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SUBURBAN ETCHINGS

It accords with the folk-lore, or traditions of the "Hill," that one must not offer violence to a black cat. Now it happened that in the season of spring chickens – in the very callow time of their existence – a vagrant cat installed himself in the garden. Charcoal was grey in contrast with the depth of his blackness; and his yellow eyes were flanked by jowls indicating that he fared sumptuously. If a cat of this hue is a symbol of evil, why not induce him to move on at once? "Bridget" was questioned for a satisfactory answer. "Because you mustn't. It is bad luck to harm a black cat." And so this superstition from the heart of the African continent was respected for a time. There might be some occult influence by which the cat propagated the superstition; creating it and living, as it were, in its very atmosphere. Hoodooing possibly is not confined to Africans. It has some relation to blackness, midnight, weird and mysterious eyes. This prowling feline may have in him the spirit of mischief. A symbol of evil may sometimes be the thing itself. It is a strange custom to mourn for lost friends by wearing black. What more natural interpretation than that the wearer also is dead? Whereas the "heathen" have hit upon a better symbol, wearing white for the loss of friends, signifying that they have entered into light, that the world itself is all luminous for the living.

Now that cat, the spirit and essence of darkness, the forerunner of diabolism, was true to the symbol. What did he do but leap over a high fence every morning and take from the inclosure the tenderest of spring chickens. Then an hour afterward he would go down the garden walk for a greeting, as if he were not a knave and a hypocrite, arching his back and curving his tail beautifully, rubbing his sleek coat against one and looking up in the face as much as to say, "The only honest trades in the world are yours and mine." It is true that the business economy of the world is mainly a system of reprisals. But there ought to be a spiritual economy which should teach something better. It is evident that this cat must be converted with other than spiritual weapons. In a millennial sense shotguns, no doubt, may become "organ pipes of peace," and even now they may be used to project a sermon to a considerable distance. One by one that brood of chickens disappeared, and another was just coming off. A neighbor was consulted as to the best manner of getting around the superstition that no harm must be done to a black cat. The case was plain enough. He had a beautiful breech-loading shotgun, costing, he suggested, a hundred and twenty dollars. All that was necessary to be done in the premises was to exhort that marauder with that gun. He would show us how to use it. Then followed a drill in its use. The cartridges went in at the breech, an eye was to be squinted along the barrel – and then came the crisis. What a beautiful implement! And how wonderful the contrast with the old Queen's arm, the relic of revolutionary days stored in the garret, with its flint lock, priming wire and muzzle, into which went five fingers of powder and shot, and one of wads! That gun, the use of which was always interdicted to small boys, had been let down from the garret window many a time by a toe-string manufactured for the occasion, and the first hint which maternal government got of that sleight of hand was a report in the nearest woods, which all the heavens echoed to the old homestead. That honest revolutionary piece would not lie. It spoke the truth even if we had to suffer the consequences. The draft made on a clump of hazel bushes near by, was the serious part of the business. But it abides in the memory that no red squirrel running on a ziz-zag fence was wholly safe when that Queen's arm was pointed at him.

The breech-loader was taken down and stored in the library for an aggravated occasion. It came in a few days. The man of all work came bowling up the walk red and wrathful. "That old son of perdition has got another chicken!" Now then, his time had come. He shall be swept with the besom of destruction. Superstitions go this day for nothing. A hundred and twenty dollar shotgun, silver mounted, and a patent cartridge! "Rest it across my back, 'Squire, and take good aim. Aim for his shoulder, and don't kill the chicken in his mouth." – "Did you fetch the cat?" Well, not exactly. The old superstition that day had a powerful effect. That cat dropped the chicken, though, and ran toward the gunner as if to salute him, and then leaped over a ten-feet fence and disappeared. That was not all. There were four chickens feeding in the grass beyond, every one of which was laid out cold, and a fifth was struck in the head and had the blind staggers so that it was counted in with the dead. There had been a little variance in the "besom of destruction" which operated in favor of that mysterious cat. Then there was the salutation of Bridget: "Didn't I tell you that it is bad luck to kill a black cat!" "Well, I haven't killed him by a long way. But you might go down in the back lot and gather up an apron full of spring chickens." That gun was returned with thanks. It was an elegant piece. But, somehow, it didn't work like the Queen's arm. The next day that cat returned as if nothing had happened, and took the regular toll of a chicken a day. For a whole year more these depredations went on at intervals, regulated by the supply of young chickens. Here was enterprise. A hundred-dollar chicken yard, constructed and arranged on "scientific principles," was just adequate for the supply of one black cat, on which no impression could be made with a breech-loader, while chickens were bought every week in the market to meet the home demand! In this extremity a new plan was evolved.

A cash premium – a new dollar from the mint – shall go for the destruction of this particular cat and all successors. Robert, the utility man, soon claimed the dollar. He had exhorted the sleek old hypocrite with a hoe-handle, and brought him to sudden repentance.

"It is bad luck to kill a black cat," said Bridget the next morning; "and you didn't kill him, neither." Well, I paid Robert a premium of a dollar, and he took him off. "Hang all superstitions."

"But the black cat is down in the garden now."

There was that thieving rascal, or a duplicate, at the old business. Robert offered to show the original underground. The premium business was continued, and went into the monthly statement. No sooner was one taken off than another appeared, provided always that it was not the original vagabond. The same predatory habits, the same midnight and diabolical expression, the same decimation in the chicken yard. What did it all mean? There was some occult diabolism that could not be explained. "Didn't I tell you," says Bridget, with an air of triumph, "that you can't kill a black cat."

No, I can't, with a breech-loader. But Robert is drawing a regular premium. The black cat premium fund was exhausted. Now, state your account, my boy. "Well, I have killed five, upon honor, and have my eye upon another one." There was a suspicion that the original was still there. But the superstition vanished in the clear light of day when it was shown that number six had a little fleck of white between the four legs. But the depredations still go on, and you cannot convince the honest old house-servant that a black cat has ever been killed – and looking out into the garden just now, as that sleek black rascal lies in the grass, with a waving motion of his tail and his yellow eye fixed upon a callow brood, it is clearer than ever before that the succession of black cats is eternal. They do not come in single file, but sun themselves on the fences by the half dozen, run over the green-house, breaking panes of glass, climb up on the outside to the gable window of the barn, flit across the garden walks at twilight, conceal themselves under the low shrubbery, as if defying all efforts at dislodgement. Then there is the comment of Patrick, our neighbor's utility man: "They know the char-acter you've made with that gun."

Nor was it a mitigating circumstance that a sympathizing friend proposed to regulate the succession of cats by sending over a small half-grown terrier. If well brought up, he would keep the peace in the interest of spring chickens. He did occasionally run the black vagrants to the trees handsomely. But as an incidental diversion, he would lay out half a dozen chickens on any fine morning. Where was the gain? Cats could be exhorted with a shotgun, at least there was one experiment of that kind. But when "Towser" was exhorted with a switch, a wail went up from the Hill. It was as if the spirits of all the dogs in Christendom had united to pierce the heavens. So great a noise for so small a catastrophe! But this elementary education cannot be interrupted on account of noises. There is a Hindoo proverb that you cannot get the crook out of a dog's tail by mollifying appliances. But what was needed in that particular case was to get the crook out of his intellect. It ought to have been settled long ago, as a principal of moral and mental philosophy, that you cannot beat honesty and virtue into men or dogs. And so this young canine rascal will come back to do to-morrow what he has done to-day. Does the boy rob bird's nests or plum trees any the less because he gets a sprouting now and then? He has in his moral system a thousand years of inherited aptitude for such predatory excursions.

The moulting season having come, the "chicken lot" looks as if several feather beds had been emptied there. There is less crowing and apparently more time given to meditation and introspection. The old rooster and his harem are now in undress, and a hint has been given that domestic eggs will be scarce for the next month. A young chick that learned to crow hardly more than a month ago, and eats from the hand with fine audacity, has just begun to balance his accounts. He is in full dress – his first suit, as it were – and is not subject to the moulting process at present. But having been under the tyranny of the patriarch who has now lost his tail, the younger one calls him to account daily. There is a hint of retributive justice here. All tyrants ought to have some part of their accounts settled in this world. By way of example, it might be better if the settlements were very complete. After all, there are very few tyrants who manage to get out of the world without a partial accounting with humanity. Now and then, it is measure for measure, the tyrant having his heaped up a little by way of emphasis. That last reflection is made clearer by the way that young rooster, in his juvenile dress, persists in settling his grievances. He knows nothing of the quality of magnanimity, which suggests that when an adversary has had a sound drubbing he should be let off with a mild regret that any such chastening had been necessary. There is little probability that the quality of mercy will be strained at present. Although, when a tramp called at the kitchen door, unkempt, belated and besotted, the compassionate Bridget set him out a generous breakfast. But when he complained that the coffee was not hot, the quality of mercy was strained which withheld the firing of the poker and coal scuttle at his head. The asceticism of the modern tramp, and the delicacy and exacting nature of his tastes, constitute the latest problem in sociology. It is strange, too, that his moulting season should last the year round. His laying off season never ends. His gains are in inverse proportion to his industry. It might be well to inquire whether there is not a secret profit in cultivating incapacity for work. This Christian Bedouin gets all he needs without effort. But daily I see a man who has acquired ten millions, and wants more. I know not which is the better off. The one appears to be going forward to an eternity of wants. Suppose this capacity for wanting things to increase in geometrical ratio – it may be necessary to mortgage the universe for his convenience. The other is going back on the track, lightening the dead weight as he goes, shedding his superfluous clothes by the wayside, getting down to the level of a ruminating animal, rejoicing in the fragrance of hay stacks at night and the freedom of hospitable kitchens by day. If there is nothing better than to delve for clothes and wooden palaces, it were as well that there should be more moulting. Who knows but the tramp reposing in the sun, his blood enriched thereby, his person made a little more fragrant by the redolence of the hay stack, may not gain a fresh stock of vitality quite needful for this languishing world? The profoundest philosopher of modern times surprised the world with a treatise devoted mainly to clothes. It is not given to know the day on which the profounder philosopher will come and surprise the world by showing the absurdity of clothes worn in conformity to any conventional requirements. Society is forever moulting, putting off and on, and is not happy. But the Patagonian covers his epidermis with mud to protect him from cold, and is happy, at least there is no evidence to the contrary. After all, there was a savor of health in the cynicism which inspired the sturdy old Greek to live in his tub when at home, and to hunt for an honest man with a lantern in the open day. It is nowhere stated that he found him.

There is an ancient Spanish custom of planting the seed of fruit which has been eaten. It is a way of pronouncing a benediction for the good received – not in empty words, but by a thoughtful and beneficent act. One has eaten of the fruit that another has planted, and he is glad; he will also plant that another may eat. Were that custom perpetuated the world over, evermore there would be fruit by the wayside. The highways and byways would not be cursed with barrenness and dust, but fringed with the mulberry and apple, with silent salutations for every weary traveler who would put forth his hand and eat. What matters it that the tree planted to-day shall never overarch and protect you from the smiting sun? – shall never drop its golden fruit by your side? Shall we not read by the light of eternal day that every tree thus planted has brought its benediction to the world? Is it little that others had planted for us, that we should forget to plant again? The patriarch entertained an angel unaware. How many angels might be entertained by one goodly orchard? Or, at least, such as by grace of speech, of mind, and manner, have already received the divine stamp. The heavens have no message for the destroyer; but they have one of peace for those who plant and build wisely on the earth.

It is a notable fact that all the deciduous trees, as well as all the rose bushes which are within the range of suburban observation, have a dormant season about mid-summer. Neither the sun, the south wind, nor water at the roots, can wholly prevent this intervening period of rest. In their own time and way they awake, as it were, to newness of life. In this dormant season they are storing energy for a new development. It is drawn from the sun, the atmosphere, and the nursing earth. When they have accumulated fresh stores there is a new wealth of blossom and foliage. Something analogous to this divine order reaches over from matter to mind. There are dormant seasons – periods of infertility – when the chemistry of heaven and earth is needed to overcome this barrenness. The artist dreams and touches not the fresh canvas on his easel. The poet wanders aimlessly in wider pastures, content to see the bees come and go, and the lupins and wild poppies nod to each other on the hillside. It is the ruminant season, when it is needful that one should digest what has been stored up within. Doth not the land lying in summer fallow gain new fertility? The unclothed land going so near to barrenness shall surely be clothed upon in the coming spring-time. It is well now if one may lie down and dream that the heavens were studded for him alone; and that the west wind of autumn, bearing the perfume of a hundred orchards, comes to him from a land of eternal fruitage. Even now the young leaves are starting on the rose bushes; the period of second growth has already begun. The pear begins to blush under the rays of a September sun; and a strange lily among the ineffable white of the callas, has gone all aflame, as if sainthood and bleeding martyrdom were never far apart.

LITERATURE AND ART.²

If one may find by the way-side in early springtime so much as a harebell or dandelion, a springing blade of grass or an unfolding bud, as much real satisfaction may be drawn from these scant treasures as from the more abounding fullness of summer, or the mellow ripeness of autumn. In all that relates to education, literature and art, it is early springtime here. What would you have more than some wayside evidences of the serene summer yet to follow, and an intellectual fruitage, of which the gold and purple of the vintage are but the faintest symbols? What is a quarter of a century in the life of a commonwealth, to the rounded centuries which have matured the great universities of Europe, or even the two centuries which have enriched Harvard and Yale? The canvas tents of '49, pitched on the sandy slopes of the peninsula, promised no great city, no perfected system of common schools, no academies and seminaries, and no university planted at Berkeley, in sight from a city of more than a quarter of a million inhabitants. The dissolving gravel beds of a placer mine and the arid plains, were neither symbols of permanence nor of bread. What could you expect in this stress of humanity, even though the agglomerated community were not lacking in some of the best and bravest of all lands?

There can be no beginning of a commonwealth until a Divine Providence begins to set the solitary in families. Homes, children, the economies of domestic life, the commonwealth of husband and wife, the law of the household, and that human providence which grows tender and thoughtful with each young and dependent life – these are precedent conditions of the future state.

It was most fitting that a graduate of one of the oldest colleges in the country should have opened the first public school in California. Thomas Douglas, a graduate of Yale College, began a public school in San Francisco on the 3d day of April, 1848. It was a good beginning. But when a few months later nearly the whole population had, drifted away to the mines, Douglas was left high and dry on the sand hills.

All true scholarship has breadth and catholicity. Let not ours be impeached by ignoring what others have done in the domain of letters and science. The fact is none the less significant, that the public school, with its canvas roof, and three scholars, in 1849, is crowned by the University of California to-day.

Possibly, the pioneer educators builded better than they knew. Douglas, the master of arts of Yale, setting the first stakes in the sand hills – Marvin, the first State Superintendent of Public Schools, who, having made a campaign against the Indians, turned over his emoluments to the school fund – Brayton, who conducted for years the most successful preparatory school in the State, a brave, patient and lovable man, whose life went out all too soon in the midst of his noble work – Durant, who, beginning at the foundations, saw the University with the clear vision of a prophet, and lived to see the fruition of his hopes – the gentle and profound scholar, the dignified president, the wise and firm civil magistrate, who, in the richness of his intellect, the purity of his soul, and the steadfastness of his friendship, was more than president, magistrate, or scholar. Tompkins, as a legislator and as regent, worked with unflagging zeal for the University, and fitly crowned that work by endowing, out of his moderate fortune, the first professorship. When he had made his last public speech in behalf of the institution for which he had wrought so well, it remained for him to enter into the sacred guild of those pioneers who had gone a little before. Gilman, the second president, whose organizing mind grasped every detail of the University, who wrought effectively for it by day, and planned wisely for it by night – a man of rare executive ability, who seemed half unconscious of his own power to influence men in behalf of the great interests for which he wrought. Let it be said of him that he bore himself in his high office with a patience and dignity befitting the Christian gentleman and accomplished scholar. Such a man rarely misses his place, because he is a citizen of the world of letters. It is here for a few years, and on the other side of the country for more. But here or there, I think he will never need a better testimonial than that which his work will offer.

Some good work has also been done in a scientific way. The geological survey of this State was arrested by the impatience of the people for immediate results. The topographical survey alone, than which nothing better has ever been done in this country, was more than an equivalent for the entire outlay. There will come a time when the practical value of such an enterprise will be better understood. The physical problems in a single State like California could not be solved in half a century. Was it well to ask a scientific commission to solve them, and publish the results in a few months?

The public journal, as a factor in education, is here, as elsewhere, the outgrowth of our civilization. It embodies the passions, caprices and enterprises of the community. In its best estate it gives the history of the world for one day. In its poorest estate it is content with a patent outside, the puffing of some mountebank, and the abuse of rivals. But at the close of this quarter century, the only complete history of the rise and progress of this commonwealth is that which the newspapers contain. I have seen an artist sketch an accurate likeness of his friend on his thumb-nail. But the modern newspaper every day sketches the likeness, the pulse, and the throbbing heart of the civilized world.

Just as the ideal state is something far in advance of the actual, so the ideal newspaper is something far better than exists on this side of the continent. Here, as elsewhere, it is largely the product of steamships, railroads and telegraphs. But the journal of the future will, after all, be very much what the community makes it. It is the child of civilization, going forward with the community to a better condition, or going backward with it to coarseness and barbarism. The best newspaper a hundred years ago was a poor affair. A hundred years hence, the journal of to-day will probably be viewed with as much interest for what it lacks, as for what it contains.

Our ideal newspaper will pander to no mean prejudices. It will be no generator of slang phrases. It will not murder honest English. It will have ripe and well-digested opinions. It will not truckle to base men. It will not sneer at religion. It will keep its editorial columns above all just suspicion of purchase. It will leave garbage in the gutter. It will assail no man unjustly, nor fear to defend any man or interest because he or it may be obscure or unpopular. No good citizen will fear the honest journal of the future, and no bad man will like it.

Observe how the outer bark of the madrono and eucalyptus, with the coming of every Summer, bursts, rolls up, and falls to the ground as so much rubbish. That is a sign of expanding life. A great deal of newspaper rubbish to-day is a sign of growth. The outer rind and husk of things fall to the ground by that vital force which is continually developing a larger and nobler life in the community. No man will hereafter go to the head of this profession without fair scholarship, a wide range of observation, a large capacity, to deal in a general way with human affairs, and that keen insight which catches the spirit and essence of this on-going life. Most difficult of all is a certain power of statement which no school can teach, and without which the highest plane of the journalist cannot be reached. Your long story will not be heard. The world is waiting for the man of condensation. Tell it in few words. If one can master this high eclecticism of thought and statement, I know of no more promising field for young men to-day than journalism. If one cannot, the potato field, in a season of blight, is quite as promising.

Without this broader culture for the journalist, there will be great danger that the exigencies of his work will make him a superficial man. The habit will grow upon him of touching merely the surface of things. He will come to think that, as his journal is only for the day, his errors are for the day also. The habit of careful investigation and exactness of thought and statement, will be discarded for random guesses and the temporary expedients of the hour. Nothing but the balancing influence of generous culture will arrest this lapsing tendency. It will be disclosed in platitudes and commonplaces; in writing against space, and in that dreadful amplitude which buries a thought under a mountain of verbiage.

One cannot fail to note that the newspaper has been gradually encroaching on the domain of literature. It has absorbed monthly magazines or forced publishers to resort to illustrations – to a sort of picture-book literature for grown-up children. It has driven the lumbering quarterlies into smaller fields and diminished their relative importance. The average citizen craves the news from a journal having the very dew of the morning and of the evening upon it. It must come to him damp and limp, bringing whatever is best at the smallest possible cost. The newspaper is the herald of the new era. Its errand must be swift, its statements compact, and its thought eclectic and comprehensive.

Three thousand years ago, one of the grand old prophets spoke mysteriously of the "living spirit in the wheels." Was it other than the modern newspaper thrown off by the pulsing of the great cylinder press? But observe that through yonder Golden Gate, which the sun and the stars and the lamps of men glorify day and night, the devil-fish comes sailing up, and is no whit concerned whether his accursed tentacula close around saint or sinner. Is it not the fittest symbol of a public journal conducted by ignorant and unscrupulous men? Rather would you not choose, as a more fitting symbol of the ideal journal, one of the small globules of quicksilver which you shall find on any of these encircling hills, so powerless to draw to it an atom of filth or rubbish, but ever attracting the smallest particle of incorruptible silver and gold?

It can hardly have escaped notice that California, during this quarter-century, has produced more humorists, and more of that literature which is essentially humorous, than all the rest of the country. It may be difficult to trace to any outward sources the inspiration of so much wit. Does it lie in the odd contrasts and strange situations which so often confront the observer here? Nor has this facetiousness depended at all for its development upon any degree of prosperity. In fact, the boldest and bravest challenge which has ever been given to adverse fortune here, has been by the gentle humorists who have suffered from her slings and arrows. It is said: "Cervantes smiled Spain's chivalry away." But these modern satirists made faces at bad fortune; they lampooned her and defied her to do her utmost. The more miserable they ought to have been, the happier they were. They found a grotesque and comic side to the most sober facts. They were facetious when there was small stock in the larder and smaller credit at the banker's. They smiled at the very grimness of evil fortune until she fled, and, in doing this, they half-unconsciously tickled the midriff of the world. A ripple of laughter ran over the surface of society. It sometimes made slow progress when it here and there met a mountain of obtuseness. But wit is wit; and what difference does it make if, failing to see the point, some people laugh next year instead of this? I will not be distressed because my friend does not, to this day, see how the immortal "Squibob" conquered his adversary at San Diego by falling underneath him and inserting his nose between his teeth. Nor does it greatly concern me that he does not assent to the proposition that John Ph[oe]nix, having made a national reputation by editing the San Diego Herald for one week, was the greatest journalist of modern times. If reputation is the measure of greatness, Ph[oe]nix is to this day without a peer. He made the very desert sparkle with his wit. He was a humorous comet, shooting across the dull horizon of pioneer life. Men looked up and wondered whence it came and whither it had gone.

Possibly, there is something favorable to the play of humor in a greater freedom from conventional limitations. If one grows into this larger liberty, or is translated into it, a flavor of freshness comes to pervade all the intellectual life. A certain spontaneity of expression, a spring, a rioting song of gladness, are some of the signs of this more abounding life. In homely phrase, we say there is a flavor of the soil about it. It might, therefore, have been necessary that Mark Twain should sleep on this soil, and should have a wide range of pioneer experiences, before he could become the prince of grotesque humorists. He got up suddenly from the very soil which in its secret laboratory colors the olive and the orange, and began to make the world laugh. With a keen sense of the symmetry and harmony of things, he had a keener perception of all the shams and ridiculous aspects of life. His pungent gospel of humor is as sanitary as a gentle trade-wind. He knew a better secret than the old alchemists. Every time he made the world laugh he put a thousand ducats into his pocket. But never until he had slept in his blankets, had been robbed on the "Divide," and had learned the delicate cookery of a miner's cabin, could he do these things. But now he cannot even weep at the tomb of his ancestor, Adam, without moving the risibles of half the world. He has also a finer touch and flavor, not of the rankest soil, but of that which gives the aroma and delicate bouquet to the rarest mountain-side vintage. When this man had tried his wit on a Californian audience and had won an approving nod, he had an endorsement that was good in any part of the English-speaking world.