SKETCHER

Dunstan Times, Issue 2217, 19 January 1904, Page 3

SKETCHER

THOUGHT BETTER OF IT. An American lady recently related an amusing experience of hers that happened shortly before she left the States. She said that the incident took place at a town in Arizona, called Boulder, and that they had not many amusements or excitements in those days excepting shooting matches which the town people soon became accustomed to. So, when a Mrs. Somebody, who stated that she came from London, strewed the town with handbills stating that she would shortly give a spiritual seance in a hotel drawing room, everybody was excited about it. ‘ I was a very good pianist,’ said the lady, 1 so when the medium offered me five dollars to furnish the music for the evening I jumped for joy, though I was rather nervous about the spirits. My parents gave their consent, and tickets sold rapidly. * On the day of the seance I met a young Englishman who had emigrated from the old country and settled in Arizona, where he gained a reputation as a dead shot. I asked him if he was going that night. ‘ Haven’t heard anything about it,’ he said. Then I explained it to him. ‘Those things are frauds,’ he exclaimed. ‘ I’ve seen any number of them in England. I’ll go, and the first spirit that shows up I’ll shoot at it. If it’s only a spirit it can’t be injured, and if it isn’t why, serve ’em right.’ And away he went whistling merrily. ‘ I knew he would keep his word, and I made up my mind that I’d not be there for the music. So I went to the hotel and explained to the medium that I had changed my mind, and would not perform. * She seemed annoyed, and pressed me for my reasons. At last I told her and she turned as white as a sheet. * Do you think he’ll keep his word ?’ she queried. 1 Certainly ; and he’s a dead shot. So good a shot in fact, that they’ve barred him at all the pigeon matches.’ ‘ • She l hanked me, and I went away. That afternoon the town was again flooded with handbills, which stated that there would be no seance on account of the illness of the medium. She profited by my information.’ THE 18xh AND 19th BRUMAIRE. It was on the 18th Brumaire, otherwise November 9th, 1199, that Napoleon took his first decisive step toward the Imperial throne. I say decisive, because it is beyond dispute that, long before this, the gaunt and saturnine artillery-man of Toulon had cherished dreams of aggrandisement. His entire conduct as commander-in-chief in Italy, and later in Egypt, goes to prove that Napoleon, if he did not foresee the heights upon which he would stand, at least felt that he would distance all his competitors in the delirious race for power. The affair of the 18th Brumaire was picturesque and significant. Napoleon had but recently returned from Egypt. He had come without authority, yet had appeared rather as a triumphant prince than as a citizen soldier. He was received with acclamations. His victories were trumpeted, his defeats whispered. He was the man of the hour, and he had no rival. Beside him all others were pigmies. Barras, worn and weary, had lost his zeal for power; and neither Talleyrand, nor Fouche, and ambitious as they wore, possessed a single attribute wherewith to dazzle the public mind, or captivate the imagination of the populace. L-sser men and interests in the seething pot of politics were as many and various as the ingredients in the cauldron of the three weird sisters of Macbeth. From that cauldron Napoleon’s genius evoked a figure upon whose brow glistened ‘ the round and top of sovereignty !’ The figure was his own • , , All Paris sought him; but no skilful coquette could have withheld, and anon displayed, her person with greater ingenuity than he. Napoleon was a great slagemanagor. Ha understood the value of a well-contrived entrance, and a swift, but graceful, exit. He surrounded himself with mystery; he said little ; he looked voutmes. I speak of the period immediately antecedent to the ‘coup de’etat’ of the Orangerlo. His associates then were savants, not soldiers; travellers of renown rather than self-seeking politicians. If he went to the theatre, he sat in the seclusion of a curtained box; in fact, in every way he cultivated that ‘ divinity which doth hedge a king. ’ But on the morning of the 18th Brumaire he held a reception of his own military staff, and the generals who had shared his toils and part or his glorv. Regiments favourable to him were in readiness, end presently followed him to the two Assemblies. It is probable that thenbayonets produced greater conviction than his eloquence. To the Council of Ancients Nanoieon addressed one of his exclamatory orations: ‘ Citizen representatives, the Republic was perishing, you knew it, and your decree has just saved it. Woe to those who wish trouble and disorder! I will stop them, sided by General Lefebvre, General Berthier, and all my companions-in-arms.’ This meant the overthrow of the constitution of the year HI., and the erection of the Consulate, with Napoleon at its head. The next morning Napoleon invaded the Chamber of the Five Hundred.- Napoleon, gaunt and hollow-eyed, with the long hair of the Revolutionary period, is in the centre of the group, while one of his deputies, in accord • ante with a legend which has been fully disproved, is in the act of stabbing him. On his first entrance, Napoleon was repulsed and driven out, notwithstanding the pleading of his brother Lucien, president of the Assembly. A little later he came back, followed by grenadiers, and by Lumen, who had abandoned his position to aid his brother; and in a few minutes the frightened deputies were escaping by doors or windows, as best they could. . , , . , . , Although its nominal demise was deterred till later, the Republic actually expired at the moment when Napoleon and Lucien Bonaparte drove the deputies from their Chamber. THE VOICE OF THE DRUM. The poet Heine declared that hj • had a talent for drumming in every limb and in his feet to a remarkable degree. It was early cultivated by a valiant French drummer, long quartered in the quaint town of Dusseldorf, who had been with the Emperor Na poleon in most of his campaigns. He had, as Heine declares, the face of a fiend and a Ijgart like an angel’s; a small, mobile face, a

fearful Mack moustache, under which his red Ups curved proudly, while hie eyes shot fiery glances on every aide. - Little fellow as I was (Heine says), I was for ever chained to his side, helping him polish his buttons and chalk his white waist* coat-—for M. Le Grand was not indifferent to pleasing the eye. 1 followed him to guard, roll-call, and parade; there was nothing but rattling of arms and fun. M. Le Grand spoke only a little broken German, hut he could express himself perfectly on the drum. For example, when I did not know what the word liberte meant he beat the * Marseillaise,’ and I understood. In the same way he taught me the story of the late events. It is true I could not follow the words ; but as he drummed away all the time I knew what he meant to say. You comprehend the story of the storming of the Bastille, the taking of the Tuileries, etc., if you know how the drums beat while it happened. Years afterwards, while sitting beneath a tree and dreaming of the past, I heard behind me the confused sound of voices, bewailing the fate of the poor Frenchmen who had been taken prisoners in the Russian War and sent to Siberia, and there detained for several years after peace was declared. Raising my eyes, I beheld these unfortunates of France on their way home. Bare want stared through every rent in their tattered uniforms; deep, plaintive eyes looked from their wasted faces; but, sore, tired, and mostly lame as they all of them were, they had a sort of martial stride, and, strangely enough, a drummer with his drum staggered at the head. With an inward shudder I thought of the tales of soldiers who, fallen in battle by day, rise from the field at night, and, with the drum at their head, march onward to their native land. And truly the poor French drummer looked as if he had risen from the grave. He was a mere shadow in a dirty, ragged cape, a dead, yellow, face, with a great moustache hanging sadly over the shrivelled lips. His eyes were like burntout coals, with hardly a spark still living —yet by One of these sparks I recognised M. Le Grand, the old drummer-1 had known as a boy. He know me, too, and drew me down upon the grass; and there we sat as we used to do in the old times when he taught me French and modem history on the drum. It was the same old drum, and I could not but wonder how he had saved it from the greed of the Russians. He began to drum in- his old way, with- ■ out speaking a word. But though Lis lips were pressed sadly together, his eyes spoke all the more plainly, as they sparkled with' triumph, while he drummed the old marches. The poplars near by trembled as he rattled out ‘ March of the Red Guillotine.’ As of old, he drummed the struggle for liberty, the battles, the deeds of the emperor; and it seemed as if the drum were a living creature, rejoicing to utter its inward delight. Once more I heard the canon’s roar, the whistle of the bullets, the crash of battle ; I saw the Guards brave in death, I saw the waving flags, I saw the emperor on his horse. But a sad tone crept into the joyous notes, the drum-beats gave forth cries wherin the wildest triumph and the deepest woe were strangely mingled. It was a triumphal march and a dead march in one. Le Grand’s eyes stared I'ke a ghost’s, and I saw in them a great white field of snow strewn with corpses. It was the Battle of Moscow. I would never have believed that the stiff old drum could give such melancholy cries as M. Le Grand now drew from it. It was like drumming tears, and now they sounded lower and lower, and sighs came from Le Grand’s bosom like sad echoes. He grew weaker and more ghost-like; his hands shook with cold; he sat as in a dream, drumming in the air and listening to the far-off voices. And then at last, he turned on mo a deep, deep, imploring look. I understood him. And then his head fell forward upon his drum. . M. Le Grand never drummed again in this world, nor did his drum ever give out another sound. Never should it serve an enemy of liberty to beat a slavish tattoo. I had understood Le Grand’s last imploring look ; I drew my dagger and thrust it through the head of the drum.