LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XXI, Issue 1802, 29 November 1879, Page 3

LITERATURE.

THE SENATOR’S DAUGHTER. Thb Small Gold Box. [From tha “New York Sun.”] • Then you have not danced ? ’ said Wanlee, as they glided off together. •No, Daniel,' said Miss Newton, *1 haven’t danced with any gentleman.’ The Mongolian thanked her with a smile. * I have made good use of Francesco, however,’ she went on. ‘ What a blessing a competent partner is ? Only think, our grandmother’s, and even our mothers were compelled to sit dismally around the walls waiting the pleasure of their high and mighty— She paused suddenly, for a shade of annoyance had fallen npon her partner’s face. ‘ Forgive me, ’ she whispered, her head almost upon his shoulder, ‘ Forgive me if I have wounded you. You know love, that I would not— ’

‘I know it,’ ho interrupted, * You are too good and to noble to let that weigh a feather’s weight in your estimation of the man. You never pause to think that my mother and my grandmother, were not accustomed to meet your mother and your grandmother in society—for the very excellent reason,” he continued, with a little bitterness in h!s tone, ‘that my mother had her hands full in my father’s laundry in San Francisco, while my grandmother’s social ideas hardly extended beyond the cabin of onr ancestral san-pan on the Yangtse- Kiang, You do not care for that. But there are others— *

They walked on for some time in silence, he thoughtful and moody, and she sympathetically concerned. ‘ And the Senator ; where is he to-night ?’ asked Wanlee at last.

‘Papa!’ said the girl, with a frightened little glance over her shoulder, ‘Oh! papa merely made his appearance here to bring me and because it wai expected of him. He has gone home to work on his tiresome speech against the Vegetables.’ ‘Do you think,’ asked Wanlee, after a few minutes, whispering the words very slowly and very low, ‘that the Senator has any suspicion V It was her turn now to manifest embarrasment, ‘I am very sure, ’ she replied, • that papa has not the least idea in the world of it at all. And that is what worries me. I constantly feel thac we are right, and that Heaven means it to be just as it is ; yet I cannot help trembling in my happiness. You know as I do the antiquated and absurd notions that still prevail in Masachnsetts, and that papa is among the conservatives. He respects your ability—that I discovered long ago. Whenever you speak in the House, he reads your remarks with great attention, I think,’ she continued, with a forced laugh, ‘ that your arguments bother him a good deal.’ ‘ This must have an end, Clara,’ said the Chinaman, as the music ceased and the waltzers stopped. ‘ I cannot allow yon to remain a day longer in an equivocal position. My honor and your own peace of mind require that there shall be an explanation to your father. Have yon the courage to stake all our happiness on one bold move 7’ *1 have courage,’ frankly replied the girl, ‘to go with you before my father and tell him all, And, furthermore,’ she continued, slightly pressing his arm and looking into his face with a charming blush, ‘I have courage even beyond that.’ ‘ Yon beloved little Puritan; * was his reply. As they passed out of the Hall of Representatives they encounted Mr Walalngham Brown with Miss Hoyette, of New York. The New York lady spoke cordially to Miss Newton, hut recognised Wanlee with a distant bow. Wanlee’s eyes sought and met those of his friend. ‘ I may need your counsel before morning,’ he said in a low voice.

‘ All right, my dear fellow,’ said Mr Brown, * Depend on me.’ And the two conples separated. The Mongolian and his Massachusetts sweetheart drifted with the tide into the snpper-room. Both were preoccupied with their own thoughts. Almost mechanically, Wanlee led his companion to a corner of the snpper-room, and established her in a seat behind a screen of palmettoes, sheltered from the observation of the throng. * It is nice of you to bring me here,’ said the girl, ‘ for I am hungry after our waltz.’

Intimate as their souls had become, this was the first time that she had ever asked him for food. It was an innocent and natural request, yet Wanlee shuddered when he heard it, and bit bis under lip to conceal his agitation. He looked from behind the palmettoes at the table, loaded with delicate viands and surrounded by men pressing forward to obtain refreshments for the ladies in their care. Wanlee shuddered again at the spectacle. After a momentary hesitation he returned to Miss Newton, seated her, and, taking her hand in his, began to speak deliberately and earnestly, * Clara,’ he said, * I am going to ask you for a final proof of your affection. Do not start and look alarmed, but hear me patiently. If, after hearing roe, you still bid me bring you a pate, or the wing of a fowl, or a salad, or even a plate of fruit, I will do so, though it wrench the heart in my bosom. But first listen to what I have to say,’ ‘Certainly, I will listen to all you have to say,’ she replied. ‘ You know enough of political theories that divide parties, ’ he went on, nervously examining the rings on her slender fingers, • to bo aware that what I conscientiously believe to be true Is very different from what you have been educated to believe.’ * I know,’ said Miss Newton, ‘that you are a Vegetarian, and do not approve the use of meat’ 1 know that you have spoken eloquently in the House on the right of every living being to a protection in its living life, and that is the theory of your party. Papa said that is demagogy—that the opposition parade an absurd and sophistical theory in order to win votes and get themselves into office. Still, I know that a great many excellent people, friends of ours in Massachusetts, are coming to believe with yon, and, of course, loving you as 1 do, I have the firmest faith in the honesty of your convictions. You are not a demagogue, Daniel. You are above pandering to the radicalism of the rabble. Neither my father nor all the world could make me think the contrary.’ Mr Daniel Webster squeezed her hand, and went on:

‘ Living as you do in the most ultraconservative of circles, dear Clara, you have had no opportunity to understand the tremendous significance and force of the movement that is now sweeping over the land, and of which I am a very humble representative. It is something more than a political agitation; it is an upheaval reorganisation of society on the basis of science and abstract right. It is fit and proper that I belonging to a race that has only recently been emancipated and enfranchised by the march of ideas, should stand in the advance guard in the forlorn hope, it may be, of the new revolution.’ His flaming eyes were now looking directly into hers. Although a little troubled by his earnestness, she could not hide her proud satisfaction in his manly bearing. ‘ We believe that every animal is born free and equal,’ he said. ‘ That the humblest polys or the most insignificant mollusk has an equal right with you or me to life and the enjoyment of happiness. Why, are we not all brothers ? Are we not all children of a common evolution ? What are human animals but the more favoured members of the great family ? Is Senator Newton, of Massachusetts, further removed in intelligence from the Australian bushman than the Flathead Indian is removed from the ox which Senator Newton orders slain to yield food for his family ? Have we a right to take the paltriest life that evolution has given ? Is not the butchery of a young chicken murder —nay fratricide-in the view of absolute justice ? Is it not cannibalism of the most repulsive and cowardly sort to prey upon the flesh of our defenceless brother animals, and to sacrifice their lives and rights to an unnatural appetite that has no foundation save in the habit of long ages of barbarian selfishness ?’ ‘ I have never thought of these things,’ said Miss' Clara, slowly. ‘Would you elevate them to the suffrage—l mean the ox and the chicken and the baboon ? * ‘ There spoke the daughter of the Senator from Massachusetts !’ cried Wanlee, ‘ No, we would not give them the suffrage—at least, not at present. The right to live and enjoy life I# a natural, an Inalienable right. The right to vota of individual intelligence. The ox, the chicken, the baboon, are, not yet prepared foe the ballot. But they are

voters in embryo; they are straggling np through the same process that our own ancestors underwent, and it is a crime, an unnatural, horrible thing, to cut off their career, their future, for the sake of a meal 1*

‘Those are noble sentiments, I must admit,’ said Miss Newton, with considerable enthusiasm.

* They are the sentiments of the Mongo Vegetarian party,’ said Wanlee. ‘ They will carry the country In 1940, and elect the next President of the United States.’

* I admire your earnestness,’ said Miss Newton after a pause, ‘ and I will not grieve yon by asking you to bring me even so much as a chicken’s wing. Ido not think I could eat it now, with yonr words still in my ears. A little fruit is all that I want. ’

‘ Once more,’ said Wanlee, taking the fair girl’s hand again, * I must request you to consider. The principles, my love, I have already enunciated are the principles of the great mass of our party. They are held even by the respectable easy-going, not over-sensative voters such as constitute the bulk of every political organization. But there are a few of us who stand on ground still more advanced. We do not expect to bring the laggards up to our line for years, perhaps not in onr lifetime. We simply carry the accepted theory to its logical conclusions and calmly await ultimate results.’ ‘ And what is yonr ground, pray ? ! she inquired. ‘ I cannot see how anything could be more dreadfully radical—that is, more bewildering and generally upsetting at fl.-st sight than the ground which you just took.’ ‘lf what I have said is true, and I believe it to be true, then how can we escape Including the Vegetable Kingdom in our proclamation of emancipation from men’s tyranny ? The trees, the plant, even the fungus, have they not also the right to live ? ’ * But how— ’ ‘And, indeed,’ continued the Chinaman, not noticing the interruption, ‘ who can say where vegetable life ends and animal live begins ? Science has tried in vain to draw the boundary line. I hold that to uproot a potato is to destroy an existence certainly, although perhaps remotely, akin to oars. To pluck a grape is to maim the living vine, and to drink the juice of the grape is to outrage consanguinity. In this broad, elevated view of the matter, it become a duty to refrain from vegetable food. Nothing less than the vital principle itself becomes the test and tie of universal brotherhood, ‘All living things are born free and equal, and have a right to existence and the enjoyment of existence.’ Is not that a beautiful thought ?’ 'lt is a beautiful thought.' said the maiden, ‘ but—l know you will think me dreadfully cold, and practical, and unsympathio—but how are we to live ? Have we no right, too, to existence ? Must we starve to death in order to establish the theoretical right of vegetables not to be eaten ? ’ * My dear love,’ s-.id Wanlee, ‘ that would be a serious and perplexing question, had not the latest discovery of science already solved it for ns.’ He took from his waistcoat pocket the small gold box, scarcely larger than a a watch, and opened the cover. In the palm of her white hands he placed one of the little pastile.’ ‘ Eat it ’ said he, ‘it will satify your hunger,’ She put the morsel into her month. ‘I would do as you bade me,” said she, ‘ even if it were poison.’ ‘lt is not poison,’ he rejoined. ‘lt is nourishment in the only rational form.’ ‘ But it is tasteless—almost without substance.’ ‘ Yet it will support life from eighteen to twenty-five days. This little gold box holds food enough to afford snbsistance to the entire Seventy-Sixth Congress for a month.’ She took the box and curiously examined its contents. * And how long would it support my life—for more than a year, perhaps.’ ‘ Yes, for more than ten —more than twenty years.’ {To he continued.}