Violets and Other Tales Part 3

And so there was, for we scattered winter roses on his little grave down in old St. Rocque's cemetery. The cold and rain, and the broken leg had told their tale.

ANARCHY ALLEY.

To the casual observer, the quaint, narrow, little alley that lies in the heart of the city is no more than any other of the numerous divisions of streets in which New Orleans delights. But to the idle wanderer, or he whose mission down its four squares of much trodden stones, is an aimless one,--whose eyes unforced to bend to the ground in thought of sordid ways and means, can peer at will into its quaint corners. Exchange Alley presents all the phases of a Latinized portion of America, a bit of Europe, perhaps, the restless, chafing, anarchistic Europe of to-day, in the midst of the quieter democratic inst.i.tution of our republic.

It is Bohemia, pure and simple, Bohemia, in all its stages, from the beer saloon and the cheap book-store, to the cheaper cook shop and uncertain lodging house. There the great American inst.i.tution, the wondrous monarch whom the country supports--the tramp--basks in superior comfort and contented, unmolested indolence. Idleness and labor, poverty and opulence, the honest, law-abiding workingman, and the reckless, restless anarchist, jostle side by side, and brush each other's elbows in terms of equality as they do nowhere else.

On the busiest thoroughfares in the city, just in the busiest part, between two of the most crowded and conservative of cross-streets, lies this alley of Latinism. One might almost pa.s.s it hurriedly, avoiding the crowds that cl.u.s.ter at this section of the streets, but upon turning into a narrow section, stone-paved, the place is entered, appearing to end one square distant, seeming to bar itself from the larger buildings by an aimless sort of iron affair, part railing, part posts. There is a conservative book-store at the entrance on one side, and an even more harmless clothing store on the other; then comes a saloon with many blind doors, behind which are vistas of tables, crowded and crowded with men drinking beer out of "globes," large, round, moony, common affairs.

There is a dingy, pension-claim office, with cripples and sorrowful-looking women in black, sitting about on rickety chairs.

Somehow, there is always an impression with me that the mourning dress and mournful looks are put on to impress the dispenser and adjuster. It is wicked, but what can one do if impressions come?

There are more little cuddies of places, dye-shops, tailors, and nondescript corners that seem to have no possible mission on earth and are sadly conscious of their aimlessness. Then the railing is reached, and the alley instead of ending has merely given itself an angular twist to the right, and extends three squares further, to a great, pale green dome, and stately entrance.

The calmly-thinking, quietly-laboring, cool and conservative world is for the nonce left behind. With the first stepping across Customhouse street, the place widens architecturally, and the atmosphere, too, seems impregnated with a sort of mental freedom, conducive to dangerous theorizing and broody reflections on the inequality of the cla.s.ses. The sun shines in a strip in the centre, yellow and elusive, like gold; someone is rattling a gay galop on a piano somewhere; there is a sound of mens' voices in a heated discussion, a long whiff of pipe-smoke trails through the sunlight from the bar-room; the clink of gla.s.ses, the c.h.i.n.k of silver, and the high treble of a woman's voice scolding a refractory child, mingle in incongruous melody.

Two-story houses all along; the first floor divided into cuddies, here a paper store, displaying ten-cent novels of detective stories with impossible cuts, ill.u.s.trating impossible situations of the plot; dye-shops, jewelers, tailors, tin-smiths, cook-shops, intelligence offices--many of these, and some newspaper offices. On the second floor, balconies, dingy, iron-railed, with sickly box-plants, and decrepit garments airing and being turned and tended by dishevelled, slip-shod women. Lodging-houses these, some of them, but one is forced to wonder why do the tenants sun their clothes so often? The lines stretched from posts to posts seem always filled with airing garments. Is it economy?

And do the owners of the faded vests and patched coats hide in dusky corners while their only garments are receiving the benefit of Old Sol's cleansing rays? And are the women with the indiscriminate tresses, near relatives, or only the landladies? It would be something worth knowing if one could.

Plenty of saloons--great, gorgeous, gaudy places, with pianos and swift-footed waiters, tables and cards, and men, men, men. The famous Three Brothers' Saloon occupies a position about midway the alley, and at its doors, the acme, the culminating point, the superlative degree of unquietude and discontent is reached. It is the headquarters of nearly all the great labor organizations in the city. Behind its doors, swinging as easily between the street and the liquor-fumed halls as the soul swings between right and wrong, the disturbed minds of the working-men become clouded, heated, and wrothily ready for deeds of violence.

Outside on the pavements with hundreds of like-excited men, with angry discussions and bitter recitals of complaints, the seeds of discord sown some time since, perhaps, sprout afresh, blossom and bear fruits. Is there a strike? Then special minions of the law are detailed to this place, for violence and hatred of employers, insurrection and socialism find here ready followers. Impromptu ma.s.s meetings are common, and law-breaking schemes find their cradle beneath its glittering lights. It is always thronged within and without, a veritable nursery of riot and disorder.

And oh, Bohemia, pipes, indolence and beer! The atmosphere is impregnated with it, the dust sifts it into your clothes and hair, the sunlight filters it through your brain, the stray s.n.a.t.c.hes of music now and then beat it rhythmically into your mind. There are some who work, yes, and a few places outside of the saloons that seem to be animated with a business motive. There are even some who push their way briskly through the aimless bodies of men,--but then there must be an occasional anomaly to break the monotony, if nothing more.

It is so unlike the ordinary world, this bit of Bohemia, that one feels a personal grievance when the marble entrance and great, green dome become positive, solid, architectural facts, standing in all the grim solemnity of the main entrance of the Hotel Royal on St. Louis Street, ending, with a sudden return to aristocracy, this stamping ground for anarchy.

IMPRESSIONS.

THOUGHT.

A swift, successive chain of things, That flash, kaleidoscope-like, now in, now out, Now straight, now eddying in wild rings, No order, neither law, compels their moves, But endless, constant, always swiftly roves.

HOPE.

Wild seas of tossing, writhing waves, A wreck half-sinking in the tortuous gloom; One man clings desperately, while Boreas raves, And helps to blot the rays of moon and star, Then comes a sudden flash of light, which gleams on sh.o.r.es afar.

LOVE.

A bed of roses, pleasing to the eye, Flowers of heaven, pa.s.sionate and pure, Upon this bed the youthful often lie, And pressing hard upon its sweet delight, The cruel thorns pierce soul and heart, and cause a woeful blight.

DEATH.

A traveller who has always heard That on this journey he some day must go, Yet shudders now, when at the fatal word He starts upon the lonesome, dreary way.

The past, a page of joy and woe,--the future, none can say.

FAITH.

Blind clinging to a stern, stone cross, Or it may be of frailer make; Eyes shut, ears closed to earth's drear dross, Immovable, serene, the world away From thoughts--the mind uncaring for another day.

SALAMMBO.

BY GUSTAVE FLANBERT.

Like unto the barbaric splendor, the clashing of arms, the flashing of jewels, so is this book, full of brightness that dazzles, yet does not weary, of rich mosaic beauty of sensuous softness. Yet, with it all, there is a singular lack of elevation of thought and expression; everything tends to degrade, to drag the mind to a worse than earthly level. The crudity of the warriors, the minute description of the battles, the leper, Hann; even the sensual love-scene of Salammbo and Matho, and the rites of Taint and Moloch. Possibly this is due to the peculiar shortness and crispness of the sentences, and the painstaking attention to details. Nothing is left for the imagination to complete.

The slightest turn of the hand, the smallest bit of tapestry and armor,--all, all is described until one's brain becomes weary with the scintillating flash of minutia. Such careful attention wearies and disappoints, and sometimes, instead of photographing the scenes indelibly upon the mental vision, there ensues only a confused ma.s.s of armor and soldiers, plains and horses.

But the description of action and movement are incomparable, resembling somewhat, in the rush and flow of words, the style of Victor Hugo; the breathless rush and fire, the restrained pa.s.sion and fury of a master-hand.

Throughout the whole book this peculiarity is noticeable--there are no dissertations, no pauses for the author to express his opinions, no stoppages to reflect,--we are rushed onward with almost breathless haste, and many times are fain to pause and re-read a sentence, a paragraph, sometimes a whole page. Like the unceasing motion of a column of artillery in battle, like the roar and fury of the Carthaginian's elephant, so is the torrent of Flanbert's eloquence--majestic, grand, intense, with n.o.bility, sensuous, but never sublime, never elevating, never delicate.

As an historian, Flanbert would have ranked high--at least in impartiality. Not once in the whole volume does he allow his prejudices, his opinions, his sentiments to crop out. We lose complete sight of the author in his work. With marvellous fidelity he explains the movements, the vices and the virtues of each party, and with Shakespearean tact, he conceals his ident.i.ty, so that we are troubled with none of that Byronic vice of 'dipping one's pen into one's self.'

Still, for all the historian's impartiality, he is just a trifle incorrect, here and there--the ancients mention no aqueduct in or near Carthage. Hann was not crucified outside of Tunis. The incident of the Carthaginian women cutting off their tresses to furnish strings for bows and catapults is generally conceded to have occurred during the latter portion of the third Punic War. And still another difficulty presents itself--Salammbo was supposed to have been the only daughter of Hamilcar; according to Flanbert she dies unmarried, or rather on her wedding day, and yet historians tell us that after the death of the elder Barca, Hannibal was brought up and watched over by Hamilcar's son-in-law, Hasdrubal. Can it be possible that the crafty Numidian King, Nari Havas, is the intrepid, fearless and whole-souled Hasdrubal? Or is it only another deviation from the beaten track of history? In a historical novel, however, and one so evidently arranged for dramatic effects, such lapses from the truth only heighten the interest and kindle the imagination to a brighter flame.

The school of realism of which Zola, Tolstoi, De Maupa.s.sant, and others of that ilk are followers, claims its descent from the author of Salammbo. Perhaps their claim is well-founded, perhaps not; we are inclined to believe that it is, for every page in this novel is crowded with details, often disgusting, which are generally left out in ordinary works. The hideous deformity, the rottenness and repulsiveness of the leper Hann is brought out in such vivid detail that we sicken and fain would turn aside in disgust. But go where one will, the ghastly, quivering, wretched picture is always before us in all its filth and splendid misery. The reeking horrors of the battle-fields, the disgusting details of the army imprisoned in the defile of the battle-axe, the grimness of the sacrifices to the blood-thirsty G.o.d, Moloch, the wretchedness of Hamilcar's slaves are presented with every ghastly detail, with every degrading trick of expression. Picture after picture of misery and foulness arises and pursues us as the grim witches pursued the hapless Tam O'Shanter, clutching us in ghastly arms, clinging to us with grim and ghoulish tenacity.

Viewing the character through the genteel crystal of nineteenth century civilization, they are all barbarous, unnatural, intensified; but considering the age in which they lived--the tendencies of that age, the G.o.ds they worshipped, the practices in which they indulged,--they are all true to life, perfect in the depiction of their natures. Spendius is a true Greek, crafty, lying, deceitful, ungrateful. Hamilcar needs no novelist to crystallize his character in words, he always remains the same Hamilcar of history, so it is with Hann; but to Flanbert alone are we indebted for the hideous realism of his external aspect. Matho is a dusky son of Libya,--fierce, pa.s.sionate, resentful, unbridled in his speech and action, swept by the hot breath of furious love as his native sands are swept by the burning simoon. Salammbo, cold and strange delving deep in the mysticism of the Carthaginian G.o.ds, living apart from human pa.s.sions in her intense love for the G.o.ddess, Tanit; Salammbo, in the earnest excess of her religious fervor, eagerly accepting the mission given her by the puzzled Saracharabim; Salammbo, twining the gloomy folds of the python about her perfumed limbs; Salammbo, resisting, then yielding to the fierce love of Matho; Salammbo, dying when her erstwhile lover expires; Salammbo, in all her many phases reminds us of some early Christian martyr or saint, though the sweet spirit of the Great Teacher is hidden in the punctual devotion to the mysterious rites of Tanit. She is an inexplicable mixture of the tropical exotic and the frigid snow-flower,--a rich and rare growth that attracts and repulses, that interests and absorbs, that we admire--without loving, detest--without hating.

LEGEND OF THE NEWSPAPER.

Poets sing and fables tell us, Or old folk lore whispers low, Of the origin of all things, Of the spring from whence they came, Kalevala, old and h.o.a.ry, aeneid, Iliad, aesop, too, All are filled with strange quaint legends, All replete with ancient tales,--

How love came, and how old earth, Freed from chaos, grew for us, To a green and wondrous spheroid, To a home for things alive; How fierce fire and iron cold, How the snow and how the frost,-- All these things the old rhymes ring, All these things the old tales tell.

Yet they ne'er sang of the beginning, Of that great unbreathing angel, Of that soul without a haven, Of that gracious Lady Bountiful, Yet they ne'er told how it came here; Ne'er said why we read it daily, Nor did they even let us guess why We were left to tell the tale.

Came one day into the wood-land, Muckintosh, the great and mighty, Muckintosh, the famous thinker, He whose brain was all his weapons, As against his rival's soarings, High unto the vaulted heavens, Low adown the swarded earth, Rolled he round his gaze all steely, And his voice like music prayed: "Oh, Creator, wondrous Spirit, Thou who hast for us descended In the guise of knowledge mighty, And our brains with truth o'er-flooded; In the greatness of thy wisdom, Knowest not our limitations?

Wondrous thoughts have we, thy servants, Wondrous things we see each day, Yet we cannot tell our brethren, Yet we cannot let them know, Of our doings and our happenings, Should they parted be from us?