it will come to you as strange, my friends, to hear objection—as though against an ill trait—to that open-handed generosity which is held by many to be among the marks of supreme virtue. generosity, whether it be evidenced by gifts of money, of sympathy, of effort or of time, is only another word for weakness. if one were to go into careful consideration of the life-failure of any man, it would be found most often that his fortunes were slain by his generosity; and while, without consideration, he gave to others his countenance, his friendship, his money, his toil or whatever he conferred, he in truth but parted with his own future—with those raw materials wherewith he would otherwise have fashioned a victorious career. generosity, in a commonest expression, is giving more than one receives; it is to give two hundred and get one hundred; he is blind, therefore, who does not see that any ardor of generosity would destroy a rothschild.
from birth, and as an attribute inborn, i have been ever too quick to give. for a first part of my life at least, and until i shackled my impulse of liberality, i was the constant victim of that natural readiness. and i was cheated and swindled with every rising sun. i gave friendship and took pretense; i parted with money for words; ever i rendered the real and received the false, and sold the substance for the shadow to any and all who came pleasantly to smile across my counter. i was not over-old, however, when these dour truths broke on me, and i began to teach myself the solvent beauty of saying “no.”
during those months of exile—for exile it was—which i spent in washington square, i cultivated misanthropy—a hardness of spirit; almost, i might say, i fostered a hatred of my fellow man. and more or less i had success. i became owner of much stiffness of sentiment and a proneness to be practical; and kept ever before me like a star that, no matter how unimportant i might be to others, to myself at least i was most important of mankind. doubtless, i lost in grace by such studies; but in its stead i succeeded to safety, and when we are at a final word, we live by what we keep and die by what we quit, and of all loyalties there’s no loyalty like loyalty to one’s self.
while i can record a conquest of my generosity and its subjugation to lines of careful tit-for-tat, there were other emotions against which i was unable to toughen my soul. i became never so redoubtable that i could beat off the assaults of shame; never so puissant of sentiment but i was prey to regrets. for which weaknesses, i could not think on the affairs of the emperor’s cigars and the german girl’s diamonds, nor on the sordid money i pouched as their fruits, without the blush mounting; nor was i strong enough to consider the latter adventure and escape a stab of sore remorse. later could i have found the girl i would have made her restitution. even now i hear again that scream which reached me on the forward deck of the “wolfgang” that september afternoon.
but concerning the cuban filibusterer, his outsailing against spain; and the gold i got for his going—for these i say, i never have experienced either confusion or sorrow. my orders were to keep him in; i opened the port’s gate and let him out; i pocketed my yellow profits. and under equal conditions i would do as much again. it was an act of war against spain; yet why should one shrink from one’s interest for a reason like that? where was the moral wrong? nations make war; and what is right for a country, is right for a man. that is rock-embedded verity, if one will but look, and that which is dishonest for an individual cannot be honest for a flag. you may—if you so choose—make war on spain, and with as much of justice as any proudest people that ever put to sea. the question of difference is but a question of strength; and so you be strong enough you’ll be right enough, i warrant! for what says the poet?
“right follows might
like tail follows kite.”
it is a merest truism; we hear it in the storm; the very waves are its witnesses. everywhere and under each condition, it is true. the proof lies all about. we read it on every page of history; behold it when armies overthrow a throne or the oak falls beneath the axe of the woodman. do i disfavor war? on the contrary, i approve it as an institution of greatest excellence. war slays; war has its blood. but has peace no victims? peace kills thousands where war kills tens; and if one is to consider misery, why then there be more starvation, more cold, more pain, and more suffering in one year of new york city peace than pinched and gnawed throughout the whole four years of civil war. and human life is of comparative small moment. we say otherwise; we believe otherwise; but we don’t act otherwise. action is life’s text. humanity is itself the preacher; in that silent sermon of existence—an existence of world’s goods and their acquirement—we forever show the thing of least consequence to be the life of man. however, i am not myself to preach, i who pushed forth to tell a story. it is the defect of age to be garrulous, and as one’s power to do departs, its place is ever taken by a weakness to talk.
this filibusterer whom i liberated to sail against spain, i long ago told you was called ryan. that, however, is a fictitious name; there was a ryan, and the spaniards took his life at santiago. and because he with whom i dealt was also put up against a wall and riddled with spanish lead, and further, because it is not well to give his true name, i call him ryan now. his ship rode on her rope in new york bay; i was given the harriet lane to hold him from sailing away; his owners ashore—merchants these and folk on ’change—offered me ten thousand dollars; the gold was in bags, forty pounds of it; i turned my back at evening and in the morning he was gone.
you have been told how i never thought on those adventures of the emperor’s cigars, and the german girl’s diamonds, without sensations of shame, and pain. indeed! they were engagements of ignobility! following the latter affair i felt a strongest impulse to change somewhat my occupation. i longed for an employment a bit safer and less foul. i counted my fortunes; i was rich with over seventy thousand dollars; that might do, even though i gained no more. and so it fell that i was almost ready to leave the customs, and forswear and, if possible, forget, those sins i had helped commit in its name.
in the former days, my home tribe was not without consequence in old dominion politics. and while we could not be said to have strengthened ourselves by that part we took against the union, still, now that peace was come, the family began little by little to regather a former weight. it had enough at this time to interfere for my advantage and rescue me from my present duty. i was detailed from washington to go secretly to europe, make the careless tour of her capitols, and keep an eye alive to the interests of both the treasury and the state department.
it was a gentleman’s work; this loafing from london to paris, and from paris to berlin, with an occasional glance into holland and its diamond cutting. and aside from expenses—which were paid by the government—i drew two salaries; one from the customs and a second from the secret service. my business was to detect intended smuggling and cable the story, to the end that betelnut jack and lorns and quin and the others make intelligent seizures when the smugglers came into new york. the better to gain such news, i put myself on closest terms—and still keep myself a secret—with chief folk among houses of export; i went about with them, drank with them, dined with them; and i wheedled and lay in ambush for information of big sales. i sent in many a good story; and many a rich seizure came off through my interference. also i lived vastly among legation underlings, and despatched what i found to the department of state. there was no complaint that i didn’t earn my money from either my customs or my secret service paymaster. in truth! i stood high in their esteem.
at times, too, i was baffled. there was a lady, the handsome wife of a diamond dealer in maiden lane. she came twice a year to europe. obviously and in plain view—like the vulgarian she was not—this beautiful woman, as she went aboard ship in new york, would wear at throat and ears and on her hands full two hundred thousand dollars’ worth of stones—apparently. and there they seemed to be when she returned; and, of course, never a dime of duty. we were morally sure this beautiful woman was a beautiful smuggler; we were morally sure those stones were paste when she sailed from new york; we were morally sure they were genuine, of purest water, when she returned; we were morally sure the shift was made in paris, and that a harvest of thousands was garnered with every trip. but what might we do? we had no proof; we could get none; we could only guess.
and there were other instances when we slipped. more than once i tracked a would-be smuggler to his ship and saw him out of port. and yet, when acting on my cables, the smuggler coming down the new york gang-plank was snapped up by my old comrades and searched, nothing was found. this mystery, for mystery it was, occurred a score of times. at last we learned the trick. the particular room occupied by the smuggler was taken both ways for a round dozen trips ahead. there were seven members of the smuggling combine. when one left the room, his voyage ended, and came ashore in new york, another went duly aboard and took possession for the return trip. the diamonds had not gone ashore. they were hidden in a sure place somewhere about the room; he who took it to go to europe knew where. and in those several times to follow when the outgoer was on and off the boat before she cleared, he found no difficulty in carrying the gems ashore. the customs folk aren’t watching departures; their vigilance is for those who arrive. however, after a full score of defeats, we solved this last riddle, and managed a seizure which lost the rogues what profits they had gathered on all the trips before.
also, as i pried about the smuggling industry, i came across more than one interesting bit of knowledge. i found a french firm making rubies—actual rubies. it was a great secret in my time, though more is known of it now. the ruby was real; stood every test save the one test—a hard one to enforce—of specific gravity. the made ruby was a shadow lighter, bulk for bulk, than the true ruby of the mines. this made ruby was called the “scientific ruby;” and indeed! it was scientific to such a degree of delusion that the best experts were for long deceived and rubies which cost no more than two hundred dollars to make, were sold for ten thousand dollars.
as a curious discovery of my ramblings, i stumbled on a diamond, the one only of its brood. it was small, no more than three-quarters of a carat. but of a color pure orange and—by day or by night—blazing like a spark of fire. that stone if lost could be found; it is the one lone member of its orange house. what was its fate? set in the open mouth of a little lion’s head, one may now find it on the finger of a prince of the bourse.
it was while in madrid, during my european hunting, that those seeds were sown which a few months later grew into a smart willingness to let down the bars for my filibusterer’s escape. i was by stress of duty held a month in madrid. and, first to last, i heard nothing from the natives when they spoke of america but malediction and vilest epithet. it kept me something warm, i promise, for all i had once ridden saber in hand to smite that same american government hip and thigh. i left madrid when my work was done with never a moment’s delay; and i carried away a profound hate for spain and all things spanish.
as i was brought home by commands from my superiors at the end of my madrid work, these anti-spanish sentiments had by no means cooled when i made the new york wharf. decidedly if i’d been searched for a sentiment, i would have been discovered hostile to spanish interest when, within three weeks following my home-coming, i was given the harriet lane, shown the suspect and his ship, and told to have a sleepless eye and seize him if he moved.
it’s the norse instinct to hate spain; and i was blood and lineage, decisively norse. that affair of instinct is a mighty matter. it is curious to note how one’s partisanship will back-track one’s racial trail and pick up old race feuds and friendships; hating where one’s forbears hated, loving where they loved. even as a child, being then a devourer of history, i well recall how—while loathing england as the foe of this country—i still went with her in sympathy was she warring with france or spain. i remember, too, that, in england’s civil wars, i was ever for the roundhead and against the king. this, you say, sounds strangely for my theory, coming as i do from virginia, that state of the cavalier. one should reflect that cavalierism—to invent a word—is naught save a southern boast. virginia, like most seaboard southern states, was in its time a sort of botany bay whereunto, with other delinquents, political prisoners were condemned; my own ancestors coming, in good truth! by edict of the bloody jeffreys for the hand they took in monmouth’s rebellion. it is true as i state, even as a child, too young for emotions save emotions of instinct, i was ever the friend, as i read history, first of my own country; and next of england, germany, holland, denmark and sweden-nor-way—old race-camps of my forefathers, these—and like those same forefathers the uncompromising foe of france, spain, italy, and the entire latin tribe, as soon as ever my reading taught me their existence.
my filibusterer swung on his cable down the bay from governor’s island. during daylight i held the harriet lane at decent distance; when night came down i lay as closely by him as i might and give the ships room as they swept bow for stern with the tide. also, we had a small-boat patrol in the water.
it was the fourth day of my watch. i was ashore to stretch my legs, and at that particular moment, grown weary of walking, on a bench in battery park, from which coign i had both my filibusterer and the harriet lane beneath my eye, and could signal the latter whenever i would.
on the bench with me sat a well-dressed stranger; i had before observed him during my walk. with an ease that bespoke the trained gentleman, and in manner unobtrusive, my fellow bencher stole into talk with me. sharpened of my trade, he had not discoursed a moment before i felt and knew his purpose; he was friend to my filibusterer whose black freeboard showed broadside on as she tugged and strove with her cable not a mile away.
he carried the talk to her at last.
“i don’t believe she’s a filibusterer,” he said. her character was common gossip, and he had referred to that. “i don’t believe she’s a filibusterer. i’d be glad to see her get out if i thought she were,” and he turned on me a tentative eye.
doubtless he observed a smile, and therein read encouragement. i told him my present business; not through vain jauntiness of pride, but i was aware that he well knew my mission before ever he sat down, and i thought i’d fog him up a bit with airs of innocence, and lead him to suppose i suspected him not.
after much tacking and going about, first port and then starboard—to use the nautical phrase—he came straight at me.
“friend,” he said; “the cause of liberty—cuban liberty, if you will—is dear to me. if that ship be a filibusterer and meant for cuba’s aid, speaking as a humanitarian, i could give you ten thousand reasons, the best in the world, why you should let her sail.” this last, wistfully.
thereupon i lighted a cigar, having trouble by reason of the breeze. then getting up, i took my handkerchief and wig-wagged the harriet lane to send the gig ashore. as i prepared to go down to the water-front, i turned to my humanitarian who so loved liberty.
“give your reasons to betelnut jack,” i said; “he delights in abstract deductions touching the rights of man as against the rights of states as deeply as did that thetford corset maker, thomas paine.”
“betelnut jack!” said my humanitarian. “he shall have every reason within an hour.”
“should you convince him,” i retorted, “tell him as marking a fact in which i shall take the utmost interest to come to this spot at five o’clock and show me his handkerchief.”
then i joined the harriet lane.
at the hour suggested, betelnut jack stood on the water’s edge and flew the signal. i put the captain’s glass on him to make sure. he had been given the reasons, and was convinced. there abode no doubt of it; the humanitarian was right and cuba should be free. besides, i remembered madrid and hated spain.
“captain,” i observed, as i handed that dignitary the glasses, “we will, if you please, lie in the narrows to-night. if this fellow leave—which he won’t—he’ll leave that way. and we’ll pinch him.”
the captain bowed. we dropped down to the narrows as the night fell black as pitch. the captain and i cracked a bottle. as we toasted each other, our suspect crept out through the sound, and by sunrise had long cleared montauk and far and away was southward bound and safe on the open ocean.
“i believe,” observed the jolly doctor to the sour gentleman when the latter paused, “i believe you said that the filibusterer was in the end taken and shot.”
“seized when he made his landing,” returned the sour gentleman, “and killed against a wall in the morning.”
“it was a cheap finish for a 10,000-dollar start,” remarked the red nosed gentleman, sententiously. “but why should this adventurer, ryan, as you call him, go into the business of freeing cuba? where would lie his profit? i don’t suppose now it was a love of liberty which put him in motion.”
“the cuban rebellionists,” said the sour gentleman, “were from first to last sustained by certain business firms in new york who had arranged to make money by their success. it is a kind of piracy quite common, this setting our spanish-americans to cutting throats that a profit may flow in wall and broad streets. every revolution and almost every war in south and central america have their inspirations in the counting-rooms of some great new york firm. i’ve known rival houses in new york to set a pair of south american republics to battling with each other like a brace of game cocks. thousands were slain with that war. sure, it is the merest blackest piracy; the deeds of kidd or morgan were milk-white by comparison.”
“it shows also,” observed the jolly doctor, “how little the race has changed. in our hearts we are the same vikings of savage blood and pillage, and with no more of ruth, we were in the day of harold fairhair.”
sioux sam, at the old cattleman’s suggestion, came now to relate the story of “how moh-kwa saved the strike axe.”