more care of his perishable mortal tenement. I went to him as a physician, and told him that he must moderate his ascetic exercises if he wished to live and do his work. He heard me through, turned his great eyes full on me, and said, with a determination that I knew no words of mine could shake: 'I thank you, Doctor; but you are wasting your time. You speak well, according to your light. I obey a higher law. It will not fail me. I shall not change my ways.' There was nothing more to be said. I left him to his mortification of the flesh; 15 and Sister Agatha wept when I told her his answer. 'He will die,' she said. Two weeks after Christmas, Father Anastatius was officiating in the convent 20 chapel. It was the hour of meditation, and I slipped in, as I sometimes did, in Teisure moments, to watch the strange spectacle of silent devotion. There sat the long row of novices, their heads 25 bowed, still as so many statues — still as death. It was absolute silence, if you know what that is; a footfall would have seemed a desecration. The chapel was still dressed in the 30 garlands that had been hung there at Christmas time- now dry and withered. Suddenly a festoon broke, of its own weight, and one end swung into the flame of a gas-jet. I saw it - but in a helpless 5 daze, for in three seconds the fire had flashed from one dry garland to another, and all the lower end of the room was one wild blaze of spreading flame. The frightened women shrieked and sobbed, and most of them rushed madly for the door near which I stood. I fought them back as best I could; for all behind me was one mass of fire, and no human being could have passed through. that great door, saw the veins stand out on his forehead, and his face grow black with the intensity of the struggle, and then saw the door give way, and saw the 5 priest go down under the great heap of scaffolding and the wreck of the organ that came crashing down from above. The way was clear, and we had the women out in a minute or two more, and the fire was subdued after half-an-hour of hard work. But when we got Father Anastatius out from under the mass of wreck that had overwhelmed him, we knew that the convent had lost its senior priest. He was alive-it seemed probable that he might even live for some few hoursperhaps a day or two. But he was hideously injured. His left arm and leg were crushed into splinters. He was speechless; and it soon became clear that there was a paralysis of the vocal organs and probably some injury to the brain. We got him to bed at once, in the nearest of the convent cells they were hardly to be called rooms. It was Sister Agatha's apartment. The poor child had fainted when she saw the priest's insensible form removed from the heap of timber and twisted organ-pipes, and we had put her in the hospital. But for Father Anastatius there was nothing to be done but to make his last hours as easy as might be. What we could, we did for him. It was little enough. He lay there in the narrow bed, by the door of the narrow cell, his left side swathed in cloths soaked with carbolic acid and water, for there was no possibility of an operation, and we did not expect that he would linger long. There was some power of movement on the right side - he moved his hand feebly, and seemed to dislike having it un45 der the bedclothes, so we laid it outside. But he could not speak, and even those splendid eyes failed to give us any sign in answer to our questions as to his wishes and sensations. They stared at us in a troubled, anxious way; but they told us nothing. Late that night I spoke to him and let him know, as gently as I could, that the end was hear; but I could not see that he understood me though 55 I know now that he did. There was one other exit from the place a broad side-door, under the organ and the flames already had spread to the loft. I tried to force myself through the crowd in that direction; but 50 even as I did so I remembered with horror that repairs were being made in the corridor outside, and that a huge scaffolding stood right across the door, which opened outward. Then, over the heads of the swaying crowd of helpless women, I saw Father Anastatius throw his mighty form against He lived through that night, and the next found him alive. His tremendous nervous strength, his superb vitality, kept him alive nothing else. He lay there speechless and motionless save for a feeble stirring of his right hand, and his great eyes wandered from face to face in a sort of half-intelligent helplessness. That night Sister Agatha watched over him. And that you may understand something of what followed, I must tell you that the room was a narrow, cell-like box, perhaps twelve feet long by six 1 broad. The bed was at one end, close by the door. At the other end, against the wall, stood the chair in which Sister Agatha sat. There was no other furniture in the room, except a small stand in the 15 further corner, which held a wash-basin and pitcher, and a tiny looking-glass hanging over this. Beyond these things, the room was bare. The one small window, high up in the end of the room, above 20 Sister Agatha's chair, was nailed fast. A small ventilator, sunk in the pane, gave all the necessary air. I had been looking after the hospital patients up to eleven o'clock that night. 25 Then I lay down, in the room next to that where Father Anastatius had been placed. I could not sleep, and lay with my eyes fixed on the door-way opening into the corridor. I heard the soft mur- 30 mur of the voices of the nuns assembled in the room on the other side of Sister Agatha's, which held the sick man. There were no doors in the opposite wall of the corridor. It was blank and solid, for 35 a hundred feet on each side of my room. 40 At half-past twelve o'clock, or thereabouts, I was startled into full wakefulness by a sudden outcry among the nuns in the further room. They had heard a cry from Sister Agatha, and had hurried into the narrow cell between us. There they had found Sister Agatha, still seated in her chair, and choked to death. Her hand was at her throat, as if to draw an- 45 other hand away, and high up on her white neck—if you were a physician I could tell you just where were two dark spots, one on each side. She had been strangled. That was ob- 50 vious. The Coroner's Jury found a verdict in accordance with the facts.' But who had strangled her? We could get no information whatever from Father Anastatius. He was in a state of wild ex- 55 citement when we entered the room, and although we questioned him, and asked him to answer with his eyes, we could ex 5 tract nothing from him. He showed an uncontrollable desire to communicate with us; but he was so seriously excited that we did not dare to press him. On The papers took hold of it, and made it a 'celebrated case.' It did not need that, however, to enlist my interest in unraveling the mystery. Mystery it was. one side of the sick man's room was mine; and I had lain awake, staring at the corridor, for an hour and a half. No one had passed through the corridor from my side. The nuns in the corresponding room beyond testified to the same thing for their end of the passageway. The window in the room, as I have told you, was closed-nailed tight. Here was a murder. How had it been done? I thought I could draw the truth from Father Anastatius. I believed that by some adroit system of questioning I could force him to signal to me, with those strong restless eyes, some hint of the hidden truth. All through the next day I devoted myself to the care of that broken, helpless being, lying there, silent and wakeful, on his bed of agony. All through that day I watched him. Hour after hour, my eyes sought his. And, late in the day, watching him thus, a hideous idea came into my mind. It was idiotic-it was senseless it was mad - but it was there. I thought I felt that he Father Anastatius- was the murderer. Yes, it was wild. There was no reason or excuse for it. I knew that he had never stirred that he never would stir from the bed where he lay bound and utterly helpless. And all the same, deep in my heart, I felt how can I tell what I felt? I only know that I looked at him, and my eyes told him something; and that he looked back at me, and I thought that I saw a deadly defiance in his eyes. That night it was I who watched with him. I had arranged it so; and it was with a feeling that the revelation would somehow come that night that I sat down in the chair where Sister Agatha had sat, two nights before. I think it must have been between twelve and one o'clock when I looked up at him. I had looked at him before: but this time it was with a difference. My eyes met his, and could not turn away. Clear across the room, I saw those terrible eyes, fixed upon mine — looking into mine The unspoken threat grew to be a reality. As those eyes glared into mine I felt the power of a stronger will that held mine captive. My dull, captured, ob- 10 servant gaze noted a slow movement of the thin, muscular hand that lay on the coverlid — that right hand that still could move. Slowly slowly slowly I saw it rise, trembling and uncertain, but in- 15 stinct with nervous strength. I saw it rise till it neared his throat - and then I saw my own hand raised, as his was raised, and knew that it was moving closer and closer to my own throat, and that no 20 power of mine could stay it. That iron will had closed upon mine in a mighty grasp. His fingers, long, lean and strong, closed upon his throat in a gesture that mine obeyed with an actual grip that sent the blood to my face, and stopped my breath. The eyes still glared at me, with a pitiless determination. I fought, within myself, with all the strength that there was in me and all the time my fingers tightened on my throat. My breath was gone my heart beat like a trip-hammer and then suddenly—like a flash of lightning, there came a quick, realizing sense of the death that was so near; and with one frightful struggle, I freed myself, and sprang to my feet. There was a gurgling, gasping cry of pain from the bed, and when the nuns in the next room hurried in, they found Father Anastatius dead. And I? Well, I did not say anything about it, at the time. You see I had a great pity for Sister Agatha. (1889 or 1890) THEODORE ROOSEVELT (1858-1919) To none of the Presidents of the United States can the title man of letters' be so properly applied as to Theodore Roosevelt, the twenty-sixth occupant of the presidential chair. The list of his books includes upward of thirty titles not counting the various volumes of his official correspondence and state papers. Nor were his literary efforts all in a single field. He wrote history, The Naval War of 1812. 1822, The Winning of the West, 1889-96, A History of New York, 1890; he wrote biography, lives of Thomas Hart Benton, Gouverneur Morris, and Oliver Cromwell; he published an interesting set of books of travel and adventure, records of his own hunting and exploring trips in the Rocky Mountains, in Africa, and South America; he produced many essays which he collected in volumes like American Ideals, 1907, and History as Literature, 1913; he wrote much on natural history, producing books like The Deer Family, and Life History of African Game Animals; and in addition to all this were his autobiographical writings, his various lectures, and his orations. Like the man himself, all his work is characterized by earnestness, by emphatic power, and by insistence upon truth and the moral fundamentals. He was clear rather than elegant; forceful rather than polished. His Winning of the West, is a valuable historical study and it is to be regretted that the manifold duties of his later public life did not permit him to finish it. In all that he wrote there was a sturdy Americanism. His vigorous addresses like The Strenuous Life' should be read by all young Americans. THE STRENUOUS LIFE 1 5 In speaking to you, men of the greatest city of the West, men of the State which gave to the country Lincoln and Grant, men who preeminently and distinctly embody all that is most American in the American character, I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the life of toil 10 and effort, of labor and strife; to preach that highest form of success which comes, not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bit- 15 ter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph. be the ultimate goal after which they strive? You men of Chicago have made this city great, you men of Illinois have done your share, and more than your share, in making America great, because you neither preach nor practise such a doctrine. You work yourselves, and you bring up your sons to work. If you are rich and are worth your salt, you will teach your sons that though they may have leisure, it is not to be spent in idleness; for wisely used leisure merely means that those who possess it, being free from the necessity of working for their livelihood, are all the more bound to carry on some kind of non-remunerative work in science, in letters, in art, in exploration, in historical research work of the type we most need in this country, the successful carrying out of which reflects most honor upon the nation. We do not admire the man of timid peace. We admire the man who embodies victorious effort; the man who never wrongs his neighbor, who is prompt to help a friend, but who has those virile qualities necessary to win in the stern strife of actual life. It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. In 30 this life we get nothing save by effort. A life of slothful ease, a life of that peace which springs merely from lack either of desire or of power to strive after 20 great things, is as little worthy of a nation as of an individual. I ask only that what every self-respecting American demands from himself and from his sons shall be demanded of the American nation 25 as a whole. Who among you would teach your boys that ease, that peace, is to be the first consideration in their eyes - to 1 From the Strenuous Life; Essays and Addresses, copyright by the Century Co. Freedom from effort in the present merely 15 dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, 5 because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat. If in 1861 the men who loved the Union had believed that peace was the end of all things, and war and strife the worst of all things, and 10 had acted up to their belief, we would have saved hundreds of thousands of lives, we would have saved hundreds of millions of dollars. Moreover, besides saving all the blood and treasure we then lavished, we would have prevented the heartbreak of many women, the dissolution of many homes, and we would have spared the country those months of gloom and shame when it seemed as if our armies marched only to defeat. We could have avoided all this suffering simply by shrinking from strife. And if we had thus avoided it, we would have shown that we were weaklings, and that we were unfit to stand among the great nations of the earth. Thank God for the iron in the blood of our fathers, the men who upheld the wisdom of Lincoln, and bore sword or rifle in the armies of Grant! Let us, the children of the men who proved themselves equal to the mighty days, let us, the children of the men who carried the great Civil War to a triumphant conclusion, praise the God of our fathers that the ignoble counsels of peace were rejected; that the suffering and loss, the blackness of sorrow and despair, were unflinchingly faced, and the years of strife endured; for in the end the slave was freed, the Union restored, and the mighty American republic placed once more as a helmeted queen among nations. 25 In the last analysis a healthy state can exist only when the men and women who make it up lead clean, vigorous, healthy lives; when the children are so trained that they shall endeavor, not to shirk dif- 30 ficulties, but to overcome them; not to seek ease, but to know how to wrest triumph from toil and risk. The man must be glad to do a man's work, to dare and endure and to labor; to keep himself, and 35 to keep those dependent upon him. The woman must be the housewife, the helpmeet of the homemaker, the wise and fearless mother of many healthy children. In one of Daudet's powerful and melan- 40 choly books he speaks of the fear of maternity, the haunting terror of the young wife of the present day.' When such words can be truthfully written of a nation, that nation is rotten to the heart's 45 core. When men fear work or fear righteous war, when women fear motherhood, they tremble on the brink of doom; and well it is that they should vanish from the earth, where they are fit subjects for 50 what goes on beyond them, sunk in a the scorn of all men and women who are themselves strong and brave and highminded. As it is with the individual, so it is with the nation. It is a base untruth to say 55 that happy is the nation that has no history. Thrice happy is the nation that has a glorious history Far better it is to We of this generation do not have to face a task such as that our fathers faced, but we have our tasks, and woe to us if we fail to perform them! We cannot, if we would, play the part of China, and be content to rot by inches in ignoble ease within our borders, taking no interest in scrambling commercialism; heedless of the higher life, the life of aspiration, of toil and risk, busying ourselves only with the wants of our bodies for the day, until suddenly we should find, beyond a shadow of question, what China has already found, that in this world the nation that has trained itself to a career of unwarlike |