Vice
flourished
luxuriantly
during
the
hey-day
of
our
"flush times."
The
saloons
were
overburdened
with
custom;
so
were
the
police
courts,
the
gambling dens,
the
brothels
and
the
jails—unfailing
signs
of
high
prosperity
in
a mining region—in
any
region
for
that
matter.
Is
it
not
so? A crowded
police
court docket
is
the
surest
of
all
signs
that
trade
is
brisk
and
money
plenty. Still,
there
is
one
other
sign;
it
comes
last,
but
when
it
does
come
it
establishes
beyond
cavil
that
the
"flush times"
are
at
the
flood.
This
is
the
birth
of
the
"literary" paper.
The
Weekly Occidental, "devoted
to
literature,"
made
its
appearance
in
Virginia.
All
the
literary
people
were
engaged
to
write
for
it. Mr. F.
was
to
edit
it.
He
was
a felicitous
skirmisher
with
a pen,
and
a
man
who
could
say
happy
things
in
a crisp,
neat
way. Once,
while
editor
of
the
Union,
he
had disposed
of
a labored, incoherent, two-column
attack
made
upon
him
by
a contemporary,
with
a single line, which,
at
first
glance,
seemed
to
contain
a
solemn
and
tremendous
compliment—viz.: "THE
LOGIC
OF
OUR
ADVERSARY
RESEMBLES
THE
PEACE
OF
GOD,"—and left
it
to
the
reader's
memory
and
after-thought
to
invest
the
remark
with
another
and
"more different" meaning
by
supplying
for
himself
and
at
his
own
leisure
the
rest
of
the
Scripture—"in
that
it
passeth understanding."
He
once
said
of
a little, half-starved, wayside
community
that
had
no
subsistence
except
what
they
could
get
by
preying
upon
chance
passengers
who
stopped
over
with
them
a
day
when
traveling
by
the
overland stage,
that
in
their
Church
service
they
had
altered
the
Lord's
Prayer
to
read: "Give
us
this
day
our
daily
stranger!"
We
expected
great
things
of
the
Occidental.
Of
course
it
could
not
get
along
without
an
original
novel,
and
so
we
made
arrangements
to
hurl
into
the
work
the
full
strength
of
the
company. Mrs. F.
was
an
able
romancist
of
the
ineffable
school—I
know
no
other
name
to
apply
to
a
school
whose
heroes
are
all
dainty
and
all
perfect.
She
wrote
the
opening
chapter,
and
introduced
a
lovely
blonde simpleton
who
talked
nothing
but
pearls
and
poetry
and
who
was
virtuous
to
the
verge
of
eccentricity.
She
also
introduced
a
young
French
Duke
of
aggravated refinement,
in
love
with
the
blonde. Mr. F.
followed
next
week,
with
a
brilliant
lawyer
who
set
about
getting
the
Duke's
estates
into
trouble,
and
a sparkling
young
lady
of
high
society
who
fell
to
fascinating
the
Duke
and
impairing
the
appetite
of
the
blonde. Mr. D., a dark
and
bloody
editor
of
one
of
the
dailies,
followed
Mr. F.,
the
third
week,
introducing
a
mysterious
Roscicrucian
who
transmuted
metals,
held
consultations
with
the
devil
in
a
cave
at
dead
of
night,
and
cast
the
horoscope
of
the
several
heroes
and
heroines
in
such
a
way
as
to
provide
plenty
of
trouble
for
their
future
careers
and
breed a
solemn
and
awful
public
interest
in
the
novel.
He
also
introduced
a
cloaked
and
masked melodramatic miscreant,
put
him
on
a salary
and
set
him
on
the
midnight
track
of
the
Duke
with
a
poisoned
dagger.
He
also
created
an
Irish
coachman
with
a
rich
brogue
and
placed
him
in
the
service
of
the
society-young-lady
with
an
ulterior
mission
to
carry
billet-doux
to
the
Duke.
About
this
time
there
arrived
in
Virginia
a
dissolute
stranger
with
a
literary
turn
of
mind—rather seedy
he
was,
but
very
quiet
and
unassuming;
almost
diffident, indeed.
He
was
so
gentle,
and
his
manners
were
so
pleasing
and
kindly,
whether
he
was
sober
or
intoxicated,
that
he
made
friends
of
all
who
came
in
contact
with
him.
He
applied
for
literary
work,
offered
conclusive
evidence
that
he
wielded
an
easy
and
practiced pen,
and
so
Mr. F. engaged
him
at
once
to
help
write
the
novel.
His
chapter
was
to
follow
Mr. D.'s,
and
mine
was
to
come
next.
Now
what
does
this
fellow
do
but
go
off
and
get
drunk
and
then
proceed
to
his
quarters
and
set
to
work
with
his
imagination
in
a
state
of
chaos,
and
that
chaos
in
a condition
of
extravagant
activity.
The
result
may
be
guessed.
He
scanned
the
chapters
of
his
predecessors, found
plenty
of
heroes
and
heroines
already
created,
and
was
satisfied
with
them;
he
decided
to
introduce
no
more;
with
all
the
confidence
that
whisky
inspires
and
all
the
easy
complacency
it
gives
to
its
servant,
he
then
launched
himself
lovingly
into
his
work:
he
married
the
coachman
to
the
society-young-lady
for
the
sake
of
the
scandal; married
the
Duke
to
the
blonde's stepmother,
for
the
sake
of
the
sensation; stopped
the
desperado's salary;
created
a misunderstanding
between
the
devil
and
the
Roscicrucian; threw
the
Duke's
property
into
the
wicked
lawyer's hands;
made
the
lawyer's
upbraiding
conscience
drive
him
to
drink,
thence
to
delirium
tremens,
thence
to
suicide;
broke
the
coachman's neck;
let
his
widow
succumb
to
contumely, neglect,
poverty
and
consumption;
caused
the
blonde
to
drown
herself,
leaving
her
clothes
on
the
bank
with
the
customary
note
pinned
to
them
forgiving
the
Duke
and
hoping
he
would
be
happy; revealed
to
the
Duke,
by
means
of
the
usual
strawberry
mark
on
left arm,
that
he
had married
his
own
long-lost mother
and
destroyed
his
long-lost sister;
instituted
the
proper
and
necessary
suicide
of
the
Duke
and
the
Duchess
in
order
to
compass
poetical justice;
opened
the
earth
and
let
the
Roscicrucian through, accompanied
with
the
accustomed
smoke
and
thunder
and
smell
of
brimstone,
and
finished
with
the
promise
that
in
the
next
chapter,
after
holding a
general
inquest,
he
would
take
up
the
surviving
character
of
the
novel
and
tell
what
became
of
the
devil!
It
read
with
singular
smoothness,
and
with
a "dead" earnestness
that
was
funny
enough
to
suffocate
a body.
But
there
was
war
when
it
came in.
The
other
novelists
were
furious.
The
mild
stranger,
not
yet
more
than
half
sober, stood there,
under
a scathing
fire
of
vituperation, meek
and
bewildered,
looking
from
one
to
another
of
his
assailants,
and
wondering
what
he
could
have
done
to
invoke
such
a storm.
When
a lull came
at
last,
he
said
his
say
gently
and
appealingly—said
he
did
not
rightly
remember
what
he
had written,
but
was
sure
he
had tried
to
do
the
best
he
could,
and
knew
his
object
had been
to
make
the
novel
not
only
pleasant
and
plausible
but
instructive and——
The
bombardment began again.
The
novelists
assailed
his
ill-chosen
adjectives
and
demolished
them
with
a
storm
of
denunciation
and
ridicule.
And
so
the
siege
went on.
Every
time
the
stranger
tried
to
appease
the
enemy
he
only
made
matters worse. Finally
he
offered
to
rewrite
the
chapter.
This
arrested hostilities.
The
indignation
gradually
quieted
down,
peace
reigned
again
and
the
sufferer
retired
in
safety
and
got
him
to
his
own
citadel.
But
on
the
way
thither
the
evil
angel
tempted
him
and
he
got
drunk
again.
And
again
his
imagination
went mad.
He
led
the
heroes
and
heroines
a wilder dance
than
ever;
and
yet
all
through
it
ran
that
same
convincing
air
of
honesty
and
earnestness
that
had
marked
his
first
work.
He
got
the
characters
into
the
most
extraordinary
situations,
put
them
through
the
most
surprising performances,
and
made
them
talk
the
strangest
talk!
But
the
chapter
cannot
be
described.
It
was
symmetrically crazy;
it
was
artistically absurd;
and
it
had
explanatory
footnotes
that
were
fully
as
curious
as
the
text. I
remember
one
of
the
"situations,"
and
will
offer
it
as
an
example
of
the
whole.
He
altered
the
character
of
the
brilliant
lawyer,
and
made
him
a great-hearted,
splendid
fellow; gave
him
fame
and
riches,
and
set
his
age
at
thirty-three years.
Then
he
made
the
blonde discover,
through
the
help
of
the
Roscicrucian
and
the
melodramatic miscreant,
that
while
the
Duke
loved
her
money
ardently
and
wanted it,
he
secretly felt a
sort
of
leaning
toward
the
society-young-lady. Stung
to
the
quick,
she
tore
her
affections
from
him
and
bestowed
them
with
tenfold
power
upon
the
lawyer,
who
responded
with
consuming
zeal.
But
the
parents
would
none
of
it.
What
they
wanted
in
the
family
was
a Duke;
and
a
Duke
they
were
determined
to
have;
though
they
confessed
that
next
to
the
Duke
the
lawyer
had
their
preference. Necessarily
the
blonde
now
went
into
a decline.
The
parents
were
alarmed.
They
pleaded
with
her
to
marry
the
Duke,
but
she
steadfastly
refused,
and
pined
on.
Then
they
laid a plan.
They
told
her
to
wait
a
year
and
a day,
and
if
at
the
end
of
that
time
she
still
felt
that
she
could
not
marry
the
Duke,
she
might
marry
the
lawyer
with
their
full
consent.
The
result
was
as
they
had foreseen:
gladness
came again,
and
the
flush
of
returning
health.
Then
the
parents
took
the
next
step
in
their
scheme.
They
had
the
family
physician
recommend
a
long
sea
voyage
and
much
land
travel
for
the
thorough
restoration
of
the
blonde's strength;
and
they
invited
the
Duke
to
be
of
the
party.
They
judged
that
the
Duke's constant
presence
and
the
lawyer's
protracted
absence
would
do
the
rest—for
they
did
not
invite
the
lawyer.
So
they
set
sail
in
a steamer
for
America—and
the
third
day
out,
when
their
sea-sickness
called
truce
and
permitted
them
to
take
their
first
meal
at
the
public table,
behold
there
sat
the
lawyer!
The
Duke
and
party
made
the
best
of
an
awkward situation;
the
voyage
progressed,
and
the
vessel
neared
America. But,
by
and
by,
two
hundred
miles
off
New
Bedford,
the
ship
took
fire;
she
burned
to
the
water's edge;
of
all
her
crew
and
passengers,
only
thirty
were
saved.
They
floated
about
the
sea
half
an
afternoon
and
all
night
long.
Among
them
were
our
friends.
The
lawyer,
by
superhuman
exertions, had saved
the
blonde
and
her
parents,
swimming
back
and
forth
two
hundred
yards
and
bringing
one
each
time—(the
girl
first).
The
Duke
had saved himself.
In
the
morning
two
whale
ships
arrived
on
the
scene
and
sent
their
boats.
The
weather
was
stormy
and
the
embarkation
was
attended
with
much
confusion
and
excitement.
The
lawyer
did
his
duty
like
a man;
helped
his
exhausted
and
insensible
blonde,
her
parents
and
some
others
into
a
boat
(the
Duke
helped
himself
in);
then
a
child
fell
overboard
at
the
other
end
of
the
raft
and
the
lawyer
rushed
thither
and
helped
half
a
dozen
people
fish
it
out,
under
the
stimulus
of
its
mother's screams.
Then
he
ran
back—a
few
seconds
too
late—the blonde's
boat
was
under
way.
So
he
had
to
take
the
other
boat,
and
go
to
the
other
ship.
The
storm
increased
and
drove
the
vessels
out
of
sight
of
each
other—drove
them
whither
it
would.
When
it
calmed,
at
the
end
of
three
days,
the
blonde's
ship
was
seven
hundred
miles
north
of
Boston
and
the
other
about
seven
hundred
south
of
that
port.
The
blonde's captain
was
bound
on
a whaling
cruise
in
the
North
Atlantic
and
could
not
go
back
such
a distance
or
make
a port
without
orders;
such
being
nautical
law.
The
lawyer's captain
was
to
cruise
in
the
North
Pacific,
and
he
could
not
go
back
or
make
a port
without
orders.
All
the
lawyer's
money
and
baggage
were
in
the
blonde's
boat
and
went
to
the
blonde's ship—so
his
captain
made
him
work
his
passage
as
a
common
sailor.
When
both
ships
had been
cruising
nearly a year,
the
one
was
off
the
coast
of
Greenland
and
the
other
in
Behring's Strait.
The
blonde had
long
ago
been
well-nigh
persuaded
that
her
lawyer
had been
washed
overboard
and
lost
just
before
the
whale
ships
reached
the
raft,
and
now,
under
the
pleadings
of
her
parents
and
the
Duke
she
was
at
last
beginning
to
nerve
herself
for
the
doom
of
the
covenant,
and
prepare
for
the
hated
marriage.
But
she
would
not
yield
a
day
before
the
date set.
The
weeks
dragged
on,
the
time narrowed, orders
were
given
to
deck
the
ship
for
the
wedding—a
wedding
at
sea
among
icebergs
and
walruses.
Five
days
more
and
all
would
be
over.
So
the
blonde reflected,
with
a sigh
and
a tear.
Oh
where
was
her
true love—and why,
why
did
he
not
come
and
save her?
At
that
moment
he
was
lifting
his
harpoon
to
strike a whale
in
Behring's Strait,
five
thousand
miles
away,
by
the
way
of
the
Arctic Ocean,
or
twenty
thousand
by
the
way
of
the
Horn—that
was
the
reason.
He
struck,
but
not
with
perfect aim—his
foot
slipped
and
he
fell
in
the
whale's
mouth
and
went
down
his
throat.
He
was
insensible
five
days.
Then
he
came
to
himself
and
heard
voices; daylight
was
streaming
through
a
hole
cut
in
the
whale's roof.
He
climbed
out
and
astonished
the
sailors
who
were
hoisting
blubber
up
a ship's side.
He
recognized
the
vessel, flew aboard, surprised
the
wedding
party
at
the
altar
and
exclaimed: "Stop
the
proceedings—I'm here!
Come
to
my arms, my own!"
There
were
foot-notes
to
this
extravagant
piece
of
literature
wherein
the
author endeavored
to
show
that
the
whole
thing
was
within
the
possibilities;
he
said
he
got
the
incident
of
the
whale
traveling
from
Behring's
Strait
to
the
coast
of
Greenland,
five
thousand
miles
in
five
days,
through
the
Arctic Ocean,
from
Charles
Reade's "Love
Me
Little
Love
Me
Long,"
and
considered
that
that
established
the
fact
that
the
thing
could
be
done;
and
he
instanced
Jonah's adventure
as
proof
that
a
man
could
live
in
a whale's belly,
and
added
that
if
a
preacher
could
stand
it
three
days
a
lawyer
could
surely
stand
it
five!
There
was
a
fiercer
storm
than
ever
in
the
editorial
sanctum
now,
and
the
stranger
was
peremptorily discharged,
and
his
manuscript
flung
at
his
head.
But
he
had
already
delayed
things
so
much
that
there
was
not
time
for
some
one
else
to
rewrite
the
chapter,
and
so
the
paper came
out
without
any
novel
in
it.
It
was
but
a feeble, struggling,
stupid
journal,
and
the
absence
of
the
novel
probably shook public confidence;
at
any
rate,
before
the
first
side
of
the
next
issue
went
to
press,
the
Weekly
Occidental
died
as
peacefully
as
an
infant.
An
effort
was
made
to
resurrect it,
with
the
proposed
advantage
of
a telling
new
title,
and
Mr. F. said
that
The
Phenix
would
be
just
the
name
for
it,
because
it
would
give
the
idea
of
a
resurrection
from
its
dead
ashes
in
a
new
and
undreamed
of
condition
of
splendor;
but
some
low-
priced
smarty
on
one
of
the
dailies
suggested
that
we
call
it
the
Lazarus;
and
inasmuch
as
the
people
were
not
profound
in
Scriptural
matters
but
thought
the
resurrected
Lazarus
and
the
dilapidated
mendicant
that
begged
in
the
rich
man's gateway
were
one
and
the
same
person,
the
name
became
the
laughing stock
of
the
town,
and
killed
the
paper
for
good
and
all. I
was
sorry
enough,
for
I
was
very
proud
of
being
connected
with
a
literary
paper—prouder
than
I
have
ever
been
of
anything
since, perhaps. I had written
some
rhymes
for
it—poetry I
considered
it—and
it
was
a
great
grief
to
me
that
the
production
was
on
the
"first side"
of
the
issue
that
was
not
completed,
and
hence
did
not
see
the
light.
But
time
brings
its
revenges—I
can
put
it
in
here;
it
will
answer
in
place
of
a
tear
dropped
to
the
memory
of
the
lost Occidental.
The
idea
(not
the
chief
idea,
but
the
vehicle
that
bears
it)
was
probably
suggested
by
the
old
song
called
"The
Raging
Canal,"
but
I cannot
remember
now. I
do
remember, though,
that
at
that
time I
thought
my doggerel
was
one
of
the
ablest
poems
of
the
age: