The next year my argument took the shape of, "My dear Podgers, let me beg of you to vote a straight ticket this year. Do you realize what year it is, Podgers? Of course you do. I need not remind a gentleman of your exceptional intelligence that this election is but the prelude to the presidential election of next year, with its issues of far-reaching and vital importance." Podgers concluded to postpone. The next year was the presidential year, when I repeated the argument first mentioned. The others in turn again did service, and so on for thirty-six years. And that's the way I kept persuading Podgers to postpone. He never was, but always to be, a scratcher or a bolter. At the elections at which no national or state ticket was run, and only minor local offices were to be filled, I pointed out to Podgers the necessity of keeping the party organization intact; and when all other arguments failed I insisted that of two evils he should always choose the least and that, admitting that our ticket was evil, it was the least of the two. Even this brief and inadequate account of its application will make sufficiently clear to you, I think, the true inwardness of the postponement treatment. Just one word more about it. Those who employ it with the most gratifying results allow the impression to be produced in the patient's mind at the outset that, although they have never happened to find an election at which scratching or bolting could be indulged in without perfectly harrowing injury to public interests of colossal moment, yet, nevertheless, they heartily and unreservedly approve of scratching and bolting in the abstract. Such an attitude on my part toward poor Podgers won his confidence at our first political conference on this subject, and produced in him a mood hospitable to all my subsequent arguments and admonitions. This communication has already exceeded reasonable limits, and yet I have only touched upon a few points. But perhaps I have written enough to start you right, to make you understand the nature of our great American game, and to put you in possession of the clew to the secret of playing it successfully. Be it yours to consult the expedient, leaving it to the purists of the party to consult the highly proper. Beware of those who take sentimental views of unsentimental matters. A man who would "rather be right than be president" by all means ought to decline a presidential nomination, and run for a position in a theological seminary, a Sunday-school, or Vassar College; while he who holds that "one with God is a majority" antagonizes the system of reckoning which has come down to us from the fathers, and which has the approval of every practical inspector of American elections. Be practical in your politics, be practical, evermore be practical. With fervent hopes and high anticipations of your future, I subscribe myself your affectionate uncle, Charles Goodrich Whiting. BORN in St. Albans, Vt., 1842. THE EAGLE'S FALL. [The Saunterer. 1886.] HE eagle, did ye see him fall? THE Aflight beyond mid-air Erewhile his mighty pinions bore him, And not a bird could dare To match with that tremendous motion, Through fire and flood, 'twixt sky and ocean, – And so ye saw the eagle fall! Struck in his flight of pride He hung in air one lightning moment, Thus did ye see the eagle fall! Where closed the monarch's eye in dying, Sparrow and jackdaw, hawk and vulture, Great eagle in his fall? AND SEA-SHORE. ND still it does not always satisfy. In those weary heats wherein the grasshopper and everything else becomes a burden, this mountain wind, with all its careering freedom and bounteous perfume of field and forest, is but a makeshift. The true elixir in midsummer faintness is the salt tonic of ocean, the essence of the world-embracing seas. Some cannot feel its full power unless free of the land, dandled by the waves and uncertain as to their horizons; but perhaps they get little on a voyage that is more valuable than what they might have on shore-besides sea-sickness. It is a matter of temperament, however, and to some it is delight to battle with the clashing elements, to "revel in their stormy faculties," to sport with ocean and "on her breast to be Borne like a bubble onward." VOL. X.-12 The sea needs longer knowing than the hills, which to one who has the password of Nature offer at once their unstaled intimacy. The sea gives nothing to the stranger at the first, unless he find it in one of its grand moods, and it is not in such moods that friendship is formed. Summers and winters for a life are not too much to gain and satisfy that deep charm which the waves enfold. It is a mightier spell than that of the hills, for among them there abides no challenging personality, but the encompassing spirit of Nature; while the sea is itself personal, and the spirit that rides upon its waters is the spirit of God. The sea at calm of receding tide, beneath a burning sky and a still air, presents a curious aspect of sleeping power,-but only to one who has looked upon that power's manifestation. To see it thus at first is not to cry, with Xenophon's Greeks, "Thalatta! Thalatta!" but to echo the disappointed exclamation of Gebir, "Is this the mighty ocean? Is this all ?" Yet after knowing the ways of the waves, the sea is never more impressive than in this feline beauty of quiet, when the ripples make their purring murmur on the beach, and the sun lines the horizon with a band of blinding white. A better first meeting is as the surf rolls in strong at flood-tide, either on sand or shingle, or against the cliffs of some stern coast. Except when on shipboard in mid-ocean, the ship itself an inconsequent speck on a limitless expanse, man can hardly feel more insignificant than in facing a surf, urged by tide and beaten by winds up the beach. Each wave that curls and crests itself seems dashing down upon his head; and it is hard to realize the illusion, and that the rolling water will in a few moments fling its highest foam beneath his feet. Often the illusion extends farther, so that the whole ocean from the sky-line seems majestic rapids, irresistibly pouring to the land. The rocks reveal new phases. High on some cliff one looks upon broken masses of its constituent rock hurled in shapeless confusion around its base, and curiously observes where at some future instant the part on which one sits shall yield to the endless onset and join these age-old fragments. At each side the pounding waves have worn long galleries through softer strata, or beneath have carved "the coast wise mountain into caves." They dash and sprinkle spray far up the crag, then drop and wash around its base, among the stones they have for ages been rounding and polishing, and retreat and gather for new assaults. With untiring interest and question one watches these blows,-so ponderous, so gracefully foam-fringed, so notably alike, so continually varied,—so individual and irregular, so harmonious and rhythmic. These aspects of the sea, in which the white sails gleam on its wide fields, and it seems the welcoming or subject friend of man, are but its superficial character. Into its darker depths we who seek midsummer rest will not now pry; it may chance a word shall utter thence unsought. For it is on the shore that the ocean wreaks its power in expression; there, not on its bosom, that its voice is clearly heard; thence that its magic sends, and thither that it draws them "that go down unto the great deep." The sea-shore is full of wonder, yet full of rest. Nowhere can man be more potently awake, nowhere more happily asleep. The lull of the waves on the beach is better than any other croon of babyhood or echo of life. And when the storm rises, and the rush of the waters up the sands or their dash upon the rocks is heard, and the foamy spray tops the crag and booms and dashes far a-land, the whole sense wakes, and the pulse quickens to delight in elemental strife. The god of the storms knows well how the life of his creatures stirs under the assault of his minions of wind and rain and lightning. In the dawn that follows a night of storm, when everything smiles as if no force of Nature had been wrenched to its limit, what a surprise the day is! Has there ever before been a dawn like this? Ο Η FOR RONALD IN HIS GRAVE. H are the heavens clear, ye say? Oh is there joy yet in the day, I thought the sky in tears would break, Oh Nature has a cruel heart How can the merry earth go dance, BE Henry James, Jr. BORN in New York, N. Y., 1843. BEAUTIFUL ENGLAND. [A Passionate Pilgrim, and Other Tales. 1875.] ETWEEN the fair boundaries of the counties of Hereford and Worcester rise in a long undulation the sloping pastures of the Malvern Hills. Consulting a big red book on the castles and manors of England, we found Lockley Park to be seated near the base of this grassy range, though in which county I forget. In the pages of this genial volume, Lockley Park and its appurtenances made a very handsome figure. We took up our abode at a certain little way-side inn, at which in the days of leisure the coach must have stopped for lunch, and burnished pewters of rustic ale been tenderly exalted to "outsides "athirst with breezy progression. Here we stopped, for sheer admiration of its steep thatched roof, its latticed windows, and its homely porch. We allowed a couple of days to elapse in vague undirected strolls and sweet sentimental observance of the land, before we prepared to execute the especial purpose of our journey. This admirable region is a compendium of the general physiognomy of England. The noble friendliness of the scenery, its subtle old-friendliness, the magical familiarity of multitudinous details, appealed to us at every step and at every glance. Deep in our souls a natural affection answered. The whole land, in the full, warm rains of the last of April, had burst into sudden perfect spring. The dark walls of the hedge-rows had turned into blooming screens; the sodden verdure of lawn and meadow was streaked with a ranker freshness. We went forth without loss of time for a long walk on the hills. Reaching their summits, you find half England unrolled at your feet. A dozen broad counties, within the vast range of your vision, commingle their green exhalations. Closely beneath us lay the dark, rich flats of hedgy Worcestershire and the copsecheckered slopes of rolling Hereford, white with the blossom of apples. At widely opposite points of the large expanse two great cathedral towers rise sharply, taking the light, from the settled shadow of the circling towns,the light, the ineffable English light! "Out of England," cried Searle, "it's but a garish world!" The whole vast sweep of our surrounding prospect lay answering in a myriad fleeting shades the cloudy process of the tremendous sky. The English heaven is a fit antithesis to the complex English earth. We possess in America the infinite beauty of the blue; England possesses the splendor of combined and animated clouds. Over against us, from our station on the hills, we saw them piled and dissolved, compacted and shifted, blotting the azure with sullen rain-spots, stretching, breeze-fretted, into dappled fields of gray, bursting into a storm of light or melting into a drizzle of silver. We made our way along the rounded summits of these well-grazed heights, -mild, breezy inland downs,-and descended through long-drawn slopes of fields, green to cottage doors, to where a rural village beckoned us from its seat among the meadows. Close beside it, I admit, the railway shoots fiercely from its tunnel in the hills; and yet there broods upon this charming hamlet an old-time quietude and privacy, which seems to make it a violation. of confidence to tell its name so far away. We struck through a narrow lane, a green lane, dim with its height of hedges; it led us to a superb old farmhouse, now jostled by the multiplied lanes and roads which have curtailed its ancient appanage. It stands in stubborn picturesqueness, at the receipt of sad-eyed contemplation and the sufferance of "sketches." I doubt whether out of Nuremberg-or Pompeii !—you may find so forcible an image of the domiciliary genius of the past. It is cruelly complete; its bended beams and joists, beneath the burden of its gables, seem to ache and groan with memories and regrets. The short, low windows, where lead and glass combine in equal proportions to hint to the wondering stranger of the mediaval gloom within, still prefer their darksome office to the grace of modern day. Such an old house fills an American with an indefinable feeling of respect. So propped and patched and tinkered with clumsy tenderness, clustered so richly about its central English sturdiness, its oaken vertebrations, so humanized with ages of use and touches of beneficent affection, it seemed to offer to our grateful eyes a small, rude synthesis of the great English social |