were en..eavoring to exclude from the synagogue-itself a very curious instance of the transplanting of an Old World caste prejudice to the New World); and there was a somewhat notable and exceptional grade of society, composed of a residue of former wealthy sojourners become permanent residents as a result of the fascination of the local climate and atmosphere-a most delightfully and systematically idle circle. Between and amongst tuese more distinct elements other intermediate social groups had grown up; so that society was composed of a large number of well-defined "chops," as the people themselves called their curiously intricate divisions. Here, it is hardly necessary to say, the social motive openly dominated the life of the people. Social rivalries and ambitions and appearances absorbed a great part of their energies and their time, and particularly the time and energies of the women. It seemed to me here, indeed, as it has seemed to me almost everywhere else in the country, that the women were engaged, all unconsciously, in an attempt to avenge their exclusion from the suffrage, in a republic where the suffrage is commonly spoken of as "universal," by neutralizing or nullifying, through their powerful influence in the family, the supposed equality of American institutions. If women could turn to a mockery democratic or equal institutions in which they have no direct part, and at the same time greatly increase the influence and advantage in the struggle for existence of certain social elements in which they as individuals are powerful, at the expense of the mass they might be held to have accomplished a very neat piece of retribution for their exclusion from participation in political affairs, as well as to have proved the unwisdom of that exclusion. I hardly suppose that any woman, in her social struggles, was ever animated by such a motive; but the effect is very much as if all women were. If to aggrandize the family is to take away something from democratic equality, then American women must be, whether they intend or know it or not, the enemies of the democratic idea; for they are mostly engaged in an attempt to push their particular families along into a position of greater relative importance in the community. In Newport I saw evidences in abundance, not only in the prevalence of frank worship of social position, and in the growth of castes, but in the demoralization of the tradespeople through much dealing with corruptible flunkeys, that a whole community may be unfavorably influenced by the example set by a wealthy, fashionable, and exclusive class. In a subsequent residence of nearly three years at Fall River, which is quite near Newport, I had an opportunity to get what might be called a cross-section of all American society by taking the two places together. Fall River is an exclusively manufacturing town of large population which developed with great rapidity from what was, early in the present century, a small farming community. The town has been remarkably free from outside influences except in the lower strata of its society. I found here a great foreign population which was governed industrially, and for the most part politically, by a small native community descended from the handful of farmers who had once wrung a hard living from the thin soil that covered the granite ledge on which scores of cotton-mills now stand. These mills are owned, chiefly, by the descendants of the old farmers who owned the ground along or about the stream which flows through the town, and which afforded a fine water-power. The advantage which the possession of the ground gave them resulted, apparently, in their perpetual domination in the affairs of the city which was to grow up here. Of "aristocracy" there was never any in the place; the mother of one of the chiefest mill-owners and social heads of the existing community had once been an operative in a cotton-mill; her condition in this regard-for it dated from the days of Lucy Larcom and the "Lowell Offering," Celebrated in Dickens's "American Notes"-being not exceptional, but ordinary. Naturally, many of the frugal ways and some of the democratic notions of a more primitive period clung to these people; but their usages were strongly cratic impulse which had a highly favor marked with the conceit of the social superiority of certain families, of the same sort as that of the Vermont community which I have described. These Fall River families had the advantage over the members of "Society" in New York or Boston of being really dominant in the affairs of their town. When I was there these people had developed little likeness to or connection with the fashionable society of the greater or older cities. Nevertheless, by a slow process of individual selection, the assimilation of the descendants of these very humble New England crofters with the elegant and exclusive society of New York and Boston could be seen already progressing; and their position in their own community gave them a prospect of eventual affiliation with it. The effect of the concentration of influence in a small mill-owning and landowning class upon the opposite pole of society was what, I should suppose, was exactly to be expected. I saw a little snobbery in the place, and little fawning, but rather the most implacable enmity, on the part of the imported work ing population, toward the American masters. Great numbers of these operatives possessed votes, but by pitting the voters of one imported nationality against another-English against Irish, and Canadian-French against both the American minority generally ruled the town politically without much trouble. The close combination of the mill-owners in industrial matters was answered by several labor unions, whose hostility to the masters was at least intense, if their cohesion was not as great as that of the ring of brothers, cousins, and old neighbors who stood above them. Thus this promising caste of farmers grown mill-masters had very cleverly reproduced the most marked social conditions of industrial Europe, with an angry proletariat clamoring at their doors. Social details of the sort I have mentioned may not appear very important in themselves. They would be of importance, however, if, taken with other facts, they pointed to a prospect of an eventual triumph of a social arrangement founded on caste over a demo able opportunity for its development. Caste questions form the theme of plays and romances, but they are seldom studied by economists. It seems to me that serious data concerning them are worthy of presentation. In America we concern ourselves much with the "dangerous elements," with anarchistic sentiments which are supposed to have been imported into our great cities from Europe, and hear much about the division of society into two great camps of rich and poor, a division which is supposed to rest on legislation which favors the rich; but we hear little about the perfectly voluntary growth of caste feeling, though I shall count this really a more important matter, because more inveterate in human thought and much further beyond the reach of legislation. It is a thing which general prosperity does not check, but rather stimulates, by bringing a greater number of persons within the range of social ambition; the accumulation of even a small amount of wealth in a family kindles to white heat the desire for progression toward the charmed upper circle. And it is a thing which is so peculiarly voluntary, and apparently so inevitably the outgrowth of the organization of society on the basis of the family, that the very people whom we hear vaguely lamenting the social stratification as contrary to the principles of the Fourth of July orations, are every day doing their utmost to assist it. JOSEPH EDGAR CHAMBERLIN. Boston, Mass. From Macmillan's Magazine. THE SONG OF THE MOOR. This is a story that I heard from the King of the Numidians, who with his tattered retinue encamps behind the peat-ricks. If you ask me where and when it happened I fear that I am scarce ready with an answer. But I will vouch my word for its truth; and if any one seek further proof, let him go east the town and west the town and over the fields of Nomansland to the Long Moor; and if he find not the king there among the peat-ricks, and get not a courteous answer to his question, then times have changed in that part of the country, and he must continue the quest to his Majesty's castle in Spain. Once upon a time, says the tale, there was a great godly man, a shepherd to trade, who lived in a cottage among the heather. If you looked east in the morning you saw miles of moor running wide to the flames of sunrise; and if you turned your eyes west in the evening, you saw a great confusion of dim peaks with the dying eye of the sun set in a crevice. If you looked north, too, in the afternoon, when the life of the day is near its end and the world grows wise, you might have seen a country of low hills and haughlands with many waters running sweet among meadows. But if you looked south in the dusty forenoon or at hot midday, you saw the faroff glimmer of a white road, the roofs of the ugly little clachan of Kilmaclavers, and the rigging of the fine new kirk of Threepdaidle. It was a Sabbath afternoon in the hot weather, and the man had been to kirk all the morning. He had heard a grand sermon from the minister (or it may have been the priest, for I am not sure of the date, and the king told the story quickly),—a fine discourse with fifteen heads and three parentheses. He held all the parentheses and fourteen of the heads in his memory, but he had forgotten the fifteenth; wherefore, for the purpose of recollecting it, and also for the sake of a walk, he went forth in the afternoon into the open heather. The air was mild and cheering, and with an even step he strolled over the turf and into the deep of the moor. The whaups were crying everywhere, making the air hum like the twanging of a bow. Poo-eelie, poo-eelie, they cried, kirlew, kirlew, whaup, wha-up; and sometimes they would come so close about him, all but brushing him, that they fairly drove all settled thoughts from his head. Often had he been on the moors, but never had he seen such a stramash among the feathered clan. The wailing iteration vexed him, and he strove to scare the birds away with his arms; but they seemed to mock him and VOL. XV. 773 LIVING AGE. whistle in his very face, and at the flap of their wings his heart grew sore. He waved his great stick; he picked up bits of loose moor-rock and flung them wildly; but the godless crew paid never a grain of heed. The morning's sermon was still in his head, and the grave words of the minister still rattled in his ear, but he could get no comfort for this intolerable piping. At last his patience failed him and he swore unchristian words. "Deil rax the birds' thrapples!" he cried. At this all the noise was hushed, and in a twinkling the moor was empty. Only one bird was left, standing on tall legs before him, with its head bowed on its breast and its beak touching the heather. Then the man repented his words and stared at the thing in the moss. "What bird are ye?" he asked crossly. "I am a respectable whaup," said the bird, "and I kenna why ye have broken in on our family gathering. Once in a hundred years we foregather for decent conversation, and here we are interrupted by a muckle, sweerin' man." Now the shepherd was a fellow of greaɩ sagacity, yet he never thought it a queer thing that he should be having talk in the mid-moss with a bird; to tell the plain truth, he had no mind on the matter. "What for were ye making siccar a din, then?" he asked. "D'ye no ken ye were disturbing the afternoon of the holy Sabbath?" The bird lifted his eyes and regarded him solemnly. "The Sabbath is a day of rest and gladness," it said; "and is it no reasonable that we should enjoy the like?" The shepherd shook his head, for the presumption staggered him. "Ye little ken what ye speak of," he replied. "The sabbath is for them that have the chance of salvation, and it has been decreed that salvation is for Adam's race and no for the beasts that perish." The whaup gave a whistle of scorn. "I have heard all that long ago. In my great-grandmother's time, which 'ill be a thousand years and mair syne, there came a people from the south with bright brass things on their heads and breasts, and terrible swords at their thighs. And with them were some lang-gowned men who kenned the stars, and would come out o' nights to talk to the deer and the corbies in their ain tongue. And one, I mind, foregathered with my great-grandmother and told her that the souls o' men flitted in the end to braw meadows where the gods bide, or gaed down to the black pit which they ca' Hell. But the souls o' birds, he said, die wi' their bodies and that's the end o' them. Likewise in my mother's time, when there was a great abbey down yonder by the Threepdaidle Burn, which they called the House of Kilmaclavers, the auld monks would walk out in the evening to pick herbs for their distillings, and some were wise and kenned the ways of bird and beast. They would crack often o' nights with my ain family, and tell them that Christ had saved the souls o' men, but that birds and beasts were perishable as the dew o' heaven. And now ye have a black-gowned man in Threepdaidle who threeps on the same owercome. Ye may a' ken something o' your ain kitchen-midden, but certes ye ken little o' the warld beyond it!" Now this angered the man and he rebuked the bird. "These are great mysteries," he said, "which are no to be mentioned in the ears of an unsanctified creature. What can a thing like you wi' a lang neb and twae legs like stilts ken about the next warld?" "Well, well," said the whaup, "we'll let the matter be. Everything to its ain trade, and I will not dispute with ye on metapheesics. But if ye ken something about the next warld, ye ken terrible little about this." Now this angered the man still more, for he was a shepherd reputed to have great skill in sheep and esteemed the nicest judge of hog and wether in all the countryside. "What ken ye about that?" he asked. "Ye may gang east to Yetholm, and west to Kells and no find a better herd." "If sheep were a'," replied the bird, "ye michu be right; but what o' the wide warld and the folk in it? Ye are Simon Etterick o' the Lowe Moss. Do ye ken aucht o' your forbears?" "My father was a God-fearing man at the Kennel-head, and my grandfather and great-grandfather afore him. One o' our name, folk say, was shot at a dyke-back by the Black Westeraw." "If that's a'," said the bird, "ye ken little. Have ye never heard o' the little man, the fourth back from yoursel', who killed the Miller o' Bewcastle at the Lammas Fair? That was in my ain time, and from my mother I have heard o' the Covenanter, who got a bullet in his wame hunkering behind the divotdyke and praying to his Maker. There were others o' your name rode in the Hermitage forays and burned Naworth and Warkworth and Castle Gay. I have heard o' an Etterick, Sim o' the Redcleuch, who cut the throat o' Jock Johnson in his ain house by the Annan side. And my grandmother had tales o' auld Ettericks who rade wi' Douglas and the Bruce and the ancient Kings o' Scots; and she used to tell o' others in her mother's time, terrible shockheaded men, hunting the deer and rinnin' on the high moors, and bidin' in the broken stane biggings on the hill-taps." The shepherd stared, and he, too, saw the picture. He smelled the air of battle and lust and foray, and forgot the Sabbath. "And you yoursel'," the bird went on, "are sair fallen off from the auld stock. Now ye sit and spell in books, and talk about what ye little understand, when your fathers were roaming the warld. But little cause have I to speak, for I too am a downcome. My bill is two inches shorter than my mother's, and my grandmother was taller on her feet. The warld is getting weaklier things to dwell in it, even since I mind mysel'." "Ye have the gift of speech, bird," said the man, “and I would hear mair.” You will perceive that he had no mind of the Sabbath day or the fifteenth head of the forenoon's discourse. "What things have I to tell ye when ye dinna ken the very horn-book o' knowledge? Besides I am no clattervengeance to tell stories in the middle o' the muir, when there are ears open high and low. There's others than me wi' mair experience and a better skill at telling. Our clan was well acquaint wi' the reivers and lifters o' the muirs, and could crack fine o' wars and the taking of cattle. But the blue hawk that lives in the corrie o' the Dreichill can speak o' kelpies and the dwarfs that bide in the hill. The heron, the lang solemn fellow, kens o' the green-wood fairies and the wood elfins; and the wild geese that squatter on the tap o' the Muneraw will croak to ye of the merrymaidens and the girls o' the pool. The wren-he that hops in the grass below the birks—has the story of the lost Ladies of the Land, which is ower auld and sad for any but the wisest to hear; and there is a wee bird bides in the heather (hill-lintie men call him) who sings the Lay of the West Wind and the glee of the Rowan Berries. But what am I talking of? What are these things to you, if ye have not first heard the Song of the Moor, which is the beginning and end o' all things." "I have heard no songs," said the man, "save the sacred psalms o' God's kirk." "Bonny sangs" mocked the bird. "Once I flew by the hinder end o' the kirk and I keekit in. A wheen auld wives wi' mutches and a wheen solemn men wi' hosts! Be sure the Song of the Moor is no like yon." "Can ye sing it, bird?" said the man; "for I am keen to hear it." Rune of the and say after me the "Now lay ye down and put your ear to the earth," said the bird, and the man did so. Instantly a cloud came over his brain, and he did not feel the ground on which he lay or the keen hill-air which blew about him. He felt himself falling deep into an abysm of space, then suddenly caught up and set among the stars of heaven. Then slowly from the stillness there welled forth music, drop by drop like the clear falling of rain, and the man shuddered, for he knew that he heard the beginning of the Song of the Moor. High rose the air and trembled among the tallest pines and the summit of great hills. And in it were the sting of rain and the blatter of hail, the soft crush of snow and the rattle of thunder among the crags. Then it quieted to the low sultry croon which told of blazing midday when the streams are parched and the bent crackles like dry tinder. Anon it was evening, and the melody "Me sing," cried the bird, "me that dwelled among the high soft notes has a voice like a craw! Na, na, I which mean the coming of dark and the canna sing it; but maybe I can take ye green light of sunset. Then the whole where ye may hear it. When I was changed to a great pæan which rang young an auld bog-blitter did the same like an organ through the earth. There to me, and sae began my education. were trumpet-notes in it and flute-notes But are ye willing and brawly willing, and the plaint of pipes. "Come forth," for if ye get but a sough of it ye will it cried, "the sky is wide and it is a far never mair have an ear for other cry to the world's end! The fire music?" crackles fine o' nights below the firs and "I am willing and brawly willing," the smell of roasting meat and woodsaid the man. "Then meet me at the Gled's Cleuch Head at the sun's setting," said the bird, and away it flew. Now it seemed to the man that in a twinkling it was sunset, and he found himself at the Gled's Cleuch Head with the bird flapping in the heather before him. The place was a long rift in the hill, made green with juniper and hazel, where it was said True Thomas came to drink the water. "Turn ye to the west," said the whaup, "and let the sun fall on your face. Then turn ye five times round about, smoke is dear to the heart of man. Fine, too, is the sting of salt and the risp of the north wind in the sheets. Come forth, one and all, to the great lands oversea and the strange tongues and the fremit peoples! Learn before you die to follow the Piper's son, and though your old bones bleach among grey rocks, what matter, if you have had your bellyful of life and come to the land of Heart's Desire?" And then the tune fell low and witching, bringing tears to the eyes and joy to the heart; and the man knew (though no one told him) that this was the first part of the Moor Song, the Song of the Open Road, |