working-classes in England than there is in America and in most other countries. They have not the sunny demeanor of the Southern peoples, nor their readiness to make themselves agreeable by pleasant words and small acts of civility that cost no trouble. But for true kindness and consideration, especially where women and children are concerned, it would be hard to beat the proletariat of the English manufacturing districts and Scotland. The failure is rather in the higher grades of society. Our "smart set" has no occasion to sneer at American manners. The etiquette of the Court and salon has given place to that of The Outlook. the restaurant and the race course. There is a slangy, free-and-easy tone which is an undignified substitute for that quiet formality which foreigners observed in English society twenty or thirty years ago. ticeable in the men and women. man about town treats the ladies of his circle with the same casual freedom as his own male "pals." And as fashions filter downwards fast, a similar roughness of demeanor in their behavior to the other sex is extending to the youth of the middle-classes. We may need the blue button in England soon if matters do not improve. This is especially nointercourse between The modern young THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ.* These recollections of a man who, born of a peasant family at Liblar, near Cologne, rose to be an American Secretary of State, are undeniably interesting, but they by no means escape the fault of prolixity. Gifted with a prodigious memory and possessed of a sententious turn of mind, Carl Schurz spares us nothing. His reflections on first hearing Wagner's music are commonplace, but they occupy several pages; and his political disquisitions are dreary. Still, he gives his readers a good thing and an important thing, though too much of it. The most pleasant of his three large volumes, on the whole, is the first, containing an ac-count of his boyhood under the shadow of the ancestral home of the Counts Wolf Metternich, his student days at Bonn, and the outbreak and subsidence of the revolutionary movement of 1848. We admire the resource of the prompter of a company of strolling players, who, when the gun of the heroine in "The Bandit Bride" missed fire "The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz," 18291869. 3 vols. Illustrated. (John Murray.) as she was about to shoot the villain, exclaimed in a loud stage-whisper: "Bang him on the head with the butt; bang him quick!" But the uncontrollable laughter of the audience gave Carl Schurz, aged about nine, his first disillusionment. More serious disappointments were in store for him when, at the age of nineteen, he burst into involuntary oratory, and became a personage in revolutionary Germany. Not long after the beginning of strife, he came into contact with Karl Marx: The somewhat thick-set man, with broad forehead, very black hair and beard and dark sparkling eyes, at once attracted general attention. He enjoyed the reputation of having acquired great learning, and as I knew very little of his discoveries and theories, I was all the more eager to gather words of wisdom from the lips of the famous man. This expectation was disappointed in a peculiar way. Marx's utlogical and clear, but I have never seen terances were indeed full of meaning, a man whose bearing was so provoking and intolerable. To no opinion which differed from his own did he accord the honor of even condescending consideration. In his deliberate way, Carl Schurz paints an attractive picture of Young Germany, with its idealism, its magnificent comradeship, and its military inefficiency. The inevitable Pole came forward to organize the volunteers of the Palatinate, and Schurz describes with some humor General Sznayde, "a stout and ponderous old gentleman who looked as if he preferred to wield fork and knife rather than the sword." He tells his own exploits modestly, though they included a plucky escape from Rastatt; and, after a stay in Switzerland (where he met Wagner, by no means popular among the refugees as "an extremely arrogant, domineering character with whom nobody could long associate"), the sensational rescue of his friend and mentor Kinkel from the prison at Naugard in Pomerania. This incident, drawn out though it is, makes as good reading as-we will not say a chapter of Dumas, but Harrison Ainsworth at his best. The invincible optimism of political refugees struck Carl Schurz forcibly during his residence in England, where he lived in St. John's Wood, near the Kinkels. He met Mazzini and Kossuth, but does not tell us much that is really new about those well-known figures; and frequented the revolutionary drawing-room of the emotional Baroness von Brüning, who had a selfcontained husband of Conservative tendencies. But Carl Schurz came to the conclusion before long that reaction was victorious in Europe all along the line, and resolved to throw in his lot with the United States. He reached that decision while sitting on a bench in Hyde Park, and after an hour perceived a little man on the other end. It was Louis Blanc: "Ah, c'est vous mon jeune ami! C'est fini, n'est-ce pas? C'est fini!" Of We must pass rapidly over Carl Schurz's second and third volumes. Interesting though they are, they would have gained not a little if he had been able to disengage essential events and persons from accidents and unimportant characters in politics and war. himself it is enough to say that as a German with an honorable record he soon became a prominent orator in Wisconsin, with its strong German element; and that, on the outbreak of hostilities between the North and South, his military experience, small though it was, justified his appointment as brigadier-general of volunteers. In both capacities he entered into intimate relations with distinguished men, and his portraits-by far the best features in his volumes-show discrimination. He sets Lincoln and Sumner before us in their habits as they lived; and here is an admirable sketch of Chase, a great politician marred, as Schurz shrewdly points out, by hunger for the Presidency: His bearing in public gave Chase the appearance of a somewhat cold, haughty, and distant man. Without the least affectation or desire to pose, he was apt to be superbly statuesque. But when in friendly intercourse he opened himself, the real warmth of his nature broke through the icy crust, and one received the impression that his usual reticence arose rather from something like bashful shyness than from a haughty sense of superiority. His dignity of deportment never left him even in his unbending moods, for it was perfectly natural and unconscious. It really belonged to him like the majestic figure that nature had given him. There was something very captivating in the grand simplicity of his character as it revealed itself in his confidences when he imparted them with that almost childlike little lisp in his deep voice, and I can well understand how intimate friends could conceive a sentimental affection for him and preserve it through the changes of time, even when occasionally they ceased to approve his course. Carl Schurz's chapters on the American Civil War treat battle-fields somewhat in the Tolstoy manner; indeed, he expresses his admiration for that unrivalled analyzer of carnage, with its heroisms and littlenesses. Thus we get vivid passages illustrative of the behavior of men under fire, and of retreats embittered by cold and hunger. His main object seems to be to defend the "Dutchmen" who fought for the North under his and other commands against charges of giving way to panic; the aliens-to quote Sheil's famous phrase -did not blench. But it is only in details that he modifies generally accepted ideas on the strategy employed by both sides; and, as before, he shines mostly in his portraits. This is how Meade appeared on Cemetery Hill before Gettysburg: problem. But this simple, cold, serious soldier with his business-like air did inspire confidence. The officers and men, as much as was permitted, crowded around and looked up to him with curious eyes, and then turned away, not enthusiastic, but clearly satisfied. Schurz records an utterance by Sherman which he rightly regards as remarkable and true: There was a difference between Grant's and my way of looking at things. Grant never cared a damn about what was going on behind the enemy's lines, but it often scared me like the devil. The remainder of Carl Schurz's career hardly calls for protracted comment. He became a Senator at forty, and rose to be Secretary of the Interior in the Hayes Cabinet. But an honorable zeal for Civil Service reform, combined with an idealist passion for opposition, placed him outside the established grooves of party, and he ended as a typical "mugwump." the terror of Presidents, especially of those who were incautious enough to invite his correspondence. His reminiscences break off in 1869, shortly after his admission to the Senate; but Mr. Frederic Bancroft and Mr. William A. Dunning have summed up the rest of his life, which ended in 1906, with sympathy and ability. It was, if I remember rightly, about 8 o'clock when General Meade quietly appeared on the cemetery, on horseback, accompanied by a staff officer and an orderly. His long-bearded, haggard face, shaded by a black military felt hat, the rim of which was turned down, looked careworn and tired, as if he had not slept that night. The spectacles on his nose gave him a somewhat magisterial look. There was nothing in his appearance or his bearing-not a smile nor a sympathetic word addressed to those around himthat might have made the hearts of the soldiers warm up to him, or that called forth a cheer. There was nothing of pose, nothing stagey, about him. His mind was evidently absorbed by a hard many speaking likenesses. The Athenaeum. The numerous illustrations included in these volumes are of value, notably those presenting Federal generals; and Carl Schurz himself pervades them in "Hush! I haven't. I got a bullet on the liver in the campaign of '03, due to over-smoking; and sometimes it hurts me a little in the cold weather. That's all." "Why don't you try the Hyperion?" "I will. Where is it?" "It isn't anywhere; you buy it." "Oh, I thought you dined at it. What do you buy it for?" "It's one of those developers with elastics and pulleys and so on. Every morning early, for half an hour before breakfast "I suppose," I reflected, "there is a limit of beauty beyond which it is dangerous to go. After that either the thing would come off its hook, or-” "Well," said Adela suddenly, "aren't I looking well?" "You're looking radiant," I said, appreciatively; "but it may only be because you're going to marry Billy next month." She smiled and blushed. "Well, I'll send it to you," she said. "And you try it for a week, and then tell me if you don't feel better. Oh, and don't do all the exercises to begin with; start I undid the wrappings eagerly, took off the lid of the box, and was confronted with (apparently) six pairs of braces. I shook them out of the box and saw I had made a mistake. It was one pair of braces for Magog. I picked it up, and I know that I was in the presence of the Hyperion. In five minutes I had screwed a hook into the bedroom wall and attached the beautifier. Then I sat on the edge of the bed and looked at it. There was a tin plate, attached to the top, with the word "LADIES" on it. I got up, removed it with a knife, and sat down again. Everything was very dusty, and I wondered when Adela had last developed herself. By-and-by I went into the other room to see if I had overlooked anything. I found on the floor a chart of exercises. and returned triumphantly with it. There were thirty exercises altogether, and the chart gave you (1) A detailed explanation of how to do each particular exercise; (2) A photograph of a lady doing it. "After all," I reassured myself, after the first bashful glance, "it is Adela who has thrust this upon me; and she must have known." So I studied it. Nos. 10, 15, 28 and 30 seemed the easiest; I decided to confine myself to them. For the first of these you strap yourself in at the waist, grasp the handles, and fall slowly backwards until your head touches the floor-all the elastic cords being then at full stretch. When I had got very slowly halfway down, an extra piece of elastic which had got hitched somewhere came suddenly into play, and I did the rest of the journey without a stop, finishing up sharply against the towel-horse. The chart had said, "Inhale going down," and I was inhaling hard at the moment that the towel-horse and two damp "No. Well, I started with No. 10. No. 10, you may recall, is one of the most perilous. I nearly died over No. 10. And when I had been doing it for a week I discovered what its particular object was." Having recovered from my spontaneous rendering of No. 15, I turned to No. 28. This one, I realized, was ex- "What?" tremely important; I 6. ΤΟ would do it twelve times. You begin by lying flat on the floor roped in at the waist, and with your hands (grasping the elastic cords) held straight up in the air. The tension on your waist is then extreme, but on your hands only moderate. Then taking a deep breath you pull your arms slowly out until they lie along the floor. The tension becomes terrific, the strain on every part of you is immense. While I lay there, taking a deep breath before relaxing, I said to myself, "The strain will be too much for me." I was wrong. It was too much for the hook. The hook whizzed out, everything flew at me at once, and I remembered no more. As I limped into bed, I trod heavily upon something sharp. I shrieked and bent down to see what had bitten me. It was a tin plate bearing the word "LADIES." "Well?" said Adela a week later. “Well?" I looked at her for a long time, "When did you last use the Hyperion?" I asked. "About a year ago." "Ah! ... You don't remember the chart that went with it?" Punch. 66 round the forearm'! Yes, madam," I said bitterly, "I have spent a week of agony rounded one forearm." "Why didn't you try another?" "I did. I tried No. 15. Six times in the pursuit of No. 15 have I been shot up to the ceiling by the left foot and what for, Adela? 'To arch the instep'! Look at my instep! Why should I want to arch it?" "I wish I could remember which chart I sent you," said Adela, wrinkling her brow. "It was the wrong one," I said. There was a long silence. "Oh," said Adela suddenly, "you never told me about No. 28." "Pardon me," I said, "I cannot bear to speak of 28." "Why, was it even more unsuitable than the other two?" "I found, when I had done it six times, that its object was stated to be, "To remove double chin.' That, however, was not the real effect. And so I crossed out the false comment and wrote the true one in its place." "And what is that?" asked Adela. "To remove the hook," I said gloomily. A. A. M. |