finds it difficult to keep the record of the material growth of the country, so rapid and so vast is it, there has come and gone a man with the original insight, the profound sympathy, the touch with his kind, which are the prime elements of power in a great man of letters. It is easy to overestimate the significance of a writer, like Frank Norris, who dies at the very beginning of his career; and it is too soon to pass final judgment upon the work which he has left; but it must be quite clear, even to those who differ widely from the young novelist in his methods and his point of view, that the author of "The Octopus" and "The Pit" brought to the study of American life that power of looking beneath the surface, of touching the great realities, of seeing the dramatic and ethical aspects of contemporary movements, which constitute original force in literature. While other men were saying that there can be no poetry or romance in a country so engrossed in business affairs, so absorbed in gigantic practical enterprises, Frank Norris fastened upon one of the most engrossing, colossal, and in a sense tyrannical of these activities, saw how every great outgoing of energy relates itself to many forms of life, and how impossible it is for men to work lavishly and with sublime forgetfulness with their hands without engaging their souls; and, equipped with this insight, guided by this sympathy, Norris was artist enough to seize the dramatic aspects of the raising of wheat, its transportation, and its final distribution. It was an immense theme, demanding the energy of a Zola and the genius of a Tolstoi.

It is not surprising that a man who died at thirty-two should not have shown a complete mastery of his material, and should have failed perfectly to coordinate all the parts of his great design. What is significant is the fact that he saw under the surface of American life the deep and inexhaustible human interest; and that he had the genius to recognize the epical quality, not of life in Russia or in France, but on the wheat-fields of the Far West and in the exchange in Chicago.

That he had the faults of a young writer is clear enough. McTeague

66

could not discriminate clearly between what was essential and what was nonessential, and, in his attempt to tell the truth as he saw it, was willing to drag in incidents which were not only disagreeable but absurdly out of place in any formal study of character. The book was significant, not as a finished piece of art, nor as a faultless piece of workmanship, but as disclosing a determination to see things as they are, and to deal with them, not only from first-hand knowledge, but with firsthand directness and power. When "The Octopus" appeared, it registered an immense advance on all its predecessors. It was far from being a finished piece of work. The influence of Zola was evident on almost every chapter; it lacked concentration; there were departures from good taste in it, and there was lack of restraint; but, on the other hand, there were the tread and swing of a powerful man, exploring, with open mind and heart, a great new field.

The second story in the trilogy which Norris planned shows a still greater advance on the work which preceded it. There are signs of immaturity in "The Pit." The lighter phases of life with which it deals are not always touched with a light hand; Norris had still much to learn in the delicate art of social portraiture. But in the handling of his main theme "The Pit" shows the touch of a master. There is a current in the story which is almost irresistible, and which mounts at times to the height of a flood. Such power is not common anywhere in the literature of the world, and it has very rarely appeared in this country. No such searching study of the absorbing, tyrannical, destructive fascination of speculation has ever before appeared. In its vivid description of relentless energy, made up of a thousand details, each one of which contributes to the impressiveness of the general effect, one is no longer reminded. of Zola, from whose influence Norris had evidently broken away, but of Balzac. There is no imitation of the method of the older writer on the part of the younger writer; but there is the same thoroughgoing, searching study of all the phenomena contributing to a tremendous impressiveness in the total result.

widely read for its human interest; it ought to be widely read for its searching exposure of one of the perils which menace American growth and manhood in the country. It would be premature to hail "The Pit" as the great American novel. It has evident faults; but its insight, its power of imagination, and its tremendous energy ought to silence those

who have been ready to declare that the material of great art does not exist on this continent; and it will confirm the hopes of those who believe that there is to be another literary development in America in the near future not less char acteristic of the hope of the New World than was the fine, aspiring, noble-minded literature of a past generation.

I

April 5.

T is idle to attempt to recall and record the suppressed excitement which we all shared when we found ourselves yesterday in the Ægean Sea, and to describe the various scenes in the everchanging panorama as we sailed among the islands of the Grecian Archipelago. At one point we saw a ruined temple to Athene on one bold promontory overlooking the sea, and watched it for an hour; then it was that I first realized that I was really in Grecian waters. Once we saw a village, partly modern, partly remains apparently of an older time; what it was I could not make out; some of our fellow passengers were wiser and knew or thought they knew; but I did not take their information very seriously, and have already forgotten what it was. For some time Mount Olympus, snow-capped, was clearly discernible in the distance; that it was Mount Olympus we were certain, both from the direction in which it lay and from the fact that there is no other snow-capped mountain in the vicinity. I almost repented my resolve to bring no temptations to study with me. I wished that I had a history of Greece, or Mahaffy's "Survey of Greek Civilization," or at least Bulfinch's "Age of Fable"-anything to enable me to revive the little knowledge I once possessed of this land of romance and of tragedy. I envied the two or three collegians on board whose knowledge was more recent, and who could therefore reclothe these shores with some resemblance to the ancient life. I think, too, I would have been willing to take for twenty-four hours the responsibility of command, just to direct the

steamer to land us at the Plains of Troy, and lie off shore there for the day, that we might get at least a tantalizing glimpse of the excavation at Mycena. I went to bed early and asked the steward to call me as we approached the Dardanelles, and was on deck at half-past five this morning as we entered them. We stopped opposite the formidable batteries which the Turkish Government has erected to command this entrance, while some Turkish official rowed out in a boat to examine our papers and give us permission to enter. The batteries were formidable; but not so the three Turkish men-of-war in the harbor. I do not know much about shipping; but if their boilers and engines were in no better condition than their hulls, which were covered with barnacles to an extent I never saw before even on a stranded hulk, combined they would be no match for one American gunboat. The Turkish officer, in his uniform and his red fez, looked like a gentleman; but a more villainous set of countenances I never saw than those of three or four boatmen who attended him. The Armenian massacres are no longer an enigma to me. All day has been spent in the sail up the Dardanelles, past the narrow strait across which Byron swam in emulation of the Greek Leander, and through the inland Sea of Marmora. Not until well on in the afternoon did we come in sight of Constantinople and watch the domes and minarets of the city emerge from the haze, while we looked on wondering and questioning of one another which was the Mosque of St. Sophia, and where was the palace in which the brother of the Sultan was supposed to

be confined for life for no other crime than that of being the Sultan's brother, and which was Scutari and which Stamboul, and where was the Golden Horn and where the famous bridge of boats.

Hardly had we come to anchor near the mouth of the Golden Horn before a tugboat appeared maneuvering about us, but whether to get at us or out of our path it was at first difficult to guess. The Matron was the first to spy some familiar faces on the boat. Yes, there were our friends. Now they are on board our steamer with their greetings, and which is the happier, they or we, who can tell? Now we are all of us on the tug with our hand luggage. Now we are at the custom-house. Now we are walking along the famous bridge of boats, across the Golden Horn, our baggage examined and our passports viséed.

April 8.

We are back on the Prinzessin again, and though I should have liked more time to study Constantinople and more time to spend with my friends, and time to accept an invitation which I received to go a day's journey into the country and see a rural Turkish community and what Christian missionaries are doing in the interior, I am not unthankful to be out of what is the worst-governed city I ever saw in my life-worse in all of its aspects than anything I ever dreamed of. I shall not attempt to preserve here the pictorial and dramatic aspects of our experiences, though I hope never wholly to forget them: the beauty of the Bosphorus; the splendid site of Robert College, which occupies the best situation between the Golden Horn and the Black Sea; the queer steamers which ply up and down, with a harem for the women which no man may enter if there is a Turkish woman in it, but may if there are only Frank women; the ostentatious but flimsy-looking palaces along the shore; the mosques, especially the splendid mosque of St. Sophia, with its aerial dome resting on nothing, like the dome of the heavens; the cosmopolitan markets; the shops, big and little; the famous bridge of boats, with the constant procession passing and repassing upon it; the overloaded porters, bent nearly double under their burdens; the veiled women looking

at you with great eyes through the openings in their veils; the disreputable graveyards, unkempt and uncared for, which constitute apparently the sole pleasuregrounds of Constantinople; the evening call to prayer as we heard it in the gloaming, repeated from minaret to minaret along the banks of the Bosphorus-these hints, aided by such snap-shots as I was able to get with my camera, must serve to keep alive the outward aspects of life in Constantinople. For more detailed impressions I can always go to the pages of Charles Dudley Warner and D'Amicis. But I have my own impressions of the civic and political life. Our visit was very brief, it was true-too brief for any adequate study of conditions. But some of the conditions were too apparent to require study, and I had the advantage of information from permanent residents in the city.

Midway between the Black Sea on the north and the Ægean Sea leading into the Mediterranean on the south is the little Sea of Marmora, at a guess twenty-five or thirty miles in length, for we were two hours or a little over traversing it. The Hellespont connects it with the Ægean Sea, the Bosphorus with the Black Seatwo narrow straits the bold rocky shores of which are easily fortified. The Sea of Marmora is thus a landlocked and easily protected harbor, within which the fleets of the world could not only ride at anchor but could conduct naval maneuvers. Judging from the absence of lighthouses and buoys, the water is everywhere relatively safe. Where the Bosphorus enters the Sea of Marmora, and at right angles to it, there enters from the west a broad but comparatively short river, which at the point of juncture is rather an arm of the sea. This is the Golden Horn. Where these two streams enter the Sea of Marmora three cities of considerable size are clustered: on the eastern or Asiatic shore, Scutari; on the western or European shore, south of the Golden Horn, Stamboul, north of the Golden Horn, Galata and Pera, which are as indistinguishable from each other as Williamsburg and Brooklyn, the name of Galata being given to the portion lying along the water's edge, the name of Pera to the portion rising above it on the side of one of the steep hills which, leaving but a narrow

margin, wall in the Bosphorus on both shores. Galata and Pera are the modern city; contain the good hotels, the banking houses, the commercial offices, etc.; are supposedly relatively decent but uninteresting. We did not visit this section. Scutari is the oldest and the most squalid portion, as we saw it in our brief and incidental visit on Sunday. Stamboul is the ancient city; the city of the Turks and the city for sightseers. Here are the great mosques, the famous bazaars, the museum, the extraordinarily Oriental and cosmopolitan market; here the strange costumes and the strange faces. These four cities, Stamboul, Galata, Pera, and Scutari, constitute the city of Constantinople. A city so situated ought to be one of the chief commercial and manufacturing centers of Europe. Its harbor ought to be full of the fleets of commerce; it should collect the products of European manufactures needed in the East and Eastern products demanded in Europe; it should be a manufacturing center of raw material brought from both communities; it should at least be the connecting link between Eastern Europe and Western Asia, and a distributing reservoir for both; it should have great piers, commodious warehouses, large and active manufacturing establishments, broad avenues, wellpaved and well-lighted streets, a busy and large population. It has none of them, and the reason it has none of them is because it has nothing worthy to be called a government.

One day not long since a lady in the environs of Constantinople was sitting in the library of her house when she heard the report of a gun, and then shot fell in the hall and in the room at her feet. Half a dozen panes of glass had been broken by the shot. She rushed out to find a Turkish neighbor-a shepherd-of an unenviable reputation near by, shotgun in hand. She called him to account, and he replied that he was shooting at a dog which had been killing his sheep. But dogs have not wings, she said, and to have shot thus into my windows you must have shot up into the air. She got no satisfactory reply, proposed to report the case to the police, but was dissuaded by her friends. The police will do nothing, they said; the police are afraid of him. And if you make him any more your enemy

than he is now, you will find some member of your family murdered some night on his way up from the boat, and no one will know by whom, and no one will trouble to inquire. This little incident is fairly. illustrative of the Turkish Government, or, to speak more accurately, of the Turkish no-government. No one is really safeno one, from the Sultan to the lowest peasant. The Sultan lives in daily dread for his life, and rarely stirs outside his palace grounds. He is universally hated by Turk as well as by Christian. From rapacity and greed in a favorite of the Sultan no person is really safe. The widow of a once prominent Pasha owned house and land in the vicinity of Constantinople which had been a long time in the family. An unscrupulous favorite of the Sultan, a scheming and influential politician, laid covetous eyes on it, and offered her an absurdly small price for it-perhaps half its market value. Her friends advised her to sell, and she did so, rather than risk the peril to herself and her children of arousing his enmity by a refusal. Robert College wished to add seven acres to its grounds. The bargain was made, the price agreed upon, everything was settled but the delivery of the deed and the money for the deed. But a year elapsed before the transfer could be finally effected, and the matter had to be kept a profound secret lest political influences should be brought to bear to prevent the sale. The owner planted trees in the lot to conceal his purpose to sell, and on the day when the exchange was made would not come up to the College for the transfer lest the secret should be suspected, but sent for its President to meet him elsewhere.

Such is the Turkish Government on its executive side. On its administrative side it is quite as bad. Constantinople is probably the worst-administered city in the world. Its dirt and its dogs defy description. The latter divide the task of scavenger with beggars; both prowl the streets at night, and our fellow-passengers affirm that the yelping of the dogs, even in Pera, the modern city, made sleep at night wellnigh impossible. nigh impossible. The roads in the immediate suburbs of Constantinople are, many of them, impassable for carriages. I did not learn as to the sewer system, though I think there is practically none, and

apparently nothing that could be called a ! water system. There is no local post

office. If one wishes to send a letter from one part of Constantinople to another part, he must send it by a porter. Corruption pervades all branches of administration; indeed, all departments of the Empire. The Government is bankrupt; the Empire is reported to be some years in arrears to its soldiers, though, as there is no popular assembly, no responsibility to the people, no free press, and, so far as I can learn, no public reports, it is difficult to get at the facts with any approximation to accuracy. But the Sultan personally is enormously rich. When an English Duke, a few weeks ago, visiting Constantinople in his yacht, called on the Sultan, and the Sultan wished to return the visit and did not wish to risk his person in so public a manner as would be required by a visit to the yacht, he put a palace on shore, royally fitted up and with a retinue of servants, at the Duke's disposal, that the visit might be made. there. To put the whole situation in a sentence, "Constantinople is thoroughly Crokerized." It is carried on by the Sultan and his favorites on the principle avowed by Mr. Croker, "I am in politics for what I can make out of it."

Appeal to the courts appears, from all that I can learn, to be quite useless. Justice is sold by the court to the highest bidder; payment of the suitors to the judge is regarded as quite legitimate; and he only is looked upon as an unjust judge who receives money from a suitor and then renders decision against him. Even when justice is not corrupt, it is not, I judge, very intelligent, from this Turkish popular story illustrative of Turkish justice. Once upon a time-so the story runs a thief climbing over the fence of his neighbor to break into his house fell, caught his eye on a hook to which the clothes-line was attached, and destroyed his eye.

He brought complaint against the owner of the house which he was planning to rob. The judge decided that the owner must lose his eye, because the law says, An eye for an eye. In vain the innocent house-owner pleaded his right to have a hook in his yard for his clothesline and the no-right of the intruding burglar to be there at all. The law was explicit an eye for an eye. At last a

happy thought struck the defendant. "I am a tailor," he said to the judge, “and I need both my eyes. If one of them is put out, I can no longer support my family and they will become objects of charity. But my neighbor is a hunter. When he goes shooting, he closes one eye to take aim. aim. Take his eye out. It will be an accommodation to him; I shall still be able to support my family, and the law will be maintained." "Excellent suggestion!" cried the judge; and it was so decreed. Such a story is not to be taken too seriously; but the fact that it is found in the folk-lore of the Turkish people indicates at least what is the popular conception of justice as practically obtainable in Turkey.

This

I naturally made some inquiries of residents as to the Armenian massacres. The result fully confirmed my previous impressions. Turkey had solemnly promised the Powers certain political reforms. Turkey never fulfills her promises unless she is compelled to do so, and the Powers were too jealous of one another to unite in bringing any pressure to bear on Turkey to initiate the reforms. The Christians in the Empire universally desired them-; so did a small but growing party of Turks known as Young or Reforming Turks. There were a few fanatical Armeniansneither considerable in numbers nor in influence with their own countrymen— who were too impatient to await the development of events and who constituted a Revolutionary Committee. fact furnished at once a provocation and an excuse to the Turkish Government. The universal belief among the foreigners in Turkey appears to be that the orders for the massacres came from the Porte. It is certain that the first massacres, those at Trebizond, were commenced without the knowledge of the local Governor, who used all the power he possessed, at no inconsiderable hazard to himself, to stop the massacre in his own city; of course he was powerless to arrest it elsewhere. The fire, once lighted, easily and rapidly spread. The massacres which followed were due partly to race and religious prejudices, partly to Turkish envy of the most prosperous people in the Empire, partly to the hostility of a debtor to a creditor class (the Armenians being the money-lenders and the Turks