|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 2
INSTEAD SHE BURIED HER FACE IN ITS FOLDS (Frontispiece)
STOPPING FOR HALF-HOURS AT A TIME BEFORE A BAZAAR
THE BOAR HUNT
CONSUMED TEA AND THIN SLICES OF BREAD
"I NEVER SAW A KING," GORDON REMARKED
THE EXILES
I
The greatest number of people in the world prefer the most highly
civilized places of the world, because they know what sort of things
are going to happen there, and because they also know by experience
that those are the sort of things they like. A very few people prefer
barbarous and utterly uncivilized portions of the globe for the reason
that they receive while there new impressions, and because they like
the unexpected better than a routine of existence, no matter how
pleasant that routine may be. But the most interesting places of all
to study are those in which the savage and the cultivated man lie down
together and try to live together in unity. This is so because we can
learn from such places just how far a man of cultivation lapses into
barbarism when he associates with savages, and how far the remnants of
his former civilization will have influence upon the barbarians among
whom he has come to live.
There are many such colonies as these, and they are the most picturesque
plague-spots on the globe. You will find them in New Zealand and at
Yokohama, in Algiers, Tunis, and Tangier, and scattered thickly all
along the South American coast-line wherever the law of extradition
obtains not, and where public opinion, which is one of the things a
colony can do longest without, is unknown. These are the unofficial
Botany Bays and Melillas of the world, where the criminal goes of his
own accord, and not because his government has urged him to do so and
paid his passage there. This is the story of a young man who went to
such a place for the benefit he hoped it would be to his health, and
not because he had robbed any one, or done a young girl an injury. He
was the only son of Judge Henry Howard Holcombe, of New York. That was
all that it was generally considered necessary to say of him. It was
not, however, quite enough, for, while his father had had nothing but
the right and the good of his State and country to think about, the
son was further occupied by trying to live up to his father's name.
Young Holcombe was impressed by this fact from his earliest childhood.
It rested upon him while at Harvard and during his years at the law
school, and it went with him into society and into the courts of law.
When he rose to plead a case he did not forget, nor did those present
forget, that his father while alive had crowded those same halls with
silent, earnest listeners; and when he addressed a mass-meeting at
Cooper Union, or spoke from the back of a cart in the East Side, some
one was sure to refer to the fact that this last speaker was the son
of the man who was mobbed because he had dared to be an abolitionist,
and who later had received the veneration of a great city for his
bitter fight against Tweed and his followers.
Young Holcombe was an earnest member of every reform club and citizens'
league, and his distinguished name gave weight as a director to
charitable organizations and free kindergartens. He had inherited his
hatred of Tammany Hall, and was unrelenting in his war upon it and its
handiwork, and he spoke of it and of its immediate downfall with the
bated breath of one who, though amazed at the wickedness of the thing
he fights, is not discouraged nor afraid. And he would listen to no
half-measures. Had not his grandfather quarrelled with Henry Clay, and
so shaken the friendship of a lifetime, because of a great compromise
which he could not countenance? And was his grandson to truckle and
make deals with this hideous octopus that was sucking the life-blood
from the city's veins? Had he not but yesterday distributed six
hundred circulars, calling for honest government, to six hundred
possible voters, all the way up Fourth Avenue?--and when some flippant
one had said that he might have hired a messenger-boy to have done it
for him and so saved his energies for something less mechanical, he
had rebuked the speaker with a reproachful stare and turned away in
silence.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|