choir, could see it in its completeness and splendor. Those in the nave saw nothing but the processions entering and leaving; the Lords and Commons only saw the king and queen when crowned; the judges and great sailors and soldiers saw nothing at all. I do not know who were the people in the two bays, but they and I alone saw the coronation. All the rehearsed parts which I have described, except the fall of the Duke of Connaught, were brought off. The greater part and the most solemn part took place in the choir. Only once or twice did the king face his people, when presented by the heralds to the four corners of the earth, and when he walked to the throne; at all other times he turned his back on them. The ceremony, which lacked sunlight, lacked, too, a central figure. The king had no dignity, no majesty; he lacked every quality that made his father the central, the conspicuous figure in England. Amid all the pomp and ceremony he was the most undistinguished figure, the least kingly in it. The little Prince of Wales played his part immensely better. Never once did the king give the impression that he was a king. He looked more like a middle-class shopkeeper, trying on suits for a fancy-dress ball than a king. There were gorgeous processions first, to bring the crowns and the regalia; then the arrival of the various visiting royalties and the envoys and the princes and princesses royal and, finally, the king and queen, heralded by trumpets and booming guns, who passed into Edward the Confessor's Chapel to be robed. Then came the presentation of the king and the demand of the herald if the people would accept him. Then the crowning, and then they undressed him to a red undershirt and, after they had cut a hole in his shirt and annointed him with oil, they dressed him up again, and he came and took his seat on the throne. Everything was as it should be, but the diamonds did not flash when the peers put on their coronets. It was all purple and ermine and ivory on deep blue in the ranks of peers and peeresses, court dresses and official robes, some of amazing color, crossed with ribbons, covered with stars, rows of decorations, and three small feathers in each lady's hair. But the sun did not shine or the diamonds glitter. It was dark, with only one or two fitful gleams. Other notes of color were among the envoys, and they were dominated by the Etheopian, black as night, in a green top-hat lined with red, and covered with pearls and strewn with diamonds, which he wore all the time. The rest of him was arrayed, as far as I could see, in cloth of gold. From his screaming splendor one gradually descended to an acquaintance, arrayed as a colonel of Italian infantry in blue representing San Martino, and Mr. John Hays Hammond in solemn United States black and white, a telling note in the discordant riot of color. The Indian princes, if they could have been seen, would have been superb, all gold and glitter; but they were hidden away down the nave, and hundreds of major-generals and hundreds of admirals made two big blocks of red and blue, lost in the shadows of the nave. Then the Archbishop of York preached in an utterly inaudible voice. We could walk about, luckily, for a time, for it was tiresome, though the poor actors could not, and could see only one another. There Then came anthems and rejoicings, and finally the prayers, with their heavenly responses, too beautiful for words; then the homage, and the king let himself go and gave the Prince of Wales a sounding kiss. He could not have been less kingly and more sentimental. Then came more processions, under canopies, and benedictions. It went on for hours. I luckily had brought some lunch, and I believe there was lunch. Some one said so. certainly was at Victoria's coronation, for Strachey talks of it coming out of a tomb, and for a while nobody paid much attention to what was going on. The Prince of Wales found out who made his coronet, and the Duke of Connaught cringed to everybody above him, and ignored the salutes of all his inferiors who passed his seat. But the Prince of Wales bobbed to everybody for about five hours. Then there came disrobing and a change of crowns, and at last the king and queen departed, there were five hours of it, --and as the king stepped down from his throne he would have fallen over his footstool if some unsung Walter Raleigh had not snatched it out of the way. Then the princes and princesses left, and as they went, the peers carefully seized the prayer-books and programs, and, I heard, carried off their chairs, too. Finally we all got out. Still, one could not help thinking if there had been a panic, British aristocracy would have ceased to exist, and Lloyd George, too, for he and John Burns were there, though the latter had no means of distinguishing himself. In the Dean's Yard the sight was wonderful, with royal carriages, ducal coaches, ambassadorial equipages, the peers' coaches, the horses with colored trappings on their heads, their manes and tails platted with ribbons, the great gold, silver, white and blue coaches, the prompous drivers, the crowds of footmen hanging on behind, seen probably for the last time. And the mess of it! One lord could not find his coach, and when he did find it, he lost her ladyship, and when he found her, the coach had been moved on. Then it began to rain, and the want of dignity, combined with the carefulness of the British peer, shown forth. Coronets came off, and caps went on. A duchess and a vicountess, with robes and skirts up to their knees, disappeared up Victoria Street under an umbrella, heading a body of beefeaters. Lords from Chelsea went back on penny steamboats they chartered. Cinderella, after the ball, was nothing to it, and there was no end to it, either. to it, either. Hardly a person save Sullivan and I-we stuck together— was not in costume. Finally we left. We had had enough; but still the Abbey was disgorging dukes, ambassadors, princesses, and envoys. The streets were solid with soldiers, with but a little space left in the middle. You bumped suddenly into a gorgeous thing. "Look out, old man, you 'll tear me." It was an official you knew in private life. The streets were carpeted with newspapers and sandwich-bags, over which the royal carriages rustled. In a motley crowd only to be seen after a Quatr' Arts ball-only these costumes were real-we struggled up Parliament Street, and so home. A few hours later the drawing was finished, and it and Sullivan's appeared next day in "The Chronicle" and all the papers of Great Britain, and soon they got all over the world. That was illustrated daily journalism, a lost art. Birthright A Novel in Seven Parts-Part VII By T. S. STRIBLING Drawings by F. LUIS MORA HEN Peter Siner started on his Windefinite errand among a indefinite errand among the village stores he believed it would require much tact and diplomacy to discuss the race question without offense. To his surprise, no such precautions were necessary. All persons agreed at once that the South would be benefitted by a more trustworthy labor, that if the negroes were trustworthy they could be paid more; but they did not agree that if negroes were paid more they would become more trustworthy. The prevailing dictum among all the whites was found to be "A nigger 's a nigger." As Peter came out into the shabby little street of Hooker's Bend a discouragement settled upon him. He felt as if he had come squarely against some blank stone wall that no amount of talking could budge. The black man would have to change his psychology or remain where he was, a creature of poverty, hovels, and dirt; but amid such surroundings he could not change his psychology. The point of these unhappy conclusions somehow turned against Cissie Dildine. The mulatto became aware that his whole crusade had been undertaken in behalf of the octoroon. Everything that the merchants said against negroes became in the end accusations against Cissie in a sharp personal way. "A nigger was a nigger"; "A thief was a thief"; "She would n't quit stealing if I paid her a hundred a week." It was all so hopeless, so unchangeable, that Peter walked down the bleak street unutterably depressed. There was nothing he could do. The situation was static. It seemed best that he should go away North and save his own skin. It was impossible to take Cissie with him. Perhaps in time he would come to forget her, and in so doing he would forget all the pauperism and pettinesses of all the black folk of the South, because through Cissie Peter saw the whole negro race. She was flexuous and passionate, kindly and loving, childish and naïvely wise; on occasion she could falsify and steal, and in the depth of her Peter sensed a profound capacity for fury and violence. For all her precise English, she was untamed, perhaps untamable. Cissie was a far cry from the sort of woman Peter imagined he wanted for a mate; yet if he stayed on in Hooker's Bend, seeing her, desiring her, with her luxury mocking the loneliness of the old Renfrew manor, he knew that presently he would marry her. Already he had had his little irrational moments when it seemed to him that Cissie herself was quite fine and worthy and that her peculations were something foreign and did not pertain to her at all. With this plan in mind, Peter set out down the street, intending to cross the Big Hill at the church, walk over to his mother's shack, and pack his few belongings preparatory to going away. It was not a heroic retreat. A conversation which he had had with one of his college friends named Farquhar recurred to Peter. Farquhar had tried to persuade Peter to remain North and take a position in a system of garages out of Chicago. "You can do nothing in the South, Siner," assured Farquhar; "your countrymen must stand on their own feet, just as you are doing.” Peter had argued the vast majority of the negroes had no chance, but Farquhar pressed the point that Peter himself disproved his own statement. At the time Peter felt there was an elench in the Illinoisan's logic, but he was not skilful enough to analyze it. Now the mulatto began to see that Farquhar was right. Peter had an uneasy sense that this was exceedingly thin logic, a mere smoke screen behind which he meant to retreat back up North. He walked on down the poor village street, turning it over and over in his mind, affirming it positively to himself, after the manner of uneasy consciences. disappeared among the stores on the other side. Peter caught glimpses of him among the wretched alleyways and vacant lots that lie east of Main Street. The boy was still running toward Nigger Town. By this time Peter was just opposite the watchers on the corner. He lifted his voice and asked them the matter, but at the moment they began an excited talking, and no one heard him. Jim Pink Staggs jerked off his fur cap, made a gesture, contorted his long, black face into a caricature of fright, and came loping across the street, looking back over his shoulder, mimicking a run for life. His mummery set his audience howling. The buffoon would have collided with Peter, but the mulatto caught Jim Pink by the arm and shoulder, brought him to a halt, and at the same time helped him keep his feet. To Peter's inquiry what was the matter, the black fellow whirled and blared out loudly, for the sake of his audience: "'Fo' Gawd, niggah, I sho thought Mistah Bobbs had me!" and he writhed his face into an idiotic grim ace. The audience reeled about in their mirth, because with negroes, as with white persons, two thirds of humor is in the reputation, and Jim Pink was of prodigious repute. Peter walked along with him patiently, because he knew that until they were out of ear-shot of the crowd there was no way of getting a sensible answer out of Jim Pink. "Where are you going?" he asked. "Thought I'd step ovah tuh Niggah Town." Jim Pink's humorous air was still upon him. "Guess he mus' 'a' wanted tuh git quoted a couple of words from a poem on t' othuh side uv town." he knew. He stared at the green Peter flattered the Punchinello by black depth of the glade, which set in smiling a little. about half-way up the hill they were "Come, Jim Pink, what do you climbing. know?" he asked. "If this weathuh don' evah break," The magician poked out his huge he observed sagely, "we sho am in fuh lips. a dry spell." "Mistuh Bobbs tu'n across by de chu'ch, ovah de Big Hill. Da' 's always a ba-ad sign." Peter's brief interest in the matter flickered out. Another arrest for some niggerish peccadillo. The history of Nigger Town was one long series of petty offenses, petty raids, and petty punishments. Peter would be glad to get well away from such a place. "Think I'll go North, Jim Pink," remarked Peter, to keep up a friendly conversation with his companion. "Wha' chu gon' do up thauh?" "Take a position in a system of garages." "A position is a job wid a white colluh on it," defined the minstrel. "Whut you gon' do wid Cissie?" Peter looked around at the foolish face. "With Cissie-Cissie Dildine?" "Uh huh." "Why, what makes you think I'm going to do anything with Cissie?" "M-m, visitin' roun'." The fool flung his face into a grimace, and dropped it as one might shake out a sack. Peter did not pursue the topic of the weather. He climbed the hill in silence, wondering just what the buffoon meant. buffoon meant. He suspected he was hinting at Cissie's visit to his room. However, he did not dare ask any questions or press the point in any manner, lest he commit himself. The minstrel had succeeded in making Peter's walk very uncomfortable, as somehow he always did. Peter went on thinking about the matter. If Jim Pink knew of Cissie's visit, all Nigger Town knew it. No woman's reputation, nobody's shame or misery or even life, would stand between Jim Pink and what he considered a joke. The buffoon was the cruelest thing in this world—a man who thought himself a wit. Peter could imagine all the endless tweaks to Cissie's pride Nigger Town would give the octoroon. She had asked Peter to marry her and had been refused. She had humbled herself for naught. That was the very tar of shame. Peter knew that in the moral categories of Nigger Town Cissie would suffer more from such a rebuff than if she had lied. committed theft |