66

me, could distinguish some of the more familiar ejaculations, Virgo venerabilis, virgo fidelis," or the solemn "Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis."

Our daily life, notwithstanding its austere simplicity, was full of a certain picturesque charm which was not that of novelty alone. We grew accustomed to our tiny bedrooms, with their whitewashed walls and scanty furniture, and learned to keep them so tidy that they became almost attractive. It was no hardship to fill our own baths, for delicious spring water was to be had in every corridor, and immediately on our arrival we had persuaded the sœur chambrère to intrust us with two of the largest brocs that the house possessed.

In the beginning, our places were at the very end of the long table, among the most casual of the pilgrims, - simple folk, who were too busy to be absent many days from their farms and households. We liked hearing their stories of long journeys made, and obstacles overcome, to reach what to them was so sacred a ple. I remember one family which had come up from the Valbonnais (on the other side of our Col, and some four thousand feet lower down) on a terrible evening, when the clouds suddenly descended and wrapped the whole chain of mountains in impenetrable mist.

These women had brought a guide with them as far as the Col; then, believing the way to be plain, had dismissed him. A few minutes later, they were in the clouds, and, as it seemed, hopelessly lost; for, instead of taking the downward path, which would have brought them in a short time to the hostelry, they had continued to ascend until they were upon one of the most dangerous slopes of the Gargas, and on this frightful incline which I cannot even now think of without a shudder-they had wandered for hours, until, at last, getting into the bed of a torrent, they had wisely determined to descend with it; and so, near midnight, wet to

the skin and well-nigh exhausted, they reached La Salette.

For a few days we had opposite us a number of Auvergne peasants, undoubtedly well-to-do, or they would not have been at the table d'hôte, but having about them a distinct suggestion of hay-fields and farmyards. There was little that was objectionable in their manners, and they were always polite in handing the dishes and in carving (for the carving and dressing of salad was done at the table, and by any one kind enough to undertake it), but they did not go as far as a sweet, simple - minded woman beside me, who was so much annoyed because my plate was not changed for each course they are changed only three times at a meal that she frequently carried it away and changed it herself.

Later on, we were moved to the upper end of the room, in the midst of the

66

eeg-leef," as we called it, according to that extraordinary pronunciation of high life, which I then heard for the first time. There we found ourselves among ladies of rank who were making their neuvaines, and gentle, high-bred sisters whose pilgrimage is their only respite from the weary round of hospital or schoolroom duties. The most attractive of them all was a Sœur de Saint Joseph, who, with her serene, mediæval face and straight coif, looked as if she had just stepped down from one of Cimabue's canvases. We did not hear her name, but one felt that it must be Scholastique or Polycarpe. For some inexplicable reason the kind creature attached herself to me, and not only looked after all my wants at the table, but when she found me, one day, attempting to brush my mountain-boots, a labor which visitors are expected to perform for themselves, - insisted upon taking them away and brushing them herself.

One morning, having asked a question of the sœur portière in regard to the lodging of the poorer pilgrims, we were given permission to inspect the whole hos

telry as we liked. So we made our way to the upper story of all, which we found entirely given up to dormitories; some holding a dozen beds, others only two or three. All were wonderfully clean and airy, with water brought into the rooms themselves, and not, as in our part of the building, into the corridors. Occupants of these dormitories pay but half a franc daily for their lodging, and may order what food they like from the kitchen, paying for each portion as they take it from the guichet. As they usually come provided with butter and bread and cheese and sausages, their pilgrimage cannot be very costly.

Indeed, our own pension was but five francs, and we could have any extra we wished such as a mazagrand (black coffee) after dinner - by paying a small supplement, generally of twenty-five centimes. An amusing thing was that a pillow in one's bedroom was considered an extra, and charged twenty-five centimes per week. These supplements must be paid when the things are ordered; a wise provision, by the way, which saves the sisters from all the complications of bookkeeping.

Now and then, when the weather was unpropitious for walking, we used to vary our occupations by helping the two religieuses who look after the little shop, and who are often hard-pressed in serving the constant succession of visitors. We soon learned the prices of medals, scapularies, and all sorts of objects unfamiliar to us, and when peasants consulted us in regard to a present to take home to "Monsieur le Curé," or a Christ bien robuste, as they called a strongly made crucifix, we felt entirely competent to help them with our advice.

Only one unpleasant episode disturbed the tranquillity of my fortnight at La Salette. Though August had begun, the weather became bitterly cold, a northwest storm set in, and for five days, while the rain beat against our windowpanes, we saw no more of the outer

a

world than if we had been in a storm at sea. At an evening service, when I unfortunately sat between the open door of the sacristy and a broken clerestory window (until that moment one of my chief comforts), I took a severe cold, and was obliged to keep my room and bed for several days, which would have been dreary enough but for the unremitting care of the sisters. The sœur portière one of those nurses who, like the poets, are born, not made-prepared my poultices, and always found time to come herself and put them on; the Superior charmingly sympathetic and human little person brought me wonderful lozenges from her private store, and as soon as I was able to enjoy them paid me long visits, in the course of which I learned more than I fancy she meant me to learn of the hard life they lead in the summer so often worked to the utmost limit of endurance; and in the winter, when snowbound for four or five months, and when the fathers and the schoolboys have gone down to Corps, half-frozen and utterly solitary. The refectory sister brewed tisanes, and made extraordinary efforts to serve my meals hot, answering in her pretty cooing way, when I lamented over the number of pilgrims she had to serve, "that she was bien contente to see so many, and that Our Lady was bien contente also." And when, to add to my misfortunes, my watch refused to go, and had to be sent to Grenoble for repairs, the sweet Sœur Polycarpe insisted on lending me her own great old-fashioned silver one, because she thought "the night would seem so much longer if I did not know the hour."

The dear creatures even came to my rescue with a change of linen, when the faithless washerwoman failed to bring back my own. I could hardly keep a straight face, as we say, when a collection of their curious mediæval garments was brought to me, and I was told to choose what I liked from among them. Some were so small, and of so remark

able a shape, that to this day I have not the faintest notion for what they were intended; others were correspondingly voluminous. I naturally chose some of the latter, and am sure that the amusement I experienced in putting them on had no slight share in restoring my circulation, and so in helping forward my recovery.

But the return of fair weather, which released me from the confinement of my cell, and suggested all sorts of delight

ful but hitherto impossible expeditions, brought with it the realization that if we were to keep faith with old friends, we must tear ourselves away from new ones. And so, one day, the last farewells were spoken, and, having confided our packages to the good Casimir (the driver whom timorous travelers should always ask for at La Mure), we took our way on foot down the "holy mountain," back to the broad highways and commonplace scenes of ordinary life.

Anna Pierrepont McIlvaine.

SEVENTEEN years ago, in July, 1877, a strike of unprecedented intensity occurred on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, which spread thence to the trunk lines and west to the Mississippi River. It was accompanied, as all great strikes are in this country, with rioting and the usual exhibitions of lawlessness. After millions of property had been destroyed and some hundreds of lives lost, it was put down by the armed forces of the state and national governments. It was originally a contest about wages. At that time public opinion and law had not progressed so far as they have since done in the direction of asserting and exercising the right of the government to supervise and control the railway companies, either in their relations with the traveling and shipping public or with their employees.

The great strike now apparently closing1 in a triumph for the General Managers' Association and humiliation and defeat for the American Railway Union finds a very different state of judicial and popular opinion regarding the nature and function of a railway, and a very different condition of the state and

1 The reader should bear in mind that this paper, to appear in October, necessarily was

federal statute books as to the right and duty of the government to regulate and control the public traveled roads. How far the former desperate contest may have operated in the subsequent evolution of legislation and public opinion, it is hard to say, but surely such a glimpse of the yawning gulf of anarchy suddenly opening in the very midst of the commonwealth must have awakened the apathetic, taught wisdom to the thoughtful, and suggested moderation to the headstrong. At all events, courts and legislatures have been busy ever since in devising ways and means to curb the arbitrary and irresponsible exercise of corporate power, and the general mind has gradually drifted to the position that there is hardly anything the government may not with propriety do, if necessary, to check the concentration of power in private hands. A vast network of laws and tribunals has been constructed to prevent unjust discrimination in rates, but little has been done to insure just treatment of employees. On this point, though public opinion recognizes the fitness of equally stringent legislation, in actual practice there is no remedy for wage inwritten at the end of July.-ED. ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

justice but a strike. An act of Congress was passed in 1888, providing for the voluntary appointment, by the contestants, of a board of arbitrators to adjust differences between interstate railroad companies and their employees. All expenses were to be paid by the United States, and the decision of the board was to be made matter of record. The law has no compulsive power, and has slumbered peacefully on the statute book ever since. The same act also empowers the President to appoint a commission to investigate and report as to the causes and conditions of the controversy and the best means of adjusting it. It is such a commission whose labors, now that the strike is over, are just commencing.

The present strike should be viewed in the light of recent occurrences which have had their effect in determining its form and the atmosphere in which it has been fought. In December, 1893, the receivers of the Northern Pacific Railway, having aroused the dissatisfaction of their employees by successive cuts in wages, and fearing a general strike, applied to the United States court for an order enjoining such a demonstration. Without any hesitation, Judge Jenkins issued an order in the nature of a military proclamation, directed to the men in the various grades of the service, and "all persons generally," enjoining them from interfering with the property in the hands of the receivers, or with men in their employ, and from combining and conspiring to quit the service of the receivers, either with or without notice, "with the object and intent of crippling the property in their custody or embarrassing the operation of said railroad," etc. The promulgation of this sweeping prohibition, backed up by the United States army, prevented the threatened strike, but it put the court on record as claiming and actually exercising the power to force men to continue at work against their will, and at the same time declaring that any railroad strike is an

unlawful conspiracy and every striker a criminal. Ominous growls of discontent were heard everywhere, but the fact that such an extraordinary utterance proceeded from a federal court and was supported by boundless power averted open disorder. Then came the attempt of the receivers of the Union Pacific to cut down wages, and the answer of Judge Caldwell, of the United States court, in substance, that fair wages must be paid, whether interest on bonds or dividends on stock be paid or not. His decision aroused the wildest enthusiasm among the wage-earning classes. Here a strike was averted by a policy exactly opposite to that pursued by Judge Jenkins.

Next followed the strike on the Great Northern Railway, in which the American Railway Union and its young leader, Mr. Debs, came conspicuously to the front. It was an organization based apparently on the principle that a strike must originate in the local unions, and become general only when a majority of the members of local unions had voted for it. As a matter of fact, the strike on this railway so completely embraced every branch of the service, and enlisted the sympathies of the communities which were the chief sufferers by the cessation of traffic, that President Hill speedily saw the hopelessness of his position and resorted to the device of an arbitration, in which he consented beforehand to an award granting substantially everything the strikers demanded. The conflict ended in mutual congratulations; railway managers, newspapers, business men, and the community in general, joining in a chorus of admiration for the intelligence, moderation, and magnanimity of Mr. Debs. The result was a complete victory for the strikers, and met the approval of the people of the entire Northwest.

Having thus won his spurs, and no doubt believing all the fine things that were said about him, Mr. Debs turned to see what other wrongs needed to be redressed. The Pullman strike offered