Read Ebook: Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature Science and Art fifth series no. 129 vol. III June 19 1886 by Various

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Release date: August 22, 2023

Original publication: Edinburgh: William and Robert Chambers, 1853

ARACHNE AND MELISSA.

The Arachnides are for the most part characterised by a strange and chilling silence, when a few words would remove a painful impression or enlighten a dangerous ignorance. When they do speak, their words fall like vocal icicles which freeze and cut at the same time; and they contrive to make their good advice more painful than other people's rebukes, and to give their information the form of a sarcastic reproach in that you did not know it all before. Their presence in society reminds one of the winter whose 'Breath was a chain which without a sound, The earth and the air and the water bound.' Where they are, freedom flags and gaiety declines; and only the most robust of those moral pachyderms who oppose their thick insensitiveness to all outside influences whatsoever, can withstand the lethal effect of the Arachnides. Their small pale eyes wither; their pinched lips paralyse; their very smiles are the fracture of a crystal more than the visible sign of a living, friendly heart; and they are the veritable 'freezing mixtures' of life. They take strong and unreasoning dislikes to quite innocent strangers and harmless acquaintances, and will not be convinced that they have no occasion to do so; they quarrel for a mere nothing with those who are so unfortunate as to be their friends and relations, and cannot be induced to make nor to receive an explanation. No one knows what has offended them, but all at once they become like anthropomorphous polar bears to those to whom they had been moderately human a little while before; and more intolerable than ever to those to whom they had been intolerable enough when things were at their best. Then they retreat into their own spiritual den to hammer away at that leaden cup from which they drink the deadly acid that vitiates all their life and destroys all their happiness. They make the worst of things in every direction. If a cloud has come across the sky of others' friendships, they do what they can to increase the trouble and to make that permanent which, by the nature of things and without their evil offices, would have been evanescent. They kill all the tender little sprouts of growing affection between two young people or two likely comrades; and what they cannot do by straightforward means, they do by crooked ones--which comes to the same thing in the end.

Egotist to their finger-tips, the Arachnides make their own small annoyances the one great thought of their lives. They do not make much account of their blessings, only of their misfortunes; and nothing is so large as a microscopic speck on one of their most luscious fruits. The fate of empires and the fall of nations are not so important as the change of a servant or the ill arrangement of a dinner. The loss of a hundred men in a battle does not touch them so much as the loss of a row of cabbages in their garden; and a burnt duster out of a set is a more serious affair in their eyes than a passenger-ship wrecked on the Cornish coast or a merchant-steamer burnt to the water's edge. On one thing only can they be made loquacious--on their own small sufferings. On these they will descant an hour by the clock, and more to come after. But speak to them of the heart-anguish of others, and they are unsympathetic, dumb, indifferent. Their fire burns for themselves alone; to all the world beyond they have only slag and ice to give.

As a physiognomical sign, the Arachnides do not often look you in the face. They glance rather than gaze with straight and level eyes; and they prefer the corners of their eyes to the centres.

When these workers in gold are, what common parlance calls friends, with the workers in lead, the former have a hard time of it. They are always at the point where the Arachnides are backing and the Melissides are pulling--where the one are trying to break and the other doing their best to hold. The Arachnite takes offence at a word, a look, a gesture, a thing done or not done; and the Melissite will not have it. 'Come, old fellow, what's up now?' he says in that round cheery voice of his which suggests honey and sunshine, or a strong west wind, or anything else you like both sweet and wholesome. Probably the Arachnite pinches his lips and says 'Nothing;' but 'nothing' does not answer the purpose, and an explanation is forced--if indeed that poor chilled soul can be forced into anything frank and human. If he cannot, then the other does his best to laugh away the cloud and to go on as before; but it all depends on the mood of the Spider-born whether this frankness will be an offence or a clearance--whether it will win the day or lose it for ever. Unlike the Arachnite, whose analogue is that liquid which, when it is struck or stirred ever so lightly, breaks at once into crystals, the Melissite is almost impossible to freeze. Even his anger has a touch of generous pity in it, in that a man should be such a fool or so wrong-headed; and where the one will not forgive the smallest mistake, the other will forget the gravest wrong and trust to better things in the future. Tender of heart, he nourishes all good impulses in himself, and recognises them with gladness in others; and essentially peace-loving, as the really strong ever are, he is slow to 'wash his spears,' and only when forced by self-respect, goes out to fight his foes. Generous as a master and genial as an administrator, he puts up with the worries and disappointments inevitable to his business, whatever it may be; not troubling the gods with his complaints because men are made of clay, and every now and then break in the handling and fly in the firing. On the contrary, he makes the best of things even when they are bad; and looks to the perfected work rather than to the abortive, which cannot now be mended. He believes in the doctrine of encouragement rather than in the theory of repression, and thinks when men know that they are trusted to do well, they do better than when they know that they are expected to do ill--with the handcuffs to follow. He has no great faith in gags and bearing-reins, whips and spurs, for any kind of team that he may have to manage. He trusts rather to the cheering voice and the guiding hand; and his choice of method is justified by its results. In all troublous times, the Melissite--he who looks at a man's circumstances from that man's own standpoint, and not from one external, unintelligent and unsympathetic--escapes the doom accorded to the Arachnides, and lives in peaceful security where these others are not safe, however well protected. If such as he did not form what Matthew Arnold calls the remnant, society would stand still like the clogged wheels of a watch, and men would perish in the moral desert as they perish in the material. The righteous men who save cities are they who do good to their brother-men as well as they who pray to God; and 'he prayeth best who loveth best' is a phrase we all know by head, and some of us by heart and head as well.

In hours of doubt and danger, the Arachnite despairs; but the Melissite buckles to for the work of decision and deliverances, hoping while a ray of light remains, or a plank whole out of the wreck. The one cannot spell success; the other will not learn to say defeat; the one does not hold on, the other cannot be beaten off. Hence we seldom find the working Arachnides successful in life; and the bread which they have to bake for themselves is apt to be both scant in quantity and sour in quality. The others, on the contrary, for the most part succeed. They have not only a larger volume of life to bear them on, but they have also the art of making friends, such as those poor starved prison-pinched souls do not know. They are thus backed by their own strength, and given a helping hand by the strength of others; where the Arachnides get no extraneous aid, and soon come to the end of their own power. Then they complain of their ill-luck, or speak of secret enemies who work in the dark against them; and, if women, they go into the sunless labyrinth of 'nerves,' by which they excuse their jealousy and ill-temper, their sourness and crossness. They say severely that no one knows what they suffer, save those who are in like manner afflicted, and that they alone can measure the pain they endure. Perhaps the good-tempered interlocutor thinks to himself: 'A little honey mixed in with all thy vinegar, O Arachnite, would soften much of thy misery and reduce thy misfortunes to zero; and the milk of human kindness set to make cream is a better spiritual drink than the poison thou distillest and the vinegar which makes thee thin; and the poor thin whey, which is but serum with all the cream and cheese and butter taken out, is bad nourishment for men or babes.'

IN ALL SHADES.

Delgado had fixed 'the great and terrible day' for Wednesday evening. On Monday afternoon, Harry and Nora, accompanied by Mr Dupuy, went for a ride in the cool of dusk among the hills together. Trinidad that day was looking its very best. The tall and feathery bamboos that overhung the serpentine pathways stood out in exquisite clearness of outline, like Japanese designs, against the tender background of pearl-gray sky. The tree ferns rose lush and green among the bracken after yesterday's brief and refreshing thunder-shower. The scarlet hibiscus trees beside the negro huts were in the full blush of their first flowering season. The poinsettias, not, as in England, mere stiff standard plants from florists' cuttings, but rising proudly into graceful trees of free and rounded growth, with long drooping branches, spread all about their great rosettes of crimson leaflets to the gorgeous dying sunlight. The broad green foliage of the ribbed bananas in the negro gardens put to shame the flimsy tropical make-believes of Kew or Monte Carlo. For the first time, it seemed to Harry Noel he was riding through the true and beautiful tropics of poets and painters; and the reason was not difficult to guess, for Nora--Nora really seemed to be more kindly disposed to him. After all, she was not made of stone, and they had an interest in common which the rest of the house of Dupuy did not share with Nora--the interest in Edward and Marian Hawthorn. You can't have a better introduction to any girl's heart--though I daresay it may be very wicked indeed to acknowledge it--than a common attachment to somebody or something tabooed or opposed by the parental authorities.

Mr Dupuy rode first in the little single-file cavalcade, as became the senior; and Mr Dupuy's cob had somehow a strange habit of keeping fifty yards ahead of the other horses, which gave its owner on this particular occasion no little trouble. Harry and Nora followed behind at a respectful distance; and Harry, who had bought a new horse of his own the day before, and who brought up the rear on his fresh mount, seemed curiously undesirous of putting his latest purchase through its paces, as one might naturally have expected him to do under the circumstances. On the contrary, he hung about behind most unconscionably, delaying Nora by every means in his power; and Mr Dupuy, looking back from his cob every now and again, grew almost weary of calling out a dozen times over: 'Now then, Nora, you can canter up over this little bit of level, and catch me up, can't you, surely?'

Mr Dupuy unconsciously prevented him from carrying out this natural design. Meeting his nephew first in the narrow pathway, he was just going to make him turn round and ride alongside with him, when Nora, seized with a sudden fancy, half whispered to Harry Noel: 'I'm not going to ride with Tom Dupuy; I can't endure him; I shall turn and ride back in the opposite direction.'

'We must tell your father,' Harry said, hesitating.

'Of course,' Nora answered decidedly.--'Papa,' she continued, raising her voice, 'we're going to ride back again and round by Delgado's hut, you know--the mountain-cabbage palm-tree way is so much prettier, and I want to show it to Mr Noel. You and Tom Dupuy can turn and follow us.--The cob always goes ahead, you see, Mr Noel, if once he's allowed to get in front of the other horses.'

They turned back once more in this reversed order, Nora and Harry Noel leading the way, and Mr Dupuy, abreast with Tom, following behind somewhat angrily, till they came to a point in the narrow lane where a gap in the hedge led into a patch of jungle on the right-hand side. An old negro had crept out of it just before them, carrying on his head, poised quite evenly, a big fagot of sticks for his outdoor fireplace. The old man kept the middle of the lane, just in front of them, and made not the slightest movement to right or left, as if he had no particular intention of allowing them to pass. Harry had just given his new horse a tap with the whip, and they were trotting along to get well in front of the two followers, so he didn't greatly relish this untoward obstacle thrown so unexpectedly in his way. 'Get out of the road, will you, you there!' he shouted angrily. 'Don't you see a lady's coming? Stand aside this minute, my good fellow, and let her pass, I tell you.'

Delgado turned around, almost as the horse's nose was upon him, and looking the young man defiantly in the face, answered with an obvious sneer: 'Who is you, sah, dat you speak to me like-a dat? Dis is de Queen high-road, for naygur an' for buckra. You doan't got no right at all to turn me off it.'

Harry recognised his man at once, and the hot temper of the Lincolnshire Noels boiled up within him. He hit out at the fellow with his riding-whip viciously. Delgado didn't attempt to dodge the blow--a negro never does--but merely turned his head haughtily, so that the bundle of sticks pushed hard against the horse's nose, and set it bleeding with the force of the sudden turn. Delgado knew it would: the sticks, in fact, were prickly acacia. The horse plunged and reared a little, and backed up in fright against the cactus hedge. The sharp cactus spines and the long aloe-like needles of the pinguin leaves in the hedgerow goaded his flank severely as he backed against them. He gave another plunge, and hit up wildly against Nora's mount. Nora kept her seat bravely, but with some difficulty. Harry was furious. Forgetting himself entirely, he knocked the bundle of sticks off the old man's head with a sudden swish of his thick riding-crop, and then proceeded to lay the whip twice or three times about Delgado's ears with angry vehemence. To his great surprise, Delgado stood, erect and motionless, as if he didn't even notice the blows. Appeased by what he took to be the man's submissiveness, Harry dug his heel into his horse's side and hurried forward to rejoin Nora, who had ridden ahead hastily to avoid the turmoil.

'He's an ill-conditioned, rude, bad-blooded fellow, that nigger there,' he said apologetically to his pretty companion. 'I know him before. He's the very same man I told you of the other evening, that wouldn't pick my whip up for me the first day I came to Trinidad. I'm glad he's had a taste of it to-day for his continual impudence.'

'If you put your foot on rattlesnake,' Louis Delgado cried aloud from behind, in angry accents, 'you crush rattlesnake; but rattlesnake sting you, so you die.' And then he muttered to himself in lower tones: 'An' de rattlesnake has got sting in him tail dat will hurt dat mulatto man from Englan', still, dat tink himself proper buckra.'

Tom Dupuy and his uncle had just reached the spot when Louis Delgado said angrily to himself, in negro soliloquy, this offensive sentence. Tom reined in and looked smilingly at his uncle as Delgado said it. 'So you know something, too, about this confounded Englishman, you wretched nigger you!' he said condescendingly. 'You've found out that our friend Noel's a woolly-headed mulatto, have you, Delgado?'

Louis Delgado's eyes sparkled with gratified malevolence as he answered with a cunning smile: 'Aha, Mistah Tom Dupuy, you glad to hear dat, sah! You want to get some information from de poor naygur dis ebenin', do you! No, no, sah; de Dupuys an' me, we is not fren'; we is at variance one wit de odder. I doan't gwine to tell you nuffin' at all, sah, about de buckra from Englan'. But when mule kick too much, I say to him often: "Ha, ha, me fren', you is too proud. You tink you is horse. I s'pose you doan't rightly remember dat your own fader wasn't nuffin' but a common jackass!"'

He loved to play with both his intended victims at once, as a cat plays with a captured mouse before she kills it. Keep him in suspense as long as you can--that's the point of the game. Dandle him, and torture him, and hold him off; but never tell him the truth outright, for good or for evil, as long as you can possibly help it.

'Do you really know anything,' Tom Dupuy asked eagerly, 'or are you only guessing, like all the rest of us? Do you mean to tell me you've got any proof that the fellow's a nigger?--Come, come, Delgado, we may have quarrelled, but you needn't be nasty about it. I've got a grudge against this man Noel, and I don't mind paying you liberally for anything you can tell me against him.'

But Delgado shook his head doggedly. 'I doan't want your money, sah,' he answered with a slow drawl; 'I want more dan your money, if I want anyting. But I doan't gwine to help you agin me own colour. Buckra for buckra, an' colour for colour! If you want to find out about him, why doan't you write to de buckra gentlemen over in Barbadoes?'

He kept the pair of white men there, dawdling and parleying, for twenty minutes nearly, while Harry and Nora went riding away alone towards the mountain cabbage-palms. It pleased Delgado thus to be able to hold the two together on the tenter-hooks of suspense--to exercise his power before the two buckras. At last, Tom Dupuy condescended to direct entreaty. 'Delgado,' he said with much magnanimity, 'you know I don't often ask a favour of a nigger--it ain't the way with us Dupuys; it don't run in the family--but still, I ask you as a personal favour to tell me whatever you know about this matter: I have reasons of my own which make me ask you as a personal favour.'

Delgado's eyes glistened horribly. 'Buckra,' he answered with a hideous grin, dropping all the usual polite formulas, 'I will tell you for true den; I will tell you all about it. Dat man Noel is son ob brown gal from ole Barbadoes. Her name is Budleigh, an' her fam'ly is brown folks dat lib at place dem call de Wilderness. I hear all about dem from Isaac Pourtal?s. Pourtal?s an' dis man Noel, dem is bot' cousin. De man is brown just same like Isaac Pourtal?s!'

'It's too late to follow them up by the mountain-cabbages,' Mr Theodore Dupuy exclaimed with an anxious sigh--how did he know but that at that very moment this undoubted brown man might be proposing to his daughter Nora?--'it's too late to follow them, if we mean to dress for dinner. We must go home straight by the road, and even then we won't overtake them before they're back at Orange Grove, I'm afraid, Tom.'

He paused again, and chewed violently for a minute or two at a piece of cane he pulled out of his pocket; then he spat out the dry refuse with a fierce explosion of laughter, and went on again: 'But I doan't gwine to punish Noel like I gwine to punish de Dupuys an' de missy. Noel is fren' ob Mistah Hawtorn, de fren' ob de naygur: dat gwine to be imputed to him for righteousness. In de great and terrible day, de angel gwine to pass ober Noel, same as him pass ober de house ob Israel; but de house ob de Dupuy shall perish utterly, like de house ob Pharaoh, an' like de house ob Saul, king ob Israel, whose seed was destroyed out ob de land, so dat not one ob dem left.'

THE MODERN PRIZE SYSTEM.

It may be accepted as a principle that the education question admits of no final settlement in a state of progressive civilisation. Methods and forms, possibly the outcome of much thought and effort, established in one age, become cumbrous or altogether valueless in the next. They are found unsuited to the requirements of the later period, during which a demand has arisen for other kinds of knowledge, or for more advanced teaching in subjects previously treated in an elementary manner only. Hence it follows that the minds of enlightened nations become directed to educational matters with a certain degree of periodicity: from time to time the education question becomes a burning one.

The most superficial reader of the daily papers or magazines cannot fail to have been struck latterly by the increasing attention bestowed on such matters by the people of these countries. So decided an influence is exerted by these considerations on the public just now, that we find them furnishing a test in some districts for parliamentary or other representatives. At social and literary gatherings, such questions as the following are warmly discussed: Should the State provide and maintain schools for the people, or should these be largely left to individual enterprise, as at present?--Should State interference take the form it has done in recent educational experiments, wherein two universities and one gigantic scheme of intermediate education have been framed on the lines of mere examining boards, disbursing public prize-money?--What is the relative value of the kinds of instruction ordinarily given in schools?--How may the desire for information be aroused among the masses, and in what way may the stimulus be best applied?

These and other questions of a kindred nature occupy the thoughts of many at this time. It is not our present purpose to deal with the whole question of education, but to consider very briefly one aspect of it--namely, prizes and their distribution.

If we inquire what inducements are offered to pupils to excel in special subjects or to proceed to higher branches of them, we find that the same general plan is followed in all our institutions, from the most elementary to the highest--namely, money prizes or their equivalent in books or medals, the obtaining of which presupposes a competitive examination. In most instances, the prize-money is paid in cash to the successful candidate. The age in which we live is eminently competitive, a fact early recognised by children at school, and still better understood in after-life. In comparing ourselves with our neighbours, may it not be a fact that we are an over-examined people? We may further ask, are examinations always fair tests of ability? Is the reward system, as we have it, the best means of promoting a higher culture?

Those who have had any experience at all of examinations must have been over and over again surprised at the order in which candidates known to them are placed on the Honour list. There is a certain element of chance about examinations rapidly conducted that cannot be eliminated, and which may lead to the disappointment of the most confident hopes. A diligent student, who has perhaps overtaxed himself physically in preparation for, or who is over-anxious about the examination, fails utterly, or is surpassed by some one of very superficial attainments. It seems to us that the verdict of a teacher, or, to prevent favouritism, of several teachers, as to the relative merits of the pupils long under their training and observation, has some advantages over the examination method at present in vogue, success in which is as often attained by an unhealthy effort of 'cramming,' as by patient and honest study. Doubtless, examinations for some purposes cannot be entirely dispensed with, but must remain as necessary evils. Still, their frequency could be reduced considerably with decided benefit to the physical, and possibly also to the intellectual, condition of the rising generation.

The second part of our question remains to be considered: Is the present reward system the best means of promoting higher culture? Let us suppose a case. There is a class of twenty pupils engaged upon a subject for which a valuable prize is offered. Possibly seventeen of these, from their former experience of their class-fellows, conclude that the prize lies between the remaining three, and that there is no use trying for it. The prize and perhaps the subject also have no longer any interest for them; they cease to study, or at all events do little. The three amongst whom the prize lies are the most diligent, who probably like the subject, or learning generally for its own sake, or who, from vanity or ambition, are anxious to excel. These are they to whom the stimulus is applied; but they are the very pupils that need no further stimulus. The spur is virtually withheld from those requiring it, and applied to those who need it not.

If it be conceded that the need of reform is indicated in such cases, we must avoid rushing to the opposite extreme in trying to effect it. No one will suggest that the method of reward as applied to donkey-races would meet the case. With our present light, we are not prepared to recommend a thorough-going remedy. Much may, however, be done for the cause of true culture by modifying the distribution of prizes. The current notion of a prize is, that it is a reward for something well done, due as soon as the meritorious act is accomplished. Etymologically considered, the word conveys nothing more than that. A higher estimate of the function of a prize might advantageously be substituted for the one implied in the above definition. If it were regarded as not merely a reward for something past and done, but also as a stimulus to further effort in the same direction, more lasting good might be effected, and a modification of the present system of distribution would become a necessity. For example: a large money prize obtained in a junior school, instead of being paid directly to the successful candidate, might be divided into two unequal sums, the smaller to provide a medal or book, &c., as a tangible evidence of distinction; the larger, to be applied as fees at a neighbouring high-school or college where the favourite subjects could be studied for a longer period free of cost to the pupil. The payment of the larger instalment could be made contingent upon the successful candidate desiring to prosecute his studies further. In the event of the pupil electing to abandon study in favour of trade or business, or from mere disinclination, the medal, book, &c., showing the position attained, might alone be presented, and the balance of the prize-money be forfeited.

Among other benefits resulting from this scheme we might instance--that cramming would be diminished to an appreciable extent. A common practice nowadays with many who enter for prize examinations is to hurriedly prepare a large number of subjects, selected more with reference to their maximum of marks than to the tastes of the pupil, then to obtain the coveted prize, and subsequently to forget the mass of undigested information with which their memories have been surfeited, possibly never to return without disgust to the consideration of them.

We fancy such a modification as sketched above would influence favourably those who select a subject for its own sake and are desirous of knowing it perfectly. If successful in the elementary schools, the means are gained for following it up in a more advanced one till it is finally mastered, the information having been gradually imparted and more perfectly assimilated. On the other hand, the scheme would rather repel those alluded to before, who study hurriedly particular branches solely for the sake of the money to be gained, only so long as this is at once paid to them in the form of cash.

The plan recommended appears to be inconsistent with separate or private educational enterprises, many of which depend for their maintenance and efficiency on large fees. The want of uniformity in constitution and management of elementary schools, and the want of harmonious action resulting from the rivalry between them, scarcely offer the proper conditions for the full development of the plan. In a few large towns, where the relations between schools have rendered its introduction possible, it has been eminently successful. Pupils of marked intellectual power, belonging to the less opulent classes, have been induced by the operation of this system to proceed from primary to intermediate schools, and ultimately to the attainment of the highest distinctions at the English universities; following specially at each advancement the subjects of their choice.

Undoubtedly, a complete State-controlled educational scheme embracing all grades would render possible the general adoption of this method of applying large money prizes. In offering this suggestion as a plea in favour of State education we must bear in mind that the State system depends for its favourable reception on considerations of much greater moment, which cannot in our present limits be discussed.

TREASURE TROVE.

After a sleepless night of suspense and dread, Bertha, who was always up first in the little household, lingered in her room until long after her usual time, not daring to descend, for fear of meeting Jasper Rodley, and only did so at the personal summons of her father, who assured her that their visitor had gone.

Contrary to his usual habit, the captain was silent during breakfast; and the girl's heart, which had been brightened partly by the departure of Jasper Rodley, and partly by the thought that it was Wednesday, interpreted the silence of her father as ominous. After breakfast, she began to prepare as usual for her weekly visit to Saint Quinians' market.

'Bertha,' said her father, who had lighted his pipe and was stumping up and down the room, 'don't hurry to-day. An hour or so cannot make much difference. I want to speak to you.'

Pale and trembling, the girl took her seat at the open window, through which streamed the early sunshine.

'Jasper Rodley was talking to me for a long time last night,' continued the old man. 'I think he is a nice young fellow, and I am sure you have made an impression on him.'

Another person better versed in the art of approaching a delicate subject would have chosen a more circuitous mode of procedure; but the simple, blunt, old sailor knew very little about conversational wile and artifice, and could only go straight to the point.

Bertha did not answer, but sat motionless, with her eyes fixed on the shining rocks and the tumbling sea beyond.

So her father continued: 'And I don't think you could do better, in case he should make any proposal to you about--about marriage, than accept him. In fact, it is my wish that you should do so.'

Bertha remained silent for some moments; then she moved from her seat, placed herself on the stool by her father's side, took his hand in hers, and said: 'Father, my dearest wish is to please you and to do all that you wish. I have but one other friend in the world besides you, and no other relation. You have been the best of fathers to me, and I have tried to be a good daughter to you; but I cannot, oh, I cannot obey you in this!'

'But, my lass,' continued the old man, who was evidently moved by the earnest manner in which the girl spoke, 'Jasper Rodley is a man of a thousand--good-looking, of respectable birth, and doing well. He would make you happy, and another important thing--he would not take you from me.'

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