Honest John Vane: Part I

I.

ONE of the most fateful days of John Vane’s life was the day on which he took board with that genteel though decayed lady, the widow of a wholesale New York grocer who had come out at the little end of the horn of plenty, and the mother of two of the prettiest girls in Slowburgh, Mrs. Rensselaer Smiles.

Within a week he was in a state of feeling which made him glance frequently at the eldest of these young ladies, and within a month he would have jumped at a chance to kiss the ground upon which she trod. In the interval he ventured various little attentions, intended to express his growing admiration and interest, such as opening the door for her when she left the dining-room, taking off his hat with a flourish when he met her in the hall, joining her now and then in the street, “just for a block or two,” and once tremulously presenting her with a bouquet. He would have been glad to run much more boldly than this in the course of courtship, but his heart was in such a tender-footed condition that he could not go otherwise than softly. In his worshipping eyes Miss Olympia Smiles was not only a lovely phenomenon, but also an august and even an absolutely imposing one. Notwithstanding that she was the daughter of his landlady, and held but a modest social position even in our unpretentious little city, she had an unmistakable air of fashionable breeding and boarding-school finish, such as might be expected of a lady who had passed her early youth in opulence. Moreover, she drew about her an admiring bevy of our university undergraduates, who, by their genteel fopperies and classic witticisms, made Vane feel ill at ease in their presence, although he strove manfully in secret to despise them as mere boys. Finally, she was handsome and impressively so, tall, shapely, and grand in figure, superb and even haughty in carriage, with a rich brunette coloring which made him think of Cleopatra, and with glowing dark eyes which pierced even to his joints and marrow.

The one circumstance which encouraged Vane to aspire after this astral being was the fact that she seemed older than most of the undergraduate planets who revolved about her, throwing him for the present into sorrowful eclipse. He thought that she must be twenty-three, and he sometimes trusted that she might be twenty-five, or perhaps twenty-seven. At the same time he so reverenced her that he could not have been tortured into believing that she was a veteran flirt, trained to tough coquetry in many a desperate skirmish. Often and often had Olympia “sat up” with a young man till after midnight, and then gone up stairs and passed her mother’s bedroom door on her hands and knees, not in penance and mortification of spirit, but in mere anxiety to escape a lecture. Of these melodramatic scenes John Vane knew nothing, and desired to know nothing. We must add also, as indicative of his character and breeding, that, had he been minutely informed of them, he would have thought none the less of Miss Smiles. In the first place, he was so fascinated by her that he would have pardoned almost any folly or imprudence in her bygone history. In the second place, he had been brought up in a simple stratum of society, where girls were allowed large liberties in sparking, even to the extent of arms around waists and much kissing, without incurring prudish condemnation. Indeed, so far was he from being fastidious in these matters, that, when he heard that Olympia had been engaged to one or more students, and that these juvenile bonds had been promptly severed, he was rather pleased and cheered by the information than otherwise.

“ She must be about sick of those young jackanapes,” he hopefully inferred. “ She must be about ready to take up with a grown man, who knows what he wants, and has some notion of sticking to a bargain, and is able to do the decent thing in the way of supporting her.”

John Vane was himself, both in person and in repute, no despicable match. As may have been already guessed by such readers as are fitted to apprehend his character and find instruction in his history, he was one of those heroes of industry and conquerors of circumstances known as self-made men, whose successes are so full of encouragement to the millions born into mediocrity, and whom, consequently, those millions delight to honor. Had he really fabricated himself, whether we speak of his physical structure or of his emotional nature, he would have accomplished a rather praiseworthy job of creation. Very few better looking men or kinder hearted men have ever paraded the streets of Slowburgh in Masonic caparisons. Justly proportioned, with ample withers, a capacious barrel, and limbs that were almost majestic, he stood nearly six feet high in his stockings, weighed full two hundred pounds in the same, and was altogether an uncommonly fine animal. It is true that, to use his own jovial phrase, he “ran a little too much to blubber for comfort” ; but it was disposed so becomingly and carried so easily, that it did not prevent him from moving with grace, while his political enemies had to admit that it conspicuously enhanced his dignity, and justified his admirers in talking of him for governor. His face, too, usually passed for handsome ; it was fairly regular in feature, and of a fresh blond color like that of a a healthy baby ; moreover, it had the spiritual embellishment of a ready, courteous, and kindly smile. It was only the fastidiously aristocratic and the microscopically cultivated who remarked of this large and well-moulded figure-head that it lacked an air of high-breeding and was slightly vacuous in expression. These severe critics found the genial blue eyes which fascinated humble people as uninteresting as if they had been made of china-ware. They hinted, in short, that John Vane’s beauty was purely physical, and had no moral or intellectual significance.

To this height of sentimental faultfinding Miss Olympia Smiles had not attained. New-Yorker by birth though she was, and polished by long-continued friction against undergraduate pundits, she was not a soul of the last and most painful finish. She could not see but that Mr. Vane was, from every point of view, sufficiently handsome. Still she did not feel much pleased with his obvious admiration, nor desire at all to lure him on to the point of love-making. There were imperfections in him which grated upon her sensibilities, far as these were from being feverishly delicate. In the first place, she found his conversation rather uninteresting and distinctly “common.” He could only talk freely of politics, business, and the ordinary news of the day ; he had no sparkles of refined wit and no warm flashes of poesy; he was a little given to coarse chaffing and to slang. For instance, he one day said to his vis-à-vis at table, “ Harris, please to scull that butter over this way ” ; and, what made the matter worse, he said it with a selfsatisfied smile, as though the phrase were original and irresistibly humorous. It was unpleasant also to hear him remark every morning, alluding to the severity of the weather, that “ the thermometer was on a bender.” Such metaphors might do in students and other larkish, agreeable youngsters ; but in a mature man, who pretended to be marriageable, they argued dulness or vulgarity. Finally, Olympia plainly gathered from Mr. Vane’s daily discourse that he was pretty ignorant of science, history, literature, and other such genteel subjects.

But there was a much more serious defect in this handsome man, considered as a possible admirer. He was a widower, and a widower with encumbrances. He had a wife thirty years old in the graveyard, and he had two children of eight and ten who were not there. It was annoying to Olympia to see him help this boy and this girl to buttered slapjacks, and then bend upon herself a glance of undisguisable, tender appetite. Had he rolled in his carriage and resided in a mansion on Saltonstall Avenue, she might have been able to put up with his weeds and his paternity ; but in a mere manufacturer of refrigerators, whose business was by no means colossal, these trappings of woe and pledges to society were little less than repulsive.

“ I can never, never let him speak to me about it,” said the young lady, with excitement, when her mother hinted to her that Mr. Vane seemed to be drifting toward an offer ; “ he is so common ! ”

“ You must get married some time, I suppose,” sighed Mrs. Smiles, whose pride had had a fall as splintering as that of Humpty Dumpty, and who found it hard work to support two stylish daughters ; “ men who are not common are rare in our present circle.”

“ I would rather be an old maid than take a widower with two children,” asserted Olympia.

“But how would the old maid live in case her mother should be removed?” asked the parent, pained in heart by her own plain-dealing, but feeling that it was called for.

The spinster who had never spun nor done any other remunerative labor could not answer this question. Presently it might have been observed that a tear was rolling down her cheek. Hard, hard indeed is the condition of a proud girl who sees herself encompassed by the thorny hedges of poverty, with no escape there from but a detested match, — a match as disagreeable to smell at as one of the brimstone species. “ Don’t throw away this chance without fairly considering it,” continued the widow. “ Mr. Vane is a prosperous man, and a growing man every way. He has good manners, barring some slang phrases. He likes to talk about sensible subjects and to inform himself. Ten years hence you may find him your superior and have reason to be proud of him. A clever wife would help him forward wonderfully. He is a man that the right kind of a woman could make over and make fit for any circle.”

Mrs. Smiles was so deeply interested in this subject that she talked much more firmly and impressively than was her wont. Her manner, however, was pathetically mild and meek, as of a woman who is accustomed to be trampled upon by misfortune, and of a mother who has learned to bow down to her children. She was a somewhat worn creature, originally, indeed, of fair outlines both physical and spiritual, but considerably rubbed out and defaced by the storms of adversity. She reminded one of those statues which travellers have seen in Italian courtyards, which were once, no doubt, rounded, vigorous, clean-cut, sparkling, and every way comely, but which, being made of too soft a marble, or beaten upon too long by winds and rains, have lost distinctness of lineament and brightness of color. “ A good liquor at the start, but too much matured somehow ’r nuther,” judged one of her boarders, Mr. Jonas Damson, the grocer. Yet this seemingly dilapidated and really tottering woman was the entire support, financially and morally, of two healthy daughters. Why ? Because she was a relic of the time when ladies were not mere dandies ; when work steadily done and responsibility loyally borne trained their characters into vigor ; when they, like their men, were producers as well as consumers. Mrs. Smiles was not as highly educated as Olympia ; she could not talk, whether wisely or foolishly, of so many subjects ; but industrially and morally she was worth six of her.

Well, as this sorrowfully forethoughted mother had foreseen, the proposal of marriage came at last. John Vane popped the question with the terror and anguish and confusion natural to a selfmade man who is madly in love with a “born lady.” His tender heart, hysterical with affectionate fear and desire, nearly pounded the breath out of him while he uttered its message. What he said he was not then sanely conscious of, and could never afterwards distinctly remember. He may have spoken as beautiful words as lover ever did, or he may have expressed himself in the slang which Olympia found so repellent. But five minutes later he had forgotten the most momentous speech of his life ; the particulars of it had departed from him as irretrievably as the breath in which they had been uttered ; they were as completely gone as the odors of last year’s flowers. Olympia’s response, however, remained engraven upon his soul with sad distinctness ; it was as plain as “ Sacred to the memory of,” cut into the marble of a gravestone.

“ Mr. Vane, I sincerely respect you, and I thank you for this mark of your esteem, but I cannot be your wife,” was the decorous but unsympathetic form of service which she read over his hopes.

He essayed to implore, to argue his suit, to ask why, etc. But she would not hear him. “ It cannot be,” she interrupted, hastily and firmly ; “ I tell you, Mr. Vane, it cannot be.”

And so what seemed to him his ghost went out from her presence, to walk the earth in cheerless unrest.

Ofcourse, however, there was yethope in the depths of his wretchedness, like a living though turbid spring of water in the bottom of a ruined well. He still wanted this girl ; meant to bring her somehow to favor his suit; trusted in cheerful moments that she would yet be his. How should he move her? His friend, Mr. Jonas Damson, to whom he confided his venture and shipwreck, said to him, “ John, you must show her your dignified side. Don’t stay here and look melted butter at her and cry in your coffee. Don’t make a d—d fool of yourself, John, right under her nose. If you can’t keep a good face on the business here, quit the house. Show her your independence. Let her see you can live without her. Sorry to lose you, John, from your old chair ; but as a friend I say, look up another feedingplace.”

So, despite the plaintive reluctance of Mrs. Smiles, and despite his own desire to gaze daily upon his fair tormentor, the rejected lover changed residence. A rival boarding-house received John Vane and his two children, and his weekly payment of forty dollars. Next, after a little period of nerveless stupor, he rushed into the arena of politics. A politician of some local note, he was already able to send to the polls a “crowd ” of the artisans whom he employed, or who knew him favorably as an old comrade in handicraft, and consequently a sure candidate for the city council from his own ward, and a tolerably strong one for the State legislature.

Happily for his reawakened ambition, there had been a scandal of late among the “ men inside politics.” The member of Congress from the district of Slowburgh had been charged, and proved guilty too, of taking a one thousand dollar bribe from the “Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea Steam Navigation Company.” Some old warhorses of the party, after vainly trying to hush the matter up, had decided to throw the Honorable James Bummer overboard.

“ Bummer never could run again,” they unanimously neighed and snorted. “To try to carry Jim Bummer would break down the organization. Jim must take a back seat, at least till this noise about him blows over, and give some fresh man a chance. A man, by George, that would cut the cherry-tree, and then tell of it, was n’t fit to guide the destinies of his country.”

On the other hand, the personal friends of Bummer, that is to say, the men whom he had put into “soft places,” or who had shared his “perks,” supported him for many cogent reasons. They charged his enemies with encouraging the Copperheads and the KuKlux ; with dishonoring American institutions in the face of monarchical Europe and of high Heaven, — both apparently hostile countries ; worst of all, and what was insisted upon with the bitterest vehemence, they charged them with demoralizing the party, as if Bummer had moralized it. They denied the bribe doubly : first, they asserted that their man had accepted no stock in said Steam Navigation Company; second, they affirmed that he had as much right to own stock in it as any other citizen. They were stubborn and very uproariously wrathful, and not feeble in point of following. It was evident that the battle which must take place in the nominating caucus would be very fiercely contested. The friends of reform were forced to concede that, if they did not put up a candidate of admittedly high character and of great personal popularity, the meretricious veteran who now carried the banner of the district would continue to carry it. The whole momentous struggle, too, must centre in the aforesaid caucus. Of course, after this mysterious agency had decided who should head the party, no good Republican could “go back on ” the nominee, though he were the impenitent thief.

“ John Vane, you must be there tonight,” said Mr. Darius Dorman to our hero, a few hours previous to the caucus. “ We may want you like the Devil,” he added, without considering the precise uncomplimentary sense of the comparison.

Darius Dorman called himself a broker or general business man ; he shaved notes when he had money, and when he had none speculatedin citylots ; he was always on the lookout for public jobs, such as paving contracts, and the supply of stores to the State militia ; of late he was reported to be “ engineering something through Congress.” A very sooty and otherwise dirty chore this last must have been, if one might judge of it by the state of his linen, his hands, and even his face. Indeed, there was about Dorman such a noticeable and persistent tendency toward griminess, that it seemed as if he must be charged with some dark, pulverous substance, which shook through the interstices of his hide. Soap and water were apparently of no more use to him than they would be to a rag-baby of coarse calico stuffed with powdered charcoal instead of sawdust. His collar, his cuffs, his haggard, ghastly features, his lean, griping claws, his very finger-nails were always in a sombre condition, verging in spots towards absolute smirch. This opaque finish of tint, coupled with a lean little figure and a lively, eager action, caused some persons to liken him to a scorched monkey. Other persons, whose imaginations had been solemnized by serious reading, could not look upon him without thinking of a goblin fresh from the lower regions, who had not found time since he came on earth to wash himself thoroughly. In truth, if you examined his discoloration closely, you distinguished a tint of ashes mingled with the coal smirch, so that a vivid fancy might easily impute to him a subterranean origin and a highly heated history. Another poetical supposition concerning him was, that his dusky maculations and streakings were caused by the exudations of an exceedingly smutty soul. H is age was unknown ; no one in Slowburgh knew when he was born, nor as much as where he came from; but the iron-gray of his unkempt, dusty hair suggested that he must be near fifty.

“ They mean to put up Saltonstall against Bummer, don't they?” asked John Vane, with a languid air, as if he took little interest in the caucus.

“Yes, but it won’t work,” replied Dorman. “ Saltonstall is altogether too much of a gentleman to get the nomination. He’s as calm and cold and dead as his buried ancestors, the old governors. You can’t get people to hurrah for a gravestone, even if it has a fine name on it. In fact, the fine name is a disadvantage; American freemen hate an aristocrat. It’s really curious to see how Saltonstall’s followers are killing him off. They are saying that, because he is the son of an honorable, he ought to be an honorable himself, and that he will do the right thing for the sake of his forefathers. Our voters don’t see it in that light. They want plain people to become honorables. Besides, who wants a Congressman to be fussy ? The chaps inside politics know that they won’t get any favors out of a man who has a high and mighty character to nurse. I tell you that Saltonstall won’t get the nomination. Bummer won’t get it either. Some third man is bound to come in ; and you may be the very fellow. So, don’t fail to be on hand, Vane. Everything depends on your showing yourself. When you are called for, rise up to the full height of your manly figger, and see what a yell there ’ll be for honest John Vane.”

“ O, pshaw ! nonsense now,” smiled Vane, shaking his large and shapely head ; but none the less he resolved to attend the caucus, and, indeed, positively promised so to do.

II.

ALTHOUGH Darius Dorman was noted for his unfulfilled prophecies, — for instance, frequently making business predictions which caused such widows and orphans as believed in him to lose their money, — he on this occasion hit the nail of the future pretty squarely on the head.

As soon as the caucus had been organized and bad listened to a pair of brief speeches urging harmonious action, it split into two furiously hostile factions, each headed by one of the gentlemen who had talked harmony. Fierce philippics were delivered, some denouncing Bummer for being a taker of bribes and a pilferer of the United States Treasury, and some denouncing Saltonstall (as near as could be made out) for being a gentleman. So suspicious of each other’s adroitness were the two parties, and so nearly balanced did they seem to be in numbers, that neither dared press the contest to a ballot. The war of by no means ambrosial words went on until the air of the hall became little less than mephitic, and the leading patriots present had got as hoarse and nearly as black in the face as so many crows. At last, when accommodation was clearly impossible, and the chiefs of the contending parties were pretty well fagged with their exertions, Darius Dorman sprang to his feet (if, indeed, they were not hoofs), and proposed the name of his favored candidate.

“ I beg leave to point the way to a compromise which will save the party from disunion and from defeat,” he screamed at the top of a voice penetrating enough to cleave Hell’s thickest vapors. “ As Congressman for this district I nominate honest John Vane.”

Another broker and general contractor, whose prompt inspiration, by the way, had been previously cut and dried with great care, instantly and, as he said, spontaneously seconded the motion. Then, in rapid succession, a workingman who had learned the joiner’s trade with Vane, and a Maine liquor law orator who had more than once addressed fellow-citizens in his teetotal company, made speeches in support of the nomination. The joiner spoke with a stammering tongue and a bewildered mind, which indicated that he had been put up for the occasion by others, and put up to it, too, without regard to any fitness except such as sprang from the factof his being one of the “ hard-handed sons of toil,” — aclass revered andloved to distraction by men whose business it is to “run the political machine.” The practised orator palavered in a fluent, confident singsong, as brassily penetrating as the tinkle of a bell, and as copious in repetitions. “ Let the old Republican,” he chanted, “ come out for him ; let the young Republican come out for him ; let the Democrat, yea, the very Democrat, come out for him ; let the native-born citizen come out for him ; let the foreign-born citizen come out for him ; let the Irishman and the German and the colored man come out for him ; let the cold-water temperance man come out for him ; let the poor, tremulous, whiskey-rotted debauchee come out for him ; let the true American of every sort and species come out for him ; let all, yea, all men come out for awnest Jawn Vane ! ”

There was no resisting such appeals, coming as they did from the “ masses.” The veteran leaders in politics saw that the “ cattle,” as they called the common herd of voters, were determined for once to run the party chariot, and most of them not only got out of the way, but jumped up behind. They were the first to call on Vane to show himself, and the first to salute his rising with deafening applause, and the last to come to order. A vote was taken on his nomination, and the ayes had it by a clear majority. Then Darius Dorman proposed, for the sake of party union, for the sake of the good old cause, for the sake of this great Republic, to have the job done over by acclamation. There was not an audible dissenting voice ; on the contrary, there was “wild enthusiasm.” The old war-horses and wheel-horses and leaders all fell into the traces at once, and neighed and snorted and hurrahed until their hard foreheads dripped with patriotic perspiration, every drop of which they meant should be paid for in municipal or State or Federal dollars.

Many elders of the people escorted Vane home that evening, and sat up with him with a devotion which deserved no end of postmasterships. Of all these admirers, however, the one who snuggled closest and stayed latest was that man of general business, Darius Dorman.

“John, a word with you,” he began confidentially, after his rivals had all departed, at the same time drawing close up to Vane’s side, and insinuating a dark, horny claw into one of his buttonholes ; “ I think you must own, John, that I have done more than any other man to help you into this soft thing. Would you mind hearing a word of advice ? ”

“ Go on,” replied Vane, with that cheery, genial smile which had done so much toward making him popular ; “ I owe you an oyster supper.”

“ You 'll owe me a good many, if you follow my counsel,” continued Dorman. “Now listen to me. You’ll be elected ; that’s a sure thing. But after that, what ? Why, you’ve got a great career open to you, and you may succeed in it, or you may fail. It all depends on what branch of politics you work at. Don’t go into the war memories and the nigger worshipping; all those sentimental dodges are played out. Go into finance. The great national questions to be attended to now are the questions of finance. Spread yourself on the tariff, the treasury, the ways and means, internal improvements, subsidy bills, and relief bills. Dive into those things and stick there. It’s the only way to cut a figure in politics and to make politics worth your while.”

“ I ’ve thought of that already,” replied Vane hopefully. “ It’s my line, you know, — business, money-matters, practical finance.”

“Exactly!”assented Dorman. “Well, throw yourself on it, especially internal improvements and subsidy bills,—that sort of thing. When you get in I shall have a scheme to propose to you which you ’ll like to push. Something big, something national, something on a grand scale. If it goes through, it will make reputations, and fortunes, too, for that matter,” he added, with a glance at Vane which was monkey-like in its sly greediness.

“ I don’t propose to go into Congress for money,” answered honest John Vane.

“ O, of course not! ” leered Dorman. “ You want honor, and the respect of the country, and so on. Well, that is just the kind of a measure that will fix the eyes of the country on whoever carries it through. You ’ll be delighted with it, I know you will. However, I mustn’t blow it now ; the time has n’t come. All I meant to say was, that I wanted you to keep a hand ready for it when it comes round. Well, that’s all. I congratulate you, I do, with all my heart. Good night.”

Next day all Slowburgh was talking of Vane’s unexpected nomination for Congress. “ Queer choice,” said some people. “Everything happens in politics. Vane is as ignorant of real pubtic business as he is of Sanscrit” Others remarked, “ Well, we shall have a decent man in the place. John is a good-hearted, steady, honest fellow. Not very brilliant, but he will learn the ropes as others have ; and then he is so confounded honest ! ”

After a nomination, as we Americans know by wearisome experience, there must be an election. The struggle between the two great and noble parties of the ins and the outs which divided Slowburgh was on this occasion unusually vehement. The opposition, trusting to the divisions which they supposed to exist in the administration ranks, made such a fight as despair makes when it changes to hope. Many of those genteel and highly cultivated persons who ordinarily hate politics became excited ; and among these abnormally agitated ones was Miss Olympia Smiles. It seems very strange, and yet it was natural. Discovering that her rejected suitor had become an object of interest to all Slowburgh, she also, by mere human infection or contagion, began to find him interesting. We know how women go on when they once begin ; we remember how, during the war, they flung their smiles, their trinkets, and seemingly their hearts, to unintroduced volunteers ; we have all seen them absorb enthusiasm from those around, and exhale it with doubled heat. So it went, during that political crisis, with the young lady in question. Before the campaign had roared half-way through its course, she was passionately interested in it, and electioneered for her preferred candidate even to her mother’s Democratic boarders.

“ Measures are of little consequence,” she declared when she was argued with and confuted by these prejudiced individuals. “ What we want and all that we want is good men in high places. And, if I had a vote,” she frequently asserted with a convincing blush, so beautiful was it, — “if I had a vote, it should go for honest John Vane.”

Honest John heard of this and of other similar speeches of Olympia’s, and they seemed to him altogether the most eloquent efforts of the campaign. They gave him a joy which a connoisseur in happiness might envy, — a joy which more than once, when he was alone, brought the tears into his eyes. He had cherished no spite against the girl because she had refused him ; and he did not now say to himself scornfully that she would like to be the wife of a Congressman, but that it was too late ; he was too thoroughly a good fellow and true lover to secrete any such venom of thought or feeling. The hope that he might yet win Olympia Smiles, and devote to her such part of his life as his country and the refrigerator business could spare, opened to him the prospect of a little heaven upon earth. Meeting her one day in the street, he ventured to stop her, thanked her stammeringly for her favorable wishes, pressed her hand with unconscious vehemence, and parted from her with a swimming head. Olvmpia was sensible enough and sensitive enough to carry away a rejoiced heart from this interview. She knew now that she could still have this hero of the hour, and she began to find that she wanted him, at least a little. He was no longer common and, metaphorically speaking, unclean in her patrician eyes. She looked after his tall, robust figure as it went from her, and thought how manly and dignified and even handsome it was. His condition of widowerhood became vague to her mind; the gravestone of his wife vanished like a ghost overtaken by daybreak; even his two cherished children could not cast a shadow over her feelings. It would surely be something fine to enter the capital of the nation as the wife of one of the nation’s law-givers ; it would at least be far better than growing into old-maidenhood amid the sordid anxieties of a boarding-house. Aristocratic as her breed was, and delicate as had been her culture, the title of Mrs. John Vane tempted her. Should she throw a net for this man, drag him back to her feet, and accept him? Well, perhaps so ; but first she would see whether he carried his election ; she must not be caught by a mere prophecy of greatness and glory. Let us not be severe upon the young lady because of her prudence, asserting that she carried it to the point of calculating selfishness. As far as concerned lovemaking, this was her first essay in that deliberate virtue ; and impartial psychology will not express angry surprise at her overdoing it a little, so much is the human mind ruled by the law of undulation or pulsation, or, in other words, so apt is it to go from one extreme to another. Besides, in a matter so permanently serious to woman as marriage, it is pardonable and even praiseworthy that she should be cautious.

Well, honest John Vane triumphed at the polls, and became member of Congress for the district of Slowburgh. Let us glance now at his qualifications for the splendid and responsible position of which his fellow-citizens had pronounced him worthy. He was, to use a poetical figure, in the flower of his age, or, to use a corresponding arithmetical figure, about thirty-five. He had, as he and his admirers supposed, fully formed his character, and settled it on a stable platform of worthy habits and creeds. He was commercially honest, indefatigably industrious, a believer in the equal rights of man, a strenuous advocate of the Maine liquor law, a member, if I am not greatly mistaken, of the church, and every way in good repute among grave, conscientious people. His “war record” was admitted to be unimpeachable ; that is to say, he had consistently and unflinchingly denounced the Rebellion “ from its inception ” ; if he had not fought for the Union on the battle-field, be had fought for it on the stump and in the chimney-corner. In all his geographical sentiments he was truly American, even to occasional misunderstanding of our foreign affairs, and to the verge of what one might call safe rashness. He wanted somebody (meaning of course somebody else) to thrash England well for the Trent affair, and to annihilate her for the Alabama outrages. He affirmed in one of his public “ efforts ” that our claim for indirect damages should be prosecuted, if necessary, “ before the court of high Heaven,” which phrase he always regarded as one of his happiest inspirations, although he had found it “ in the paper.” Me contended that it was our mission, and consequently our duty to interfere in behalf of oppressed Cuba by bringing it within the pale of our own national debt, and generally to extend the area of freedom over such countries as would furnish us with a good market for our home productions, and a mild climate for our invalids. At the same time he did not want to go to war for these benevolent purposes ; for war, as he frequently remarked, was a frightful thing, and we had already shed blood enough to show that we would fight rather than submit to outrage ; he only proposed that we “ should sit still in our grandeur and let those fellows gravitate towards us.”

His views concerning internal affairs were marked by an equal breadth. He held that the industry of the American producer should be protected, at no matter what cost to the American consumer. He was opposed to the introduction of Chinese cheap labor as being injurious to the “ noble class of native artisans,” however it might benefit our equally noble farmers by furnishing them with low-priced tools, shoes, and clothing. He believed that our system of government was the purest and most economical in the world, when it was not abused by municipal rings, public defaulters, railroad legislation, and lobbyists of the State and national capitals. He argued that rotation in office is republican, because it “gives every citizen a fair chance ” ; and that it is a means of national education, because it tempts even the dregs of society to aspire to responsibility and power. In the whole superficies of our civil affairs he saw but one error which needed serious and instant attention, namely, the franking privilege. If that could be removed, and two millions thereby saved annually out of a budget of three or four hundred millions, he thought that the legislative sun of American democracy would be left without a spot, the exemplar and despair of other tax-laden nations.

Such was the optimist and amiable patriotism of Congressman Vane. While we cannot but admire it from a sentimental point of view, we are obliged to regret that it did not rise from a wider base of information. Whether the conclusions of this selftaught statesman were right or wrong, they were alike the offspring of ignorance, or at best of half-knowledge. We can only palliate his dark-mindedness with regard to American politics on the ground that it was cosmically impartial, and extended to the politics of all other countries, ancient and modern. He had never heard that our civil institutions were not exclusively our own invention, but germinated naturally from the colonial charters granted by “ tyrannical Britain.” He believed that, because Queen Victoria cost England half as much annually as Boss Tweed cost the single city of New York, therefore England ought to be and must be on the verge of a revolution. He supposed that Prussia must be an unlettered and dishonestly governed country, because it is ruled by a king. Of the ancient states of Greece he had a general idea that they were republics, with some form or other of representative government, Sparta being as much a democracy as Athens.

It would have been news to him, as fresh as anything arriving by telegraph, that Attica was legislated for by a single municipality, and that its inhabitants were three fourths slaves. The Rome of his mind was also a representative democracy, and its conscript fathers were, perhaps, selected by conscription, like recruits for some armies. Of the tyranny of capitalists and of the corruption of magistrates and tax-collectors in that most famous of all republics, he was as ignorant as he was, or strove to be, of similar phenomena in the United States. His reading in ancient history began and ended with Rollin, to the exclusion of Niebuhr, Arnold, Grote, Curtius, and Mommsen, of whom, indeed, he had never heard. It may be thought that, for the sake of a joke, I am exaggerating Mr. Vane’s Eden-like nakedness and innocence ; but I do solemnly and sadly assure the reader that I have not robbed him of a single fig-leaf of knowledge which belonged to him.

As for political economy, he had never seen a line of Adam Smith, Mill, Bastiat, or any of their fellows, they not being quoted in “the papers” which furnished his sole instruction in statesmanship, and almost his sole literary entertainment. He was too completely unaware of these writers and of their conclusions to attack them with the epithet of theorists or of doctrinaires. All that he knew of political economy was that Henry C. Carey had written some dull letters about it to the Tribune, and that the Pennsylvania ironmen considered him “ an authority to tie to.” His vague impression was that the science advocated the protection of native manufactures, and that consequently it would be worth looking into whenever he found a moment’s respite from business and politics.

Certainly, it was wonderful how little this self-taught soul could see into a millstone, even when it was his own and he ground at it daily. He was a manufacturer of refrigerators ; and very thankful indeed was he that Congress had imposed high import duties on foreign specimens of that “ line of goods ”; it was patriotic and wise, he thought, thus to protect American industry against the pauper labor of Europe. Meantime, he did not consider that his zinc and hinges, and screws and nails, and paint and varnish were taxed ; that his own food, raiment, fuel, and shelter, and also the food, raiment, fuel, and shelter of his workmen, were likewise taxed ; that, in short, taxation increased the expense of all the materials of labor and the necessaries of life which made up the principal cost of his fabrics ; and that it was mainly because of these things that he was unable to produce refrigerators at anything like the ante-tax prices. The government put a little money into one of his pockets and took the same sum or more out of several others ; and he was so far from seeing that the legerdemain did not help him, or perhaps hurt him, that he enthusiastically sang praises to it. There had been a time when he exported, when he could boast that a portion of his revenue came from beyond sea, when he had hopes of building up a fine market abroad. Not so now ; foreigners could no longer afford to buy of him ; they made all their own refrigerators. John Vane did not comprehend this adverse providence any more than if he had himself been made of pine and lined with zinc. He compendiously remarked, “ Our prices rule too high for those beggars,” and was patriotically proud of the fact, though sadly out of pocket by it. Such was his insight into legislation where it directly concerned his own bread and butter. You can imagine what a clear view he had of those labyrinths of it which ramify through the general body politic.

But if he was not an instructed soul, he was at all events an honest one. That attribute all his fellow-citizens conceded to him, even those who did not see the wisdom or beauty of it ; it was a matter of common fame in Slowburgh, and, one might almost say, of common conversation. Men who could not get trusted for five dollars spoke of him approvingly as “Honest John Vane,” feeling, perhaps, that in so doing they imputed to themselves a little of his righteousness, so illogical are the mental processes of sinners. It is worth while to relate (if only to encourage our youth in the ways of virtue) how easily he had acquired this high repute. While a member of the State legislature he had refused a small bribe from a lobbyist, and bad publicly denounced the briber. That this inexpensive outburst of probity should secure him widespread and permanent fame does not, to be sure, shed a very pleasing light over the character which is borne by our law-givers. But we will not enter upon that subject ; it perhaps needs more whitewash than we possess. We will simply call the attention of Sunday school pupils and Young Men’s Christian Associations to the cheering fact that, at a prime cost of one hundred dollars, our townsman was able to arise and shine upon a people noted for its political purity as “ Honest John Vane !” Only one hundred in greenbacks (about ninety in gold) out of pocket, and the days of Washington come again ! I should suppose that, for say twice the figure, a legislator of the period might get the title of “Father of his Country.”

F. W. DeForest.