cannot affirm with confidence. At any rate, both he and his troops departed from the wagon as if the oracular prediction concerning the untying of the cord had been fulfilled. Moreover, that very night the thunder and lightning were signs from heaven of its fulfillment. And for this reason Alexander offered sacrifice on the following day to the gods who had revealed the signs and assured him that the cord had been untied in the proper way. End of Alexander at Gordium by Arian of Nicodemia 86 to 160 A.D. Before Grant won his stars by E. J. Edwards This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org We know, with a good deal of detail, the story of Grant's successes from the time of Belmont to the day when he delivered over the White House to his successor. But the part of his career contained in the months just prior to the outbreak of the Civil War and the weeks just after, or until he received his Colonelcy, is so little known that all that can be said of it by almost anyone is that it was a period of trial, of hard luck, and at times almost of despair. It is possible now, however, to give something like a detailed narrative of that time, because one who was near Grant in Galena, who saw him in the Leather Store many times, who went with him to a meeting called by the citizens of Galena in answer to Lincoln's first call for troops, who had him as a companion from Galena to the Illinois capital, and as a roommate in Springfield while Grant was there struggling desperately to gain an entrance into the service, is now living, and can recall those days with vividness. He is Brevet Major General Al Chetlain, now residing in Chicago, and known to every member of the Loyal Legion, both as a fearless fighter in many battles, and as the man who was the intimate of Grant in the days when Grant had few intimates. General Chetlain's ability to speak accurately of Grant in those early times is endorsed by Colonel Fred D. Grant, who said in answer to a question, Oh yes, I know General Chetlain very well, and he was the intimate and faithful friend of my father in the early days of the war. It is from General Chetlain, in the main, that this narrative has been obtained, although his precise language is not followed, and although some of the incidents narrated were collected from other sources of information. With this understanding, the story will be told as an historic narrative whose accuracy can be vouched for by a living witness. In a few particulars it differs from General Grant's own account of the same period. But General Chetlain has been at pains to assure himself that his own recollection is right. Captain Grant went to Galena to serve his father as a clerk in the Leather and Hardware store of J. R. Grant and Company. He gladly accepted that employment a year or two before the outbreak of the war. He received, at first, forty dollars a month, but his pay was afterward raised to seventy-five. He rented a little cottage, still standing, and paid twelve dollars a month rent. This left to some upon which he could support his family only by the closest economy. A clerk who would rather talk than trade. As Grant had been a captain in the regular army and had seen service in the Mexican War, the people of Galena for a little while looked upon him as a young man who had had something of a career. He acquired a local distinction, however, due to his military experience, but strange to say, to his locosity. The subsequent silent man of the war was perhaps the most continuous and rapid talker of all the clerks in the town, which would seem to show that the taciturnity of Grant in the field, like that of Sherman in the Treasury Department, was assumed because it was found to be a necessity. Upon stormy days, or at other times when customers were few and idle moments plenty, the young men used to gather in the Grant's store where they found Captain Grant very ready for a chat. He wore in the winter months a blue army overcoat that had seen much faithful service, for it was a relic of the Mexican War, and very vivid is the recollection of General Chet Lane of that coat, of a soft and rather rusty black felt hat, and of a stream of interesting comment and reminiscence. His talk, however, was never frivolous and never coarse. It was marked always by strong common sense. Captain Grant talked with great freedom about the political situation, expressing very frank opinions of the public men of the day, and now and then setting forth his reasons believing that the country was drifting into trouble. He would frequently sit and talk all day, sometimes forgetting that the dinner-hour had come until he was reminded of it. Thus Grant came to be known in Galena as a clerk who had no special fondness for the counter or for leather, but who would rather sit and chat than sell goods or take in money. When Lincoln's call for seventy-five thousand volunteers was published, and with it the report that Fort Sumter had been fired upon, a public meeting was held in Galena of which the mayor of the city was made chairman. He was not a very enthusiastic union man and made a weak, apologetic, timid speech. Under the effect of his remarks the meeting adjourned without decisive action. Most of the people present were filled with indignation, and another meeting was called for a day or two later. When the public-spirited citizens were asking themselves what man among them ought to be asked to reside at this second meeting, someone said, Why not ask Captain Grant? The suggestion was thought a happy one, and Augustus Chet Lane and one or two others called upon Captain Grant at the Leather Store. As nearly as can be remembered, this conversation took place. Captain, we are going to have another public meeting tonight, and we don't propose to have a half-hearted man preside over it. We all feel that you are the man to call the meeting to order and to state its object. What? I? said the young Captain in surprise. Oh, no! You would better get somebody else. I never made a speech in my life, and I don't believe I could. Oh, but you're not asked to make a speech. Just call the meeting to order, and state in the plainest way that Galena is sure to do its part in furnishing the volunteers Lincoln asks for, and that an opportunity will be given for enrollment as soon as the meeting adjourns. Captain Grant talked rapidly and with great earnestness of the necessity for raising troops at once, and of the way in which it could be done. Until it lasts, some one said to him, My Captain, if you will only talk to the meeting as you talk to us, they will say that you have made a pretty good speech. But only after it was suggested to him that the chief reason why he was asked to preside was that he had served in the Mexican War as a Captain in the Regular Army, did he at last consent. Grant as Chairman of a War Meeting. Captain Grant came upon the Platform at the appointed hour in a shy, hesitating way, and took a chair which was pointed out to him behind the table. A number of the more prominent citizens sat nearby. At the proper moment he arose, and in a clear enough voice, but with a manner which plainly revealed embarrassment, he said something like this. This meeting has been called for the purpose of taking action upon the President's call for volunteers. We in Galena must do our part. We ought to be able to organize a company right away. It is a time for the highest patriotism, for the government is in peril, and it must be sustained. When he had finished he sat down, and seemed glad that his part was ended. Others made ringing speeches, after which an opportunity for enrollment was offered. The first man to step up and put his name to the paper was Augustus L. Chetlain, Grant's friend. He looked up after he had signed his name, and saw Grant smiling upon him, and by a common impulse each extended a hand to the other. Enlistments followed rapidly. The next day it was determined to send a committee to a little town some twelve miles from Galena, that a public meeting might be held there, and an opportunity given for the enlistment of volunteers. Grant was invited to be one of this committee. He accepted, and he seemed pleased when he was told that a young lawyer of Galena named John A. Rawlins would accompany him, though the two were at this time not much known to each other personally. Rawlins, energetic and studious, was thought to have a successful career before him at the bar, and had gained the highest respect in that community. His path and Grant's till that night had lain quite apart, but that night their paths were merged in a manner that the men themselves little dreamed of as they started out upon a twelve-mile drive over the muddy roads. Grant suffers an interruption in a war speech. When they reached the village, they were conducted to the schoolhouse, which was the only public hall. As they entered, Rawlins said to Grant, You will have to make a speech. Well, I will try, answered Grant. I can't make a speech, but I'll say something, and you will have to do the real speech-making. So Captain Grant was introduced, and it was explained that he had presided at the Galena meeting. He spoke in a conversational way, very much as he would have done had he met the people he had dressed in his father's store. But his talk was earnest and full of common sense. But in the very midst of his speech there came a catastrophe, a long stove-pipe beneath which he was standing broke, and the pieces fell to the floor at his feet. He was unhurt, but he was blackened from head to foot with soot. Brushing it off as well as he could, he continued his speech, and in his earnestness made his hearers soon forget his rather ridiculous appearance. Rawlins followed in an impassioned address, and as a result of the meeting twelve young farmers came forward and signed their names to the enlistment-roll, and promised to go the next day to Galena and join the company organizing there. Grant and Rawlins drove back home that night, reaching Galena about midnight. An early instance of Grant's executive ability. The following day Grant began to reveal his executive capacity. It was already plain that Galena would furnish a full company, and there arose the question of providing uniforms. In his autobiography, General Grant says that these uniforms were provided through the generosity and activity of patriotic women of Galena. But in that he has fallen into error. With Mr. Chet Lane, Grant himself went to the leading tailor-shop in Galena on the third morning and asked the proprietors how much cloth they had suitable for making into military uniforms. They found they had sufficient cloth to uniform some eighty men. How long will it take you, using your entire force, and calling in help, to make up these uniforms? asked Grant. The tailors decided it could be done within two or three days. Do it, said Grant, and we will see that you are paid. Some citizens of financial standing then went to the leading bankers of Galena and secured in advance, amounting to some fourteen hundred dollars to pay for the uniforms. This money was afterwards paid back by the state treasurer. The company being enrolled, Captain Grant's experience was helpful in the preliminary drill and the details of organization. Then the question arose who should be chosen for officers. Every man in the company was desirous that Grant accept the captaincy, but this he declined to do. So Mr. Chet Lane was chosen captain. In conversation with Captain Chet Lane soon after, Grant said, I am not to overestimate my abilities, and I don't think I do. When I say that I feel that my education at West Point and my service in the Army have qualified me to take the Colonelcy of a regiment. I feel pretty sure that I could command a regiment creditably enough, and I suppose that I have a share of military pride, which causes me to feel justified in asking the governor to give me the regiment, and I'm going to do it. Grant goes to Springfield in search of service. On the day when the Galena Company was to depart for the state capital, Springfield, patriotic enthusiasm was most gloriously stirred in the crowd. The company and the new uniforms paraded the principal streets and then turned toward the railway station as they passed through their stores of J. R. Grant and Company. Captain Chet Lane saw standing in the doorway a short, slender young man wearing the overcoat which had done service in the Mexican War. Upon his head was the familiar and faded, soft-fell tat. In his hand he held an old-fashioned, well-worn traveling bag. Captain Chet Lane nodded and received in reply a recognition which was half military salute and half a friendly sign. When the company had passed, the young man stepped from the doorway, fell in behind, and marched with modest step at the rear, carrying his faded carpet-bag and looking neither to right nor left. A lad of nineteen, standing where he could see this modest departure, was greatly impressed by it. Not so much the military music, the cheering of the throng, the excitement of the moment, as that inconspicuous swinging into line of the leather clerk sent the patriotic blood of the youngster tingling so that he was impelled to enlist. He did, beginning as a private and coming out as a brigadier general. He is General Livermore of Boston. At the railway station, just before the train started, the Reverend Mr. Vincent, now Bishop Vincent, addressed the company, standing upon a freight-car as an improvised pulpit. On the way to Springfield the train was delayed for an hour or two, and at Grant's suggestion the company went to a neighboring field where Captain Grant put them through some of the simpler tactics. A cold reception on all sides. Captain Grant carried with him to Springfield nothing except the change of linen which was contained in the old carpet-bag and a letter of introduction to Governor Yates, written by Elihu B. Washburn, then a member of Congress from the Gleena District. The capital was in a turmoil. Gailey uniformed volunteered officers were proud to display their presence and their activity. The Governor was hedged about by these fussy soldiers who thought they were actually engaged in war, although they were only playing at it. Immediately after the Gleena Company reached Springfield, General Grant went to the Statehouse to present his letter to Governor Yates. An acquaintance had some business which called him to the capital. As he walked down the corridor he saw a man sitting upon a bench and looking almost the picture of despair. The gaily dressed young soldiers brushed by, some of them turning for an instant to glance at this man, who seemed almost like an outcast, so strong was the contrast between his appearance and theirs. The acquaintance recognized him, and going up to him said, Why, Captain, what are you doing here? Well, I am trying to get my letter of introduction to Governor Yates, and I have been waiting so long that I don't know as it will be of any use. However, I am going to stay here until the building closes. The friend saw that Grant was a little despondent, and suggested to him that the Governor was very busy, but that he would sooner or later be sure to receive any one who bore a letter from Congressman Washburn. A little while after, Grant was able to find someone who would condescend to take his letter of introduction to the Governor, and after a while this messenger returned, saying that the Governor would see Captain Grant as soon as he had leisure. The Governor must have been very busy, for leisure did not come until another hour or two had passed. When at last Grant went into the Governor's room, the Governor, casting a quick glance at him, and perceiving that he was coarsely dressed and shy of manner, seemed to decide to make the interview a short one. So he said, Ah, you are Captain Grant, what can I do for you? Well, Governor, I have come to see if I can be of any service to you, and I hope that by and by you will be able to give me a commission. Answered Grant, adding that he was willing to do anything that would help the Governor in those trying times. He then referred very briefly to his experience as an officer in the regular army. When Grant had finished, Governor Yates said, Well, I don't know that there is anything you could do. You might stay around for a day or two. Perhaps the Adjutant General may have something that he can give you to do. Suppose you see him. Grant, a petty clerk under a state Adjutant General. Upon him the Adjutant General also put the critical eye when Grant applied to him, and seemed, like all the others, to be disposed to measure the unassuming man by his clothes rather than by his record and his intelligence. He, too, said, Well, I don't know that there is anything you can do to help us. We are pretty well organized. But, he added, Hold on. You must know how to rule blanks for making out of such reports as we make up. You certainly learned how to do that when you were in the army. Oh, yes, replied Captain Grant. I know how those blanks should be ruled. Well, you see, continued the Adjutant General. We are short of these blanks. The Department at Washington cannot forward us the printed blanks as fast as we need. The demand is so great. I think I'll set you to work ruling blanks. You may come around to-morrow. Captain Grant came, according to appointment, and paper, ink, and pen with ruler were given to him, but he was not permitted to have a desk in the room where most of the clerks of the Adjutant General worked. That was a room well carpeted, a room with handsome desks and other convenient and comfortable furniture. Just outside of it was a little enter-room, where the floor was bare and the only furniture was a plain table and a hard-bottom chair. There they put Captain Grant and sent him to work ruling blanks. And thus, in that humblest of clerical work, he, who was a few years later to command all its armies, and finally to rule the nation, began his formal service in the war. A day or two later Captain Chet Lane had occasion to go to the Adjutant General's office, and to get there he must needs past, as everyone did, through the little enter-room. He saw what he thought was a familiar figure, at least a figure dressed in familiar clothing, bending over a table, and at work upon some papers that seemed to be reports. He touched him on the shoulder. Without moving otherwise than by slowly turning his head and looking up, the clerk responded to the touch. Then, meeting the eye of Captain Chet Lane, an expression almost of despair and of humiliation came to his face, and he turned again to his work. "'What are you doing, Captain?' said Chet Lane. "'Oh, I'm ruling blanks. Work such as any clerk could do. I can do it no longer. There's no place for me here. No chance. And I'm going back to Galena.' "'No, I would not do that, Captain,' cried Chet Lane. "'Be patient. Everything is in a turmoil here. Even if you give up this work, don't go back to Galena. I am sure some chance will come for you very soon.' Saying nothing, Grant went on with his work. Grant's purse runs low. That evening he met Captain Chet Lane again, and he then told him that he had decided to remain in Springfield a little longer, but that to do so he must practice the strictest economy. Said he, "'I can't live at the hotel any longer. It costs too much. But I have found a room across the street. It is of good size, and has a double bed in it. The price is three dollars a week. Now, if you will come and share it with me, it will cost us only a dollar and a half a week each, and we'll get our meals where we can find them.' Captain Chet Lane agreed to this proposition, and thus became Grant's roommate, and remained with him until his company was mustered into the service and joined its regiment. Captain Grant must have lived very plainly at this time. He did not complain. He went to the state capital every day, and returned every evening more and more despondent. Twice he decided to go back to Galena. Once he determined to go back by the next train, and it was only at Chet Lane's urgent persuasion that he decided to remain a few days longer. In the latter part of May Governor Yates detailed Captain Grant to look after Camp Yates, and that occupied him for a time, but gave no promise of advancement. At last one day he came to Captain Chet Lane and camp and said to him, "'They have asked me to go down to Mattoon, to muster in a regiment which is going into camp there.' And then he also confessed that his money had so completely given out that he would be unable to make the journey unless some friend would advance him fifteen dollars. The small sum was found, and Grant went down to Mattoon, and spent a day or two with the new regiment, giving its officers the benefit of his military experience. He returned to Springfield, and again there was a time of waiting. Grant's services declined in four states, thinking there might be an opportunity for him at St. Louis, he finally went there. But although he met Captain Nathaniel Lyon and some other army friends, and even rode with them when they set out to break up a Confederate camp, he found no reason to believe that the state of Missouri would accept his services. So he returned to Springfield, and again almost determined to go to his home. Then he thought of McClellan, who was then in Cincinnati preparing to leave for the front. He knew McClellan slightly, and was certain that McClellan knew of him. So he went to Cincinnati, but encountered there the same indifference and bad luck. McClellan himself had just gone to Washington. His brilliantly uniform staff were in and about the hotel, but there was no offer of comradeship when Captain Grant timidly introduced himself to two or three of them. Of McClellan, he said to Colonel Chet Lane, Chet Lane had now been chosen Lieutenant Colonel of the 12th Illinois Volunteers. I look upon McClellan as one of the brightest officers of the regular army who has received appointment in the Volunteer Service, and he is now to make his mark in this war. There was nothing to do but return to Springfield. On the way back, Grant stopped over for a day in Indian Angeles, thinking that perhaps his services might be accepted by Governor Morton. But a few hours there showed him plainly that political colonels and political influence were quite as strong in Indiana as in Illinois. When he again reached Springfield, his mind was made up. Seeking out Colonel Chet Lane, he bade him goodbye, and then returned to his home in Galena, utterly despondent, and believing that, for the time at least, there was no chance for an obscure military man, since the politicians were making the officers for the regiments and brigades. A colonel at last, but without horse or uniform. In his brief services at Mattoon, however, Grant had sown better seed than he knew. The ability, energy, and thorough understanding of himself and his duties that he displayed when mustering in the twenty-first regiment of Illinois volunteers had made a deep impression on some of the officers and many of the men. For some reason the colonel of the twenty-first resigned. At that time the officers of a regiment had the privilege of signifying to the Governor their preferences for the office of Colonel. Among the officers of the twenty-first was a Captain Patterson, who afterwards was an able judge in one of the Illinois districts. Captain Patterson suggested, when the matter of a new colonel came up for discussion, that the officers endorsed that Captain Grant who had mustered the regiment in. The idea was received with instant favor. A vote was taken, the proposition was carried, and a petition setting forth the facts was sent to Governor Yates. A few days later Governor Yates sat talking with a state auditor, Mr. Dubois, father of the present Senator Dubois of Idaho. Suddenly Governor Yates took up a paper and said, Look here Dubois, I have just received a petition from the officers of the twenty-first regiment, asking me to appoint as Colonel of that regiment that Captain Grant, Washburn's friend, was around the State House a little while ago. What would you do about it? Do about it? Why I'd appoint him. He's a good man. I talked with him. He has a clear head. He is full of common sense. He knows something about military affairs, and if these men want him, I'd appoint him. The next morning Captain Grant, sitting in his father's leather store, received a telegram from Governor Yates, asking him if he would accept an appointment as Colonel of the twenty-first regiment. Accept an appointment? Would an eagle fly? Grant telegraphed back instantly that he would gladly command the regiment, and as soon as possible went again to Springfield. He received his commission and joined the regiment, and the firm impulse of his discipline became immediately apparent. But Grant was not yet freed from humiliation. He had been unable to procure any better clothes than those which he wore when he first went to Springfield. He had an old cavalry sabre, which he had found in the arsenal, and that, strapped to his waist, was the only military badge that he wore, and it served well enough when he was drilling the regiment. But he could appear on Dress Parade only in full uniform, and he did not possess the money to buy a uniform, a sword, or a horse. For more than two weeks he left to Lieutenant Colonel Alexander the duty of leading the regiment on Dress Parade. No man but himself in all the regiment knew that the only reason why he did not himself take command was because his clothing would not permit him to do so. In this emergency Grant wrote to his father and asked for the loan of four hundred dollars, the money to be used in buying a uniform, a sword, and a horse. The father did not see his way clear to advancing the money. But Euless, as he was known in the store, had a good friend in the junior partner, Mr. Collins. Knowing of Grant's request for a loan, Mr. Collins obtained the money at the bank, and sent it to Colonel Grant, not even indicating at the time that it was sent by himself and not by Grant's father. Along with a draft for four hundred dollars was enclosed a promissory note put in out of motives of delicacy so that Colonel Grant would feel that he had borrowed the money, whereas Mr. Collins looked upon the money as a contribution to the cause of the Union. With the part of the money Grant bought the famous Yellow Horse which became afterwards known as Old Clayback, and as soon as he could have a uniform made he appeared upon Dress Parade. A common belief has been that Grant owed his appointment as Colonel to the influence of Congressman Washburn. Mr. Washburn's service to Grant came later, and consisted in the procuring for him promotion to the rank of Brigadier General. In the summer, when most of the northern troops had taken the field, and when Congress had conferred upon President Lincoln the necessary power, Lincoln summoned the Illinois delegation in Congress to a conference, and said to them, I have authority to appoint six Brigadier Generals from the State of Illinois, and I want you to agree in recommending suitable men for these places. Mr. Washburn suggested Colonel Grant of the twenty-first Illinois volunteers. He had heard of Grant's efficiency in organizing and drilling the twenty-first regiment. At his suggestion every member of the Illinois delegation joined with him in the recommendation. For the other five Brigadierships no one received a unanimous recommendation, and it was because Grant was endorsed without division that his commission was dated back to the early days of May which made him the senior Brigadier General of the State. After Grant, by a swift shrewd movement which the whole north applauded, had taken his brigade over the Ohio River and gained possession of Paduca, he met Chit Lane, now become a Colonel, one morning, and said, I have got to go through tomorrow what will be to me a most unpleasant and distasteful experience. You remember, perhaps, hearing me speak of General C. S. Smith? He was my old instructor at West Point. A nobler man never lived, nor a finer soldier. Tomorrow morning he is compelled to report to me as commanding officer, and it doesn't seem right. That experience was passed through the next day with all due formality. Happily the two Generals knew perfectly well what was in the mind of each, and there went out from each silent but potent tributes of respect. End of, before Grant won his stars, by E. J. Edwards. Read by Rick Rodstrom. A California Motor Tour by Francis Lee. This is a LibriVox recording. While LibriVox recordings are in the public domain, for more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. California is the motorist's paradise, but only a few of the many thousands of people who visit it annually are aware of the great amount of pleasure which may be derived from motor tours throughout the state. California roads will not generally up to the standard of European highways. Compare favorably with those of any other section of the United States, and in the near future will be superior to those of most states, for the subject of good roads is being vigorously agitated and bonds for this purpose have been recently issued. Los Angeles County alone has voted a $3,500,000 bond issue and other counties are following. In addition, the legislature has authorized a bond issue of $18 million on behalf of the state at large. But an even greater factor than smooth hard roads is the mild climate of Southern California, which makes touring delightful at all times of the year. When automobiles are practically useless in the snowbound eastern states, California motorists are reveling in spins among orange groves, palms and roses, skirting the foothills and gliding over flower carpeted maces into the mountain glens or where the surf breaks on the beach. Taking Los Angeles as a starting point, many are the pleasant trips to be made in all directions. Some a days or a half days jaunt, some requiring more time. A favorite day's trip is one leading along the Foothill Boulevard through a number of pretty little towns nestling amid orange groves at the foot of the mountains, about 65 miles to Riverside, returning through Corona and the Santa Ana Canyon by the lower road back to Los Angeles. To go to San Diego requires more time. The coast road leading along the very edge of the Pacific for quite a distance is 140 miles in length. Returning by the inland route over the mountains and past Pala Mission, the distance is about 180 miles. Many excursions to the beaches and back may be made in a few hours. Of the long tours, that which offers the greatest pleasure and the most varied attractions is the one which leads from Los Angeles to San Francisco and return going via the valley or interior route and returning by the coast along the pathway of the old Mission Fathers. Leaving Los Angeles by the San Fernando Road, passing on the way miles of tall, stately yuccas in bloom, the wax and white candles of our Lord, San Fernando is reached at a distance of about 20 miles. Here are the ruins of the old Mission, founded in 1797. The Silmar Olive Orchard, said to be the largest in the world, is a few miles farther on. And then one of the steepest grades in California, that leading up to Fremont Pass, is encountered. A deep gorge cut in the mountains has reduced the climb some 70 feet, but the gradometer indicates 30% for a short distance even now. However, this climb is soon to be obviated by either a tunnel or a circuitous route. In the picturesque San Franciscoito Canyón the road plays tag with the stream and so we must cross the water some 60 times in a distance of 10 or 12 miles but as the bottom is hard and sandy and the water is usually less than a foot deep, this only adds to the interest and pleasure. On the edge of the Mojave Desert, about 50 miles from Los Angeles, the giant tree yuckas or Joshua trees wave their grotesque and scraggly arms, looming four or five times a man's height toward the sky. Antelope Valley is well called by the Indians the place of the year-long wind, for never is there a day when the air is not stirring briskly. Up and down easy grades the road winds and at length we come in sight of Castillac Lake, a tiny sheet of water lying a little distance to the right of the road, shimmering through the oak trees and the meadows of dark brownish green grass and sedges enlivened by yellow snapdragons. Just 100 miles from Los Angeles are the ruins of Fort Tejon founded in 1854 by General then Captain Fremont, the Pathfinder in one of the finest of California's natural parks. Here were stationed government troops until 1864 when it became unnecessary longer to guard the past to the great San Joaquin Valley from the raids of Indians and of Mexican horse thieves. From the appearance of the adobe ruins of the fort, one might think that at least two centuries have passed since it was occupied. Here the northern slopes of the hills are veiled in a pinkish purple mist thrown over them by a low flowering plant. On down the canyon, in company with a loquacious little brook, we pass blossoming buckeye trees, their white spikes scattering fragrance along the road. Down a long winding grade we coast for miles without spark and there comes into view the great central plain of California, the San Joaquin Valley extending northward from the Tahachapi 100 miles to Mount Shasta. The valley seems limitless in length toward the north and in the far distance, east and west rise hazy purple mountain ranges. Bakersfield is 150 miles from Los Angeles and from here northward past the oil fields for a couple of hundred miles the white level road leads through towns, pasture land, orchards and vineyards with here and there a river on its way to the sea. The roads are generally excellent. If you are going to the Yosemite Valley that lodestone which draws so many beauty lovers to the coast keep straight up the San Joaquin Valley to Merced and there leave your car while you take the train into the Yosemite. Automobiles are not allowed to enter the valley and if they were it would not be advisable to take them or the roads are rocky and extremely hard on tires. The marvels of the Yosemite are too well known to be described here and even the best pen picture is entirely inadequate to portray this wonderfully beautiful valley. Returning to Merced take the road to Los Baños and through the Pacheco Pass to Gilroy a very lovely trip from Gilroy to San Jose we are in the midst of the fertile, lovely Santa Clara Valley with its miles of deciduous fruit trees traveling along the east side of the San Francisco Bay. We come to Oakland Bowered in trees. While here we take a run over to Berkeley and visit the State University. Set on the hills overlooking the bay amid large widespreading oaks. Then on the ferry across the bay to San Francisco and after having seen the sights of this interesting city so cruelly injured by the terrible earthquake and fire of April 18th 1906 we follow the west side of the bay south 35 miles to Palo Alto where several hours should be spent visiting Stanford University unique in its architecture and having an endowment of 30 million dollars. Continuing on our home or journey we again come to San Jose and leave it via Los Gatos and summit for Santa Cruz. This ride of 40 miles over the Santa Cruz Mountains is one of the most picturesque in California. The road leads through hills thickly wooded with stately fragrant redwoods and madronios with smooth red bark and wax and leaves. We stop to eat our lunch beside a little stream of clear cold delicious water trickling down through blossoming shrubs and then on we go following the narrow winding road. Though the road is narrow and there are many sharp turns the way is generally smooth by a skillful driver. Santa Cruz is a very popular summer resort in a thriving little city on the northern sweep of Monterey Bay. Here we can make a side trip to the felt and grove of big trees containing many huge and famous sequoias. Whoever has heard of California has heard of Monterey and this picturesque and sleepy old town so full of history and romance charms us. After paying a visit to the mission of the world renowned 17 mile drive through forests and by the breakers past wind bent cypress trees rocky points and sandy beaches on to old Carmel mission. From Salinas southward the scenery is not particularly beautiful for some distance though the roads are excellent for the most part leading through a rolling country. San Miguel mission is passed en route to Pasa Robles which is nestled among the hills its hot springs are famous for their curative powers. Very lovely are the wooded hills between this place and San Luis Obispo where there is another mission. Gizmo beach stretches a long hard roadway of sand for many miles and here automobile races are held on the beach which excels that of Ormond, Florida in its adaptability for this purpose. Up and down hill the road leads past Los Olivos and the old Santa Ines mission and into the Gaviota pass very picturesque with no very steep grades. At the end of this pass we come again with the insight of the ocean and from Gaviota for many miles south we ride along the bluffs at the edge of the water. Just after sunset sea and sky are suffused with a rose and amethyst glow reflected on the low purple mountains to the east. On the water the kelp beds draw dark maps on the delicately tinted surface like the brown mottlings in a turquoise matrix. At Santa Barbara the beautiful ideally situated on a narrow strip between the mountains and the sea with its balmy breezes and its attractive homes its mission one of the best preserved in California stored with ancient manuscripts and relics of the days of the Padres we would feign linger for many days. There are the short drives to be taken in the vicinity offering most entrancing views from the mountains and from the shore. A few miles below Santa Barbara is Summerland where an unusual sight meets our eyes. Oil derricks rise from the very midst of the waters of the sea where there are submarine oil wells here and the surface of the water for a long distance is black and iridescent with crude oil. From the heights of the Casitas pass are obtained splendid views of the bottom of the sea. The pass itself is remarkably pretty shaded with fine old trees. Some quite steep grades the gradometer registering 20% in some places for a short distance. At Ventura we may visit another of the old missions and here we bid goodbye to the ocean for the rest of our journey. There is one more range of low mountains to cross before we come into the San Fernando Valley, whose metropolis is Los Angeles. We may keep straight ahead from Camarillo and go over to the Canejo grade and pass Calabasas, or, what is perhaps a prettier way, we may turn to the left at Camarillo and go by the Santa Susana Pass and through Chatsworth Park and San Fernando. The Canejo road takes us over the low Cajanga Pass and through Hollywood to Los Angeles, while the Santa Susana way takes us back to the road by which we left Los Angeles at San Fernando, or we may go across from Chatsworth through Cajanga and Hollywood. And when we have reached our starting point, Los Angeles, we immediately begin plans for a similar trip to be taken in the not too distant future. So delighted are we with the pleasures of our thousand mile journey. End of a California Motor Tour. Read by Betty B. Read by Mike Overby, Midland, Washington. Mr. A. T. Lane, the bicycle importer of Montreal, has been made the victim of a very mean trick, being the first instance ever recorded in Canada, these having a tricycle stolen from him. The following is a description of the machine, an Apollo front steering tricycle all bright parts plated, including spokes, two nickel plated king of road lamps, cushion seat, singer and co-pedals with all the rubber knobs out but three. While Mr. Lane was attending the CWA tournament in Toronto, the machine was loaned to a young Englishman named C.A. Speechley of London in England, and he has not been heard of since. The police are also wanting him for other charges. The thief is described as being about 19 or 20 years of age, fair complexion but spotty, puts on a large amount of quote-unquote side, has an abnormally developed gall, and has the appearance of being out about two months. Anybody hearing of him will confer a great favour by communicating immediately with Mr. Lane. End of A Despicable Trick. LibriVox.org At the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, Wisconsin was found to be among the most loyal states of the Union. Within her border, the new Republican Party founded upon the principle of checking further extension of slavery had just been born. A determination to stand by the national government at whatever cost was the instant decision of both political parties, and the overwhelming response, accorded to the first call for troops, surprised even the most enthusiastic. But before the close of the first season's campaign, enthusiasm began to dwindle, and even signs of opposition were noted in certain sections of the state. The reverses suffered by the Union army in the absence of a vigorous campaign on the part of the national administration was believed to be inexcusable. Volunteering showed a marked decrease in those who had opposed the war, or who had been even lukewarm in their support, now bestowed themselves in making it unpopular. The situation in Wisconsin became alarming. In July 1862, when President Lincoln called for 300,000 more men, volunteering had practically ceased. In August, a second call was made for another 300,000. Wisconsin's quota was fixed at 11,804, and the men were to be mobilized within 15 days. In such an emergency, the volunteer system was hopeless. Governor Solomon and the military authorities decided to adopt the draft at once, and steps were immediately taken to put the plan in operation. Even with the draft system, it was impossible to fill the quota within the a lot of time. The sheriffs in each county were ordered to enroll all able-bodied male citizens between the ages of 18 and 45. The rolls showed 127,894 men subject to military duty. Governor Solomon appointed a draft commission and an examining surgeon for each county. November 10 was the date set for drawing the names. As the day of the draft drew near, great excitement prevailed. This was especially true in the eastern and southern counties. The opposition newspapers with their sensational headlines added to the excitement. Men possessed of robust health suddenly discovered some terrible ailment and had to seek treatment in a different climate. Canada at once became a mecca for such invalids. So many healthy and robust men appeared before the examining board in Fond du Lac and asked for exemption that some wag placed a sign over the door which read Coward's Headquarters. In Ozaki County, where Lincoln had received only 627 votes out of 2450, armed opposition first broke out against the draft. On the morning of November 10, 1862, the draft commissioner, Mr. Poors and his assistant, were attacked by a mob of a thousand and more people, variously armed and under the influence of whiskey. The draft rolls were seized and destroyed. Mr. Poors was dragged to the door and thrown down the steps. The mob then took possession of a small four-pound cannon that had been used on former 4th of July celebrations, and loading it with the only ball they could find, mounted it on the pier in Port Washington and defied Uncle Sam to come and arrest them. Governor Salomon learned of the trouble and decided to take instant and vigorous action. He ordered eight companies of soldiers to be sent to Milwaukee to arrest them all. The presence of the armed soldiers caused the leaders to flee, but upwards of 80 were captured and given a trial in the Provost Marshals Court. They were convicted and taken to Milwaukee, where the company marched through the streets of the city in the form of a square with the prisoners in the center. After being confined in Camp Washburn for a time, they were transferred to the bullpen in Madison. The following week, the draft was to take place in Milwaukee, and Governor Salomon took a vigorous stand to prevent the reoccurrence of the Ozaki trouble. A proclamation was issued to the people of the county, warning them against such disgraceful scenes as it had been recently enacted by the Port Washington mob. Colonel John C. Starkweather was ordered to take charge of the troops and guard the city. Soldiers were placed on picket duty on all roads leading into the city. One company kept inside guard at the courthouse where the draft was to be made. With these precautions, the drawing on numbers began at nine o'clock in the morning and continued throughout the day and late into the night. The report of Colonel Starkweather, now on file in the State Historical Library, shows that absolute quiet prevailed throughout the city. In West Bend, Washington County, slight trouble against the draft developed, but the sudden appearance of four companies of the 31st Regiment quieted the troublemakers and the strong arm of the state government again triumphed. All the later drafts following 1862 were made under federal authority. Those who formerly were inclined to resist the authority of the government later decided that it might not, after all, be wise to do so, and we hear no more of any combined opposition to the draft. They had learned what it meant to resist the iron hand of the government. Half a century later, when the country called for an army on the basis of a selective draft, Wisconsin was among the most enthusiastic states in the union in filling her quota. End of Draft Rides in Wisconsin during the Civil War by John W. Oliver. When I first moved into the country, I have told this story before but only in the comparative privacy of the poetic form, I inquired for a suitable man to take charge of my furnace. One was recommended to me and we opened negotiations, which were conducted warily on both sides, for each of us was wondering how much the other knew about a furnace, and each of us was conscious of plenty of ignorance to betray. Finally the man asked me how much time I wanted him to devote to the furnace. Here I turned and rent him. I told him that if he were applying for the post of furnace tender he ought to know how much time it was his duty to devote to that particular furnace. This disconcerted him, and he said that he had asked the question only because it had occurred to him that I might want him to stay with the furnace all day. I asked him why he should stay with the furnace all day and he said to prevent its blowing up. Now in my simple city ignorance I suppose that that man was simply trying to impose upon me and to get a profitable job for himself, but I have since come to know that he merely reflected in his uneducated exaggerated way the attitude of all suburbanites toward that domestic mollock, the furnace. The furnace is for eight or nine months in the year the heart of domestic life and it may be said to feed the pulse of all suburban conversation. Even the question of domestic service has to yield to it in importance as a topic, for you may or you may not at any given time have a cook, but you always have a coal bill. Now I wish to do all that lies in my power to represent this tendency. It not only imparts to suburban conversation and ashy and uninteresting flavor, but it spoils the furnace. Long experience has taught me, and I do not hesitate to affirm it, that furnaces are just like children. You can spoil them and set them all wrong in life by making too much fuss over them, by coddling and petting them, by paying attention to their little whims and fancies, and above all by talking about them to their faces in the presence of visitors and strangers. You all know how it is with children. If little Clarabel is in the room and you say to the lady who is visiting you, oh, I don't know what to do. Little Clarabel is so sensitive. Do you know the other day she wept for five hours together because the cat killed a little bird on the lawn? Do you know what happens after that? Little Clarabel's one idea is to beat her own record for sensitiveness by weeping six hours over the next dead bird she finds, and if she can't find any other way of attracting attention and winning praise for her delicates susceptibilities, she will drop a tear on a deceased tumble-bug just to attract a moment's notice. In the same way, if you tell your visitor in the youngster's hearing that your dear little Reginald has such a wonderful flow of spirits that it seems impossible for him to control himself, why you must not be surprised if Reginald ceases the opportunity to kick his football through the parlor window by way of showing the exuberance of his spirits and the impossibility of restraining them. Well, you can spoil a furnace much in the same way as you can spoil a child. Do not for an instant imagine that I began my suburban life with any superiority of knowledge over my neighbors, at least so far as the management of a furnace was concerned. In many other respects I knew more than they did, although I am not using so much knowledge now. I treated my furnace with the same familiar indulgence and familiarity, and gave it just as absurd an idea of its own importance as did the most thoughtless of those about me. Many and many a time has that furnace heard me talking through the thin floor that separates the cellar from the ground's story, telling of its ways and its fancies, of its extravagance in coal one week, and of its strict economy the next, of its entire unwillingness to work in an east wind and its furious enthusiasm to roast the house every time there was a breath from the south. Beginning that way, no wonder I turned the poor thing's head. But this was only the least of the foolishness with which I encouraged that furnace to misbehave. I discharged the man whom I had first engaged to take care of it, not because I could find any real fault with him, but because he seemed to me to have no real sense of the seriousness of his responsibility. I thought he treated the furnace in a slighting and disrespectful manner, and I didn't like the way that he slammed the door after he had put the coal in. I hired a small boy to sleep in the house so that he might be at the service of the furnace day and night. I can say for the boy that he carried out one part of his contract. He slept in the house. It was I who went down late at night after I had got home from a dinner or a dance or a trip to the city to hear the opera and dove into the cellar to study the immediate needs of that furnace, drowsily summoning to my aid what small scraps of knowledge I possessed about drafts and heat units and cold air supply. Only in the end to stir up something or other, I didn't know why. To let down something about the end in aim of which I knew still less, and to make some combination of dampers and slides and doors for which I never in the world could have offered the slightest reason. Of course, in my earlier suburban days I was even more foolish in my treatment of my furnace. I took a number of plumbers down to see it and consulted with them one at a time, of course, in its very presence. Each one laid out for me a different set of rules by which to work it, and explained to me a different set of principles which governed each set of rules. You could not have told them from so many doctors. At first, too, I showed the furnace to friends of experience and to distinguished strangers who occasionally honoured my humble roof. On one occasion I took down a distinguished poet, a scientist of wide reputation, and a man who had recently invented a tense scent puzzle. And this overdose of glory and dignity was quite too much for the furnace. It would not draw for the next three weeks, and it gave out very little more heat than the refrigerator. The furnace did not improve as the years went on, and the members of the household learned with each success of twelve months to rely more and more upon open fires and upon a gradual toughening process that went on from September to April and that made an indoor temperature of fifty degrees Fahrenheit bearable, if not perhaps enjoyable. Then there came a day, a happy day, when the owner of the furnace asserted himself. It was a mild January day of a winter which I had begun by laying in twenty tons of coal for the consumption of that furnace. The boy came up to tell me that they were consumed. He was not the first boy who had made of his young energies a burnt offering to my furnace. He was only one in a long succession. When I heard from his lips that the coal was all gone, and when I reflected that the chilly annoyance of the winter were to be succeeded by the cruel inclemencies of springtime, I was bitterly angered, and for the first time in my experience I went down into the cellar, conscious of an angry and unkind feeling toward my furnace. The boy had spoken truth, yet not all the truth. The twenty tons of coal had vanished from the bin, and now, slightly charred, formed a large portion of what was supposed to be a pile of ashes in a lonely region of the cellar. One door of the furnace was broken, another had lost its hinge, and a huge crack rent its firepot halfway through. I gave my order sternly and precisely. The food for the furnace was no longer to be purchased in twenty ton lots. It was to be fed from hand to mouth, ton by ton at a time. No plumber was to heal its gaping moons, and I was never to hear one solitary word about it until the summer time should come, when I could tear it out and sell it for old iron and put some more modern device in its place. That was six years ago, and all has changed since then. That day the furnace learned its lesson. In bitterness of spirit I have no doubt, but faithfully and fully. Never since then have I had to contend with it. Perhaps its duties are not performed in absolute cheerfulness of mind, but so long as it locks up its discontent in its breast and locks no clinkers there, I shall not complain. A dull and sullen servant it may be, but so diligent and loyal and steady that I try to shut my eyes to the fact that the crack in the firepot is steadily widening, and that before long the companion of many days and nights of suburban solitude and solicitude will be loaded on a truck, and will be borne dangling and clanging away from its home to lie in some riverside junkyard and rust itself redder than it ever would fire up for me. In the meantime it patiently eats and turns to good account, short rations of coal grudgingly doled out to it too often from the sifted ash heap. End of The Furnace by H. C. Bunner. Healthy but not social by Milton Bradley From The Canadian Wheelman, London, Canada, February 1886 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Read by Mike Overby, Midland, Washington. The bicycle has doubtless become one of the greatest promoters of healthy outdoor exercise among our young men, as well as some of the older ones. But there is necessarily nothing social in it. In fact, it is the most selfish conception possible. Think of a family man buying a bicycle and starting off for a ride while the wife and children are left at home on the veranda to admire the grace and ease with which their lord and master wheels off to get exhilarating whiffs of fresh country air. The economical young man mounts his wheel on the fine afternoon and whirls off to the house of his lady love, leans his steed against the front fence and spends the summer evening on the piazza, while the young lady is no doubt thinking of her possibly old fashioned but more fortunate companion, who has gone out on the road beyond a good trotter to breathe the refreshing air. The one wheel is far more economical in every way, and it's enthusiastic if not fanatical admirers, no doubt get much good from it. But in an article on social recreations, they cannot hope for high praise, for their favorite machine is certainly not a family invention. When Mr. Edison will invent a motor which may be hung beneath the seat of a sociable tricycle, with a small seat behind for the children, and by which the whole load may whirl off to the country without the danger of running away at the first railway crossing, or the necessity for grooming or feeding on the return, then the family may sing the praise of the quote-unquote cycle. End of Healthy but Not Social by Milton Bradley. Limitations of Truth-Telling by Edward F. Adams This is a LibriVox recording, while LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Something less than two years ago at an age whose exact figure is of no public interest, but which may be described as a period at which it is useless to pretend to be young, while there is no desire to pretend to be old. I was pitchforked into an editorial position on one of what we are accustomed to call our great modern journals. The idea of filling such a place had never occurred to me, but within a few seconds after the proposal was made it was mentally accepted, although for the looks of the thing I believe that I deferred an actual acceptance for several minutes, as long as I dared to risk the chance of the proposal being withdrawn. For the truth is, although I had never proposed to myself this exaltation, having spent my previous life in the sordid pursuit of business, I was secretly of the opinion that the only people in the world whose lives were passed in the enjoyment of unalloyed pleasure were the members of the editorial staff of a great modern journal. Having accepted the unlooked-for offer, within a week I entered upon my new duties. The translation from the business turn of mind to the lofty and unselfish train of thought, which I assumed must reign in the rest of an editor, was not easy. My first day was payday, and my first thought was, where does the money come from? There were a lot of people on the paper to draw down weekly pay, and the thing that impressed me was the smooth and regular working of the financial machine, which regularly, in all weathers and at all times, ground out this multitude of weekly salaries. The delivery was as monotonous and mechanical as that of the great mint around the corner, in the hidden source of supply as mysterious. I saw an army of well-fed men take their turn at the windows. I knew of the daily expenditure for news, telegraphed tolls, white paper, and miscellaneous supplies. I saw the long row of line of types and the wonderful presses, and I knew something of their cost, and I knew that the machine I was observing had ground out the money to pay for them, and for the tall building which contained them. Then and there I resolved to go straight to the business manager for a detailed statement of costs and prices, for a magazine article. Upon reflection I didn't go, but I still regard that sudden impulse to make copy is some evidence that, until then, I had missed my vocation. Having observed and reflect it sufficiently upon the outward workings of the machine of which I had become a part, I went up in the elevator to my little den near the roof to begin to think thoughts. I was greatly impressed with my responsibility and resolved to lose no time in transmuting the mutton chops and rolls which had been my breakfast, into glowing words which should help to make the printed pages of next morning's paper worthy of the nickels which must be gathered to pay my salary. I should say that I was engaged to write only upon a special line of topics which the managing editor imagined me to know something and to which certain space was devoted, which I was to fill at my discretion. Beyond this, if I did anything, it was as a volunteer. I had no hours to keep except those of payday. All that was required was that my stuff should be on the galleys when wanted. Newspaper men will recognize this as a soft snap in journalism. Offset, however, by a corresponding modesty and compensation. I should hate to have to live on what I can earn by this kind of journalism. Few lines of work covered by daily journals can be adequately discussed without impinging on the domain of economics and politics. Mine was no exception. In entering upon my duties I had received but one instruction. Find out the truth and tell it. This was delightful, for I took it seriously, and fully in accord with my lofty conception of editorial duties and of the pure and serene ether of truth in which I conceived editors to live and move and have their being. Inspired by this noble emotion I took my pen and wrote an editorial. Resting from my labors I remembered the suggestion of the managing editor that I keep a close watch on the editorial columns in order as he said to avoid any inconsistency of expression. Surely this was sensible, although all truth is consistent with all other truth. Yet a number of us in equally eager search for the article someone might miss a little or inadvertently so express himself as to appear to have missed it, and thus open our armor to the javelins of the jeering and unprincipled sheet on the opposite corner. So I took up the file and turned over the pages and upon the editorial page of the second number back I found an exceedingly vigorous article taking a view of my subject diametrically opposed to the conclusion I had reached in intimating grave doubts as to the moral sanity of all who pretend it to disagree with it. An illusion recalled to me that it was merely upholding the soundness of a minor plank in the last platform of the great demo-publican party of which I am an unworthy member, and for whose nominees, God willing, I expect to vote. Here was a pretty mess. Although an ardent seeker after truth I am not a roaring idiot, and I promptly recognize that the particular dish of truth which I had just prepared would be sadly inopportune just then in the editorial columns of the advocate and harbinger. I also got my first lesson in the matter of the limits within which truth may be told in a public journal. As a private citizen I may and do denounce any portion of the platform of a political party, which on the whole I deem it best to support. But for a great daily paper to do so is to commit harakiri. The platforms of political parties are necessarily filled with compromises on minor points in order to hold together enough of those who agree in the more important matters to carry an election. Such agreements, when made, must be kept, and a journal which professes to support a party must do so unreservedly. Even at some points it does not reflect the opinions of a single person connected with it. Political journals may be undesirable, but while they exist they must fulfill their missions, and in the long run the consensus of a great political party is perhaps as reliable as the individual judgment of a newspaper proprietor, unless the latter is a very able and honest man. At any rate I was connected with a political journal, and therein found my first limitation to the telling of truth. My first editorial went into the waste basket. A day or two later I had occasion to deal with another subject which I certainly understood, in as to which there would be no disagreement among disinterested persons who are familiar with it. Unfortunately, however, the truth in this case, as often happens, was not in accord with the current popular prejudice. Here thought I was my long sought opportunity to set the world right, and in a glow of enthusiasm I wrote an editorial, which was a trumpet blast of no uncertain sound. There was no politics in this, and I was sure I had found my field. This was surely what I had been born for. What the managing editor wanted was the man who knew, and had the courage to say, and I was he. Tomorrow the advocate in Harbinger would show the world how to champion, fearlessly and unpopular cause, and I went home happy. On the way I met a friend, an editor whom I had known for a long time, and took occasion to compliment him on the stand he had been taking on a certain matter of popular interest. His was not a political paper. He was himself a proprietor, and could say what he pleased. He laughed quietly at my compliments, but said he feared he did not deserve them, as he was going to quit. Every one of the editorials which I had liked had brought him a dozen stops, and no new subscriptions that he could trace to them. His partners were kicking, and he himself was tired of it. If he were rich he said he might undertake to reform the world, but for a man of moderate means to attempt it meant disaster to himself with little accomplishment. The fact was that no newspaper could live long and prosper, which habitually went contrary to the prejudices of its subscribers. This set me thinking. If I knew the proprietor of the advocate and harbinger, and I thought I did, he was a man who would be very glad indeed to see right triumphant in virtue prosperous everywhere, but yet by no means glad enough to see it done at the expense of the popularity of the advocate and harbinger. On the contrary, I was sure that he would interpret his implied contract with his subscribers to mean that he should give them the stuff they liked to read, and that he would feel no call to engage in any kind of a crusade for reforms in which he had no personal interest and which would merely invoke a languid approval from a certain number of his readers and active hostility on the part of others. It therefore once occurred to me that I had discovered another limitation to the truth, which I could be permitted to tell in a newspaper, and this was that it must be only that kind of truth which the general public desires to read. I therefore went back to my den and put another editorial in the wastebasket. And in this I was not only wise, but right. I was wise, because the proofs of the work of a new hand would quite certainly be carefully looked to by the managing editor, and in this case killed. And I was right, because even if it had escaped him and got in, nobody has a right to go out reforming at other people's expense without their consent. Having agreed to take this man's money, it was my duty to give him such service as he desired, and if I did not like it, to quit. And this was nonetheless true, because I did not give the desired service. I should have to quit. It was my duty to help from the start, not to hinder. Neither do I see how it is possible for the proprietor of any paper to do otherwise than cater to the wishes of his readers, except upon the theory that his journal is to be run for the benefit of mankind, regardless of personal consequences. The fact is that truth cannot be told constantly without raising up enemies, while the disinterested majority of mankind give no corresponding support. There seems to be practically no way to make sure the regular collection of the funds necessary to payday, except by the avoidance of attacks upon vested interests. Once or twice in a generation a strong man may appear, whose personality may attract support for a really independent journal. But these instances are too few to be considered. There are great prophets and frauds and shams, and they who live by them have profits to divide, which more honorable men have not. Without the aid of advertisers who wish to sell property for more than it is worth, I do not know that payday would always be payday. Everybody knows that adulteration and poor workmanship infest all branches of trade. This general statement any journal may safely venture. But when it begins to assist the public by pointing out particular shams, it does so at great peril. And there is really a monetary interest at the bottom of all subjects of general discussion. The public does not sustain the truth-teller or the more decent journals. I know a city in which at one time the daily papers seemed to vie with each other, as to which would come the nearest to the line of indecency, which would exclude them from the males. The women of the city rose up in protest, and mass meetings were held to denounce the offenses of the press. At the height of the excitement a change of ownership took place in one of these journals, and the new proprietor, possibly as a matter of business, took sides with the women, denounced his contemporaries and engaged to and did run a perfectly clean paper. After a few months of trial and an active canvas on that basis, the propriety told me that he had not won over a single subscriber whose subscription could be traced to the cause, while his saloon and barbershop patronage fell off to nothing, and his sales to mill hands were seriously impaired. He said he presumed he did get some, but he never knew them. At considerable expense he had list-made of the men and women prominent in the clean paper agitation, including a long list many thousands of those who had registered themselves in the movement, compared his own carrier's books and made a deliberate set to get the subscriptions of these people who were taking the papers they denounced. He got substantially none of them, only the ordinary changes took place which are constantly going on, and yet his paper was as good as the others in clean. He was utterly disgusted. He said these reformers were humbugs. Every one of them really wanted the nasty stuff which they were getting. He seemed to be right, for in a few weeks more the whole thing dropped. The fact is that every community makes its own press. What the papers give people is really what they want. In public meetings they may say they do not want it, but their subscriptions say they do. The long list of clergymen and society leaders who were taking the papers they denounced and refused to change to one equally good in all things except sensationalism, convinced me that newspaper men know their business. I doubt if there are three papers in America whose course on any non-political subject in which the proprietor has no pecuniary interest cannot be changed by a hundred stops for an identical stated course. That the daily press is what we find it is due to the fact that stops do not come. In this being the case I do not see how a daily journal can be conducted as an impartial investigator and champion of the truth as it is discovered. The necessities of payday will prevent it. The public has come to demand from the daily press what it costs large daily expenditure to provide. That expenditure can only be met by maintaining a circulation which shall be a basis of profitable advertising rates. If the general public does not find what it wants in the journal, the circulation cannot be maintained. If the income falls off expenses must be reduced then the paper becomes dull for the brightest men will go where the largest salaries can be paid. Then those who would be its staunchest supporters leave it in flocks and there inevitably follows a change of character if not a change of ownership. It is the inexorable payday which so impressed me at my first entrance into journalism which controls the character of the press. I'm convinced that the ideal newspaper can no more be made a source of personal profit than the ideal university. The ideal newspaper if we ever have it will be endowed. I suppose some benevolent billionaire will sometime do it. I believe it would be as useful an application of money as may be found. The obvious difficulty is to arrange for a suitable directory whose single duty would be the choice of the editor-in-chief and the business manager. There would be no policy to dictate since the one instruction would be that which I received to find the truth and tell it. But in this case it would not be given in the Pickwickian sense. Such a board would necessarily be in the majority ex-officio. Probably presidents of colleges and librarians of great libraries and with these in the majority might safely be made self-perpetuating as to the minority. The salaries of the editor-in-chief and the business manager should be such as to make them the great prizes of journalism. Within their spheres they should have absolute power. The profits with the income of the endowment should go to some designated public purpose. There should be a deficit the income of the endowment would make it up. If I were a benevolent billionaire I now think I would do this. Whether it were pecuniarily profitable or not it would modify the character of all daily journalism. It will be seen that I no longer have illusions as to the limitations of truth-telling journalism. So far as this salaried editor is concerned he is not by virtue of his position, the power to tell any truth or express any opinion. Incidentally he may do and much of the time he does both. But what he knows or what he thinks does not necessarily determine what he writes. What he writes is determined by the managing editor who expresses the wish of the proprietor. Whoever does not wish to write on these terms should not enter journalism. Of course managing editors have common sense and are personally good fellows and gentlemen and do not habitually and wantonly set the gentleman in the editorial rooms to writing what they implore. They usually have a command those who can express the desired views. When the exigencies of the service require it the salaried editor must write what is ordered or quit and he seldom quits. If I was impressed on the first day with the effectiveness of the financial under the newspaper machine I was equally impressed as I gradually became acquainted with it with the relentless grinding of its interior works. Picking up a random yesterday's 16 page paper I find it to contain exclusive of advertising about 130,000 words less cuts and headlines. The Sunday paper will contain more than twice as many. Comparing this with Butcher and Lang's translation of the Odyssey which flies upon my table I find that the latter contains only about 200,000 words. Every day the staff of this journal writes a book two-thirds as large as the Odyssey and every Sunday won a good deal larger and nearly all about what happened the day before. Our journal is run to make money and there is no surplus of attachés. Every man has his duty and must do it every day. When he goes to his desk he does not know what he is to write about but he does know that about so much copy will be demanded, clear and interesting and not a surplus word. The writer has no choice of subjects or of time. We go to press at three o'clock and the ideas which have not yet occurred to him must be in the forms at that time. If he knows little or nothing of the subject so much the worse for him he must scrabble the harder and find out that he does not feel and the mood does not count. Boots themselves do not count. Creative work is not expected or desired but plain common sense discussion of current affairs with no errors of fact. This he can do and this he must do, sick or well. Under the stress of these circumstances the romance of editorship promptly disappears or rather is found not to exist. It is hard grinding inexorable work. Of such work as I have done in this world song cordwood comes the nearest to it. The difference in the thickness, toughness and shape of the different sticks gives the same kind of relief from monotony that attends the writing of editorials. Only in songwood there is a pleasure in the increasing pile of finished work behind you and the diminishing pile of work before you. The next week you may not be songwood but in editorship what you have done is whisked out of sight and forgotten of old men. What is before you you cannot see but you know you will be at it next week and that it will never end. This is doubtlessly a pleasure and creative work. There is a certain agreeableness even in such writing as I am now doing simply because I wish to which may or may not even be printed. But the only pleasure I conceive of in writing editorials for daily journals is the knowledge that payday is weekly and certain. It will be remembered that I am writing is one in the business but not of it. I suppose no one of strong will and beginning late in life can become a real newspaper man. I only write what I seem to see. There is after all a pleasure and all work well done and very likely my comrades if I may so call them like their jobs. For myself I am mildly tolerated about the editorial rooms as one who is there and to be made the best of. I am permitted freely to express my opinions on current topics but I think the office boy who brings in visitors cards to us would have quite as much weight in counsel. He may at least sometime become a newspaper man while I never can and it is only newspaper men who can take the right view of things. We recognize each other as good fellows and would be mutually helpful should occasion require but I made to feel that between me and them there is a great golf fixed. It is when I stray into the newsroom that I am at my worst. There I have absolutely no standing at all. I am simply sat upon. A pointer given by one of our sharp elevator boys would be jumped at and followed up but my opinion of what his news could not get even passing attention. The newspaper world has a cult of its own into which the profane may not lightly pass but mostly they are wholesome fellows and I like them and I also enjoy such work as I do in journalism while I'm permitted to do it recognizing that I am any day liable to be pitched forked out as I was pitchforked in. San Francisco and of limitations of truth telling by Edward F. Adams Mary Anning the fossil finder by child stickens. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Hawaii in December 2019. Mary Anning the fossil finder by child stickens. Everyone must have seen at least an engraving of that strange old world monster the plesosaurus of which Cuvee said when the skeleton was sent to him from lime ridges. Verily this is altogether the most monstrous animal that has yet been found amid the ruins of a former world. It had a lizard's head, a crocodile's teeth, a trunk and tail like an ordinary quadruped, a chameleon's ribs, a whale's paddles whilst his neck was of enormous length like a serpent tacked on to the body. This liacic first cousin of all lizards was discovered by a self-thought geologist, the daughter of a lime carpenter. Things in this world pretty much repeat themselves. Women's pursuits follow this law. In Lady Jane Gray's time hard study was fashionable. Mary Hutchinson and the Duchess of Newcastle are representatives of a race who were something far more than mere students. Then came a frivolous age, and then by and by science got to be popular. The lady's pocketbooks and annuals of some forty or fifty years ago almost invariably contain a few algebraic equations besides arithmetical problems like those which Longfellow's Cabinol sets his wife, and some chemical experiments to boot. This age produced a class of whom Mrs. Somerville is the type. We have now got round again to the frivolous epoch. It will be the men's fault if it lasts long, for women have consciences and feel that what their sons are to be depends mainly on them. Besides, their minds are naturally more active than those of the Lords of Creation, and if they now and then taboo everything intellectual it is because they find such conduct pleases. Geology does not seem a pursuit likely to attract women, yet we have known several who had picked up a very fair knowledge of its outlines. Some of them literally like Horace's slave, who had mastered the stoic philosophy while acting as pew opener in Sir Athenius Lecture Hall. There was a quaint old lady who used to go her midland circuit, calling on all persons and others supposed encouragers of science, carrying about with her boxes of specimens, and begging to be allowed to enlighten the national school children at so much ahead. Then there is Ms. Weatherall at Amesbury, quite worth a visit, her museum being a collection of flints in the oddest shapes, twisted like snakes, knotted like ropes, branching like coral, and her talk being about Stonehenge and the universal pre-Diluvian serpent warship of which she believes a remnant, and of noting the zealous affection with which she points out tracings of karnak and snake temples in India and America drawn by her father, the ex-ciceroan of the neighborhood. But Mary Anning was something more than a mere village celebrity, interesting to those who like to study character and are fond of seeing good stubborn English perseverance make way even when there is nothing in its favor. She acquired, if not in English, certainly a European reputation. Professor Owen thought so highly of her usefulness that he moved the authorities of the British Museum to grant her a pension of 40 pounds a year, which she enjoyed for some little time before her early death. Her father used to employ the church holidays in picking up along the beach pretty pebbles and shells, fossil and recent, and verteberries, and John Dory's bones, and ladies' fingers and other curies, as they were called. Lime and its neighbor Charmouth were then on the old coach road, and the passengers mostly liked to take away a specimen or two which they got either from Anning or from a Charmouth Fossiler called the Curie Man or Captain Curie from his trade in curiosities. In August 1800 little Mary Anning was taken to see some horse riding in the rack field. A thunderstorm came on, those in charge of her hurried her under a tree, a flash of lightning struck the party, killing two women on the spot and making the child insensible. A warm bath restored her to consciousness, and, strangely enough, she, who had been a very dull girl before, now grew up lively and intelligent. She soon got to accompany her father in his rambles. Fossilling, however, does not appear to have paid so well as steady carpentry, for the family went down the hill. The father died of consumption, and Mary, at ten years of age, was left very badly off. Just then a lady gave her half a crown for a very choice Ammonite. This encouraged her to take to collecting as a regular means of life. But she soon proved something more than a mere Fossiler. Gradually that truth dawned on her mind which our laureate has so beautifully expressed. Their roles to deep were grew the tree, O earth what change is now has seen. There where the long street roars has been the silence of the central sea. In 1811 she saw some bones sticking out of a cliff, and hammer in hand she traced the position of the whole creature, and then hired men to dig out for her the liest block in which it was embedded. Thus was brought to light the first ichthyosaurus, fish lizard, a monster some thirty feet long, withdraws nearly a fathom in length, and huge saucer eyes, some of which have been found so perfect that the petrified lenses, the sclerotica, of which it had thirteen coats, have been split off and used as magnifiers. People then called it a crocodile. Mr. Henley, the lord of the manor, boarded off the enterprising young girl for twenty-three pounds. It is now in the British Museum. Sir Everard Holm, writing in 1814, supported the crocodile theory. By and by, when more perfect paddles had been discovered, he said it must be a fish. Dr. Buckland, father of our lively young salmon hatcher, pronounced its breast bone to be that of a lizard. Dr. Ewer hit upon the happy name ichthyosaurus. Coney Bear and Delabesh and others had a turn at it, and at last all their drawings, specimens, and a great many fresh details, which Miss Anning had since brought to light, were sent over to Cuvee, and, after a ten-years siege, the Protean monster surrendered, and took the form under which he is at present known. Then came the Plasosaurus, which was the occasion of a sharper, though shorter, battle. Miss Anning's business, of course, was not to take sides, but to furnish the combatants with munitions of war, now a paddle, then a jaw, then a stomachful of half-digested fish. She had in a high degree that sort of intuition, without which it is hopeless for anyone to think of becoming a good collector of fossils. Here, as in everything else, field and chamber practice are widely different. You may be well up in the latest theories, and able to argue perfectly on the specimen when it is late before you, and yet you may totally lack that instinct which will lead your brother collector right to the place where the specimen is to be found, and will direct him in the following up the track, till from finding a fragment of a claw he succeeds in ferreting out the whole skeleton. Our heroine would have been able, for instance, out of fifteen nodules, all looking to you much of a muchness, to pick without hesitation the one which, being cleft with a dexterous blow, should show a perfect fish embedded in what was once soft clay. Senting out valuable specimens in this way, she enabled the savans to fix four kinds of ichthyosauri, besides two plesosauri, and the extraordinary pterodactyl, discovered in 1823, which made Cuvier retract what he had said of the lizard's cousin, and award the palm of strangeness to a monster-half vampire, half woodcock, with crocodiles' teeth along its tapering bill, and scale armour over its lizard-shaped body. If you have never seen the creature delineated, take Dr. Buckland's wonderful plate, Duria Antiquior, wherein the dragons of the prime which tear each other in the slime are shown swimming, flying, biting, fighting, that was their nature too, and aloft in the corner of the picture those things that look like Japanese kites are nature's first attempted anything in the bird line. Gruesome beasts they seem to be. Even if the pre-adamite man is ever proved to have been existing at that epoch, we cannot imagine his wife making pets of them, or his children liking to have them hung about the house in cages. They have such a family likeness to the evil spirits who beset Aeneas or Satan in an old illustrated Virgil or a paradise lost. One more discovery Miss Anning helped to bring about. The ladies' fingers were at last judged from their surroundings to be the bony processes of pre-chaotic cuttlefish. Belemnites they are now named because they are long and dart-like instead of flat like our present cuttlefish's inside. Some of them are so perfect that the ink-bag has been found and utilized. Dr. Buckland in his amusing Oxford lectures used to show drawings in sepia the colouring matter used in making which was countless thousands of years old. Of this liais itself in which all these creatures are discovered we must say a word. It is largely exported, especially to Holland. For liais lime has the property of hardening under water, and so is unvaluable in forming the dikes. Whereby, with facings of immense blocks of Finland granite, the Dutchmen try to keep the sea out of their polders or low-level meadows. Everybody knows that our geological strata, of which we can show a greater variety in this little island than much larger countries possess, do not run parallel with any of the coasts, but transversely from north-east to south-west. The chalk goes from Norfolk across to the Isle of Wight with the Wheeldon and London clay and other beds laid upon it, the oolite from the north riding down through Oxfordshire and westward to Bath, and so on of the rest. Then again the bands are not continuous and unbroken. Often one bed is washed away, denuded, along more than half its original course. This is especially the case with the liais. It is found at lime, it crops out again in a few other places, but is not largely represented anywhere else except in Leicestershire, where, at Barrow on Sore, fish and reptiles identical with those at lime might, till lately, have been bought for a fifth of the price which the Duke of Buckingham, who gave one hundred and twenty pounds for a very indifferent ichthyosaurus, and other amateurs have made fashionable at lime. Alas, o intending speculator, the Barrow man have now learned how to charge. But to return to Miss Anning. Dr. Karris, who went with the King of Saxony through England and Scotland in 1844, and wrote an account of his Majesty's journey, speaks of visiting her collection, and securing six feet of reptile for fifteen pounds. The doctor says, Wishing to preserve the name of this devoted servant of science, I made her write it in my pocket-book. She said, with unaffected pride as she gave me back the book, my name is well known throughout Europe. Better known indeed abroad than at home. In her own neighbourhood Miss Anning was far from being a prophetess. Those who had derided her when she began her researches, now turned and laughed at her as an uneducated, assuming person, who had made one good chance hit. Dr. Buckland and Professor Owen and others knew her worth, and valued her accordingly. But she met with little sympathy in her own town, and the highest tribute, which that magnificent guide-book, The Beauties of Lime Regis, can offer her, is to assure us that her death was, in a pecuniary point, a great loss to the place, as her presence attracted a large number of distinguished visitors. Quick returns are the thing at lime. We need not wonder that Miss Anning was chiefly valued as a bait for tourists, when we find that the museum is now entirely broken up, and the specimens returned to those who had lent them. No one had public spirit enough to take charge of a non-paying concern, when the early geology furor had calmed down, and people came to bathe, and not to chop rocks. You may now visit the old abode of Saurians, without being able to see a single tolerable specimen. Miss Anning rode sadly enough to a young girl in London. I beg your pardon for distrusting your friendship. The world has used me so unkindly, I fear it has made me suspicious of everyone. All this time she was dying of a malignant tumour in the breast, her flying to strong drinks and opium to seize the pain of this, her detracting townspeople do not fail to record to her discredit. She died in 1847, and the Geological Society, in concert with the vicar of the place, have lately put up a little memorial window to her in the church. A poor little thing, sir, one of those kaleidoscope windows, you know, said one of the faint praisers, who, having neglected her in life, seem to think it quite proper to decry all her belongings now she is gone. Grateful or ungrateful, the lying people live in a pretty country. It is a fine bracing walk over the hills from Bridport itself a quaint place, just a knot of houses by the beach, and all the rest of the town a mild and more inland, so inland that you don't see the sea from any part of it. Near Bridport ends the Chesill bank, that strange pebble beach which runs along from Portland, joining the island to the mainland. The pebbles grow gradually smaller as you move westward. At Portland they are as big as respectable potatoes. West of Bridport they are small peas. You think it is a sand bank till you put your hand down and feel. So regular is this decrease, that they say smugglers running ashore on blind nights tell their whereabouts by picking up a handful of gravel. The road to Lyme is very hilly. Even we, who live in the hillyest part of Somersetshire, groaned at the ups and downs, but what drivers these people are, how glad we were to be a foot, despite the fatigue. After our Somerset fashion of locking the wheel at every gentle slope to see those dorset men swing along down the hills without either drag or skidpan was a caution. Is it that the men are bolder or the horse is better trained? About the peak in Derbyshire they do the same thing, but in the Saxons paradise, the pleasant country, the Somerset, we always make as much fuss about a hill as a London bus does in going down by St Sepulcher's church. Lyme has a history of its own. It was great in Edward III's reign when the cob, the artificial harbour, was first built, and the feast of cob ale was founded. The ale, in the good old times, was the equivalent of a public dinner nowadays, generally for some good object, and this cob ale flourished till the Puritans put it down, along with stage plays and other unseemly sports. Lyme fitted out two good ships for the Amada. It was defended by Blake against Prince Morris. The defence of Lyme and that of Taunton are enough to immortalise our great republican admiral, even without his deeds of prowess by sea. As is often the case, the besieged sullied their cause by sad cruelty in the day of triumph. After the royalists had gone off, they salad out to pillage, and, finding a poor old Irish woman of the enemy, drove her through the streets to the seaside, knocked her on the head, slashed and hewed her body with their swords, and, having robbed her, cast her carcass into the sea, where it lay till consumed. The admiral's secretary says explicitly that the women of the town slew and pulled her in pieces. Whitelock writes much to the same effect. Some tell of a hawk's head stuck with nails having been prepared into which the old woman was put and so rolled into the sea. Such is civil war. Another said episode in the history of Lyme is the attempt of the Duke of Monmouth, the coward who skulked away from Sejmor, while the poor Somerset share rustics, whom he had deluded, charged and charged again, with sighs and billhooks, Kirk's lambs and Feversham's dragoons. Daniel Defoe was among Monmouth's men. The brother's hewling of Lyme were among the most pitied victims of the bloody assays. But amidst all the interest attaching to the quiet little fashionable watering place, not the least is that which centres round the name of Mary Anning. Her history shows what humble people may do if they have just purpose and courage enough towards promoting the cause of science. The inscription under her memorial window commemorates her usefulness in furthering the science of geology. It was not a science when she began to discover and so helped to make it one, and also her benevolence of heart and integrity of life. The carpenter's daughter has won a name for herself and has deserved to win it, end of Mary Anning by Charles Dickens from all the year round February 11th 1845.