that the election campaign was not a candid consideration, but a tremendous carnival of fun and fireworks and enthusiastic hurrahs and music by the band, in which the other side was roasted with ridicule and basted with jokes, and vast processions of sober citizens paraded the streets, shouting in stentorian chorus of rhythmical contempt the delinquencies of the opposing candidate and the absurdity of the other side. The love of fair play which springs eternal in the English-speaking breast meanwhile fills the columns of the fairplay-loving press with reports of the meetings of our side, of which the triumphant enthusiasm, the electric eloquence, the destructive broadsides of conclusive argument, and the tornadoes and cyclones of applause, the sure earnest of victory by unprecedented majorities all along the line, are duly set forth; and, on the other hand, in a few words, the wretched, miserable, torpid, stupid, melancholy, and plainly paralyzed and doomed baker's dozen of t'other side who held what they called a meeting, and made no pretence of listening (for who could listen to the dreary droning and drowsy platitudes of vapid talkers who had evidently lost all heart?), were depicted as becomes such a significant contrast to our glorious confidence and consciousness of right, and of the support of a magnanimous and freedom-loving people. This is fair play and political courtesy as generally illustrated. The stranger from the moon, who observes the spectacle with interest and curiosity, if he ventures to remark upon it, or to ask for enlightenment, is answered with hilarity that he must be very fresh in his arrival if he supposes that the methods of the moon are in vogue here, or if he thinks that both sides will not do whatever is necessary to win. Politeness is very well, but politeness is not politics. If the lunatic traveller asks, And truth?" he will be referred to the Sunday-school, for which, he will be told, the caucus cannot possibly be mistaken. But our friend from the moon will also observe that, upon the whole, and in a rough and irregular way, the system that he criticises somehow secures a good result. If an election is not to be rigidly interpreted, and has as many meanings as there are interpreters, it secures the peaceful acquiescence of the defeated side, and a greater general well-being than any other system. All that the lunatic observer remarks is well-founded, but his remarks are not complete until they include the fact that we would not exchange our own for any other system in the world. Our question is only whether what is so good may not be made better, and whether they were the best friends of navigation upon the Hudson who insisted that nothing could be better than sloops, and that Fulton was a crank. It was a wise newspaper that recently advised every American who could do so to see a national nominating convention. It is a spectacle visible in no other country, and the most exciting political spectacle in this. It is the arena in which the prolonged and passionate strife of countless ambitions, intrigues, interests, and conspiracies is decided; and it is the more exciting because with every effort to predetermine the result, the result is still at the mercy of chance. The action of the convention is a lottery. Suddenly, at the decisive moment, an unexpected combination, an impulse, a whim, like an overwhelming tidal wave, sweeps away all plans and calculations, and the result is as complete as it is unanticipated. Even the device of a two-thirds vote to make a nomination valid does not avail to secure the real preference of the party which the convention represents. The two-thirds rule, as it is called, was designed to baffle the fundamental democratic principle, which is the rule of the majority. When that is abandoned, the proportion selected is purely arbitrary. It may as well be nine-tenths as twothirds. But even such a dam will not resist the swelling waters of feeling in a convention. The French say that it is the unexpected that happens, but in a national convention it is the unforeseen which is anticipated. The palpitating multitude, which has been stimulating its own excitement, confronts every doubtful moment with an air which says, plainly, "Now it's coming." There is always a preliminary contest of various cities before the national party committee to decide where the convention shall be held. Local orators with honeyed persuasion dazzle the committee with statistics of the superior convenience, accommodation, beauty, healthfulness, resources, facilities, and whatever else their good genius may suggest, of the city for which each one of them contends. The convention is held in the largest hall, or in a building erected for the purpose, like the Wigwam in Chicago in 1860. The convention itself is composed of about nine hundred state delegates, their seats designated by a flag with the name of the state placed by the seat of the chairman of the delegation. The alternates are also seated. Every convention is full of distinguished leaders and members of the party, and as any of them appear, either entering or rising to speak, they are greeted with great applause. If the temporary chairman be an eminent party chief or an eloquent popular orator, his address touches the springs of emotion and arouses hearty enthusiasm. But the friends of the leading candidates deprecate the mention of names until the candidates are presented by the chosen orator. The reason is that the applause of the convention is one of the counters in the game. There are hired claques in the conventions which keep up a humming cry which is a substitute for applause, and which is sometimes continued for a quarter of an hour. The longer the hum, the more popular the candidate. Forgetfulness or ignorance of the value of applause under such circumstances reveals the comparative popularity of candidates in the eager mass of delegates and spectators. In one convention the permanent president in his address, but without any sinister purpose, or indeed any other purpose than kindling the convention, mentioned successively, and, of course, with impartial compliment, the name of every candidate who was known to be on the list. Involuntarily he thus tested the feeling of the convention. The galleries also swelled the acclaim, but in the galleries the claque is shrewdly distributed, and in critical moments the approval or disapproval of the turbulent galleries undoubtedly impresses the delegates, and recalls the galleries of the French convention a hundred years ago. There are occasional skirmishes of debate upon motions or resolutions, but the first great interest of the regular proceedings is the report of the platform com mittee. It is a tradition of conventions that the platform should be accepted as reported, both to gain the prestige of perfect unanimity and to escape "tinkering," which may lead to endless discussion and discordant feeling. But when the motion is made to proceed to the nomination of candidates, the excitement is intense. The orators are usually carefully selected, not alone as eloquent speakers, but as men of weight and influence, and of what at the moment is more indispensable than everything else--tact. speeches are made with the fundamental understanding that, however glowing and elaborate the praise of the candidate may be, there shall be an explicit assurance that whatever the merits of any candidate, the candidate who shall be nominated by the convention will receive the universal and enthusiastic support of the party. The On one occasion, when this fundamental rule was forgotten by an ardent orator, who, in the warmth of his devotion to his candidate, declared that no other man was so certain to draw out the whole party vote in the state for which he spoke, a hurricane of hisses from the convention and the galleries silenced him, and the friends of his candidate were instantly aware that a fatal injury had befallen him. In another convention the orator who nominated one of the candidates was so exasperated by what he felt to be the treachery to his candidate of a conspicuous friend of another that his denunciation of the traitor was held to be a covert assault upon the traitor's candidate, and again a tempest of universal hissing overwhelmed the luckless orator and his candidate. The announcement by states of the first formal vote for candidates is made in impressive silence, followed by immense applause. But the second ballot is more significant; and whenever upon any ballot the announcement of a vote is seen by the tally to decide the nomination, the feeling culminates in an indescribable tumult of frenzied acclamation, and the convention generally adjourns to consider the Vice-Presidency. But the interest in its work is at an end, and it is astounding to see the happy-go-lucky Providence which presides over the selection of the officer who has thrice become the President of the United States. In the history of national conventions there is no more touching incident than that of Mr. Seward awaiting at his home in Auburn the result of the balloting at the convention of 1860, which nominated Mr. Lincoln. By what is called the logic of the situation, Mr. Seward's nomination was assured, and no disappointment could have been greater than the selection of another. How bitter it was was not suspected until his life was recently published! But he encountered the shock with his usual equanimity, and before the election he had made the most extraordinary series of speeches for his party which the annals of any campaign record. The journal's advice was sound. a national convention if you can. where he wished to lie, and resolved to build a monument worthy of the citizen and the city. It began, but it did not finish. The cities that do not defer to a metropolitan upon the Hudson smiled, and Chicago dedicated her monument, and looked with an inquisitive smile at New York. Congress saw the delay, and proposed to build his sepulchre on national ground. And New York, professing her unquestioned love and reverence, resisted the removal and did nothing. A friend and comrade and officer of Grant, also a citizen of New York, howbeit not of Dutch descent, and confiding See both in the will and the generosity of the city, stated the situation in a simple and earnest appeal, then thoroughly organized every interest, touched every chord that might respond, and in sixty days the good-natured city which, but for that masterful appeal, would have continued to wish well, gladly did well, and the work was done. Within that time General Horace Porter had raised three hundred and fifty thousand dollars by subscription in the city. It was a service not to patriotism only, but to New York. But for this prompt, intelligent, and persistent action it is not clear that New York, however liberal, however good-natured, would have redeemed its moral pledge that if the tomb of Grant were here, his fitting monument should be here also. One citizen has kept the word of the city. NEW YORK has the indolence popularly attributed to generosity and a Dutch descent. But the Yankee has been heard to inquire whether Dutch descent ex-plains the present character and prosperity of the metropolis of the state of New York. The Easy Chair is precise because there are other cities which do not acknowledge New York as their metropolitan. But the true reply to the Yankee is his own favorite answer by counter-question. Does the history of Holland present the Dutchman as an indolent, unheroic, slumberous Wouter Van Twiller? If he answer affirmatively, he should be turned over to Mr. Douglas Campbell's history for meditation and repentance. Yet even Mr. Campbell will concede that the popular tradition of the burgher of New Netherlands as a solid citizen of the figure seen in Rip Van Winkle's vision of Hudson's crew sitting placidly upon his stoop at evening and leisurely smoking his pipe has some basis of fact. It is not a derogatory figure, and in the history of the state and city there is a good-natured indifference to many things of which other communities are very proud and not at all reticent, which is a very pleasant quality to consider. "I will do," the placid Dutchman seems to say; "let others talk." This temperament of New York, which in a sense sprang from New Netherlands, needs, however, an occasional fillip. New York with great sincerity lamented the death of General Grant, who had become its most famous citizen. With every sad splendor of funeral pomp, it laid him There is a moral to this story, and a moral which is often in need of enforcement. When a distinguished citizen dies there is an effusion of grief, and an eloquent celebration of his merit and his services, and a proposal to build a statue or to raise a monument to commemorate his life and character and work is natural to the moment, and it is received with acclamation. But grief does not necessarily express itself in dollars; nor does respect always leave a monument as its symbol. If the feeling is of a kind immediately to hasten practically to secure a memorial, as after the death of General Sherman, it is a spontaneous tribute. But if the proposal involve the collection of a great sum of money, it will not prosper except by an organized and incessant appeal, as for the Washington Arch, or by the extraordinary activity of one trusted and intelligent man devoted to the purpose, as for the monument of Grant. I. Editor's Study. THE modern literary note is Sincerity. TH A We are all agreed on that. The artist who sits down before a copper basin to transfer its features to canvas takes himself and his attitude to nature as seriously as if he were painting a hummingbird. To the young man and the young woman of the period life has also this importance. One would hesitate to say there is any cant about this, for sincerity is in the air, just as frivolity was in the time of Charles II. It is a curious reflection of Carlyle's gospel that belief in something is the one thing necessarythe object of the belief is of less importance. Perhaps it is not putting it too strongly to say that if you are sincere you will be saved. It is easy to dismiss this as a fad of fashion, but the effect of this notion upon literature has to be studied more carefully. For the ingredient of sincerity mixed with Schopenhauer has produced the modern novel of socalled realism. And it has made over the short story into its own image. misguided person recently, who was desirous of being cheerful, and seeking something that would raise his spirits, and who had, perhaps, in his soul a hankering after beauty, said that he could not find in any book-shop or news-stand a novel or short story of recent date that was not unpleasant in subject, and did not end either in despair or degradation. Even in the railway trains the same discouraging and altogether dyspeptic pabulum was offered to him; the train seemed to be run by Schopenhauer. Every day a shoal of fiction is issued, and it is nearly all of this character. All the young writers catch this note. We cannot deny their sincerity. They do not yet know by experience that it is not a cheerful world they have fallen into, but their attitude to life is that of sadness, investigating sadness aided by a microscope. The duty is laid upon them of studying life as it really is, of exposing its weakness and imperfection, its evil and its ugliness. This study is usually made without hope. And the study being always downwards, it comes to be felt that one cannot be altogether sincere without being sad and too often coarse. II. The genuine realist who seeks to escape out of a false and romantic view of life should not, of course, be held altogether responsible for the present downward tendency. It may be supposed that while he was impelled to attend to ugliness and to the inferior nature, he thought that plenty of people, as heretofore, would go on attending to beauty. He did not calculate on the fascination of imitation and the tendency to sensationalism. For a considerable quantity of the fiction of the day is not made on any theory of realism, but on the instinct to produce something that, regardless of appealing to a depraved taste, will sell. And in the deluge that has come, a flood that devastates but does not fertilize, we see here and there an original realist, whose digging impaired the levee, preparing to climb a tree; and there is something comical in his selection of the tree of psychological romance. The business, in fact, has been overdone. To use a figure that has no application in point of character, the criminal proceeds upon the supposition that society will keep its organization, that the majority of people will continue law-abiding, in order that he may thrive by crime. Even the successful and useful stock-operator would not relish life if there were no rural lambs. The purest realism cannot stand a universal running into the ground. But the late protest against the romantic and good-natured view of life differs from those that preceded it by reason of the introduction of a comparatively new element, that is, an element of discrimination. The writers of all schools are convinced that every human being is a mixed creation, that there is some good in everybody and some bad in everybody, and therefore the perfect villain and the perfect heroine have vanished from fiction. The distinction between the two schools of writers is that the one looks for the bad in human nature and the other looks for the good. And the results are often surprising. We have to associate a good deal in literature with persons we would not invite to our houses. Perhaps we ought to invite them to our houses, and perhaps we are wrong in having any houses of our own, for the wide-spreading doctrine of humanity, mingled as it is with pessimism and the elevation of the commonplace, and the realistic refusal to label any action right or wrong, have made great confusion in the public mind. Is it love for our fellow-men that leads the literary artist to depict them as bad as they can be and their life as hopeless? Is it expected that when men see themselves as they really are, they will turn from themselves with loathing and seek better things? III. Evidently this expectation has been disappointed in France, where the use of the muck-rake has failed to elevate the raker or any longer to interest the spectators. In fact, some years ago there were those who said that this downward looking and contemplation of the vile had resulted in the degradation of thought. From the perception of this fact by such a quickwitted race and such felicitous inventors of phrases, it was only a step to the new movement which is now widely known as the Spiritualization of Thought in France. Some one made the discovery that we cannot be saved by facts, and it occurred to those tired of Things to ask what they signified. For instance, what was the meaning of that tremendous show of facts called the Great Exposition? What did it symbolize? This idea once grasped, the Ideal in life came again into view, and the symbolic school was born. Life then had a meaning, and it might have a purpose. All that was necessary was that the movement should crystallize in a phrase. At the fortunate moment it was proclaimed that "Voltaire had no soul." This phrase electrified France. It sent through it a thrill of conviction. At this phrase the whole soulless fabric of the eighteenth century tumbled into ruins. Over these ruins rose, like a star, the dictum of Tolstoï, till then unheeded, "It is necessary to have a soul." A new idea is nowhere more fruitful than in France. This discovery was an inspiration. It was a renaissance. It was an appeal to the new generation, and the young men responded with enthusiasm. They thronged the lecture-rooms of the apostles of the new light. Again we had the always hopeful spectacle of teachers and eager learners, of the prophets who spoke about the higher life, the Ideal, in fact about Poetry, to throngs of hungry souls faint from feeding on husks. There is nothing like the contact of mind with mind, the inspiration of the spoken word, the idea personified in a leader, the enthusiasm of discipleship when the aspiration is noble. Things without a soul decay; fiction began to smell of it, and the logical inference was quickly drawn that the current Realism had no soul. That is, it began to be recognized for what it was by its fruits. Realism was seen to be not anything in itself, but only a protest against conceit and artificiality. It had no creative vitality. A jocund cry went out, "Realism is dead in Paris." This is, no doubt, premature from the publishers' point of view, for the novels of degradation (a word descriptive of a great part of Paris fiction) still have a market, thanks to a vitiated public taste, partly innate, partly created. It is necessary that the public, as well as the writers, should have a soul, and that it should attach the same meaning that the lecturer does to his admonition, "You must live the life." That is, life is an aspiration, an ennobling of all the faculties in a new conception of beauty and also of virtue. For there is, after all, such a thing as virtue. That is another discovery. This is not to be confounded with conventional morality; it is rather a spiritualization of the nature. Spiritualization of thought in France, it is scarcely necessary to explain, has no relation to the McCaul mission, nor has it been stimulated by any pastoral encyclical from the Vatican. It is not a religious propaganda that is on foot. I adjure you, says the lecturer, to cultivate poetry and the ideal life. Of course, this is not a call to the verse-makers. It is not the art of rhyming that is to save us either in France or in America; it has come to pass that the poet also needs a soul. It is the poetic side of life that is to be cultivated; the newly enlisted army is to fight materialism, for it is seen how Realism, more and more sordid, has been playing into the hands of the materialistic age, killing poetry, killing aspiration, with its gospel of the equal value of all facts. But the new movement has learned of its adversary; it is not to be romantic in false creations; it is to deal with life, the spiritual as well as the material side of it; it is to study directness and simplicity, and its watchword also is Sincerity. But it adds to sincerity purity in intentiou. |