1898 (MDP)

January 1, 1898

Love of Word Language

Words are wonderful and wise,

Less of Earth than of the skies,

Birds that sing,

Beings fitly beautiful

For their emprise dutiful -

Truth to bring.

 

Alliteration, liquids, vowels.

Alternate the words with bowels

Of compassion.

Or with joys and lilting lay

‘Cross my spirit wing their way

In love-fashion.

 

With word-language I'm in love;

In its eyes the heavens above

Look at me;

Symbol of the living whole

Still it hath a subtle soul.

Musical, Free.

 

Gladly do I kiss it then,

With the love of many men,

Highly given;

Yet its starry-bright return

Seems to light a flame and burn

Out of Heaven!

January 3, 1898

In style, do not elaborate, at least noticeably. Skilful elaboration shows talent; but genius strikes directly and hits it rightly at a stroke, that is, the result is neither more nor less than right. Even so great a port as Tennyson shows to less advantage by his elaborate word-picturing and is thereby more artificial and academic. Dante does otherwise; the world writers do otherwise.

January 4, 1898

In re* Mount assignment, I concluded sending divided-checks to the creditors. This practically closes the matter, save getting an order for discharge.

*

January 5, 1898

It is not upon the natural that we should particularly pride ourselves, but upon art which is supra-natural. The one is general and medial; the other, creative, evincing singular power, and rare. This may be self-evident. I trust it is obviously put; but is it so evidenced in criticism, literature and life? I know not.

January 6, 1898

"Mark Twain", a virile writer of originality and native humor when he sticks to his idiom of "The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County", slops over in an unvirile way into a canting ruthless, yet withal weak sentimentality, when he comes to defend Harriet Shelley or measure his coarseness against Percy Shelley's fineness. Disparate as it may seem, this is the expected part and writing of a rude flat-boatman of the Mississippi when cast away from his natural moorage and course. "Ovida", on the contrary, is willing to sacrifice several Harriets to the truth, radiant aspiration and pulsing beauty of a Shelley! But then, "Ovida", is a gentlewoman of spirit who knows spiritual values. And I give to the latter a ten times ten approval.

January 8, 1898

I wonder if readers note usually the collocation of a writer's words. If they do not, dull are they or green; if they do and do not admire, they have missed much, in some cases the whole matter - all the sweet reasonableness and originality, and distinctly their own vocation. They would better read the rough language of things rather than the fine spirits of allocuting and allusive words.

January 10, 1898

Took B. over the river to the theatre to-night. It was a vulgar souvenir night, and as the body of the house was all sold, we occupied a box. The Prince and Princess looked down on the mobile vulgus*. There was a play in the box as well as upon the stage. Shadowed at my side the Princess wept.

January 11, 1898

My Newyork, lesser or greater, I know fairly well, with a knowledge not gained hastily but born of leisure and a curious familiarity. Manhattan in particular is my strolling ground, whereof I could unfold rare tales and thrilling, to make each several hair to stand on end like filaments electrified, but these things conventional artifice denies. One must write reticently, and leave the round full story of the town untold; one must speak suggestively of its pictures, its people, its changing form and stress, its great deep dream, or not at all.

January 13, 1898

One of my tenants, a colored woman, who is the mother of young Ruffin who recently shot and killed his mistress, told me that she had eleven children and all of them are dead, excepting "Dick" who is now in jail awaiting his trial for murder. Think of ten children dead and the eleventh about to bear the pity of a long prison-life or terminate the family at the end of a hangman's rope! What failure of events or issue! What sarcasm of destiny! What a distressed soul I witnessed. The desolated suffering of that mother's heart is too pitiful to think on. The thought of it startled me, and I half turned with a kind of ache in my chest, as I caught glimpses of the depths to which maternal misery could go in such a case. A sensitive being would sink to the central fires. But whatever spiritual stay this woman had, and I fancy it was little or none, a certain physical provision sustained her. Mercifully her animal spirits abounded to support her greatly and defy the bitterest decrees of fate.

Edward Hallinger, who was executed for the murder, a few years ago, hacked to death his mistress in one of my houses on Third Street. I remember I entered the place of the deed and saw the blood-bespattered walls with trepidation. I understood the superstitious negroes who refused immediately thereafter to rent the rooms, and induced a white mechanic to clean and occupy them.

Going in and about many houses, tenement or other, I have come upon all sorts of crimes and evil practices, and conclude that types of these persist as tenaciously as the virtues. The same revolting vices, still human, if morbid and unnatural, that characterized Sodom and Gomorrah and were preached against by St. Paul in his Epistle to the Romans, persist in practice to-day, more covertly and less generally no doubt, but still persist. The surroundings are changed, perhaps, with science and religion, slightly improved, and the angle of view is somewhat altered; but the same old humanity looks on the sun to-day, and is of like passions, as that which toiled for Ptolemies and speculated on the same fiery orb that makes unruly the blood.

January 18, 1898

This morning I was running out to Newark on a trolley-car to attend to some business engagements in that town. Just beyond the Passaic River, I noticed a yard with a number of chickens in it. They each stood there two-legged and every now and then dipped their heads and threw up their tails. In a neighboring door-yard several children were at play. They each walked about on two black-stockinged legs and occasionally bent down their heads and raised their skirts or hinderparts. The juxta-position of the two scenes and their melting together in my mind in an elemental way made me wonder if there was much difference absolutely between chickens and children. And certainly we know some men for roostery.

January 20. 1898

At Delmonico's this evening I dined with Princeton men hereabouts, at the yearly banquet, given under the auspices of the Princeton Club of New-York. President Patton made an acute, liberal speech, befitting the head of great university unshackled by ecclesiasticism. Prof. Charles W. Shields was present: he did not speak, but received something of an ovation when any reference was made to him. Prof. Bliss Perry talked in a quiet thoughtful strain; Mr. John S. Wise, in the rousing broad style, and the Rev. Mr. McKiltrick's remarks were vigorous and well-put, giving the most finished effect. But neither these nor the others who spoke enchained with the magic of eloquence.

January 24, 1898

Finished making up last year's accounts, which I have worked at for several days. I was loth to get at them; but when I did I moved along steadily and got out of this task pleasure and strength. If you are skyey and wabble around on the periphery, writing page after page of items and totaling column after column of figures will give your feet a safe footing on earth and stiffen wonderfully the sinews of the mind.

January 25, 1898

Resigned as vice-president and director of the New Jersey Central Building and Loan Association, and from membership in the Jersey City Board of Trade.

This is called an industrial age, but that adjective is euphemistic. There is an image of virtue called up by the thought of industry that affects one favorably, and to be of the times one must be to some degree implicated in it. But I think it is not too pronounced to say that Ishmaelitish would serve better for an age, which, in vulgar commercial strife, keeps every hand upraised against another's. This bargaining and usurious spirit of the Semite is largely overlaying the better life. Nearly all economic and political evils spring from it. Its tentacles are everywhere. Even literature and religion are not safe or free of it, but feel the degrading influence of its touch. In Europe they have also militarism to contend with, but a military system, however oppressive or misapplied, is much to be preferred to the robber-craft of trade. In a fine sense there is no such thing as fair trade, but now its foul trail is over us all.

January 27, 1898

When Shakespeare poignantly sings,

"Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth",

he betrays his taste of good and evil, a knowledge that might readily be surmised of a genius so universal. He might have spared the epithet poor as applied to so rich a soul; but note that he does not accuse his soul of sin, but only the body. This is finely discriminated. It has always seemed to me that the soul, of and in itself, must always be pure, noble, and beautiful. Being immaterial, a spiritual essence, nothing material can degrade it. The body may be degraded and the soul, the seat and fountain of beauty, suffer sympathetically from the neighboring ugliness and discord, but still in its integrity remains uninjured.

As I separate accidents from essentials, I perceive that no man is bad, that no woman is ugly: the soul laid bare is white and beautiful. Yes, for the soul there is always grace in time and for eternity: the body only, marred or whole, is redissolved in time.

There is a happy kind of universalism about this, but it is none the worse for that.

January 31, 1898

It is a wild snowy night and inspiriting. I was glad to step out into it. B. and I went over to New-York to the theatre. Where I sat a draught of cold air sometimes found my back and the chilling storm seemed to creep into my heart; for a sense of world-weariness was felt and enhanced by the trifling opera I had imprisoned myself to hear and view. Between the acts I went down to the cafe and drank a comforting punch. After that I smiled and any old thing went off as all right. The fresh merry voice of a young girl behind me tinkled to every jest and caper on the stage. And she and I and all of us, for the house grew hilarious, were like,

"---- the child, by nature's kindly law, Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw."

February 3, 1898

Sometimes I am so sensitive that I dislike the light - I, who am so fond of brightness, color and flame. My nerves shrink when I pass a person on the street. I would withdraw into my shell and only peep out at the bustling aggressive world, yet somehow I manage to keep a-going. When I feel hardier I become clubbable, not perhaps too evidently sociable, but I rashly join clubs and find much support and tonic in mingling with women and men. Yet when I fully possess myself and strength, I am alone - oh, how fearfully and wonderfully alone! Still, I take it, the position of loneliness is the position of the strong great man. It may or may not be accompanied by unsayable sadness.

February 5, 1898

The wisest man who knows the bright and the dark collects within himself the consensus of humanity and intensifies it. He is all and singular and somewhat more than that. He builds upon the many and reaches higher than they and goes farther a-field than they dare to go.

February 12, 1898

Re-elected a director of the New-Jersey Title and Abstract Company.

February 15, 1898

While at the Court House this morning I stopped in for an hour at the trial of former Assistant Prosecutor Noonan and Counsellor Simpson for conspiracy to defeat the ends of justice. It is alleged that they took a bribe of $300 to liberate a Polish swindler or embezzler, at the time convicted and awaiting in the County Jail his sentence, which later consigned him to the State Prison. This morning the Pole was brought from Trenton, and gave a jumbled sort of worthless evidence while on the witness-stand. The trial is an important one of much interest, but will probably miscarry.

In the evening I dined with the newly organized University Club of this city, at the Hotel Washington. It was a congenial crowd. I sat by the Rev. Frederick W. Jackson. The after-dinner talks were bright and thoughtful. There was a little music, and someone sang Kipling's "Mandalay".

February 17, 1898

There has always seemed to me a peculiar sadness in agricultural labor. In that field the midget man is so unequally pitted, in the open, against the apparently unsocial and unrelieved universe. He strives at best with misgiving hope of a partial return, singly and in loneliness, with the hard facts and pitiless forces of nature. He is a hero with only primitive incentives and unapplauded. The city man, befriended by his kind, sees on every side, man's handiwork. It encourages him. It appears at least a measurable triumph over nature, and in its mass seemingly fortifies him against many of the minor onslaughts of fate and the bald aspect of the large. In his snug harbor he may contemplate the particular or the general without encountering too obviously either the malevolent and minatory look or the beneficent smile in the mock-heroic nature continually plays. He may struggle for existence, but he has with him the old guard. What protective foil has the husbandman working on a mountain-side or cutting his way across a prairie farm? If he have some spirit and lack fortitude of soul, he is apt to go to town or commit suicide. To go from nature to town is to get more heart and art.

February 24, 1898

Last night I knew no bounds, but seemed actually to cast loose from the earth and strike out boldly for the stars. I slipped beautifully through the cool empurpled air, and fell in with a noble company of shining shapes who welcomed me and talked in a musical language, betokening them for poets. "The Isles of Dream", I cried. Ay, there lay the Isles of Dream! This morning I walk a particularly hard dry earth with forbidding frown. And what causes, I ask, this shooting lift and sudden descent? It is my fearful freedom and imagination that I could not be satisfied to live without and yet with which I can barely live. It is the extreme joy and danger of it all - the mental and emotional excitement and consequent exhaustion. What with curious adventuring and experiments in life and with life, often audacious, but as often with a wary understanding. I am alternately either on the top wave or an invalid, rising and falling in a kind of imperious rhythm of extremes. I am surprised at my eminent safety and have seizures of dread lest at any moment by some discord or mischance I be dashed to pieces.

March 2, 1898

Helen and I dined at the Crouses' on Bentley Avenue, and passed a pleasant evening there. The Crouses - Christine and Otto - were recently married, and I enjoyed their happiness, not too obtrusively shown, the mistress's young steps in housekeeping and her relation of the humors of it. Books, houses, people, the destruction of the United States battle-ship Maine in Havana harbor and the consequences likely to flow from it, war, militarism, arbitration, the Dreyfus case in France, Darien, Kipling, Gilbert, Le Gallienne, Prof. Sloane, self-control, things reminiscent and a little badinage, dotted the conversation.

March 9, 1898

Charles H. Winfield, for the last fifteen years prosecutor of the pleas for this (Hudson) county and the author of several local historical works, died this morning, at his home on Danforth Avenue, this city. Mr. Winfield was among the few men at the Bar who have literary aptitudes. He had humor and a fair sense of style. He spoke straitly, with force, and at times eloquently. Too short of stature and thick-set for commanding appearance, his head nevertheless was leonine and distinguished, with shaggy brows, strong mustache and a facial look that frustrated aught or all but the most strenuous attacks. A criminal in consultation once said to me that he preferred to plead nou vult* to facing or putting up a defence against the onset of Winfield. Yet the late prosecutor was of doubtful official integrity, and his office is now being investigated by a legislative committee.
*

March 15, 1898

Mr. Hugh McNulty called and signed a lease with me of property, No. 297 Grand street, corner of Barrow, for the term of three years.

March 17, 1898

Mr. and Mrs. Otto Crouse and Miss Sara Eddy dined with us this evening. I was in a somewhat sinister mood, but showed it not, smiling and meeting the demands of the occasion, but I fear with a stoical indifference. Mrs. C. mouthed a good story.

March 24, 1898

Evolution seems to be the true way in literature, as it is the way of God in his world and universe. The author who has grown for years a book within him and simply takes the pen to write it out or has continued naturally in mood, the mood to fuse, writing here a little, there a little, for long periods, maybe for a life-time, till his masterpiece stands up or arrives unawares and unannounced, is a creative genius, finding peace in the method of nature and harmony in recording the universal will, whose work his is, whose handicraftsman he is, finishing a detail of creation. Such work is great and rightly perforce endures, endures as a mountain or lake endures, being the result of the same plastic spirit that informed them. And, although greater or less in degree may be the perfection of the record, such is the image and force of inspiration, whether it be Shakespeare or the Bible.

March 26, 1898

I have within me the root of the whole matter: would that the will persisted and the sap flowed amply, free, or spun upward finely to bring it to perfect flower!

March 29, 1898

Although a spring rain came down steady and strait, this evening, I went over to the Catholic Club on Jersey Avenue, and listened to a lecture on the late Arch Bishop Hughes of New-York, given by the Rev. Charles J. Kelly, the founder of the club and lately a curate of St. Mary's in the city, but now the rector of Our Lady of Grace, Hoboken. Father Kelly is a large man, bow-legged, and an easy speaker. He opened gracefully, and his sketch of John Hughes in poverty and manual labor, through persistent struggle to gain an education and theological or ecclesiastical controversies, to eminent influence and the archiepiscopal office, made an interesting story. Naturally pro-catholic, he was more guarded and reticent than I expected, and true to the American spirit.

To observe broadly or generally, it has seemed to me that most Irish and Irish-American speakers mistake diffuseness and sonority for eloquence: they have the lingual gift, but are not direct, energetic and original, and seldom turn a memorable phrase or crystallize an epigram.

What I like best in the Keltic races, and deem a contribution to literature of fine quality, is a certain plaint and weird note, - wild, yet not mystic but concrete, especially in their poetry. It comes out of the depths, a subtle murmur, and reverberates through the passages of the soul like "sweetness melancholy" or a strain of music from a far world, and then with a dying fall leaves a pensive sensation as a fleeting beauty or lost love.

March 29, 1898

Renewed lease of store No. 77 Newark Avenue, for one year, with James J. Higgins, and made a lease of the upper floors and photographic gallery with Ernie J. Paul, for the same period or term to wit, from May 1, 1898, to May 1, 1899.

April 8, 1898

Distrained on the goods and chattels of Robert A. Mearns, at No. 75 Newark Avenue, for rent due. By agreement the sale of these chattels under a chattel-mortgage executed by Mearns to Dr. Charles W. Cropper is to take place, the rent tobe* paid out of the first proceeds. The constable adjourned the sale to Friday next at 11 o'clock a.m. It was Good Friday and certain expected bidders not being present, it was thought best to carry it over a week.

April 12, 1898

Mr. and Mrs. Flavel McGee and Miss Forman of Freehold were at the house to-night. We played whist and a game at cards called "Bull", which smacked of Wall street and the stock market. Mr. McGee explained the latter game to us. The talk was largely persiflage with a few serious words regarding religious tendencies and the impending war with Spain. Sometimes I feel misplaced in present society: if I speak in what seems to be my true idiom, there is a strange effect, too distinctive and startling, for the conventional medium; so I compromise and say little or slip into the current mode. I am surprised to find how the easy takes, how the ordinary is society's coin of exchange.

April 14, 1898

The Manners tribe - Marie, Helen, Blanche and Edwin - got under umbrellas and wended their way over to the McGees'. The McGees are very hospitable and entertain royally. Besides the McGees, big and little, there were present Mr. and Mrs. Black, Miss Forman, Judge Blair, Mr. Hill, and, early in the evening, Mr. Atkinson. Miss. Julia McGee pleased with her becoming manner and costume. We broke away about midnight, again under umbrellas, and filed home.

April 15, 1898

The Mearns sale took place, realizing $400. I received $250 for rent due, the balance going to Dr. Cropper, chattel-mortgagee. Kett and Company bought the stock sold, and I gave them ten days in which to remove it.

April 16, 1898

00000000000000000000000

April 12, 1898

.

Executed a lease for ten years, May 1, 1898, to May 1, 1908, with Frank Kukielski, of property Nos. 131 and 133 Steuben Street.

April 19, 1898

The Princeton University musical clubs gave a concert this evening in Hasbrouck Hall. My sister Marie was one of the patronesses. We all attended. The students gave a good recount of themselves. Distinctive college songs were the expected thing of the evening and enthusiastically received; but the timely burden of "there's trouble in the land" and the rendering of the "Star-Spangled Banner" moved the audience seriously: they patriotically rose to their feet and the occasion when the latter was sung. I thought it the best college concert we have had in town. There was a social addendum of reception and dance; but the gay collegians soon hied them away to catch their train, and left the local buds and boys in full possession of the floor.

April 22, 1898

After much delay the war with Spain is here in earnest. The first shot was fired to-day by the United States cruiser or gunboat Nashville in capturing as prize the Spanish ship Buenaventura. Although the immediate causes for this hostile action - tremendous in portent and import - are of doubtful sufficiency or inconclusive, yet in the large and massively, for political tendencies and progressive ideas, the war is eminently righteous and should be prosecuted vigorously to a speedy conclusion.

April 23, 1898

This evening my cousin Captain Henry H. Ludlow, of the Sixth U.S. Artillery, came up from Fort Hamilton in the harbor, where he is now stationed, to see us. A war-time visit by an army officer is of more than usual interest, but necessarily brief. The Captain returns to his post in the morning.

April 28, 1898

Personally I feel some regret at the falling fortunes of China and Spain. They are too picturesque to lose - to be lost; but mayhap they can be democratized and bettered by the Anglo-American advance without losing too much of the characteristic or marring their art. Democracy has produced some great, singular characters; but has a tendency toward averages, to iron out the individual and uniform nations. The problem is to preserve, along with equal laws, the utmost differentiation.

It is inspiring to see the patriotism of our people and its symbolization in the red-white-and-blue. The people at large are truer to their country and the time-spirit than certain cliques of educated men, so reputed, and doctrinaires who cavil in small wise and expose themselves to the charge of lacking largely an important segment of knowledge and the proper electricity of spirited beings.

It is inspiring to see the buds and fruitage of freedom break through the wintry crust of custom and formal religion and flourish so bravely - gloriously independent and free! So may it soon be with Cuba and other Spanish dependencies.

May 2, 1898

Reports come of a splendid victory gained, Sunday morning, by Commodore Dewey, U.S.N., over the Spanish fleet, and to the latter's destruction in Manila Bay, Philippine Islands. Admiral Montajo commanded for Spain. The despatches, though brief, are thrilling. It appears that the American made a bold, daring stroke, swift, vigorous, but amply justified by its successful execution. The results, both immediate and far-reaching, are magnificent. Evidently Dewey is a commander of derring-do, and carries again to the front the heroism and gallant tradition of American seamanship.

"Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam
Like wrecks of a dissolving dream.

The world is weary of the past, -
Oh might it die or rest at last!"

May 10, 1898

This evening we had to dine with us Dr. David H. Ludlow, his soon-time bride, a modest country flower, attractive in her innocent look and simplicity, and Miss Mabel Warner, a co-worker with my sister Helen in some of the guilds of St. Mark's. Miss W. talks brightly with a good voice and bright complexion, with noble brow and great eyes that turn on one, but are gladly met. She gives a suggestion of affectation, which, however, is not unpleasing. Perhaps I mistake her natural manner. The dinner and evening went smoothly.

May 12, 1898

It is a duty, or seemeth well, to maintain one's self-respect, even to the verge of vanity. A little of the latter will do no harm. It is often the strong way. Vanity is only merit made so obtrusive as to affect the vanity of another person of merit. There is something essentially weak about humility, or wicked, for the humblest beings I know are bad people who have lost their self-respect.

Natural or unaffected modesty is admirable indeed, especially becoming in woman. It is however, passive, suffering secrets to be secrets, and reticent, a kind of high-bred reservation of manhood and womanhood. Humility, as it appears for the most part, is a showy, active degredation of the would-be humble, an uncovering of the ugly, an affected standing in sackcloth and ashes, or exposure of the soul in its nakedness, to the vulgar gaze - something a noble spirit resents and eyes blink at as a horrid exhibition.

'Twere vain to try to be vain, for everything counts, and sometimes when least expected it counts two.

May 18, 1898

Rain has its reasons and pelting pleasures, but after so much of a kind in obscuring effects, a bright day like this comes as a prize to be seized and a surprise of the skies. Accordingly I looked over my bicycle and spun up Mercer street, over the viaduct, to the Hudson Boulevard and along its commanding stretches. The warm yellow sunlight, with access of breezes, the atmosphere rain-cleaned, the tender spring green, with water glimpses springing out, the lively spirits and adventures of the road, -all set me in a happy frame of body, mind, and living pictures, moving round. I tooled along gaily and was highly glad to be alive in this inspiriting age of American Expansion and compelling power.

June 9, 1898

To-night at 287 Barrow street, as usual, the annual book-sale of the Fortnightly Book Club took place. There was a goodly company present and the affair left a pleasant impression. These were there: Judge John A. Blair, the Rev. Frederick Wolcott Jackson and wife, the latter's sister Miss Arnold, Miss Marie Van Vorst, Mrs. M. S. Bowen, Mr. and Mrs. Otto Crouse, Mrs. Dickinson Miller Van Vorst, the Misses Marie, Helen, And Blanche Manners, Mr. Richard Fessenden, who acted as auctioneer, Mr. Edwin Manners, city attorney JohnWahl Queen and Mr. Walter Collins. For the major part of the evening I sat by Miss Arnold. She is eternal-womanly and draws about her the sentiment that woman and the world are graceful, beautiful.

June 16, 1898

The observable society of ladies and gentlemen should be kept as pure and unspotted as a religious order, for its own essential self and as an act of wise policy. It should be high-bred and give the sense and assurance of excellence. It should breathe the air of culture, courtesy, refinement. Every act in it should be characterized by the utmost propriety and good taste. As the very flower of civilization, it should set the standard for the uplifting of the whole unleavened mass and reflect at all times what is best in conduct and thought. Better in it ceremony and reserve - indifference than familiarity; and indiscretion, rudeness, the coarse or vulgar break its sweet charm, and are more grievous than private immorality, so-called; for they violate the function and trust confided to the elect or chosen bearers of the best manners of the times and weaken their ennobling influence in the world at large. I practice and insist upon personal liberty; but society, while it may grow finer and better, has, for potent reasons, certain fixed limitations and usages more strict and well-defined than in the case of the individual. I hate hypocrisy and like to speak the truth according to nature; yet rather than mar or lessen the weight of superior society, let the bold free spirit who would naturally test himself and life in violation of the proprieties do so, for good or ill, behind closed doors and not openly to the detriment of the social scheme of right living, which has for so long been gradually created and built up; and if not yet what it should be, is still admirable and capable of a more perfect form and being.

June 20, 1898

A Girl at Hap-hazard; or the Beauty and Wisdom of Nature.

While I was sipping coffee and smoking an "Egyptian King" in at Cairo on Twenty-ninth Street, this afternoon, there trooped in an unusually striking group of young women - a delightful bevy of gay birds. They settled and disposed themselves gracefully on couches near-by, and contrasted freshly with the leaden look of the frequenters of the place. Their chat and smiles threw a radiance of joy, and one in particular, a veritable beauty in body and face, a not too common juncture, possessed most fully my eye and heart. I felt the electricity of her influence penetrate my apparently cool or stoical nature and agitate the seat of passion. I need not say that the attractive creature being perfectly willing, I quickly made up to her with a little wine and a few complimentary words. Clara - the name given and fitting its bearer - was a reposeful American girl, of nineteen or twenty years, come from up the river - from Albany, and had been but a week in town, entering upon that devious course that leads to such ugly terminations with all but the best wills and wits. She had just enough bouquet of spirit to relieve a flat stupidity. We walked out into broad light, and I was astonished to see how well her pink complexion bore the trying test of my highly magnifying telescopic glasses. We went to a hotel, and soon, in a little half-hour since we met - how can such wonders come so soon, how can they be and man deserve, God of beauty and love! - there before me she stood revealed in divine nakedness, in elusive colors that no artist can put on - a haunting presence, and I, poor child of worship, did not do directly a thing but look and look; my eyes kept steadfast gaze, marveling at the dazzling reality of her loveliness - the forming curves, grace, roundness, the eye and flesh lights with halos of wanton hair, the mystery of mien and puissance, the subtle melding of being into new life, creation's way and top ensample of the world's harmony. She proved to be no brazen machine or hardened harlot. I knew intuitively my rightness in this and joyed. I gained thereby a deeper sense of concrete and correlated beauty that was truly uplifting: I perceived that the heaven of my desire was its universal reign. Yes, I saw in this the divine order and beauty: I did well and rightly I rehearse it.

June 27, 1898

Nature is not unbeautiful in any of its aspects: it is only an artificial system of ethics or other defective formulas that can in anywise so hold it. Science, among other achievements, shows conclusively or indicates logically that the unclean of theology is cleanly; but science like theology is dogmatic and hard, and both are crude instruments of life. Mankind must ever find its best dependence and finer satisfactions in poetry and religion, if indeed these be not one at best.

With all our political independence, which is not so very real - for, believe me, here the sheep follow the sheep, and our boldness in fight on land or sea - a real eminence, there is small frankness and freedom as yet in our speech and social life.

June 29, 1898

Paid the Annual water-rents, $661.80.

Called to see my Albany Beauty at her quarters in Thirty-eighth street. I was informed that she had left town and returned to her home in Albany. As she told me when we met that she was making a tour of the gay resorts of New-York, had visited the Tivoli, Thirty-fifth street, and expected to be at the "Black Rabbit" in Bleecker street the next night, I presume, she had seen enough of the salacious and possessed sufficient understanding to get away in good time. Truly, though you smile cynically, a confessor I was to Clara, who confided in me, and I helped to clarify her ideas with reference to the control of her magnificent being.

June 30, 1898

I was in a war-like mood to-day, ready to fight a Spaniard, a windmill, or anything that got in my way or moved my ire. Fortunately or unfortunately, while I was rummaging for a pamphlet in a drawer under my book-case, two manuscript books of verse that I had spent many an hour in writing turned up to my utter disgust, and I impulsively revenged myself on them. They, poor victims, were soon torn to tatters and deposited in a waste-basket. I may have sacrificed a little real poetry and a few good numbers, but not enough to regret deeply: and yet when I began to tear the paper it seemed to resist with its toughened fibre and gave me a spooky feeling as of something alive in my hands and fighting for its life. Was this instinct true, or did I act in obedience to the scientific spirit that would do away with the blind, lame and leprous for the benefit of a symmetrical race?

July 4, 1898

The morning papers bring glorious news, so timely for the Fourth, of the destruction of Admiral Cervera's fleet or squadron, the best of the Spanish navy, in its desperate attempt, Sunday morning, to escape from Santiago harbor. The American fleet, headed in a somewhat ragged way by Sampson, acting vice-admiral, but at the time of the engagement under the immediate command of Commodore Schley, caught the enemy coming out, and, after a hot fight and pursuit, one of the most memorable naval actions in history, ended Spain's sea-power in Cuban or West Indian waters and practically in the world. Other stirring events reported, such as the easy capture of the Ladrones or Mariana Islands by American auxiliary forces on their way to the Philippines, and details of the battle of Santiago in Cuba and the city's close investiture by our army under General Shafter, kept my attention enchained for an hour or more. Then I read an essay on Diderot and one on Heine - two cognate minds, with whom I have considerable, though a qualified, sympathy.

After luncheon I went down to Fort Wadsworth on Staten Island and saw a sub-marine torpedo exploded in the Narrows off the Fort. I was enabled to witness this and examine the guns and fortifications through the kindness of my cousin Captain Ludlow, of the Regular Army, who invited me to be present.

July 7, 1898

President McKinley signed to-day the congressional resolution annexing the Hawaiian Islands to the United States. As American territory the islands will be greatly improved and benefited, and give to our country decided strategic and commercial advantages in the Pacific. They are of immediate importance, and the arguments of the respectable minority against their acquisition were of small caliber. Mr. McKinley, irresolute or purblind as an economist and financier, is steering an excellent course in our war with Spain. This is appreciated, but not tobe wondered at. It is a case in which he is strong. Men of sound financial and economic ideas are apt to show weakness and act as a drag in times of war, unless they are particularly large-minded, for the interests they have mainly in view are then more or less injured and must be held in abeyance or subordinated to the greater issues involved.

July 11, 1898

Last Saturday B. and I took a trolley ride down to Bergen Point, reconnoitered the surroundings, and refreshed ourselves at the Shore House. Judge Blair, when he called last evening, surprised us by saying that he had seen us pass out of the dining-room of said hostelry the day before. He had been sitting unobserved near the bar - a proper place for a judge, and doing very much as we had done. It was a little sheepish in him not to have come forward at the time. Perhaps he could give a better reason with a little wit thrown in wet or dry. It would be like him.

July 16, 1898

(Printed advertisement) For Rent. No. 75 Newark avenue; a large store with two floors for storage or dwelling purposes; finest business location in Jersey City. A desirable country store at Harlingen, N. J., and dwellings. Apartments and houses convenient to all trolley lines and ferries at reasonable rates. Apply to, EDWIN MANNERS, 1 Montgomery Street. (Fuller Building.) Once a week, for three months. (written beside advertisement)

August 1, 1898

As I sat reading a morning paper, on the veranda of my sister Virginia's house, at Perth Amboy, this cool morning, doubly refreshing after the heat of the last few days, a pretty young girl, the daughter of an interesting woman of the neighborhood, stept up and handed my sister one of the monthly magazines. Beyond a recognition, I looked on in silence, without a word - the part of a real picture, yet a dream. A hand-organ played with metallic tone a popular air, but the ceaseless jingling set my spirit afloat. The trio of the porch were sharply outlined and heightened in color and effective grace. My sister's classic profile imprinted the green embowering vines with a noble intellectuality. The maiden's face turned gently on me and uplifted my soul with its innocent beauty. Her expressions quickened and changed finely, as she let slip a few musical sentences in sensuous numbers, and then was off on her wheel, like mercury with winged feet, and away - a momentary vision accented by its very transitoriness. And momently I became her lover and would kiss her eyes and warm throat. In thought I flew after and overtook her. We alighted in a noble old forest of elemental suggestiveness, and there, hand in hand and soul in soul, we went at will. Soon we sat us down by a clear lake, communing in the natural spirit - her glowing cheeks inviting to frolic with the tangles of ((Necera's)) hair; but we, Uranian children, sought bravely to clarify the mysteries of being, not so much by hard discussion, that might distress my sweet's dear brow, as by rolling out great poetic words that take the essence and harmony of the topics they fall upon and crystallize. Then too our souls grew liquid and clear, even as the transparent lake that mirrored them. We lighted mental torches for one another and saw brightly; ay, we lived and loved. And now my sister interrupts my train of fancy to say something about good and evil, making the one black and the other white, remarking that in Northern legendary lore the powers of darkness were represented by brunettes, while the good angels were all blondes. This not only broke the spell of my love's witchery; but I, who had dreamed the world quit of sin and almost of all evil, could not help marveling at my sister's firm and large hold of the distinctions of a somewhat old-fashioned piety, which, in the writings of earlier generations, seems so pathetic. If not very true or philosophic, there was strength in her literal division 'twixt evil and good. She could put her finger here and there and label whatever she touched, and that is practical. But with me it is so different: the last word is never spoken, and wavy and interfused indeed is the line that separates the provinces of right and wrong. Every case or instance finely considered, is individual, and individually and circumstantially qualified. How then can it be marked out for all mankind what it shall do and what it shall refrain from doing. If you would, you can not wisely judge your neighbor. Alas! are not good and evil the warp and woof of life, what make the whole of the piece? Inseparables they must be constantly a foil the one of the other. But their threads are constantly respun, their colors recast, the contest betwixt them for predominance and mastery still goes on, their action and reaction constitute the life of the world. Consider not bare facts, which are false, but clothed ones and their relativity. Do you not see the shadowy depths behind? There truth is held or veiled in mystery. Is it not wrong to be positive? Indeed it is irreligious to be either positive or scientific. Consider that which still continues to frustrate petty logic and nice theories, this our great, actual, unreasoned, but God-given life.

"God's in his heaven - All's right with the world!"

August 20, 1898

Witnessed this noon, from the slopes around Grant's tomb, the return of the grim lead-colored warships of Sampson's fleet, in the very fighting trim in which they met and destroyed Cervera's Spanish fleet off Santiago harbor in Cuba. Salutes were fired from the ships and by a land battery. The magnificent natural theatre and emotions excited engraved permanently in the memory this striking review.

August 25, 1898

While at the farm I have been looking over my grandfather David Manner's papers, found in an old secretary he used. Some of the parchment and sheepskin conveyances looked antique indeed and contained many quaint phrases in their records of title. Several autographic letters turned up, by lawyers and officials prominent at the time. But my grandfather's own diary, written during two or three years of the first decade of the present century was the most interesting discovery. In reading it I sought to find some Manners hereditary traits, and came upon and traced not a few. It recounts in plain fashion the homely ways and life of a country gentlemen and neighborhood in Hunterdon county, New-Jersey, with scarcely an outside reference, excepting one to the victory of Nelson in 1805 over the allied French and Spanish fleets off the Cape of Trafalgar - a stunning contrast! And appropriately happened upon this year.* He repeats monotonously his work in drawing legal instruments and papers - work which is done now more rapidly without mention or ado; but evidently grandfather was a man of consideration and importance in his day. Besides managing a large farm, he was widely consulted touching business and local affairs, and did for his neighbors their surveying, conveyancing and will-writing. He administered upon the estates of decedents the country round.

These simple annals show only simple cares and joys. Perhaps these are best, at least they seemed to suffice, for there is no note of querulousness or weariness; yet the life indicated must have been pitilessly plain and lacking in color and richness. I say this looking from our more complex and varied times to his. Personally my grandfather was a superior man, and his career fortunate and pleasing. Occasionally he wrote Eighteenth century piety in Eighteenth verse - the verse trait or penchant I perchance inherit. Later he became a captain in the war of 1812 and a member of the Legislature. He was born in 1777 and died in 1836.
* And I happen upon this, appropriately this year of the great sea-fights at Manila and Santiago de Cuba, with their suggestive parallel or comparison.

September 8, 1898

Returned to-day to town from the farm. The severe wind-storm, yesterday afternoon, tore the tin-roof off of our house, at 287 Barrow street, carrying the tin with sky-light and scuttle-frame into the street. The succeeding rain and hail damaged plaster, paper and furnishings to some extent, but less, fortunately, than was to be expected, and more happily no one was hurt. The force of the wind must have been notably unusual-cyclonic in fact, for this section and more severe apparently than at Harlingen, where I was at the time.

Contracted for a new tin-roof and other necessary repairs at the house; work to begin forthwith. Mr. Frank P. Schroder has the contrast for the tin and galvanized iron work.

September 12, 1898

Yesterday, Sunday, I took a sail up the Hudson as far as Poughkeepsie and got back about seven o'clock in the evening. The day was delightfully bright, but too cool for comfort on the forward decks. The autumn coloring, not very brilliant as yet, added to the natural beauty of the shifting scenes. Perhaps the keen wind was the cause; but I felt, as the mountains crowded down on either side, an imprisoning and oppressive effect. I wished to take wing and scale their tops and be where nothing stayed my spirit. I do not wonder that many young men and maidens desert the up-river villages and towns that cling so desperately to the hillsides, and seek their fortunes and the widening influence of the great city at the river's mouth. They must have felt cramped in their narrow confines and dragooned at the very sight of the minatory heights before and behind them, while the hungry river hurries all between to the universal city and sea.

September 15, 1898

(INSERT: postcard w/ description "Montevideo")

September 22, 1898

Although brought up in a refined family and educated in the best institutions of learning and fully appreciating the quiet scholarly life, the cloistered life that dwells apart, I am as fully aware of the limitations of its too exclusive pursuit. By my father's attitude, though he ventured less than I, by being thrown with farmers and farm-hands, with tenants in town and others, I early perceived that one gained true knowledge of men and women only by mingling freely with them. And I have purposely, at the risk of unkindly gossip, uninformed criticism, violence and crime or its imputation, met and mixed with all sorts of people, good, bad and indifferent, even in intimate relationships. I have found thereby health, a nobler manhood, happiness, and the enlarged knowledge that ripens into wisdom. And the freedom of it - of the high, of the low, and all around the circle - what more precious! Nay, I would not miss or forgo the fascination and joy of this delicious natural freedom, that so many deny themselves for unnatural conventions, if the price of it were heaps of heavy gold and the cares of my country's presidency. Sincerely I do not deem it irreverent or presumptuous to say that my conduct at times, when outwardly, it appeared most reprehensible, was inwardly in truth and spirit most nearly Christ-like. This mingling with the most is in itself of the essence of democracy, and as far as feasible, in a spiritual sense, if no other, sharing life or communal: it is the practical realization of the brotherhood of man and hence the meaning of Christ.

January 1, 1898

INSERT: note from Edwin Manners to the editor of New York Tribune)

Editor of the New-York Tribune: -

With the advent of the enlarged or greater city of New York, I would suggest the consolidation of its cloven name along with the union of its several political divisions. Let it be written as a single word, to wit, Newyork. One with a feeling for a proper name will do so naturally at this late day or from long acquaintance. Such a change or modus scribendi is convenient for pen and better to look at - more compact and formidable. It preserves the historical significance, while it lessens the adjectural newness of the new, as becomes so old a town. The styles suggested is not abrupt, but smooth and in the direction of natural popular formation. By grace of example, Newark was originally written New Ark, then with a hyphen New-Ark and finally reached its present more perfect form.

I see that you, dear Editor, have attained unto the hyphenated state. 'Tis timely to go over to the mark of your high calling the crystal Newyork, and advocate its adoption in official and common use.

E. M.

October 3, 1898

Paid Mr. John English for tearing away the old wooden platform around the corner of Grand and Barrow streets - the south-east corner - and replacing it with stone; also, for resetting the flags on the front and side walks, and furnishing new flag-stones where needed. The platform is now substantial and safe, and the appearance much improved.

October 6, 1898

Try fair conclusions with the fair; you can not well improve on the plans of the Creator, and asceticism is not justified of its children. When you meet with Cleopatra, gallantly have it out with her and be done. Do not stand like Antony on the doing and going and be last. Act like Caesar.

October 7, 1898

There appears from all accounts to be a surplus or superfluity of bachelor maids and maiden bachelors. I surmise, it would better matters, if the churches more constantly preached the gospel of increase and multiply.

"From fairest creatures we desire increase". Some-one, Schopenhauer, I believe, in his "Metaphysics of Love", has suggested that we are the victims of a natural force that makes for the perpetuation of the race, the human type. Judging from the way people swarm hereabout, it would seem that the type is not endangered, but it might be much improved.

Compare New-York with its 3,500,000 inhabitants in the age of Croker with Athens numbering 50,000 souls - and what souls! - in the age of Pericles.

October 12, 1898

Manners vs. Mailly and Sullivan. Adjourned to October 25th at 10 a.m.

October 13, 1898

With brassy brass bands and vulgar shouting, the politician of some mental stature - and all the others count for little - amends a statute or effects some trifling reform, and is there upon hailed as a creative statesman. Pshaw! How paltry. True progress is of slow growth, but revolution is needed at times to clear its path. I feel at times that I should like to change the entire way of thinking and looking at a matter, have the present attitude of mind reposed and resolve life anew.

October 18, 1898

The Island of Puerto Rico, "the key of the Antilles" comes under the flag and jurisdiction of the United States. The Puerto-Ricans seem pleased. This is a good omen. Government is no fetish and exits only to satisfy the people. It is only when the people are satisfied that annexation is natural and likely to prove of permanent benefit, although it may be expedient otherwise. No government is best; the next best that which governs least.

October 19, 1898

Executed yesterday, a lease with Frank Giordano of property No. 102 Brunswick street and No. 364 First street for ten years and five months. I agreed to erect a building with assembly hall in the rear, at the latter number, to cost about $2000.

Executed to-day a lease for three years of No. 35 Hudson street, John J. Fallon being the lessee.

October 22, 1898

This appeared in the small local sheet to-day: (clipping follows)

Brinkerhoff, Manners, Corcoran, Cudlipp, Converse and Flemming are not on the Davis list of speakers, and are not apt to be.

(his comment on clipping)

The implication is intentionally misleading. A Democrat, believing in personal liberty, home rule, sound money, and a low tariff for revenue, with reciprocity and ultimate free trade - for instance and timely, our new island possessions should not be tariffed but opened to the trade of the world - I am naturally friendly to Mr. Robert Davis, the party leader, although not always satisfied with his methods, henchmen and appointments; but, aside from a certain independent attitude, I am not making campaign speeches at present for several reasons. I need not specify.

October 24, 1898

Last Saturday I rented the store-floor, No. 75 Newark Avenue, by the week, to a showman, and to-night's Journal gives this notice of the show:

(INSERT: journal clipping)

POPULARITY AND NOTORIETY.

Wounded Sailor and Noted Ex-Criminal Exhibit in This City.

A wounded sailor and a notorious ex-criminal came into the Journal office this morning and announced that they were exhibiting at 75 Newark Avenue. The sailor said that it was a case of popularity and notoriety going hand in hand. The sailor is Samuel Feltman, an ordinary seaman on the U. S. S. New York. He was struck by a fragment of a shell that killed one of his comrades at the bombardment of San Juan, Porto Rico. The shell struck him on the left leg just above the knee, pulverizing the bone and destroying the use of the muscles. He was removed to the hospital ship Solace, being the first wounded man to be taken to that boat. He is a plumber by trade, and as he cannot follow this work, he is traveling around the country exhibiting many relics of the war.

Among the relics is the primer that was used to fire the first 13-inch shell on the Oregon at Santiago, a gunsight from the Maria Teresa, six-pound shell taken from the bulwark of the U. S. S. Iowa and many other interesting relics.

The notorious part of the show is the ex-criminal, Sleepy Burke, who was one of the most notorious safe blowers and daring burglars in the West. He is at present out on a suspended life sentence for blowing up a safe and stealing $53,600, for which he was arrested. He has now reformed. He has a complete rogues' gallery, which he shows for inspection.

October 25, 1898

Appeared before the Assessment Commissioners at the City-Hall, in regard to assessment for the improvement of Barrow street, south of Grand street.

Obtained judgment in the District Court in my action against Mailly et al.

October 27, 1898

Miss Wiley commenced as clerk in my offices in the Fuller Building - as clerk to Mr. Eldred Johnson and myself. Apparently nowadays no office is complete or furnished without the eternal feminine. Such a pretty girl as Miss. Wiley is an appointment well worth while. And her voice is low, rich and musical - think of that!

November 1, 1898

The old City Hall, erected in 1860, at Newark Avenue and Cooper Place, was sold this afternoon at public auction. It brought $27,000. It originally cost about $35,000. The new City Hall on Grove Street, built in 1894, put the town to an expenditure of $950,000, or, including $100,000 for furnishings and extras, the cost was about $1,100,000.

November 2, 1898

(INSERT: Picture: another unwritten postcard w/ description Montevideo)

November 3, 1898

Is it fortune or a failure? How can I doubt who have known its peace and happiness! I have played the gamut of education in its varied keys of acceptation - of common school, academy, university and professional training - and breathed the distilled air and culture thereof. I have extended and enriched the resultant by vivid experience, by real tests in the great world, aided by a piercing but laudable curiosity that would not be gain said. The outcome has been intellectually a kind of seesaw or pendulous swing, a balancing of effects and half-truths or equilibrium - a state to which the sincere truth-seeker, soon or late, comes. It is the philosopher's quiet haven, where he rests in the peace of perfect compliance with God's will. But the work-a-day life calls me to break away from this stilling of the springs of action, and by an effort of the will I become sufficiently partisan to go about my business and live in existing conditions. And as to conduct, the result has been a character inclusive of so many characters that it partakes of the universe and moves widely a-field, like the star, to echo Goethe, that hastes not, neither does it rest, but is always guided by its own law of being.

November 10, 1898

Every thing is for use and delight. Weeds have their uses and beauties. All sounds have theirs; even those called noises, as a rumbling cart, a running train of cars, whistles and street cries, the sea-roar of cities, have their music - their rhythm and due measure. I have sometimes been annoyed at noises, but that was only because my health was not braced: when that is done, whether by viands, wine or good content, all sounds are strains of throbbing music, gentle or strong.

November 14, 1898

Although placed at birth in a delicate frame, whose spirit burned with intensity, I was animated by a persistent vitality. During a somewhat precarious childhood, I held on to life with a kind of cat-like grip which strengthened with the years. By native wit, by living on good terms with nature and myself, I have become a comparatively strong man. Indeed I have about me that superfluity of naughtiness which indicates lusty health. But my sailing has not always been easy and serene; not seldom I have had to double Cape Horn. Crises came when a little relaxation here or less will-force there would have pitched me grave-ward. And when I have thanked my home physician, Dr. McGill, for recovery, he would magnanimously say that it was due not so much to his treatment as to my own good judgment. I praise his rare skill and consideration. Contrary to the puritanic doctrine, which has only the virtue of its vigor, and in less degree that of the church, I sometimes think that living in harmony with nature is living in harmony with God's will. By nature I mean the whole man, moral, physical and spiritual - the whole of being, subjective and objective.

November 18, 1898

Contracted with Edward Kelly, building inspector and contractor, for the erection of a building at No. 364 First street, with dwelling rooms above and an assembly hall beneath and in the extension - twenty-five by sixty-five feet; the whole to be completed by January 15, 1899.

I felt pleased in signing this contract, and dedicated the house and hall to be erected thereunder to the Goddess Joy. The building instinct, akin to creation, is stimulating, and when activated is graciously satisfying. It results in such a substantial gain, however slight comparatively as to prove the worth: for no building is essentially unimportant - it is too real a factor of life and history. It is like placing a boulder in the rushing current, where so many ephemera are perishing, to stay a while, to shelter and comfort, to resist and arrest, as a placid fact of strength, if not of beauty, the idle whirl and curiousity of the times, and gather into itself sentiment and story. I know a weird old house on Bergen Hill of such provoking suggestions that about it the "whitening face and set mouth" of Emily Bronte might have constructed a strange haunting tale, fellow to "Wuthering Heights". So every building is not only a creation but creates.

November 24, 1898

In the morning it rained; in the afternoon came snow, large-flaked, softly covering the Earth in unspotted samite* and befeathering the trees beautifully; then evening brought the moon touching all strikingly with its silvern light and dreaming glory. While my sister Virginia still played at the piano and my nephew Harold mimicked an Italian peddler - the Beekmans had come from Perth Amboy and dined with us - I slipped to the window and drawing aside the curtains looked on at the sanctified scene; its subtle influence unloosed my soul and for a moment I communed deeply with its spirit and mine, if they be not one: I felt the utter folly of reticence in such a holy presence and confessed in memory and with emotion to a longing for a more concrete satisfaction in love, which seemed to be symbolized by the mysterious natural beauty that held my eyes. And with this acting passion to possess beauty as love, love as beauty, and create the one by the other, there chillingly crept upon one a fearsome sense of death and its inevitable approach: whereat I slightly shuddered, but soon recovering myself faced calmly, reflectively, the Black Terror that had so vividly projected itself athwart the white night. After a thoughtful minute or two I turned away and rejoined the family circle.

*heavy silk fabric

November 28, 1898

To-night I took B. to the Bijou Theatre, recently opened, at Newark Avenue and Bay street, this City. The play was "Lost in Siberia", said to be founded on the writings of George Kennan and fact. It proved to be brutally realistic and effective - too replete of harrowing incident and tragedy; indeed, grim, gloomly, oppressive. It was fairly well staged and enacted, but like plays of this kind left an impression of crudeness, perhaps from its very nature. Some things were misrepresented - the American misrepresented America; others were out of place - meant no doubt to relieve the Russian sombreness and despotism, as bits of genuine humor or comedy might have done, but the farcical and ridiculous only grieved the judicious.

December 2, 1898

Last year I weighed 147 pounds: today I stepped upon a platform-scales and tipped the beam at 155 pounds - a gratifying gain. My height, six feet, could bear gracefully thirty more, but my bones are fine.

So many ascetic and veteran faces are seen on the streets and elsewhere. I see them amongst sectarian ministers; the priests of the Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches fare better apparently. And I misgive or distrust the life - I question the truth, the beauty of lives that mark their tenements with lives so hard and ugly.

December 3, 1898

Mailed a letter to Capt. Henry H. Ludlow, U.S.A., at Montauk, Long Island, enclosing one from Senator Sewell and one from Flavel McGee, Esquire, respecting the Captains application to be re-detailed to the Mississippi Agricultural College as Military Professor there.

December 6, 1898

Again B. and I looked into the theatre to-night. Neither of us knew in advance the character of the piece presented. B. is no prude, but the show was so rank in parts that she would scarcely say where she had been or what she had seen! My sister B., however, is a trump, enjoys the circus or Buffalo Bill's "Wild West", and takes the world as it wags, preferring reticence or silence to canting criticism and the ill-advised reforms of the raw new woman.

December 9, 1898

Paid John Shannon contract-price for putting in a new flight of stairs and staircase at No. 75 Newark Avenue.

December 12, 1898

The formal treaty of peace between the United States and Spain was executed last Saturday evening by the commissioners of the respective countries, at Paris, France.

The war, however, virtually came to a close with the signing of the protocol in Washington, August twelfth last, and the suspension thereupon of actual hostilities. An armistice was then proclaimed.

The treaty has still to be ratified at Madrid and Washington. While our Senate seems still to be mixed and belated in its ideas as to the wisdom or policy of acquiring the Philippines, the cruel or merciful fact remains that we have already acquired them. The only part left for sagacious, practical statesmanship is to provide for them a strong enlightened government.

The event of territorial expansion, especially of an empire in the Far East, is epochal and pregnant with varied possibilities, but less startling and alarming than somebodies would make out. It is the morning stretch of a great nation.

December 15, 1898

This evening at the Academy of Music, this city, I saw Mrs. Fiske (Minnie Maddern) in the title role of "Tess of the D'Urbervilles", a tragic play reduced from Thomas Hardy's novel. I liked Mrs. Fiske's quiet subtle acting, devoid, even in culminating crises of a meretricious demonstration and noise, although a little more spontaneous feeling were fit. It was artistic. Her support was excellent. The play is well constructed, as it should be coming from Hardy, who has the informing touch of engineer and architect. There is in it, barring felicity and form, a Shakespearean note. The yokels of Wessex were good, but, I fancied, I could match them with specimens from our old homestead and its neighborhood in Hunterdon. I recall childhood visits made delightful with the picturesque fun and talk of the "help", racy of soil and toil. The closing scene at Stonehenge, though effective, partook too much of melodrama. It may do on the stage, whose less fine convention is still for striking action and strong, heightened effects, but I disapprove decidedly of violence of any kind, except in life- defense and in the event of war, and that I trust in no long time, notwithstanding some discouraging signs, will be solecistic and obsolete. Therefore I disliked the endings, nor could I justify Tess, however great her provocation, in killing Alec, a repulsive character in very fact. Doubtless the ordinary jury would acquit her, nor could I humanly sanction her legal execution, though she clearly committed the crime of murder; but in judgment her act was unjustified and not sufficiently induced or too dispassionate. As to sexual honors or dishonors, the several characters appeared to be, if not easy, at least not far from even. The causa re mota* had been condoned by living with her betrayer, or soothed by time; the apparent causa proxima*, a drunken return and abuse, was altogether inadequate for retribution so terrible. Serious as the situation became, a sense of humor should have saved her; but the sudden return of Angel Clare, supposed dead, perplexed her and enhanced the motive of revenge and determination to destroy, perhaps created the real impulse, though her passion seemed subdued, and, however, desireable, Alec's removal was unnecessary in order to a reunion with Angel. Indeed Alec's killing was sordid and ignoble. Yet after all I am only showing that, when cooly analyzed, intentional homicide is seldom or never greatly motived, but springs from a distorted nature. 'Tis strange how certain mixed souls, lacking in control, harmony and somewhat else, allow themselves still in this better day, to get wrought up to the homicidal pitch or mania over some infringement of artificial conventions of conduct, and can not see that they do more reprehensible violence than their victims, and even assail the high Creator in marking or causing the death of even the vilest of his human creatures. It is their own rank, egregious egotism and selfishness. How petty is any private, individual wrong set against the sacredness of life and the essential greatness of man simply as man!

The play itself is not too finely artistic, which is perhaps a merit. The comedy parts alone have the light touch. But a drama should have some heavy material, some plainness of reality and plot, to be natural, to avoid thinness of structure and make its effectiveness inevitable. The finest poetry is apt to effervesce or evaporate on the stage and can only be seen or caught there in hasty catches and momently. The finest subtilization is for the studio rather than the boards.
*
*

December 25, 1898

Xmas eve I passed at the theatre. Yesterday, Sunday, and to-day, the legal holiday, I remained at home reading, save for a stroll for exercise through some favored streets of Newyork. There was no outsider to dinner. Yet somehow I gave myself up to little reflection serious or otherwise, such as seems to befit the Yuletide. As I grow hardier with time my wing bears me into the midst of active actualities so absorbing that I am apt to limit or find less time and inclination for quiet thought and those precious musings, somber or sweet, that occur within the inner place where none may enter, the holy adyt* of my heart.
*adytum - inner secret shrine in a place of worship.

December 28, 1898

Paid City Collector Davis the assessment for the improvement of Barrow street south of Grand, levied on No. 297 Grand street, south-east corner of Barrow, to wit $316 75/100.

December 30, 1898

Paid Edward Kelly $450, second payment on contract for new house and hall at No. 364 First street; previously paid $400, making $850 on account to date.

December 31, 1898

The year ran out to-day in storm, a bleak rain falling and turning toward evening to snow that drifted in the icy wind. I spent the day for the most part looking after tenement-house repairs, and the evening at the theatre where a play setting forth a story of American heroism incident to the Cuban campaign appropriately closed this martial year. Some of it was ridiculous stuff, but I applauded with enthusiasm and rejoiced to see the house go wild over every patriotic sentiment and tune. I am not so sure about minorities being the remnant that saves. They discriminate better; but in the large and vital the instincts of the people are true and the safer guide.

(INSERT: 3 newspaper clippings) JOSEPH H. CHOATE EXTOLS THE LAW.
Only Learned Profession, He Says, Which Involves Study and
Pursuit of Stable and Exact Science.

CHICAGO, Feb. 4. - The annual banquet of the Bar Association was held to-night. Joseph H. Choate, of New York, was the guest of the evening, and spoke on "Our Profession." Among other things, he said:

"We love the law because, among all the learned professions, it is the only one that involves the study and the pursuit of a stable and exact science.

"Theology was once considered an immutable science - but how has it changed from age to age and even from year to year! Upon what unhappy times have we fallen, in which the props of our faith are being knocked from under us day by day!

"And then as to medicine, how its practice and its theories succeed each other in rapid revolution, so that what were good methods and healing doses and saving prescriptions a generation ago, are now condemned and all the past is adjudged to be empirical!

"Meanwhile common law, like a nursing father, makes void the part where the fault is, and preserves the rest, as it has been doing for centuries.

"The technicalities which have too long incrusted the law have been stripped away, and now, like Lord Mansfield, our judges try to solve every case by common sense and the sense of justice, and the sense of honor which, in their highest manifestation, constitute the most eminent and valuable judicial qualities.

"We hear sometimes that the American bar has degenerated; that it does not equal its predecessors in power and character and influence, but this I utterly deny.

"There is one respect, I admit, in which we have declined, and which I greatly deplore - the cultivation of the fraternal and social spirit among ourselves has been almost abandoned and it ought to be revived and transmitted.

"I trust that we in New York shall imitate your example, and that this occasion may be only the beginning of a real interchange of a living brotherhood between the bar associations of our two great and noble cities.

"So long as the Supreme Court exists to be attacked and defended - that sheet anchor of our liberties and of our government so long as the public credit and good faith of this great nation are in peril; so long as the right of property which lies at the root of all civil government is scouted, and the three inalienable rights to life, to liberty and the pursuit of happiness which the Declaration of Independence proclaimed and the Constitution has guaranteed alike against the action of Congress and of the States, are in jeopardy, so long will great public service be demanded of the bar."

Edwin F. Uhl, ex-Ambassador to Germany, spoke to the toast of "International Arbitration."

The establishment of the contemplated permanent tribunal of arbitration between the mother country and our own, he said, would not only prove a substitute for hostilities among English-speaking races, but its influence would sooner or later be sensibly felt among other nations to the uttermost parts of the earth.

Bugle Calls. From the St. Louis Globe-Democrat. I can't git 'em up! I can't git 'em up! I can't git 'em up in the morning, I can't git 'em up! I can't git 'em up! I can't git 'em up at all! The private's worse than the Corporal, The Corporal's worse than the Sergeant, The Sergeant's worse than the Lieutenant, And the Captain's the worst of all!

* * *

Go to the stable, All ye that are able, And give your horses some corn. For if you don't do it, The Captain will know it, And give you the devil As sure as you're born!

* * *

Oh, where has that cook gone, Cook gone, Cook gone. Where has that cook gone? Where the aitch is he-e-e? Twenty years till dinner time, Dinner time, Dinner time, Twenty years till dinner time So it seems to me-e-e!

* * * Come and git your quinine, Quinine, quinine, quinine! Come and git your quinine, And your pills!

* * * Soupy, soupy, soup - Without any beans! An' coffee, coffee, coffee - The meanest ever seen!

SENSE AND NONSENSE.

I know a scholar who studies the literature of the world in all ages as a German professor of entomology studies beetles and caterpillars - to find out the meaning of the life in them, behind them and over them. I asked him the other day the meaning of "modern agnosticism."

"There is no such thing," he said. "Agnosticism is not modern. It is as old as the weakness of the human intellect. All the old heathen poets are full of it, and they have expressed its deepest ideas with a strength and sweetness of melancholy emotion which is never likely to be approached by even the highest flights of its most eloquent later-day apostles. I cannot translate, but I can suggest the conclusion of the old classical heathenism - the conclusion, it is never to be forgotten, which overthrew a seemingly omnipotent and indestructible civilization."

There is another ancient literature which at every point gives back the answer of hope and courage to the cry of doubt and despair. This is what the greatest Hebrew poet says to the greatest of the Roman singers:

A PSALM OF AGNOSTICISM God's secret ways are known to all Who strive to do His will. They feel his love, though stars should fall. God's secret ways are known to all Who call to Him as children call Their father's name at midnight! Still God's secret ways are known to all Who strive to do His will. * * *

"It is most remarkable," the Professor continued, "that minds in countries far apart and separated by centuries of time should use almost the same language in describing human life. Both to the Hebrew and Roman poet are dust. This is the Roman agnostic's conclusion after he has made that discovery:

Bring us wine and brief, brief roses Ere their flowers can fade; To the stream's calm, shaded closes, Bring us wine and brief, brief roses! All the wisdom short life shows, is Drinking in the shade! Bring us wine and brief, brief roses Ere their flowers can fade! We must go where hell's hosts shiver! Bring wine, O boy, bring wine! Wine of wisdom is the giver! We must go where hell's hosts shiver - Where no love can e'er deliver Your soul, O friend, and mine! We must go where hell's hosts shiver - Bring wine, O boy, bring wine! * * *

"The Hebrew poet did not spend his time lying in the shade drinking and smelling roses. He took his life in his hand, girded himself and went as an outcast into the cave of Adullam, with his sword on his thigh, to lead a forlorn hope for the civilization of the future. And resting among his Adullamites after being chased by the most prominent conservatives of his day, he made such songs as this:"

A PSALM OF THE SHORTNESS OF LIFE. Lo, man is but as a flower! Lo, the days of a man are as grass Which is green for the space of an hour! Lo, man is but as a flower, Yet Love is eternal power, And God shall never pass - Though man is but as a flower, Though the days of a man are as grass! God knoweth whereof he has made us; He remembers we are but dust! When we stumble His hands have stayed us! He knoweth whereof He has made us; As children small he has weighed us Whom He loves as a father must! He knoweth whereof He has made us - He remembers we are but dust! * * *

"You can take your choice between these two views of life," said my friend the Professor. "One or the other of them must give direction to the life of every man and every people."

HORACE FLACK.

(Cash Account January) October 16, 1898

. (Sunday)

To-day my sister Helen was at Englewood, visiting the McGills, who have been spending the summer and early autumn there. Mrs. Bryan, Mrs. McGills sister, was up from the south and Judge John A. Blair looked in for the day. The Chancellor, a reserved man of much dignity, unbent in his home with wit and gracious hospitality. So Helen said. In the meantime I was left alone at 287 Barrow street with the maid. I do not know why I should remark this, unless it be that Solomon found the way of a man with a maid too wonderful for him. I really caught on her face a suspicion of a smile, embarrassed or roguish. However, after breakfast I read the morning papers and dipped into the poets, who give the most satisfying return for a little attention, and then ate an early dinner shortly after noon. This function concluded, I told the maid that she could have the rest of the day and evening to herself, as I was going over the river and would not be back until midnight. I took late dinner at the "Black Cat", West Twenty-Eight street - not very elegant, but passible - and talked with a Harvard man who sat opposite to me. Later heard some tolerable music, and had a bohemian time. When I returned everything appeared in order. Lights burned low in my room, the bed was prepared, and on the bureau were crackers and milk.

(Cash Account March) December 15, 1898

The new ferry-house and railway station being erected at the foot of Exchange Place, to replace the old one destroyed by fire, begins to shut off my office-window view of the river. The new is a substantial, well arranged structure, much superior to the old, and but for the lost view I should be content. Nay, rather, considering, the building should not be there at all, squatting as it does, on the city's main outlet to the Hudson and New-York - an outlet that properly and by legal implication belongs to the city and is believed moreover to have been specially vested, together with the ends of other streets, in the city by its early charters - and like some mammon-worshipping Cerberus it guards the city's exit and entrance demanding and collecting of the people perpetual tolls for their own natural or common law and statutory rights. And we are freemen, the salt of the earth, and this is freedom in the year of grace 1898. We can doctor Spain heroically, but know not the medicine that can cure ourselves!

When my father was mayor, in the early fifties, this matter came up in connection with the location of the Cunard line of steamers and docks at the foot of Grand street. Some of the ablest lawyers at the time, both here and in New York, gave the opinion that the property at the ends of streets running to the river, or the easement and right to use the same, belonged to the city. Accordingly Mr. E. Cunard refused to locate his line here unless he got a lease from the municipality of Jersey City. Terms having finally been arranged, a lease was drawn, executed and filed in the City Clerk's office, whence it later mysteriously disappeared.

William Kent, Esquire, son of Chancellor Kent, was one of the legal advisers in the case.

If the charter of 1851 or other act, actually vested the right and title in the city, neither the Riparian Commission, later created, nor any subsequent legislation, save condemnation, could divest it of the grant. Such an attempt would be clearly unconstitutional.

Besides these river streets were among the earliest opened, mapped and dedicated to public use, which carried their outlet to the river. Strangely unjust is the present construction of law that permits the state to usurp the city's rights and barter them away to private corporations for inadequate or paltry considerations.

(Cash Account May) December 23, 1898

At the instance of a New-York client I had attached a certain comedian, playing at the Bijou Theatre, of his rights, credits and other property interests, to satisfy a claim. As his company desired to leave town tomorrow night to fill another engagement, and he could not conveniently return when the cause came up for trial, a conference was held this afternoon in the District Court, at the City Hall, for the purpose of effecting a settlement. My client, himself a theatrical manager and advance-agent were on hand, and I was presently interested in the midst of this somewhat strange entourage. I found it difficult to keep them to the points at issue: their talk was so discursive and untrained, but bright and slangy. Their feelings and prejudices were on the surface and being uppermost came out; they called a spade a spade. My client was held up as a black sheep passing under an alias, the comedian as a scamp living with the troop's leading lady (!), who was the wife of another man, but a prospective divorcee. The carpentry and rendering of the greenroom tended to disillusionize, but had separate actual interest. Many of the hard, unlovely, put-about, unsettled, undignified, hollow, hand-to-mouth and miserable aspects of stage life cropped out in considering the parties' business methods and ways, and if these be fair specimens of stage-folk, they certainly are an unreliable lot. When at length I had brought the defendant to terms, he announced that he had no money to pay and his salary was pledged in advance for some time to come, but if his manager would put it up, he was willing to work out the stipulated sum. There being some demur at this, the actor jumped up dramatically and threatened to "throw down" his own manager, as the phrase goes, by quitting his part this evening at the theatre! He thus played into my hands; for the thought of it was too much for the manager, who quickly succumbed and settled.

While I eyed curiously these people, I noticed that they were equally attracted by the court-room and the trappings of justice. Two of them took possession of the judge's chambers for an aside; two toyed with pen and ink at the counsel's table, while the representative of the sock assumed a pose at the clerk's desk and looked wistfully at the judge's chair with a mind to sit in the "seat of the scornful". His faded face appeared to be toughened but mobile: his eyes sought habitually, as it were, the first balcony, and he had about his mouth, smooth-shaven, the firm impress of the practised utterer of words meant to carry to large audiences. He was a man of some cleverness; had written the play in which he acted and some others, albeit of middling or cheap wit and merit.

When we broke up I was given the glad hand all around and a pass to the theatre for the current play. (Memoranda: Photograph which likely has no recoverable image)