The Contributors' Club

FOR the highest forms of art must we continue to go abroad? A partial answer to this question comes back, not from the oldest society of the Atlantic sea-board, but from a city in the Ohio Valley, where it must seem that American influences are almost exclusively at work. Whatever the Cincinnati faience may indicate in other ways, it appears as a purely American achievement, and is for that reason full of suggestiveness to the reflective. Here is a young lady who, with a delicate feeling for art, has combined such inventive and analytic powers as have enabled her to work out, patiently and alone, a secret in pottery which has puzzled experts and practical potters in Europe for centuries. Miss Louise McLaughlin has produced a faience such as only Deck of Paris and the Havilands at Limoges have produced hitherto. At the Exhibition of the Society of Decorative Art in New York several specimens of the ware were shown, and the full significance of the discovery was recognized by the high-priests of ceramic art in the metropolis, Mr. W. C. Prime and Mr. Bennett. This artistic inventor of Cincinnati (from whence Duveneck and Dengler also came), be it understood, has never been in Europe, and of course could have known nothing of the carefully concealed French processes.

The pottery made of an earth treated with a coating of enamel or glaze, and now commonly known as faience, is not prized, as is porcelain, for its fineness or thinness. The various glazes which are in practical use in the manufacture of faience are far greater in number than is usually supposed: in one establishment the foreman has the directions in his note-book for more than three hundred different glazes. It is now sometimes necessary to define the word “glaze” as that external finish which does not enter into combination with the colors or body beneath, and “ enamel ” as the finish which is incorporated with, and enters into a union with, the colors lying on the body beneath; but the word glaze is Commonly used, generically, to include both glazes anti enamels. Stated generally, there cannot be less than two firings in the manufacture of faience (passing over salt glazes). The first firing is necessary to drive out all moisture, and to prevent further shrinkage when fired a second time at a heat sufficiently great to vitrify the glaze or enamel. But the earthenware treated with a so-called plumbiferous (containing lead) enamel, if colorless, was used to produce the faience of Oiron (improperly called Henri Deux ware); the Wedgwood, with its bas-reliefs of white, etc.; and, if colored, such products as the Palissy ware, now successfully imitated in Paris. Without speaking of the stanniferous (tin) enamel, it is claimed that these wares have been surpassed in brilliancy of color by using a “ transparent alkaline enamel.” But it is highly probable that while better effects have been gained with glazes (to use the word in a generic sense) containing more or less of an alkaline element, too much emphasis has been laid on the mere matter of the glaze, and not enough on the more difficult preparation of the body on which the colors are laid before glazing and firing. The main fact, however, to be kept in mind is that until the last few years modern Europe could produce faience decorated only in a thin style of painting, and with few colors, chiefly blue. The object to be desired at the present time is to paint on pottery under the glaze or enamel with a free choice of color and great, brilliancy, and fix the results in firing by a proper protecting surface. The pieces of ancient Chinese and Persian ware have, until lately, existed only to excite unsatisfied longings for their reproduction.

A few years ago the Lambeth potteries made some progress in the handling of color. But at last, in 1873, Laurin, by his discovery at Bourg-la-Reine, in France, gave an impetus to the movement which has finally reached high perfection. He made possible a decoration limited only by the decorative skill and coloring power of the artist. He led the way to a process which was in its effects to the old what heavy oil-painting is to thin water-coloring. But the glaze of the Bourg-la-Reine ware is said to be the softest of the glazes, yielding to the point of a knife, and the ware shows bubbles in its surface. Being fired at no great temperature, this glaze makes easily possible the preservation of the lines of the decoration in all their sharpness; but the ware lacks the brilliancy of coloring gained in firing by such processes as admit a very high temperature. What is gained in one way has been usually lost in another. Other faience, it is true, has been made with a harder glaze than that of Bourg-la-Reine ware, but only in the old thin style of painting. Both these different wares lack the much-desired “diaphanous” effect, in which the colors seem to melt away into the enamel, and give the impression of brilliant colors seen under the surface of perfectly clear water. This summum bonum was not reached until Chaplet, the partner of Laurin, left Bourgla-Reine, and united his processes with those of the Havilands (an American firm from New York, manufacturing at Limoges in France), who erected kilns especially adapted for the purpose at Auteuil. The ware now known to everyone as Limoges faience was then first produced in 1875; but none was publicly exhibited until 1876, at the Philadelphia Exposition in this country, where the pieces naturally excited great attention.

The indirect effects of such expositions receive curious illustration from our present subject. It was here that Miss Louise McLaughlin saw this ware, and without further clue set to work to secure the same effects. And now she can produce in the kiln of a manufacturer of common, coarse pottery in Cincinnati a faience decorated with as great a variety and brilliancy of color as has been achieved by the Havilands of Limoges. It should be understood that after the technical processes which allow the wide range of coloring are mastered, the value of any one piece depends on the skill of the artist, as entirely as when canvas is Used. To produce such ware, any one person must not only be a skillful potter of great inventive powers, but must have such artistic mastery of form and color as is required merely of a painter. Miss McLaughlin had, like many others, painted porcelain in the common manner, ocer the glaze (known as “ china-painting ” ), and had given the results of her experience to the public in a little work on that subject in 1877. But in that year she boldly set herself to the ambitious task of reproducing the brilliant and heavily painted Limoges faience. To paint over the glaze, as our many amateurs know, is easily and readily learned; but to paint under the glaze, with an unlimited palette and the desired brilliancy, demanded a combination of artistic and inventive powers not often seen. Then it is to be remembered, also, that the French processes were kept secret, and that her aids were only those to be found in the manufactures of common, coarse ware. The process of discovery was at first wholly empirical. For a long time, and through almost a hundred carefully made experiments, it was the old story of discouraging failure: a changing from one clay to another, a reversing of each part of the process, or a painful mastering of petty details. Each experiment was carefully recorded, and each new one made only after a study of the failures, or supposed success, of previous trials, until by a patient differentiation of disturbing elements there came gleams of partial success. At last, a substantial success was achieved in October, 1877; but as yet the threshold only had been gained. Late in the spring of 1878, a few specimens, although far from the results aimed at, were sent to Paris after the opening of the Exposition, and in competition with work there displayed received honorable mention from the jury on ceramic products. The difficulties of working under the glaze are the greater, because the colors, as laid on, are often so entirely different from the intended effect when fired that, unlike canvas painting, the contrasts and harmonies can be kept during the painting only in the mind of the artist, who is in no way assisted by her sight. The effect can be seen only after the piece is fired, and when change or correction is impossible. But as to the actual processes used in the Cincinnati ware, nothing of course is known. Identical effects, however, were produced, as in the pieces sent to the Paris Exposition, when the coloring was applied to the ware before and after the first firing.

The finish used by Miss McLaughlin is technically an enamel, which fuses with the colors underneath. It is sometimes supposed that the Cincinnati faience is the result of the discovery of a new glaze or enamel, merely; but in fact the glaze is but one part, and by no means the most important part, of a whole process of decoration, in which the preparation of the ware before firing and glazing occupies the chief place. That this is true is shown by the fact that Miss McLaughlin can produce similar effects by the use of different glazes. Nor is she dependent for the glaze she uses on the potter who makes it. The matter of the glaze is, however, on other grounds, a very important one, and it is quite certain that the young lady has made an improvement even on the work at Limoges. A glaze which, while being satisfactory in other respects, should be of such composition as to contract in cooling in the same proportion as the body underneath has hardly been attained even by the Havilands. Any one who goes the round of the china stores can see for themselves that in almost every piece of Haviland ware is to be found many fine cracks, which produce what is known as a “ crazed ” surface, caused by an unequal contraction in cooling. The same trouble showed itself at first in the Cincinnati faience; but further experiments corrected this, so that in the largest number of pieces fired in 1878, and in all of those fired in 1879, no crazing is to be discovered. If the crazing does not appear within two months after the piece has been taken from the kiln, it does not usually occur.

That the discoverer reached her results by exactly the same processes, if she gained exactly the same effects, as in the Limoges is a priori, most probable; but it may not be so. Her glaze does contain an alkaline element, but it would hardly be classified as an alkaline glaze in the sense used by the Havilands. The Havilands also state that an alkaline glaze cannot be applied in a liquid state; but in the manufacture of the Cincinnati ware the glaze can be applied in a liquid or powdered state. And, moreover, the Cincinnati and Limoges wares are fired at different temperatures. Ordinary porcelain, decorated over the glaze (if fired only once, as is usual here), requires a heat ranging from fourteen hundred to sixteen hundred degrees. The Limoges ware is fired, as is reported, at a temperature of about fifty-four hundred degrees; while the Cincinnati ware, in a kiln for common, coarse ware, is subjected to a heat of about nine thousand degrees.

As a consequence, while the effect of the decoration is brilliant and diaphanous, its surface will resist the point of the hardest steel instrument. Hence, should this system of decoration ever be used in the exteriors of buildings, like the terra-cotta work in the Boston Art Museum, these colors, as soft, varied, and brilliant as those of any canvas, would resist the action of rain, heat, and frost, and be practically imperishable. The discoverer already proposes to adapt her processes to portraiture and the higher forms of art. I have seen a head of large size on a flat surface produced by this process; the piece had unfortunately been broken in firing, but it showed the same distinguishing features as the pottery. In fact, in any form, the Cincinnati can be readily distinguished from the other wares. In each of the wares of Deck and Haviland, also, there are distinctive characteristics not to be mistaken.

Our country is as full of materials for fine ceramic products as a bountiful nature could well supply, and it would be strange if American skill and art did not create an industry here whose extent would in the future surpass any of our present conceptions. — “Much has been said, and on the whole well said,” on this village question, since the truth seems to lie, like a pie, between the upper and under crusts of statement. While in all the larger, and in most of the smaller, villages “ something is going on ” of a public and social nature, if not continually, yet I often think I never knew a young resident of average physique and intelligence who

— One of the most discouraging frailties of our race to those who feel called upon to observe and reprove the weaknesses of their kind is the propensity to keep old letters,—family letters, loveletters, gossip and idle - hour letters. Everybody intends, nobody likes, to destroy them. The pain that accompanies the re-readingof letters laid aside to be burned is put off as long as possible. Some thought of a future rainy day, when the fire shall be clear and everybody gone out, flits through the mind as the desirable time to bring the boxes of letters from their seclusion to be consumed. And yet Wisdom, remonstrating with careless Folly, and bringing up the unpleasant suggestion that strangers who intermeddle not with her living will interestedly pore over her treasured manuscripts when she is dead, — Wisdom will be silenced either by a promise to burn them “ some day,” or by an intimation given that Folly’s feelings are so tender that she cannot make way with what is so dead “just yet;” as if it did not tighten the strings of Wisdom’s heart to see the old letters go! — to watch the records of joy, of grief, of confident friendship or bitter experience, the links that bound her to life, perhaps, curl into gray ash! Would she not be spared the deadly faintness that follows the destruction of that yellowed paper with those short brown curls; that half-contemptuous smile over the ten-page “note,” in which he said her conduct was maddening, and spelt maddening with one d ? It is vingt ans après, and he is dead in the South.

The charming letters of foreign travel; those graphic sketches of intimate friends, illustrated by pen-and-ink drawings (what has become of the Miss Gushington on her Eastern camel ?); the folded writings of our dead, — those who rest in the Lord, and those whose faces chill indifference has turned from us forever; and . . . the little tissue paper with one soft, flossy, yellow curl, with only a date over the blue ribbon, — let Wisdom burn these all, lest further accumulation make her mad before the gods come !

And Folly, who hesitates and lingers, will some day find that her nephew has been writing his school exercises on the backs of her old sweetheart’s letters, and her nephew’s class is moved by curiosity to find out who could ever have addressed Mrs. Folly as “ My Sweetest Lamb and Blossom; ” and this because poor Folly could not bear to burn up her old letters, and so consigned them to the house-maid as waste paper, at the risk of wringing Mr. Folly’s heart could he have known how lovely woman stooped.

While the mania for collecting a million of stamps lasts, people supinely yield not only their present envelopes to the eager fingers that follow the more eager eyes fixed on the coveted stamp, but they relinquish their old stores of missives to be stripped of their badges. Give the stamps, by all means, but might it not be well to remember, O ladies fair, that these letters of purple ink and fine linen paper may trouble some heart you would be loth to grieve? Burn them, first cutting off the stamp; no one is called to account for idle words spoken, but those written and kept may do harm.

On reading the above, my wife said, “When I depart, I shall not leave any letters about for you to croak over, and there are never any in your pockets, I’m very sure.”

“ Alas, there is very little of anything in my pockets,” said I sadly. I was filled with astonishment at the direct manner in which the feminine mind arrives at conclusions.

was not eternally complaining of the dullness of country life.

Though probably no village exists in New England where there are literally no young people, yet in many there are so few left at home as to make life pretty forlorn. The effect is like a pulse with too few beats to the second, as any one may prove who will try for years to carry on a public meeting of any sort, with a decided doubt preliminary to each stated time of gathering whether enough will be present to say “ we.'’

Just as in a hall or church mere numbers of people assembled will raise the thermometer several degrees Fahrenheit, so the spiritual thermometer, sympathetically affected, rises from the massing of men together. In youth, when all the animal instincts are strongest, this one of mere gregariousness is peculiarly felt, and no “ getting up of good times ” at home, though useful, will ever fill the void.

When this time of tumultuous unrest, except when circumstances can keep the soul at the flood tide of living, is past, village life becomes very pleasant, especially to persons of simple tastes and limited means; and it is so because the theoretical and very often practical idea on which such life is founded, certainly in Massachusetts, is that propinquity of residence makes friends. What if they are not always congenial! Despite all the slurs cast upon the Christian idea of neighborhood life, any one who has passed his manhood in a village has tested a degree of kindness and self-sacrifice unheard of in cities except among near friends; and I protest it is not a worse hot-bed of gossip than the daily newspapers prove cities to be.

It is quite possible that the visible standard of social morality may be lower in villages than in the city, — which holds most of the best, as well as most of the worst, of men, — owing to the lack of a public opinion whose pressure can be felt; only there is more truth-telling in proportion in the former than in the latter.

The tide, by constant attrition, grinds the pebbles subjected to its action into what often seems a tameness of uniformity, but it does rub the corners off; and this fact of the pressure of public opinion may help to explain the greater tendency to insanity in the villages, if statistics prove this to be really so, I knew a lady who, living remote from cities, held high views on the subject of dress reform, and cared no more for the openly expressed disapproval of neighbors to whom she felt intellectually superior than for the whistling of the wind. She removed, at length, to a city, and was one day walking on the street with her husband, when he looked down, and asked, “ Is n’t your dress rather short? ” The tide washed them out to sea ; at once fashionable clothes on my strongminded friend proved their power. What we country people notice in those on whom the city has placed her polishing hand are greater expensiveness of living every way, more repression of the outward show of certain animal instincts and idiosyncrasies, not more truthfulness or honesty, but less simplicity, and by no means, with greater knowledge of men, a necessarily higher degree of wisdom.

— Did you ever try “ sketching on the spot” in verse? For instance, sitting on a breezy bluff, with the green sea rolling in upon the white beach below you, and the sea-gulls drifting away into the golden morning mists before you, did you ever attempt, then and there, to outline on paper some such stanzas as the initial ones of Edgar Fawcett’s Passion and Fantasy ? If you ever did, I venture to remind you of your utter failure. Honey is gathered in the open air and sunshine, from the flowers and leaves and buds; but it is made in the hive, where the worker is shut away from the bewildering influence of an excess of materials, When a poetic impression is forming in the mind is no time for artistic labor. The memory is storing away the ingredients of future inspirations, as the bee fills its honey-sack and loads its thighs for the making and filling of amber cells. Some day, in the quiet of your study, you will be seized by a fancy, and compelled to build a poem. Piece by piece the beautiful stuffs will come to hand from some mysterious source, and swiftly the cloth of gold and purple and silver will be woven. You are surprised and delighted, not knowing that all this is but a kaleidoscopic turn of memory, by which the effects of nature, caught here and there, are brought to the light, after lying many days and nights in the most shadowy chambers of the mind, where they have absorbed the characteristic flavor, or essence, or chic, of your genius.

— Were you ever troubled by the ghost of a poem ? I mean one of those shadowy, yet perfectly outlined fancies, which elude expression just in the way that a blue smoke-wreath escapes the grasp of a child’s hand. Often I have chased one for days together, trying every kind of phrasing for a net in which to catch it; but no mesh ever seemed strong enough or fine enough. It would dance before my fancy’s eye, gay colored, graceful, heavenly sweet, a mocking phantom of the perfect poem. It sometimes comes out of an indefinable suggestion, caught, as if by indirect vision, from some other poem. A mere phrase, even a word used in a new sense, a peculiarly musical rhyme, or the rhythm of a verse, may serve to call up one of these delightfully unmanageable shadows of song. I often wonder if just here may not be drawn the line dividing genius from mere talent by saying that it is genius which can capture, and talent which can only worry itself with trying to capture, this beautiful, ethereal thing as it wavers and shines in the subdued light of fancy. It may be that it eludes talent only to fly into the open hands of genius. But, somehow, to me, along with the charming apparition comes always a whispered hint that even the most exalted genius may get bewildered following this ghost of a poem, this will-o’the-wisp of the border land of dreams. Then I smile, and am much consoled with the thought that some day, after gathering a rich heap of those “ruby and diamond and sapphire words ” of which Théophile Gautier speaks, I shall write the perfect poem.

— It seems strange, when we have made such shifts for exercise as dumbbells, Indian clubs, parallel bars, etc., that we should have left archery in the lurch. In a six-foot bow and a quiver of arrows you have a whole gymnasium. One of its advantages is that it is a game that you can play social or solitaire, as you like. Another advantage is that, while most of our athletic sports are masculine, this is neither masculine nor feminine, but human.

Archery to be anything must be taken hold of in earnest. As Roger Ascham says, “ a man should wrestle with his gear,” and Hansard declares that a man ought not to begin with a how under fifty pounds, — I would say under forty. Mr. Maurice Thomson cautions against the danger of over-bowing one’s self, but I have seen more persons under-bowed than over-bowed.

A word here in regard to bows. If you mean to play archery, you may buy all you like of these three-pieced inventions: otherwise, away with them ! The English long bow, or a domestic bow of the English pattern, I think the most suitable for target practice. The domestic bows made after the Highfield pattern, high-backed, are the best.

I have used in hunting and roving a seven-foot Japanese bow: it is pleasant to shoot roving shots with; not so good for target practice, however. The belly of it is lance-wood, the back bamboo; it is wrapped and glued, and then japanned over. Most of the archers I know confine themselves to target practice, neglecting that free and life-giving part which Thomson has made so vivid for us,—hunting. I find I can concentrate on a living mark much more easily than a dead one.

When we compel ourselves to physical activity for the sake of health, that is exercise; but when we are active for the love of the thing itself, then exercise becomes recreation. We get muscle by any physical activity, but graceful muscles by doing the things we love. Hansard says, “ We esteem it the peculiar excellence of archery that neither satiety nor fatigue attends it. At the close of the livelong summer’s day I believe no archer ever heard the upshot given without regret, — without wishing that the pastime was but then to commence. Everything connected with it has a fascination for me. I make my own arrows, and I enjoy the making of them quite as much as the shooting of them.

The archery revival wave is later in reaching New England than other parts of the country. The clubs now organizing will have to work with additional zeal to overtake the older clubs in the West. What they want first is thorough organization; then procure good tackle.1 Buy English manufacture until our own workmen get more skillful. Then each club should have a uniform. A flannel suit cut after the sailor fashion for the gentlemen, and a sailor waist for ladies, makes a free, beautiful, and becoming archer’s dress. The material may be green, if the taste of the club so direct. Each club should have a small archery library, — Roger Ascham’s Toxophilus, Hansard’s Book of Archery, Maurice Thomson’s Witchery of Archery, A Life of Robin Hood, and the Robin Hood Ballads. Then in the room where the club or society meet it would be pleasant to have the walls, as far as possible, ornamented with bows and arrows of Indian make and the make of other nations.

There is an engraving, The Education of Achilles by Chiron, the Centaur, that ought to adorn the walls of every toxophilite society. Achilles has drawn the arrow to about half-way between his breast and ear; Chiron is showing him that he gets more power by elevating the shaft hand.

The old way among the Greeks was to draw low to the right breast; afterwards it was changed to the right ear. Ascham quotes Procopius, a Greek writer, as saying there was “ no pithe ” in the old way. This is, indeed, a fine stroke of the artist’s, as Achilles would probably get the old way from his parents and comrades, and be taught the new way by the Centaur.

None of the writers on archery have been explicit enough in regard to the position of the fingers on the string while drawing. Maurice Thomson says, hook three fingers under the string. I think the commonly accepted way is that the string strikes the fingers midway between the tips and the first joints. I get cleaner loosing with the string nearer the tips, steadied by the thumb. Ascham, in speaking of the shooting-glove, says, “ A shooting-glove is chiefly for to save a man’s fingers from hurting, that he may be able to beare the sharp string to the uttermost of his strength. And when a man shooteth, the might of his shoote lyeth on the formost finger, and on the ringman, for the middle finger, which is the longest, like a lubber starteth baeke, and beareth no waight; of the string in a manner at all. Therefore the two other fingers must have thick leather, and that must have thickest of all whereon a man looseth most. And for sure loosing the formost finger is most apt, because it holdeth best, and for that purpose nature hath, as a man would say. yoked it with the thumb.”

In my experience in arrow-making I have found two feathers glued spirally on the shaft to answer quite as well as three. I have shot arrows of my own making with Highfield’s best, and had them go quite as true. I found after I had adopted two feathers that the Indians of South America used the same method of feathering. A pair of wings answer quite as well for an arrow as for a bird.

— Your notice of the Life of Mrs. Eliza A. Seton recalls the memory of one who was a conspicuous figure of my childish days. There is a certain stiffness about one’s idea of a lady superior, the founder of an order, but there was nothing of the sort in the real Mrs. Seton, whom we used to know and love. She was the dear and intimate friend of our mother, who was, like her, a convert to the Catholic religion, and our two families were almost the only Americans of that faith in the city (New York). We Catholics were indeed at that time but a slender colony; in all the United States we had but a single bishop. Bishop Carroll, of Baltimore, — a brother, I think, of Charles Carroll, of Carrollton, In New York we had only one church, St. Peter’s in Barclay Street; and what a plain little place it was! Mrs. Seton lived in Stuyvesant Street, near St. Mark’s church, a locality then quite out of town. She was a lovinghearted woman, and one who openly manifested her affection for those she cared about. Her portrait is prefixed to the Memoir of her Life, written some years since by her grandson, Mgr. Seton. This does her no sort of justice, and, to my mind, hardly resembles her. Her eyes were peculiarly beautiful, of a soft, dark brown, as were those of her children, insomuch that the “ Seton eyes ” were proverbial among us. Yet it was not beauty of person so much as charm of manner that rendered her so universally attractive. She won hearts wherever she appeared. The Setons were indeed a very lovable family, and endowed in unusual degree with those poor, perishing charms on which we are warned not to set an undue value.

It was in 1808 (or 1809) that Mrs. Seton left us, to found the sisterhood at St. Joseph’s, near Emmettsburg, Maryland; and we children never saw her again, though frequent intercourse was for years maintained by letter. Of her work it may truly be said that it was sown in weakness, but raised in power. From that humble beginning came the order whose beneficent labors are too well known that I should need to recount them here. But, like other pioneers of great enterprises, the little community underwent sad hardships. They were but a handful of women, alone in an unsettled region, and they were bitterly poor. I remember a little anecdote in illustration, half ludicrous, half pathetic. Among the inmates was Sister Rose, a strong-minded, energetic person, who looked a good deal after the temporalities of the place. One of the younger sisters was suffering from toothache, to relieve which an application of ginger was proposed. “ Susan, dear,” said Sister Rose, “ had n’t you better offer up the pain to God, and save the ginger?” We may be sure that such economical devotion was not enforced where our kind Mrs. Seton reigned; but think of the state of things where such a saving could be considered an object!

— The article in defense of Uncle Sam, in the August number of The Atlantic, answers itself pretty well. The argument is about this: I admit that my client has acquired possession of property belonging to A; that he knows the owner; that he does not notify the owner; that he cautions all of his subordinates to keep it a secret: but I insist that if the owner or his duly accredited agent will make demand of my client’s chief clerk in proper form, he will be accorded both the information and the money. Suppose one were to apply this sort of reasoning to the ordinary case of a dropped pocket-book. I know the owner, but he does not know that he has any claim against me. Is it enough for me to say that when he demands his property I will hand it over, or if he asks me for information I will give that, — meanwhile cautioning all my employees to keep the finding a secret, on pain of dismissal ? What if there is a possibility that an announcement might open the door to fraud! No fraud could be worse than retaining what does not belong to me. I insist that Uncle Sam is amenable to the same moral rules as other people, and that he ought (for the sake of example) to be more careful than any one else to pay every cent which he owes.

Now I have never prosecuted a claim for a dollar against the government, either on my own behalf or that of any one else, and very likely I never shall. Uncle Sam owes me nothing. But in the course of some seventeen years of intermittent residence at Washington I have seen and heard enough to satisfy me that the system in vogue of dealing with money wrongly in governmental hands is by no means a creditable one.