 Martha Maxwell, taxidermist, at the Centennial Exposition, 1876, an excerpt from On the Plains and Among the Peaks, or How Mrs. Maxwell Made Her Natural History Collection, by Mary Dart, 1879. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Women's work? What does that mean? Can it be possible anyone wishes us to believe a woman did all this? Couldn't say. I'm pretty sure I shouldn't stretch my credulity so much it would ruin the article. I should think so. Why, one might think the Ark had just landed here. Buffaloes, bears, birds, wildcats, mice, and who but Noah or Augustus could name what else. There must be hundreds of these creatures. And the last speaker turned to me with the question, does that placard really mean to tell us a woman mounted all these animals? With an inclusive wave of a handsomely gloved hand. Yes, I replied. Instantly a dozen lips were parted and questions fell like leaves in volumbrosa upon my innocent ears. How could a woman do it? What did she do it for? Did she kill any of the animals? Well, I never. Can a body see her? What sort of a woman is she? Are you the one? It was my first day at the centennial, and I had volunteered to relieve Mrs. Maxwell by standing for an hour and answering questions behind the iron pailing that separated her natural history collection from the rest of the Kansas and Colorado building, one side of a wing of which it occupied. Then the enclosure was a miniature landscape representing a plain and a mountain side, apparently formed of rocks and crowned with evergreens. Down the rugged descent leaped a little stream of sparkling water, which expanded at its base into a tiny lake, edged with pebbles and fringed as was the brookside with growing grass and ferns. The water and the banks which confined it were peopled by aquatic creatures, fishes swimming in the lake, turtles sunning themselves on its half-submerged rocks, while beavers, musk rats, and waterfowl seemed at home upon its margin. Between the cascade and lakelet appeared the irregular, vine-fringed mouth of a cave. Its dark, moss-grown recesses soon lost from sight in shadowy gloom. Above it and upon the upper heights of the mountain side, suggesting the altitudes at which they are found, were grouped those animals that frequent the rocky mountains. Fierce bears, shy mountain sheep, savage mountain lions or pumas, and a multitude of smaller creatures, each in an attitude of lifelike action. On the limited space allowed to represent the plains that stretch eastward from that elevated chain were huge buffaloes, elk, antelope, and their native neighbors. The attitudes and surroundings of all were so artistic and unique as to form an attraction even among the many fascinations of the centuries-gathered productions. As the landscape was designed and made, the animals procured, stuffed, and arranged upon it by a woman, Mrs. M. A. Maxwell, the words woman's work, were printed on a card suspended near the cave. It was this which called forth the exclamation we first mentioned. From the opening of the exhibition gates in the morning, until darkness made sight-seeing impossible, thousands of people pushed and crowded and jammed and jostled each other against the railing of that mimic landscape. The idea of facing so many was at first not a little terrifying, but I fortified my courage with the thought of relieving Mrs. Maxwell, and that the American people are usually so polite the task could not be a very unpleasant one. Alas, I had never measured their capacity for asking questions. I had not finished assuring the large fat man in the white hat that I was by no means the person who had performed the work he saw before him. Then the tall woman in the linen duster, and the short one in the white finger-puffs, and the young one in the idiot fringe, and the old gentleman with the gold-headed cane, and the man with the blue-cotton umbrella, and the rough with the battered felt, and—I couldn't possibly begin to tell who else—all began at once to ask, Is she a young woman? Is she married? Where is she at? Did she kill all those animals? Did she kill them all? How did she do it? What did she do it with? Where did she get them? How did she stuff them? Did she kill them all? Did she kill them, Buffalo? I positively believe this question, with variations to suit the linguistic attainments of different speakers, to have been asked on an average every ten minutes through all the exhibition. I don't believe them critters were shot. I've looked them all over, and I can't see any holes. Did she poison them? Does she live in that cave? Is all this, with a gesture, made to represent the place and the cave she lived in in Colorado? Is game as thick as this all over the Rocky Mountains? If she's married, why ain't it called Mr. Maxwell's collection? How old is she? Is she good-looking? Has she any children? Is she a half-breed? Is she an Indian? And as the crowd surged by, another wave continued the inundation of like questions. I kept hold of my departing senses with an effort, and leaned forward to catch the words of some dear old Quaker ladies. They were asking in soft, confiding voices, will they be so kind as to tell us something of the history of this collection? Blessings on their sweet motherly faces, I would have attempted anything for them. Question of scientific proclivities echoed the request. People of all kinds, repeated it with an emphatic, do tell us who she is and how she did it. The promise was made, and though it is rather late, here is the fulfillment. In introducing Mrs. Maxwell to those who have never seen her, it may be well to premise that she is neither an Indian nor half-breed nor an Amazon, nor, despite the title of Colorado Huntress, which many newspapers have given her, one who, thirsting for notoriety, seized deadly weapons and went out on a crusade against the animal kingdom. On the contrary, she is a wee, modest, tender-hearted woman, lacking one inch of five feet in height and as shy as one of her own weasels. She simply has a passion, not unknown in the history of science, for all living creatures, an irresistible desire to study their habits and relations, together with a taste for the expression of beauty in form that would have made her a sculptor had she been placed in circumstances to have cultivated it. She began the practice of an art so unusual for a woman as taxidermy than in the following manner. After a residence of three years in Colorado during its earliest settlement, she was recalled to Wisconsin by the serious illness of her mother. She found her sisters whom she had left as little girls, young ladies, in school, the institution they were attending was a new one, with little in its possession save unlimited hope for the future. In this the girls owned large investments. They were charmed with their studies and enthusiastic admirers of their teachers, and Mrs. Maxwell was soon one with them in all their plans and interests. Dr. Hobart, the principal of their school, was very fond of the natural sciences, and was devoting no small amount of time and labor to the formation of a cabinet of natural history. He had the art of imparting his enthusiasm to his scholars, and many of them count as among the pleasantest recollections of their lives the memory of the long rambles over hills and beside streams in which they were invited to join him for the study of nature from his standpoint of loving admiration. It was in connection with the formation of this cabinet that Mrs. Maxwell made her debut as a taxidermist. We must have a department of zoology. Can't some of you young ladies who have more skillful fingers than I assist me in putting up some birds?" asked the professor one day. Her sisters declined the task, but recommended her as possessing the elements of touch and taste which they lacked. They recalled her account of an amusing attempt to learn taxidermy, which occurred just before her return home. During a temporary business visit of her husband to the east, she had purchased a ranch on the plains, a few miles below Denver. Need I explain that Coloradoans have appropriated a number of words from the Spanish, which seem more appropriate to that country than their English synonyms? Ranch is one of them, and means any kind of a farm. The one in question was a wholly unimproved portion of the plains, its only trace of human occupancy, being a mud-and-pole cabin. It was before the days of any government organization of that region, and the way in which such property was obtained was by putting up something that, by common consent, could be called a house, and in the expressive dialect of the frontier, squatting. The one that squatted first had the right to sell or to continue squatting, and her purchase was of this right. Upon her husband's return they wished to leave the mines at central, where they had been living, and cultivate her claim. Meantime, finding the cabin before mentioned empty, a German had concluded to perform a feat then common at the west, i.e., jump their claim. This meant to take and retain possession of it, unless forcibly removed. When they arrived they found him cosily ensconced under their shelter, surrounded by his camp equipage and a number of birds which he had mounted. They were the first unfinished specimens of taxidermy Mrs. Maxwell had ever seen, and she was fascinated with the idea of learning to preserve the strange creatures of that new land, and offered to pay almost any price if he would give her the necessary instruction. After extracting a promise that she would not practice the art in Denver, then a thriving mining camp, he agreed to give her the needful lessons at ten dollars apiece, beginning the next day. She came promptly at the appointed hour, full of the most enthusiastic anticipations, only to be told he had changed his mind, because she was a woman. As he expressed it, women is bester as men, mitt than hands in small verks. Then you know this business you makes the birds and beasts so quicker as I. You leave me no more verke at all. S is bester for me, I keeps that I knows, mitt mine self. It was in vain she assured him, she wished to learn only for her own gratification. He insisted it was vass bester for him to keep vat he knew mitt himself, prophetic tutan. Two weeks after this, a court of squatters, having in the meantime, decided that he was an unwarranted intruder upon those premises, a verdict which he treated with sublime indifference. He had an occasion given him to remember his would-be scholar by seeing his assertion of women's superiority in some things verified. Possession in those days was ten points in the law. Mrs. Maxwell had no idea of surrender, and keeping watch of the disputed cabin from a neighboring ranch made a raid upon it one day during his absence. With drawing the staple which held his padlock from the door frame, she entered, and carefully gathering up his earthly effects, removed them to a convenient point on the plains where she left them in a neat pile to await his further disposition, while she proceeded to adjust things to her own mind in the recovered domicile. Among his possessions were not the birds she had seen, those he had already sold, but others in an early stage of preparation. Of them she felt at liberty to make a critical examination, and gather an idea of the materials he used in stuffing them, if nothing more. Her sisters knew she would be only too glad to assist their teacher in his proposed experiment, so the collection was undertaken. There was no taxidermist in the place, but a gentleman who was fond of field sports, and had learned something of the principles of making skins, gave them the benefit of his knowledge, and they obtained what further information they could from the limited printed matter within their reach. Mrs. Maxwell's ingenuity supplying the rest. The professor procured the birds, and was to do the unpleasant work. She was to look on, suggest, and give the finishing touches. An amusing time they had mounting their first birds. After laboring long and faithfully over one which it was agreed they must save, in the vain endeavor to make its rumpled feathers lay down, a brilliant idea suggested itself. I'll tell you, said Mrs. Maxwell, we'll get a nest, and put the bird up fighting. Of course in that case it would be all bristled up, and its feathers standing every way. The nest was found, the bird perched on its edge, a few touches given it by her artistic fingers, and it had all the appearance of an enraged mother on the defensive. The next step was to procure a bird with which it could properly be fighting, and mount him in a suitable attitude. Just done the group was voted a complete success by the little circle interested in it. It is needless to say the collection so begun never grew to be at all large. The school did not receive pecuniary assistance that would allow of their going to any expense, and neither she nor the professor had a surplus of elegant leisure which they could donate to it, but the effort was successful in one thing. It showed to Mrs. Maxwell what a wonderful field for artistic effect taxidermy presented. Her mind, ever longing for methods of expression in forms of beauty, was captivated by it, and to be able to reproduce the characteristic grace and abandon of each animal's life became her dream, as truly as it was ever, Rosa Bonures. End of Martha Maxwell Taxidermist at the Centennial Exposition, 1876, an excerpt from On the Plains and Among the Peaks, or How Mrs. Maxwell Made Her Natural History Collection, by Mary Dart, 1879, Read for LibriVox by Sue Anderson. Northern Europe ended the Swiss Confederation in the 14th century, by Hans Putz, from the history of all nations from earliest times, volume 10, The Age of Renaissance, translated under the supervision of John Henry Wright. 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 Piotr Natter. Scandinavia, accepting Denmark during its temporary feudal dependence, felt the German influence comparatively little, in spite of its missionary and trading connections with Germany. Notwithstanding, the spirit of national independence, unaided, gained ground in the north. This spirit in turn emphasized the opposition between the Scandinavians and Germans, which led to a series of national struggles. Their outcome was the formation of a new state on the Baltic. The successes, which the Hanseatic fleets, manned with citizens, won over their northern enemies, are a fit counterpart of the victories of the English National Army over the French feudal host. Denmark had been made a limited monarchy. Constitutional conflicts were not long in breaking out. Christopher II, 1320-1326, wished to free himself from the capitulation, which had laid such restrictions on the royal power. But the nobility answered his attempt by an armed uprising. The king had to make his escape, and the regency fell to the mighty count Gerhard of Holstein and Sturman. By sacrificing the royal prerogatives still more, he bought the election for his 25-year-old nephew, Waldemar of Schleswig. At the same time he had the thief of Schleswig conferred on himself in perpetuity. The dissatisfaction caused by these measures prompted Christopher II to try to regain his throne. But he was defeated and retreated to his half-brother John, who ruled over Falster, Femern and other islands. There he died in 1332. His son Otto lost his life in trying to reconquer his paternal kingdom. As Waldemar was not strong enough to maintain his position, he voluntarily abdicated. And the youngest son of Christopher II, Waldemar IV, 1340-1376, was elected king. Denmark recovered and grew new strength under him. First of all Waldemar established peace within the realm by simply giving up all the contested districts which he was unable to hold. After five years of preparation the king showed his real nature. He conquered the island of Funen, while its lord, Count Henry of Holstein, was seeking adventure in the service of England and Sweden. Gradually Waldemar gathered in the alienated estates and became the second founder of Denmark. He enlisted his people for winning back the southern districts of Sweden by granting them the Charter of Kallundborg in 1360. Herein he renounced absolute sovereignty, restored the old rights and privileges of the estates and promised to call regular diets. With the aid of the estates the king then conquered Skania, Holland and Blekingen in the south of Sweden. His kingdom had its original extent again. This set both king and people against the maritime and commercial sway which Germany held over Denmark and Sweden by means of the Hanseatic League. To damage Sweden and to crush the power of the League in the Baltic at the same time Waldemar suddenly fell upon both in the summer of 1361. His fleet first conquered the island of Oland, then he landed near Visby, on Gotland. The strong fortifications of Visby would doubtless have withstood the siege if it had awaited the reinforcements of the Hanseatic League. But the inhabitants of the town were too much embittered by Waldemar's breach of peace. Overestimating their strength they made a sally to try a pitched battle with the aid of the Swedish peasantry. Waldemar however defeated them on July 27th and the city had to capitulate. A part of its walls were raised and Waldemar entered in triumph. The Danes seized the rich booty stored in the churches and monasteries of Visby. But otherwise the king spared the city and even confirmed its privileges. He put it on a level with the Danish cities in the hope of henceforth drawing the large profits which had flowed to Sweden and of making the Hanseatic League more serviceable. But here the king was mistaken, for the frightened German merchants no longer felt safe on the island. They deserted Visby, which became depopulated and fell into ruins. Danzig henceforth became the chief staple of the northern Hanseatic trade. Waldemar's attack upon Visby had unfortunate results for Denmark itself. Before the League was eager for revenge, as was Sweden, which was the chief sufferer. Norway, which was united with Sweden under the rule of Magnus II, also joined the alliance against Denmark. This found another member in Count Henry of Holstein, who wished to regain Fünen. The direction of the common war lay in the hands of Lübeck. Led by the mayor of Lübeck, Hans Wittenberg, the mighty Hanseatic fleet attacked Copenhagen in the summer of 1362, took the city, and plundered it. But the fleet was badly repulsed of Skania. The attack on Helsingborg also failed. A truce made in 1363 was prolonged to 1367. It left Gotland in the hands of the Danes. Meanwhile, Waldemar's growing despotism aroused the nobility against him. Also the Hanseatic merchants had constant cause for complaints. The Danes restricted their trade in every way. To avert commercial ruin, the League had to take to arms again. At a meeting in Cologne in November 1367, the merchants decided on war against Denmark. Only Hakon, the new king of Norway, stood by Waldemar, who was his father-in-law. The Count of Holstein and most of the princes on the Baltic joined the cities. Duke Albert of Mecklenburg, the nephew and successor of the deposed Swedish king Magnus, renewed his alliance with the towns in order to regain Skania and Gotland. Denmark could not withstand such odds. When he recognized this, Waldemar went abroad, and thus forfeited the esteem of his people. In the summer of 1368 the Hanseatic fleet plundered the coasts of Norway and Denmark almost unhindered. Sweden conquered Skania. The next year the Danish Council of State decided on peace, regardless of the king's absence. The parties signed it at Straslund on May 24, 1370. This peace marks the zenith of the power of the Hanseatic League. Henceforth its word was law in the north. The League was to draw the income from the royal estates in Skania for fifteen years. It retained as pledges the fortresses of Helsingborg, Malmo, Skarnel and Falsterbo, where it was to have garrisons for the same number of years. Its influence on the internal affairs of Denmark was the most important again. The League won a share in the royal election. For in case of Waldemar's abdication or death, the rule of his successor was to be conditioned on his recognition by the Hanseatic merchants. There was nothing for Waldemar but to buy his return to the throne by submitting to these humiliating conditions. When he died in 1375, without male issue, the Danish princes elected Olaf, the son of his daughter Margaret, by the Norwegian king Hakkon. But they diminished the royal prerogatives still more by the capitulation which they forced on the minor king. The Hanseatic League confirmed everything. The regent, Margaret, had a hard task. The extension of her regency to Norway on Hakkon's death in 1380 did not improve her position. While the uncontrollable nobility usurped the crown domains, the progeny of Gerhard of Holstein brought about their recognition as hereditary feudal lords of Schleswig. In return, however, they granted the regent and king firm support against the native opposition. Thus it came that Margaret gradually found a firm footing and increasing recognition for her useful activity. Accordingly, when the young king died in 1386, the magnates of Denmark called the regent to the throne. The Norwegians followed suit. This event made a great impression in Sweden, where Margaret's nephew, Albert of Mecklenburg, had forfeited all his esteem. A strong party arose to set Margaret on the Swedish throne also. It deposed Albert, who was soon in the power of the enemy, together with his sons. The Stockholm, with its large population of German merchants, still opposed Margaret. The dukes of Mecklenburg sent out daring seafarers from Rostock and Wismar, who were to bring supplies to the city and were consequently called victualing brothers. Using the favorable opportunity, they settled on Gotland. Thence they went on the piratical cruises, from which the Hanseatic League suffered much. In its own interest, the League brought about a compromise in 1395. The rest of Mecklenburg and his sons regained their freedom, in return for which the king renounced the Swedish crown. This made the union of the three Scandinavian kingdoms a fact. But it rested only on the person of Queen Margaret, and lacked every constitutional basis for the future. At her accession in Norway, her great-nephew, Eric of Farder Pomerania, had been appointed her successor. For him the queen wished to secure the accession in her other two kingdoms. The estates of the three kingdoms accepted her plan in 1396. Eric was solemnly crowned at Kalmar in 1397, in the presence of the magnates of the three realms. With these Margaret agreed upon the union of Kalmar. According to its terms, the three kingdoms, while retaining their own constitutions, judiciary, and legislatures, were henceforth to live in peace and friendship. They were to oppose all external foes in unison, and be ruled by one king whom the estates were to choose from the house of Eric of Pomerania, according to Primogenitur. Now, from the first, the United Kingdom contained the seeds of disruption, because it was conditional on a royal election which barred the way to the attainment of a better and more independent position. The greatest gain fell once more to the Hanseatic League. For all its privileges with regard to filling the Danish throne were extended to the other kingdoms by the compact of union, which made all the treaties made by any member binding on all the members of the United Kingdom. Naturally, the League recognized the union of Kalmar, yet the old conflicts still continued to break out in the north. The victualing brothers became the scourge of the Baltic trade. They claimed part ownership in Gothland. On the strength of the order, Albert of Mecklenburg had once given them to provision the besieged city of Stockholm. Finally, the Teutonic Order intervened by buying out Albert's claims and rooting out the victualing brothers. The order then took provisional possession of the island. A war of several of the northern Hanseatic cities against Novgorod was terminated in 1392. While the Hanseatic League was thus spreading the German power in the north, territorial and dynastic changes were occurring in the western Slav countries which were to bring Germany heavy losses. Since Russia had fallen under the Mongolian yoke and Bohemia had become a seat of German culture under Charles IV, the conflict between the Slavs and Germans lay chiefly in the Polish principalities which had split off from the kingdom of Poland. At the beginning of the 14th century, Poland began to develop a threatening power in but a few decades. At that time, Wadyslaw IV Wokietek rested Krakow from Wenceslaus, king of Bohemia and Poland. Later he won back the other Polish districts on Dwarfe and Wistula with the exception of Pomerilne. Lord of great and little Poland, he was crowned in Krakow in 1319 with the pope's consent as Wadyslaw I. 1319 to 1333. With him the House of the Piasts became the champion of Polish nationalism and grew to be a weighty factor in European politics by its opposition to Germany. He married his son Kazimier to the daughter of the Lithuanian prince Gedimin. The latter gave hope of embracing Christianity. The family union of Poland and Lithuania was the result in great shifting of political power in the east to the detriment of Germany and especially the Teutonic order. Notwithstanding, Wadyslaw's renewed attack on Pomerilne failed. Nor did the combined Polish-Lithuanian assault on Brandenburg meet with success. Moreover, the Silesian principalities of the Piasts freed themselves from the Polish king's overlordship. They put themselves under the protection of King John of Bohemia. The latter now took part in the wars of the Teutonic order against Poland and Lithuania, burning and ravaging far into their interior. The attempt of the order to get possession of Mazovia, Kuiavia and Dobrzyń led to a bitter struggle at the close of Wadyslaw's reign. The bloody battle of Płowcze in 1331 was a drawn one, but showed to what lengths the national hatred of the two peoples had already gone. At this time, to be sure, Poland was not strong enough to win in the national conflict. This appeared from the growing pressure from without and the marked internal decay at the end of Wadyslaw's reign. The state required strengthening within. The appreciation of this is the great merit of King Kazimir, whom his thankful people called the great. He reigned from 1333 to 1370. He was a lover of peace. Pius, though no slave of the church, and was free from the fanatical patriotism of his father. Besides, he had a clear insight into the needs of his country and was happy in the choice of his means. All of these qualities were well calculated to make Kazimir the first, the founder of a new state. He made a treaty with John of Bohemia in 1335 at Visegrad. John received the Silesian principalities of the Piasts and recognized Kazimir as king. The latter also made a truce with the Teutonic Order. When the Polish alliance with the Lithuanians came to an end and the Poles had every prospect of conquest opened by the extinction of the ruling house in Galicia, Poland and the Order finally made the peace of Kalisz in 1343. Poland gave up its claims to Kremlin, Michelał and Pomeriln, while the Order relinquished Kwiawia and Dobrzyn. Freed from his old enemy, Kazimir could add Galicia and Volinia to his kingdom in the following year. In organizing these two districts he emphasized the community of interests of the tribes united under his scepter. Thus he had two codes consisting of a mixture of customary and written law drawn up for great and little Poland. The king established a royal supreme court at Kraków, the decisions of which guaranteed a uniform development of national law. In like manner Kazimir devoted himself to establishing the legal status of the many German settlements in his kingdom. He codified their law, which was generally that of the city of Magdeburg. He set up a supreme court for his German subjects, which did away with appeals to Magdeburg and freed Kazimir's kingdom from annoying foreign dependence. Furthermore the king showed great zeal in spreading the elements of a higher civilization among his people by attracting German immigrants and by furthering trade and commerce. This he did by providing for the safety of the highways and by making coins, weights and measures conform to a uniform standard. But Kazimir paid particular attention to the peasantry which the noble land owners oppressed severely. However even Kazimir the Great did not succeed in checking the baneful development of those social conditions which had always been the great economic sore of the country. While the great barons gradually rose to the rank of princes, the great mass of the lower nobility, the real fiber of the realm, sank to an inferior class. They made leagues and combated the high nobility and tried to augment their position by praying on the lower orders. The servitude of the peasantry thus became the curse of Poland, for it cut the largest part of the people off from every participation in the national life, thus depriving the latter of the one source which might have regenerated it. The Slav has never desired or been able to develop independently a civic life. The results in this field in Poland are in part the work of German settlers and in part a product of all sorts of artificial means which ceased to be efficient as soon as the artificial care was withdrawn. In spite therefore of good beginnings no extensive city life ever flourished in Poland. The peasants themselves had no possible way of becoming free or even half free. This condition of servitude gave rise to evils which undermined the Polish state to such an extent that it finally succumbed to a national catastrophe. The stimulating rule of Kazimierz appears on the intellectual side in his foundation of the University of Krakow in 1362. His sway seemed the more meritorious because the house of the Piasts became extinct in him and was replaced by foreign dynasties. The king designated his nephew Louis the great of Hungary as his successor. In 1355 the Polish magnates acknowledged him as air presumptive but with this reservation that a change in the succession be permissible if Kazimierz should still have legitimate issue. Louis too had to make concessions. He surrendered the right to levy new taxes, promised to be satisfied with the old royal income and to observe the laws and liberties of the kingdom. During a so-called progress the king and his train were no longer to live off the estates of the nobility and clergy free of charge. Furthermore the nobility was hence forth to receive pay for foreign military service, a measure which sadly restricted the royal power. After Kazimierz had died in 1370 Louis of Hungary received the crown in Krakow. But in 1374 he had to make further concessions to the magnates at Kassau which established the predominance of the nobility for the future. The privilege of bearing arms was restricted to the nobility. It alone was eligible to the higher offices of state and its estates were freed from all taxes and dues. Louis of Hungary consented to all the demands of the nobility so as to secure the succession to one of his daughters. The question of succession however proved the source of new disasters. For Louis who was often forced to leave the kingdom transferred the regency to his mother Elizabeth. Through her partiality to the Hungarians she drove the Polish vessels to open revolt. The citizens of the capital also rebelled and murdered the hated Hungarian counselors. The regent fled to Hungary. Mazovia revolted from Poland while robbery and feuds raged within. Nevertheless Louis continued to solicit the succession of his oldest daughter, Maria, who was married to Sigismund, son to the emperor Charles IV and margrave of Brandenburg. He had just won over the Polish magnates when he died in 1382. Immediately bitter dissension broke out. A large part of the nobility demanded of Maria above all that she should make Poland her home. They formed a confederacy to carry out their will. In reality they desired separation from Hungary as did a party in that country. Savage party conflicts ensued in consequence. Finally the queen widow Elizabeth of Hungary found means to win both parties. She advocated the succession of Hedwig, the younger daughter of Louis, to the Polish throne. After bitter party struggles, which brought civil war on some parts of the country, the parties reached an understanding on this basis. In the summer of 1384 Hedwig was crowned queen of Poland at Krakow. The ambitious and crafty Jagiello, grand duke of Lithuania, soon sued for the hand of the queen, who was only 13 years old. Besides the conversion of his people, he offered the consolidation of Lithuania and Poland. The great prospect which this opened to the Polish power in the east decided the clergy and nobility to accept Jagiello's proposal. Two years later he was married to Queen Hedwig. Early in 1386 the Lithuanian prince came with his brilliant escort to Krakow, where he received baptism at the hands of the Archbishop of Gneisen. Thereupon he was wedded to Hedwig and crowned king of Poland. The conversion of the Lithuania was still more external than that of Jagiello, who adopted the name of Władysław II. Christian manners and thought had a hard struggle to introduce a higher culture among his warlike race. Also the political connection between Poland and Lithuania remained loose at first, although both countries were on the same social and economic footing. But there was this difference that the Lithuanian peasant was a step more degraded than the Polish one. He was the slave of his lord, the Boyar, and had no existence in law, while his master was oppressed by the magnates of the land to whom he had to render personal services and paid use. As yet there was no city life in Lithuania. Foreigners alone carried on the trade and industries, especially German merchants, Russian immigrants, and thrifty Jews. Thus Lithuania was the immediate gainer by the Union, whereas the military force of Poland received a considerable increase of power. The Polish nobility exacted important concessions from its foreign royal house. Henceforth the principle was to obtain that all feudal thieves, dignities and offices, as well as all castles and lieutenancies, should be given only to Polish-born noblemen. The nobility was to be paid in future for military service even within the realm. Their immunity from taxation, like that of the clergy, was confirmed. The jurisdiction over their subjects was to be theirs exclusively, but every acre, which their serfs tilled, had to pay a rent of two groats to the king. Finally the magnates reserved the right to make every ensuing royal election conditional on terms of a similar nature. This measure made the Polish monarchy a prey to a demoralizing elective system which was to break up the constitution of the state. The nobles, now the true rulers of the land, took every precaution to keep down all those elements in the state which might subvert their position. In a special, they tried to coerce the cities and exclude them from participation in state affairs. This was a severe blow to the Germans, whom the Poles and the Lithuanians henceforth ruined on principle. Notwithstanding their unanimity in this regard, there was at first no lack of intestinal strife between the united peoples. But the ill success of his expedition against the Tartars forced Vitold, the Grand Duke of the Lithuanians, to give up the struggle and draw closer to Poland again. In 1401 a treaty was made which regulated the mutual relations of the two countries. According to its terms the Lithuanians formally recognized Władysław as their lord, while the Polish magnates swore always to defend and protect Lithuania. Vitold was to be Grand Duke of Lithuania for life. After his death the country should fall to the Polish crown. In case a change of rulers should occur before that event in Poland, the Polish magnates promised not to elect a king without the previous knowledge of the Grand Duke. It is a striking fact that here, as on other occasions, the nobles, not the king, represented the Polish state. Poland prospered in the reign of the First Jagiello. By winning back Galicia, reducing to dependence Volinia, Podolia, Moldavia and Bessarabia and subjugating the Ukraine, Poland became strong enough to regain its old districts to the west and south also. A Polish vassal, Duke Władysław of Oppelne, had mortgaged dobbling to the Teutonic Order. This was the source of tedious struggles. Finally, it led to a mighty collision which resulted in a national war between the Germans and Slavs and had a great influence on the development of northeastern Europe. When the conciliatory Queen Hedwig died in 1399, she advised her consort to strengthen his right to the Polish throne by marrying a piast. Władysław chose a grand daughter of Kazimir, the child of one of his legitimized natural daughters. This princess Anna Jagiello raised to the Polish throne in 1403. His future activity lay chiefly in his conflict with the Teutonic Order in Prussia. Thus, he organized the national opposition between the Germans and Slavs. The remarkable state of the Teutonic Order in Prussia reached its zenith territorially and politically by the conquest of Pomerle and the removal of its chief seat from Venice to Marienburg. Since the beginning of the 14th century the Prussian cities had become very prosperous through their trade with Poland, the Baltic provinces and Denmark. The chief cities of the Order lands were Thorn, Elbing and Königsberg, but these were all outstripped by Danzig, which after the fall of Visby became the Emporium of the North and one of its most beautiful cities. The Order gave its cities full liberty and older relations abroad, so that they were almost independent. By becoming members of the Hanseatic League, they enjoyed the commercial privileges which it had in England, Scandinavia and Russia. To be sure, the two-folded allegiance of the cities led to conflicts at home, which gradually overcast the friendly relations between the lords of the land and their subjects. That was especially the case since the Order as such took part in the trade and experienced the inconvenient competition of its cities. Originally, the Order had been content with having its own needs satisfied as profitably as possible, but its mercantile activity soon overstepped these bounds. Thus, the office of the chief steward of the Order was gradually expanded into that of the superintendent of its wholesale trade, under whose direction the domestic and foreign agents attended to the purchase and sales of the Order. Its increasing trade gave its subjects cause for loud complain. This change from a crusading to a mercantile order took place towards the close of the 14th century. It was brought about partly by the change which the Christianization of Lithuania and its consolidation with Poland had wrought in the political status of the Order. Nor was the independent position which the Teutonic Knights took in the ecclesiastical political conflicts of the 14th century without influence on the change of the nature of their Order. In contradistinction to the Templars and the Knights of Saint John it had remained true to its national spirits. In the great conflict between Louis de Bavarian and John the 22nd and his successors, the Order had taken the part of the King and stopped paying the Peter's pens to the Papacy. In its renewed conflict with Poland about Pomeraine, the Church openly favored the latter. It even went so far as to excommunicate the Order. After the Peace of Calish, in 1343 the Papal Court continued to support the Poles while the Order had the favor of the Emperor who granted it Lithuania, Russia and other lands by charter. Of course that was of no practical value. It only incited its enemies more to overthrow the proud Teutonic Order. The Papacy set all sorts of intrigue against it on foot. The Avignonese Court even brought suit against the Order which however resulted in nothing. After all the body emerged from the deadly struggle more honored and powerful. For public opinion was with it, particularly as it still fulfilled its duty as a military order by harassing the heathen Lithuanians year after year. A closer examination however of the course and success of its campaigns would have shown even then that the Order was only fulfilling the letter of its crusading duty. For it neither furthered nor even attempted the conversion of the Lithuanians. The Prusso-Lithuanian Frontier was the scene of bloody carnage which only engendered increasing brutality on both sides. It is not surprising that the hounded Lithuanians bore deadly hatred to the Order. To avert destruction they rose in general war under the sons of Prince Gedimin. They wasted some land terribly but were defeated near Rudau in 1370 by the Marshal of the Order Henning Schindekopf. Thereafter they restricted themselves to the defensive. In 1379 the Order made a peace with Keistut the last surviving son of Gedimin which finally ensured length and quiet to the frontier. About this time Vindvik von Kniprod ruled over the Order in Marienburg. He combined in the happiest manner the duties of a knight of the Order with the obligations of the ruler. His special care was that his brethren might be able to do justice to the entirely altered claims which they were called upon to satisfy as the Officials or rather co-regions of the complex state. He introduced the study of theology and law. Moreover he watched carefully over the relaxed morals and discipline in the Order by instituting regular visitations of its individual conventional houses. Thus he made the castle of Marienburg not only the center of the Government but also the point around which the intellectual and moral life of the Order centered. Following the example of his most enlightened predecessors Vindvik paid special attention to agriculture. He relieved the peasantry of unpaid labor with the plow and cart. The cities of the Order rose to their highest pitch of prosperity. Their double allegiance to the Hanseatic League and the Order appears in their taking part in the League's war with Waldemar IV of Denmark while the Order as such refrained. However it proved the main bulwark against Scandinavian attacks on the German Baltic provinces. The salient feature of the Order's policy was its opposition to Poland. That gave it its importance in general politics. As the enemy of Poland it was indispensable to Charles IV. Its adherence to the Emperor in turn brought it into conflict with the Church which tried to break its proud ecclesiastical independence. The conversion of the Lithuanians by the Poles proved fatal to the Order because it made the fulfillment of its original object impossible. At the same time the Union of Lithuania and Poland under an inimical race entirely shifted the balance of power in the East while the simultaneous decline of the power of the House of Luxembourg under King Wenceslaus and the great schism of the Church deprived the Order of its mainstays. Like the Teutonic Order the Swiss Confederation which grew up in the course of the 14th century was a state within a state. In repeated conflicts with the Habsburgs the unassuming civil organism exercised an inspiring influence far beyond its bounds on account of its political and social principles. The army of Leopold of Austria had overrun the Swiss cantons because of their allegiance to Louis de Bavarian but the Swiss defeated the Austrians in the pass of Morgarten on November the 15th, 1315. Elated at their victory they renewed their Confederacy in the following December and had their old charter confirmed by King Louis soon after. The House of Habsburg had to recognize the freedom of the Confederation and give up all its remaining rights over the cantons. Lucerne also freed itself from this house by joining the Confederation in 1332 which united the four cantons around Lake Lucerne. In consequence of internal struggle which broke the rule of the prominent families and secured the craft guilds in a share of the town government the powerful city of Zürich joined the Swiss Confederation in 1351. In the next year Glarus and Zug followed. The accession of Bern in 1353 was of particular importance. The attempts of the Habsburgs to stay the growth of the Confederation had no success. Through the mediation of the Emperor Charles IV they had to conclude a truce in 1368 which did not however mitigate the old hostility. The internal dissensions continued chiefly with the clergy which still stood by Austria in great part. The outcome of these struggles was the so-called Priest Charter Pfaffenlief which was drawn up in 1370. This charter imposed the oath of allegiance to the Confederation on all within its bounds. It excluded all foreign jurisdictions saved the Episcopal one in matters of marriage and other spiritual cases. It likewise contained stringent regulations for the maintenance of the public peace within the bounds of the Confederate territory. The charter marks a decided step towards securing the absolute rule of the Swiss Confederation within its boundaries but it brought nearer the clash with Austria of which the immediate occasion was the support which Leopold III gave to Count Rudolf of Kiburg in his hostile measures against the Swiss. Unsupported and poorly armed the peasants utterly routed the Austrian knights on July 9th 1386 at Sempach, northwest of Lucerne. Leopold was left dead on the field. It was with this battle that legend connects the hardly authentic story of Arnold von Winkeldrid who made an opening in the enemy's ranks by grasping all the Austrian pikes he could reach and burying them in his own breast. The Swiss rushed on to victory over his dead body. After an insecure truce which the Swabian League had brought about the war broke out again in 1388. On April 9th the Swiss completely defeated the Austrians at Nafels. In the Treaty of Peace which followed the Austrians formally recognized the Swiss Confederation. End of Northern Europe and the Swiss Confederation in the 14th century. Novel, hand, shadows, dog and rabbit. From Novel, Hand, Shadows being a novel, unique and original series of 25 Silhouettes by William J. Hillier as presented by him for three consecutive months at the Great Paris Exhibition 1900. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Preface In the following pages I have endeavored to explain a number of entirely new effects in the fascinating art of shadow graffiti. The absence of any recent addition to the somewhat limited number of books on the subject entitles me to the belief that this little work will prove of interest and benefit to the profession in general and shadowists in particular William J. Hillier London 1900 Introduction The amusement of forming shadows or silhouettes is a very ancient one. It was we are led to believe by historians very much in vogue among the Chinese many centuries ago. It was however left for Frito a Spanish conjurer and fantasist to first produce same as a stage feat. And it is to him that the modern shadowist is primarily indebted for the stock figures such as a dog, rabbit, horse, old man, etc. Now always seen at exhibitions of shadow graffiti. To feliciant true way however the credit is unquestionably due for raising the hitherto almost childish pastime into an art. Anyone who may have had the pleasure of witnessing two ways performance well I am sure agree with me that shadow graffiti in his hands becomes a grand art. He invented amongst many clever figures the swan, dancer, elephant, fisherman, etc. and innumerable shadow panamines. It was not however so much in his novel figures his success was made as in his marvelous ability to make each and every little detail of same appear to be absolutely lifelike. True way was first imbued with the idea of becoming a shadowist after witnessing the performance of Fritzo before referred to in Belgium. He was not long in ascertaining that what he had witnessed was capable of improvement and after many months of tedious and patient exercise of his fingers to render them supple he succeeded in producing new figures which are each in their way little masterpieces. True way has up to the present time invented over 300 entirely new hand shadows. And although he has now retired on a large fortune his activity will not permit him to altogether discard and forget his inventive ability. The rassonde etre of this book is not to teach shadow graffiti in its elementary form as this has already been done by True way himself in his excellent little treatise on the subject but to present to the profession a few new and hitherto unpublished shadows. I would advise students to procure a portable electric lamp and screen from some reliable dealer in magical apparatus et cetera such as Mr. G. Ornham and company of Four Duke Street chairing Cross London WC as then all further inconvenience and bother caused by having a bad light and a shaky screen will be avoided. Nothing is so annoying as to find at the last moment that something has gone wrong with your light. Some recommend a settling gas but the time taken to get it to show a proper light will until vast improvements have been made effectually preclude its universal adoption at any rate by shadowists. The screen should be of as portable a nature as possible for drawing room work I simply carry a piece of linen three feet square with clips attached to each corner this sheet I suspend and fix between two ordinary folding screens usually obtainable in any drawing room and I find this arrangement especially if the sheet be slightly dampened answers admirably. Some performers who happen to be touring with cinematograph entertainments use the light for their exhibition and go down amongst the audience standing somewhere about a yard in front of the lens thereby making their silhouettes appear on the sheet on the stage even larger than life. One of the best shadowists of modern times Mr. David Devant adopts the above idea with great success in his entertainment at the Egyptian Hall London. The spectators in the immediate proximity of the performer being particularly interested in as much as they can see and appreciate the artist's great dexterity. Plenty of advice has been given from time to time as to the correct distance to stand between the light and the screen but this can only be accurately defined by experiment. It will often be found that change of expression can easily be obtained by slightly moving the hands from left to right or vice versa. To become a successful shadowist it is essential that the fingers should be extremely flexible. In fact more so than is necessary in any other art and each joint should be able to move quite independently. This can of course be acquired with constant practice. Dog and Rabbit The first silhouette to be described is that depicted in figure one. I am aware that both the rabbit and the dog have often been explained but here we have an amusing and clever combination. The rabbit is first of all shown. Then the dog appears looks round to see no one is about and promptly bites off an ear from the rabbit. Then the other ear the motion of eating being created by moving the little finger of right hand. The dog then apparently swallows the rabbit and undercover of this movement the left hand moves alongside the wrist of the right thereby making the throat of the dog appear to contain the rabbit. By moving the left hand up and down a lifelike motion of swallowing is imparted to the dog. An additional effect can be obtained by extending the little finger of right hand and pushing forward the second finger of left hand between third and fourth fingers of right. This gives the dog the appearance of having a tongue. And of novel hand shadows dog and rabbit from novel hand shadows being a novel unique and original series of 25 silhouettes by William J. Hillier as presented by him for three consecutive months at the Great Paris exhibition 1900 Read for LibriVox by Sue Anderson. Pantorinism by T. Lothrop Stoddard Reprint it from the American Political Science Review Volume 11 Number 1 February 1917 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. In practical politics the vital thing is not what men really are but what they think they are. The simple truth so often overlooked is actually of tremendous import. It gives the key to many a riddle otherwise insoluble. The European War is a striking case in point. That war is very generally regarded as being one of race. The idea certainly lends to the struggle much of its bitterness and uncompromising fury. And yet from the genuine racial standpoint it is nothing of the kind. Ethnologists have proved conclusively that apart from certain paleolithic survivals and ethnic intruders Europe is inhabited by only three stocks. One, the blonde long-headed Nordic race. Two, the brown round headed Alpine race. The brunette long-headed Mediterranean race. These races are so dispersed and intermingled that every European nation is built on at least two of these stocks while most are compounded of all three. Strictly speaking therefore the present European war is not a race war at all but a domestic struggle between closely knit blood relatives. Now all this is known to most well-educated Europeans and yet it has not made the slightest difference. The reason is that in spite of everything the Europeans believe that they fit into an entirely different race category. They think they belong to the Teutonic race the Latin race the Slav race or the Anglo-Saxon race. The fact that these so-called races simply do not exist but are really historical differentiations based on language and culture which cut sublimely a fourth genuine race lines. All that is quite beside the point. Your European may apprehend this intellectually but it will have no effect upon his conduct. In his heart of hearts he will still believe himself a Latin a Teuton an Anglo-Saxon or a Slav. For his blood race he will not stir for his thought race he will die. For the glory of the Doli-Chosopholic Nordic or the Brachy-Selpholic Alpine you will not prick his finger or wage a groat. For the triumph of the Teuton or the Slav he will give his last farthing and shed his heart's blood. In other words not what men really are but what they think they are. Now why all this why in contemporary Europe should thought race be all powerful while blood race is impenent. The reason is perfectly clear Modern Europe's great dynamic has been nationality till quite recent times nationality was a distinctly intensive concept connoting approximate identity of culture, language and historic past was the logical product of a still relatively narrow European outlook. Indeed it owed its very existence to the disappearance of a still narrow outlook which had contented itself with the regional, feudal and dialectic loyalties of the Middle Ages. But the first half of the 19th century saw a still further widening of the European outlook to a continental or even to a world horizon. At once the early concept of nationality ceased to satisfy. Nationality became extensive. It tended to embrace all those of kindred speech culture and historic tradition. Obviously a new terminology was required. The keyword was presently discovered race. Hence we get that whole series of race phrases. Pan-Germanism, Pan-Slavism, Pan-Engolism, Pan-Latinism and the rest. Of course these are not racial at all. They merely signify nationalism brought up to date. But the European peoples with all the fervor of the nationalist faith that is in them believe and proclaim them to be racial. And so far as practical politics is concerned they are racial and will so continue while the national dynamic endures. This new development of nationalism, the racial stage as we may call it, was at first confined to the older centers of European civilization. But with the spread of western ideas it presently appeared in the remotest and most unexpected quarters. Its advent in the Balkans quickly engendered those fanatical propagandists Pan-Hellenism, Pan-Servism, etc. Which turned that unhappy region first into a bare garden and latterly into a witchess Sabbath. Before the close of the last century nationalism had patently passed into Asia. The young Turk and the young Egyptian movements, the nationalist stirrings in Persia and India, and the Chinese revolution are unmistakable signs that Asia is in the throes of the first phase of national self-consciousness. But of late years numerous symptoms proclaim the fact that in Asia also the second or racial stage of nationalism has begun. This is strikingly illustrated by the recent course of events in the Muhammadan world. About a hundred years ago the Wahhabi revolt in Arabia inaugurated that vast political religious movement known as the Muhammadan revival. By the closing decades of the 19th century it had reached every corner of Islam while a simultaneous pressure from aggressive land-hungry Europe had given it a bitterly anti-European complexion. Hence close observers of Eastern affairs have decanted for many years on Pan-Islamism and have warned us of the appending Jihad or Holy War against the European West. And yet in 1914 under highly exciting provocation and extremely favorable circumstances the Jihad did not come off. Of course we are all familiar with the stock explanations for its non-appearance and doubtless these had their weight. But one reason though never mentioned probably had a great deal more to do with the Holy War fiasco than is generally supposed the dissolving effect of the new spirit of Asiatic nationalism upon Islamic unity. Just as the Gospel of nationality which came to Europe with the Renaissance disrupted the Catholic unity of the Middle Ages and made crusades impossible. So that same Gospel today seems to be relaxing the bonds of Islamic solidarity and transforming the true believers into patriots first and Muslims afterward. This tendency is especially evident in the recent relations of the two chief Mohammedan peoples of the Ottoman Empire the Turks and the Arabs. Arab and Turk have never gotten on really well together. Their racial temperaments were too incompatible for that. Still in former times their common Islamic faith and their common contempt and hatred of the infidel united them against the Christian world whatever the state of their domestic relations. But throughout the present century ominous signs of disruption have been in evidence. In the two portions of the Arab world most open to Western ideas Syria and Egypt Arab nationalist movements appeared years ago and 11 has since been permeating the whole Arab world. In great part these movements have been specifically directed against the menace of European domination but they are also self-consciously nationalistic and as such hostile to the ruling Turk. Indeed within the last few years Arab nationalism seems to have reached the racial stage. Many of its leaders today dream of a great Arab empire embracing not only the ethnically Arab Peninsula homeland Syria Mesopotamia and Egypt but also all the Arabized races of North Africa and the Sudan. With such a temper it is not surprising that the call to the Holy War from Turkish Istanbul in November 1914 found the Arab world half-hearted or cold. It also does much to explain the recent revolt of the Sharif of Mecca which today threatens Turkish rule throughout Arabia with complete destruction. This rapid growth of Arab national consciousness was undoubtedly stimulated by the hostile reaction of the corresponding development which had been taking place in the Turkish world. We all remember the startling growth of young Turkey the amazing transformation of the Ottomans from old-fashioned Moslems docilely submissive to the absolute Sultan Caleb into self-conscious patriots eager to replace the theocratic despotism of Abdul Hamid by an Ottoman national state with Turkish language and culture supreme over and absorbing all the rest. That is merely the familiar nationalist first stage. But we should also note that Turkish nationalism like Arab nationalism has already reached the second or racial stage of development. In fact, its growth has here been truly extraordinary. It has already passed the bounds of what might strictly be termed Pan-Turkism and has now arrived the truly momentous concept known as Pan-Turkism. The Ottoman Turks do not stand racially alone in the world. Right across northern Europe and Asia from the Baltic to the Pacific and from the Mediterranean to the Arctic Ocean there stretches a vast band of peoples to whom ethnologists have assigned the name of Uralo-Auteic race but who are more generally termed Turanians. This group embraces the most widely scattered folk the Ottoman Turks of Constantinople and Anatolia the Turkomans of Central Asia and Persia the Tartars of South Russia and Transcaucasia the Magyars of Hungary the Finns of Finland in the Baltic provinces the Aboriginal tribes of Siberia and even the distant Mongols and Manchus. Diverse though they are in culture, tradition and even physical appearance these peoples nevertheless possess certain well-marked traits in common their languages are all similar and what is of even more import their physical and mental makeup displays undoubted affinities they're all noted for great physical vitality combined with unusual toughness of nerve fibers though somewhat deficient and imagination and creative artistic sense they are richly endowed with patience, tenacity and dogged energy most of them have displayed extraordinary military capacity together with a no less remarkable aptitude for the masterful handling of subject peoples the Turanians have certainly been the greatest conquerors and empire builders that the world has ever seen Attila and his Huns Arpad and his Magyars Isperich and his Bulgars Alp Urslan and his Seilux Ertogrul and his Ahamans Genghis Khan and Tammerling with their inflexible Mongol hordes Babur and India Even Kabulai Khan and Nurakchu in Far of Kathay the type is ever the same the hoof print of the Turanian man on horseback is stamped deep all over the palpthin set of history glorious or sinister according to the point of view Turans is certainly a wonderous past of course one may query whether these diverse peoples really do form one genuine race but as we have already seen that makes no practical difference possessed of kindred tongues in temperaments endowed with such a wealth of soul stirring tradition it would suffice for them to think themselves racially one to form a nationalistic dynamic of truly appalling potency until about a generation ago it is true no signs of such a movement were visible not only were distant stocks like Magars and Finns quite unaware of any common Turanian bond but even obvious kinds like Turks and Turkomans regarded one another with almost complete indifference it was the labors of western ethnologists that first cleared away the myths which enshrouded Turan particularly this was true of the Hungarian ethnological school the Magars though deeply permeated by western culture have never forgotten their Asiatic origin and have always felt rather lonely in the midst of Erihan Europe this feeling was naturally intensified by the nationalist ways which swept over Europe during the 19th century emphasizing as these did ethnic differences and sharpening existing lines of cleavage between the peoples accordingly the Magars instinctively turned to seek out their long lost kindred and the researchers of Hungarian scholars particularly those of the great orientalist Arminius van Beren presently disclosed the unexpected vastness of the Turanian world this soon acquired a much more than local significance the works of van Beren and his colleagues spread far and wide through Turan and were there devoured by receptive minds already stirring to the obscure breath of a new time normality of the Turanian movement is shown by its simultaneous appearance at such widely sundered points as Turkish Constantinople and the Tartar centers along the Russian Volga indeed if anything the Levin began its working on the Volga sooner than on the Bosphorus this Tartar revival though almost unknown to the West is one of the most extraordinary phenomena in all nationalist history these Russian Tartars once lords of the land though long since fallen from their high estate have never vanished in the Slav ocean although many of them have been 400 years under Muscovy rule they have stubbornly maintained their religious racial and cultural identity clustered thickly along the Volga especially at Kazan and Astrakhan retaining much of the Crimea and forming a considerable minority in Transcaucasia the Tartars constitute distinct enclaves in the Slav empire widely scattered but indomitable the first sturrings of national self-consciousness among the Russian Tartars appeared as far back as 1895 and from then on the movement grew with astonishing rapidity the removal of governmental restrictions at the time of the Russian Revolution of 1904 was followed by a regular literary fluorescence streams of books and pamphlets numerous newspapers in a solid periodical press all attested to vigor and fecundity of the Tartar revival the high economic level of the Russian Tartars assure the material sinews of war the Tartar oil millionaires of Baku here played a conspicuous role freely opening their capacious purses for the good of the cause the Russian Tartars also showed distinct political ability and soon gained the confidence of their Turkoman cousins in Russian Central Asia the first Duma showed a large Mohammedan group so enterprising in spirit and so skillfully led that Russian public opinion became genuinely uneasy and Tartar influence in Russian parliamentary life was thereafter diminished by summary curtailments of Mohammedan representation although the Mohammedans of Transcorkasia have displayed unmistakable signs of fanaticism the Tartars of European Russia scattered in clays as they are amid the vest bulk of Muscovite Slavism carefully refrained from any overt exhibition of separatism or disloyalty nevertheless many earnest spirits have gone forth to seek a freer and more fruitful field of labor in Turkish Istanbul where the Russian Tartars have played a great part in the Pan-Turanian development within the Ottoman Empire fact it was a vulgar Tartar Yusuf by Akşora Ugru who was the real founder of the first Pan-Turanian circle at Constantinople up to the young Turk revolution of 1908 Pan-Turanism was somewhat under a cloud at Istanbul Abdul Hamid had an instinctive aversion to all national movements he pinned his faith on Pan Islamism and furthermore was much under Arab influence accordingly the Pan-Turanians were not actually persecuted were decidedly out of favor with the advent of young Turk nationalism to power however all was changed the atomizing leaders of the committee of union and progress listened eagerly to Pan-Turanism preaching and it is safe to say that all the chief man among the young Turks had been for years affiliated with the Pan-Turanians the present Pan-Turanian leader is the able publicist Ahmed by Agahiv also be it noted a Russian Tartar his well-edited organ Turk Yurdu Turkish home penetrates to every corner of the Turkotartar world and exercises great influence on the development of its public opinion although leaders like Ahmed by Agahiv have long seen the entire Taranian world from Finland to Manchuria as a potential whole their practical efforts were until very recently confined to the closely related Turkotartar segment that is to the Ottomans of Turkey the Tartars of Russia and the Turkomans of Central Asia and Persia since all these people were also Mohammedans it follows that this propaganda had a religious as well as racial complexion trending indeed in many respects toward Pan Islamism in fact even disregarding the religious factor when they say that though Pan-Turanian in theory the movement was at that time in practice a little more than Pan-Turkism it was the second Balkan war of 1913 which really precipitated full-fledged Pan-Turanism that war brought a new recruit into the Taranian camp Bulgaria the Bulgarians have until yesterday been classed as Slavs they are in reality a mixed origin the primitive Bulgars were a Taranian tribe who a way back in the Dark Ages conquered the unorganized Slavic hordes recently migrated south of the Danube and settled down as masters unlike their cousins the Magyars these old Bulgarians were absorbed by their more numerous subjects losing their speech and racial identity but like most Taranian stocks the blood was a potent one for they left behind them far more than their name the resulting malgum was stamped with marked Taranian physical and mental characteristics which set the new Bulgarians quite a part in the category of Slav peoples this fact came out strongly after the Russia-Turkish war of 1877 Russia having freed the Bulgars from the Turkish yoke expected them to be a mere Pan-Slav outpost the docile exponent of Russia's Balkan will Russia was soon bitterly undeceived from the very hour of their liberation the Bulgarians displayed an intense and aggressive particularism and showed themselves emphatically Bulgars first in Slavs a long way afterwards when sharply reminded of their duty to Pan-Slavism the Bulgarians answered partly that they did not care a fig for Pan-Slavism except insofar as Pan-Slavism coincided with Bulgarian national interest there upon Russia deeply incensed transferred her favor to the Serbs the people with a strong Slav consciousness and hence amenable to Russia's Pan-Slav policy but this merely widened the breach with the Bulgars who now turned away from their former protector and sought support from Russia's Balkan rival Austria-Hungary the ulcerating humiliations of the Second Balkan War at the hands of the hated Serbs with Russia's undisguised approval snapped the last links with the historic past and threw the Bulgars full into the arms of the Teutonic powers and their Turkish ally the manner of Bulgaria's entrance into the present war was thus practically a foregone conclusion but this chapter of European politics had in it much more than mere political significance call us Huns, Turks, Tartars but not Slavs exclaimed a Bulgarian leader immediately after the signing of the disastrous Treaty of Bucharest the subsequent course of events proved that this trenchant phrase was a true reflection of Bulgarian public opinion a few months later came the reconciliation with the hereditary Turkish enemy this was not the abnormal Volte Fasse which might at first sight appear even before the Balkan wars many young Turks had favorably distinguished the Bulgars from the other Balkan peoples while pan-Turanism publicists had hailed this folk as Slavised Toranians the nightmare of Bucharest now brought the Bulgarians into a similar frame of mind what happened was in fact merely a shifting of balance in the national psychology hitherto latent Toranian tendencies had been submerged or inhibited by a dominant Slav consciousness now the scale swung the other way and emphasis began to be laid on Toranism it is apparently not too much to say that since their entrance into the European War the Bulgars have formally renounced Slavism and have embraced the Toranian ethnic gospel this fraternization with their southern neighbors was powerfully aided by the influence of another Toranian people to the north the Magyars as we have seen had long been conscious of their kinship with the Turks the evil memories of Ottoman conquest had quite died away and throughout the 19th century Magyar opinion was increasingly Turcofile after the suppression of the Hungarian Revolution in 1849 it was to Turkey that Louis Kassuth and the other Hungarian leaders fled and the warm welcome and resolute protection there accorded them greatly strengthened the ties of sympathy between the two peoples during the Russia-Turkish War of 1877 Hungary was violently pro-Turkish and a magnificent sort of honor then presented by the Magyars to the Sultan aroused comment throughout Europe the labors of Magyar publicists and statement have had a great deal to do with the present Turco-Bulgar intimacy the political potentialities of the rapprochement between these three contiguous peoples are truly extraordinary should this rapprochement prove lasting we shall witness the erection of a solid block stretching from the middle Danube to Mesopotamia bound together by that most solid of bonds racial self-consciousness and there is no inherent reason why it should not be lasting the group has a common deadly enemy Russia whose triumph would doom all of its members to virtual subjugation should the present plans for a great central European sovereign mature the tie of self-preservation will be powerfully supplemented by that of economic interdependence and then what a revolution and traditional ideas in old political preconceptions imagine the effects of Bulgarians ceasing to think of themselves as Slavs Nagyars as Western Europeans Turks as primarily true believers but instead all three considering themselves fellow Turanians to Russia especially the prospect is full of ill omen the Volga region and the Crimea are as we have seen dotted with tartar enclaves nearly five millions strong in Transcaucasia are two millions more in Russian Central Asia not to mention Chinese Turkestan stands a compact block of seven millions fanatical Turkomans all these peoples are today consciously stirring to the 11th of Pan-Turbanism but Russia contains many other Turanian elements the Finns of Finland and the Baltic provinces the unassimilated Finnish tribes of the Russian north the natives of Siberia and in the far east the Mongols and the Manchus indeed the Russian people itself is largely an ethnic compost sprung from the union of Slav colonists with indigenous Finnish peoples in fact from a certain point of view the whole Russian empire may be conceived as a Slav alluvium laid with varying thickness over a Turanian subsoil granting for the sake of argument that the Finnish and Mongol elements will never awaken to a Turanian race consciousness the presence in both Europe and Asiatic Russia so many Turko-Tartar Turanian irredenta may yet raise new political and ethnic problems which will tax Russian statesmen to the full Pan-Turanian thinkers have assuredly evolved a body of doctrine which should appeal powerfully to Turanian psychology their hopes for the race future are certainly grandiose enough emphasizing as they do the great virility and nerve force everywhere patent in Turanian stocks these men see in Turan the dominant race of the morrow zealous students of western evolutionism and ethnology they have evolved their own special theory of race grandeur and decadence according to Pan-Turanian teaching the historic peoples of southern Asia Persians Egyptians and Hindus are hopelessly degenerate as for the Europeans they have recently passed their epigee and exhausted by the consuming fires of modern industrialism are already entering upon their decline it is the Turanians with their inherent virility and steady nerves unspoiled by the wear and tear of western civilization who must be the great dynamic of the future some Pan-Turanian thinkers go so far as to proclaim that it is the sacred mission of their race to revitalize a whole sentient worn out world by the saving infusion of regenerative Turanian blood now most westerners will probably see in all this merely the wild figments of a disordered imagination and of course Pan Turanism may vanish like the mirage of the desert leaving not a rack behind but considered soberly and dispassionately in the light of historic precedent dare anyone assert dogmatically that it will thus end before Muhammad the countless tribes of Arabia notoriously the jackals of the east had vegetated from time immemorial in an arctic obscurity kindled by Islam's Promethean spark they swept like a roaring forest fire over half the earth their immense still living saw in youth a Germany so rent by particularistic strife that they would have deemed a mad man him who should then have foretold the mighty Germany of 1914 stung to action by the most grandiose vision of power and glory since imperial Rome others may object that whatever Pan Turanism's latent possibilities they are wholly dependent upon the outcome of the present war but as even this is certainty for some movements the ringing of disasters hammer upon the anvil of humiliation is the very thing needed to forge them into temperate steel it was the Napoleonic despotism which engendered modern Germany it was the Austrian white coat who fashioned modern Italy it is the present war which is apparently welding into being a genuine British empire Turan's destiny is today close veiled from the eyes of men but so tremendous are its latent potencies that they will deserve our close consideration one thing is sure even a partial realization of those grandiose dreams would shake the fabric of the present world End of Pan Turanism by T. Lothrop Stotter The Passing of a Princess by Ella Wheeler Wilcox this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org The Passing of a Princess There is one name which, when spoken in Honolulu or indeed in any part of the Hawaiian islands brings a tender look to every face a look which is like the reverent lifting of a hat that name is Kailani Born to wealth and station reared with every advantage beautiful and beloved Princess Kailani passed early to the royal mausoleum to sleep with her ancestors I walked one day in wide spreading grounds under the shadow of lordly palms where her childhood was spent Chopa Covines flowering in audacious colors flung bold arms about unresisting trees and made a riot of strange bloom Splendid Peacocks swept down the spacious paths beside the handsome white-haired host as he came to greet his guests Soft fountains played and refreshed the air with cooling sounds The month was February the weather July We sat under a wonderful banyan tree made historic by the pen of Robert Louis Stevenson Later we siftee in a great room filled with portraits of kings, queens, princes and princesses, rulers and potentates all interesting from a historical point of view but one oft repeated from childhood to young womanhood was of peculiar and pathetic interest Kaolani, daughter of our stately host Governor Clegghorn and his wife Lique Lique, sister to the late king Kaolani was heir apparent to the throne of Hawaii and she had grown from childhood to young womanhood thinking of herself as a future queen Governor Clegghorn had made his magnificent estate what he deemed a suitable home for coming queen and he had sent Kaolani to Scotland and England and France to educate her as befitted her position While she was abroad the great change came to the Hawaiian islands which turned them from a kingdom to a territory of the United States Kaolani was only a young girl she was not a philosopher or a deep student of altruistic forms of government and so the blow fell upon her with severity It destroyed her dearest hope her most cherished ambition and one year after annexation she died Everybody in Honolulu and in the Hawaiian islands loved Princess Kaolani When she went away to Scotland to attend school Robert Louis Stevenson wrote in her album Fourth from her land to mine she goes The island made, the island rose Light of heart and bright of face The daughter of a double race Her islands here in southern sun shall mourn their Kaolani gone and I and her dear Banyan shade look vainly for my little maid but our Scots island far away shall glitter with unwanted day and cast for once their tempest's spy to smile in Kaolani's eye And to these pretty lines Mr. Stevenson appended this exquisite bit of prose more poetical than his poetry as always was his prose Written in April to Kaolani in the April of her age and at Waikiki within easy walks of Kaolani's Banyan When she comes to my land and her fathers and the rain beats upon the window as I fear it will let her look at this page it will be like a weed gathered and pressed at home and she will remember her islands and the shadow of the mighty tree and she will hear the peacocks screaming in the dusk and the wind blowing in the palms and she will think of her fathers sitting there alone That was written in 1889 and the father of Kaolani still sits there alone As we walked under the great Banyan tree and down the avenues bordered by wonderful palms and every species of tree and vine and flowering shrub known in the tropics Governor Kleghorn said softly I selected all these trees and arranged these grounds for Kaolani I wanted the domain to be a rest home for her and these walks to give her cool shade in her promenades But only visitors walk now where Kaolani's son-der-feet trod for a few brief years She died of rheumatism of the heart, her father said a year after the annexation of Hawaii You see, she had been educated with the idea and expectation of becoming queen She was the nearest in line and had been officially announced heir apparent It was hard for all Hawaiians to accept the passing of the monarchy even those who realized that it was inevitable and for the best It was particularly hard for Kaolani who had been reared with the expectation of becoming our queen It might really be said that she died of annexation her interest in life passed with the monarchy Everywhere were portraits of Kaolani She was beautiful as are almost all these daughters of a double race The Polynesian blood mingled with that of the English, Scotch, American or Irish produces a peculiarly attractive type of beauty and education and culture had added the refining charm to the young princess As we walked down the long avenues and out to the main thoroughfare followed by the haughty peacocks who seemed to want convincing proof that we were not loitering in the grounds A penetrating melancholy permeated the sunshine of the brilliant day and never did life speak more clearly of the transitory nature of happiness which is based on human ambitions Later in the day we stood by the royal mausoleum where Princess Kaolani lies buried beside her mother and her uncle the late king of the Hawaiian islands and other members of the royal family and again the words of the old Persian poet came to mind And this too shall pass away Yet somewhere I am sure The sweet spirit of Kaolani has realized its dream and somewhere she is ascending thrones for to each of us in God's good time must be given our heart's desire End of The Passing of a Princess by Ella Wheeler Wilcox Read by Anita Sloma Martinez Plague in Ireland in the Chidder period by Charles Creighton 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 Chad Horner The accounts of Plague in Ireland in the Chidder period are not many but some of them are of interest The province of Munster is said to have had a pestilence raging in it in 1504 evidently not a famine fever for the dearth and mortality therefrom came in 1505 There is no doubt as to the reality of the next Plague in Ireland in 1520 The Earl of Surrey writes from Dublin to Woolsey on the 3rd of August 1520 There is a marvellous death in all this country which is so sore that all the people be fled out of their houses into the fields and woods where they in likewise die wonderfully so that their bodies be dead like swine unburied On the 23rd of July he had already written that there was sickness in the English Peele and on the 6th of September he wrote again that the death continued in the English Peele It is perhaps the same epidemic or an extension of it that is referred to as the Plague raging in Munster in 1522 On the same authority a most violent plague is said to have been in the City of Cork in 1535 and a great plague in the same in 1547 The earlier of those dates corresponds probably to a season of ill health in Ireland generally 1536 This year was a sickly unhealthy year in which numerous deaths namely a general plague and smallpox that is a disease with an Irish name supposed to be smallpox and a flux plague and the bed December profiled exceedingly In a state letter from Ireland September 10th 1535 the prevalence of plague is mentioned In the winter of 1566 to 1567 a remarkable outbreak of plague occurred among the English troops quartered around the old monastery of the dairy At the head of Locke Foyle where London Dairy was afterwards built the men were landed there in October and by November the flux was raining among them wonderfully On December 18th and January 13th many of the soldiers are dead the rest are discontented and provisions are short On February 16th the sickness continues in this miserable place and on March 26th the death at the dairy is said to be by cold and infection The survivors to be removed to Strangford Haven Only 300 men were fit for service out of 1100 and several officers of rank were dead The men's quarters had been built over the graveyard of the ancient abbey and the infection of plague was ascribed at the time of the emanations from the soil The scarcity was general in Ireland that winter and was attended by great mortality Sir Philip Sidney the Lord Deputy writes to the Queen on April 20th 1567 Ye the view of the bones and skulls of your dead subjects who partly by murder partly by famine have died in the fields is such that hardly any Christian with dry eye could behold In 1575 there was a severe and widespread outbreak of plague The localities specially named being Wexford, Dublin, Nass, Athai, Carlow and Leland The city of Dublin was as if deserted of people so that grass grew in the streets and at the doors of churches New term was held after Trinity and prayers were appointed by the Archbishop throughout the whole province The extremity of the plague in Ireland was such that the English trips sent by way of Chester and Holyhead had difficulty in finding a safe place to land whether that outbreak had been connected with the military operations as afterwards in Cromwell's time the information does not enable us to judge but Chester and other places near indirect communication with Ireland had been visited with plague the year before 1574 End of Plague in Ireland in the Tudor period by Charles Creighton Some reflections growing out of the recent epidemic of influenza that afflicted our city a discourse delivered in the 15th Street Presbyterian Church Washington D.C. Sunday, November 3, 1918 by the pastor, Reverend Francis J. Grimke This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Samuel 24, 15-16 So Jehovah sent a pestilence upon Israel from the morning even unto the time appointed and there died of the people from Dan even unto Beersheba seventy thousand men and when the angel stretched forth his hand toward Jerusalem to destroy it Jehovah repented him of the evil and said to the angel that destroyed the people it is enough now stay thy hand We now know perhaps as we have never known before the meaning of the terms pestilence, plague, epidemic since we have been passing through this terrible scourge of Spanish influenza with its enormous death rate and its consequent wretchedness and misery every part of the land has felt its deadly touch north, south, east and west in the army, in the navy, among civilians among all classes and conditions rich and poor, high and low, white and black over the whole land it has thrown a gloom and has stricken down such large numbers that it has been difficult to care for them properly overcrowding all of our hospitals and it has proven fatal in so many cases that it has been difficult at times to get coffins enough in which to place the dead and many enough to dig graves fast enough in which to bury them Our own beautiful city has suffered terribly from it making it necessary as a precautionary measure to close the schools, theaters, churches and to forbid all public gathering within doors