“A MODERN HERCULES,”

The Tale of a Sculptress,

BY

MELVIN G. WINSTOCK,

OF THE

LEADVILLE BAR.

AUTHOR OF “A Western Politician,” “The Fatal Horoscope,” “A Virginian Romance,” Etc.

Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1899, by Melvin G. Winstock, in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.

Herald Democrat Print. Leadville, Colo. — 1899.

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PREFACE.

Hotel Vendome, } Leadville, Colo., October 31, 1899.}

To the Public:

This City, surrounded by snow-clad peaks pointing to and almost losing themselves in the bosom of the Supreme Intelligence, has inspired my effort. The volume is dedicated to “Ouida,” radiant also with inspiration. She lives. The novel is written from my play of the same title.

The clergy at first may condemn the morale of my story, but upon reflection I think they will realize the injustice of such a course. There is no religion that does not preach that though men sin, true redemption may be accomplished by honest repentance and noble effort. My hero and heroine go through the valley of the Shadow of Death to cleanse themselves of impurity, and the story of their lives is a living, breathing sermon in itself.

I have published my story here for the reason that the generosity of Leadville citizens has made it possible for me to place my work before the public. I trust it will meet with such success as it merits and no more.

Melvin G. Winstock.

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“A MODERN HERCULES.”

CHAPTER I. “THE NUDE IN ART.”

Two things caused the great heart of New York society to throb with unusual excitement. One was a marvelous work of sculptural art, where boldness in design and utter fearlessness in execution had almost affronted, and yet had won the plaudits of the cultivated of the Metropolis. Ouida Angelo, a woman in “A Grecian Temptress,” had dared to wring from men an absolute tribute to and acknowledgement of her genius and power. The second event was the announcement that Horatio Nugent, the great pulpit orator, would preach a sermon on “The Nude in Art.”

The wealth and fashion of the city sat spell-bound beneath the eloquent tongue of the great divine. The sad face of the Madonna, in the painted window of Geneva, grew sadder still as she looked down upon the favored multitude. There were present there, men who headed every published list of charity, who paid thousands for pew rental, in this great official residence of God, yet who had no compunction about wrecking a railroad and thereby indirectly spreading ruin among hundreds. In the front row sat a bank president, who knew that on the morrow his financial institution would be in irretrievable ruin, yet who for months had been a pillar of the church and had some of the congregational funds in his rapacious clutch. A poor wash woman or window[Pg 6] cleaner, probably attracted by the magnetic tones of the stupendous organ, had dared to wander in. In simple ignorance she had probably imagined that Christ’s boasted friendship for the poor meant something to modern dogmatists, and had taken a seat high up among these mighty lordlings of this majestic world. The congregation

held its breath in amazement, and could not have been more shocked if the yellow fever in disguise had paid its fatal visit. This magnetic indignation communicated itself to an usher in full dress. He came forward and whispered something to the woman. She slowly rose and went up into the gallery. God had sold out all the down-stair seats to the rich! The Madonna sighed in pity and was angry. The congregation breathed a sigh of relief. The church itself cost half a million. It had no reading room, free bath, employment bureau or lunch counter attached to it. It was open for about nine months each year on Sundays, and when a millionaire wanted to get married, or his heirs wanted to bury him, so they could get up a sensational will contest and make newspapers sell. Not far away from the church was a series of alleys, where poverty held supreme sway, and where the grim specter of want, filth and misery, stalked, dealing death, crime and agony, winning each moment recruits for the devil’s army in hell.

I’ll not allow that rich woman over there to plead not guilty, upon the ground of ignorance of these conditions. She knows all about it, and yet to get those latest diamonds that sparkle on her breast, she made her husband sell the farm, whereon his honest old rustic parents were buried. Over there sits a woman, who is unfaithful in heart to her marriage vows, and who yet lacks the [Pg 7]courage to follow the bent of her intense longing, for fear of what her small world would say. In all of this artificial brilliance, there are masks and faces as false as many of the hearts which rich attire conceals.

Notwithstanding all this, there was every inducement for real inspiration. The architectural beauty of the interior of the church was artistic to the nature, and soft and alluring to the eye. The place was decorated with beautiful pots, plants and flowers. Through the stained windows a mellow light gilded rich carpets and soft cushions. The trained choir sang divinely while the organist thundered forth not only the wrath of the Deity, but promised mercy, like the whisper of an angel, through the organ’s pipes. As the notes of the grand instrument died away in the distance, softly, like a summer sigh, a man of noble face and figure stood in the pulpit.

It was the preacher!

He was young. His eyes were boldly black and brilliant. They sparkled like pure diamonds with feeling, comprehension and intelligence. His head had the shape of a Roman God. His shoulders were square. He looked the very physical and intellectual giant that he was. His voice was flavored with magnetism that always distinguishes the eloquent orator from the mere word absorber. He ran his long, shapely fingers through his dark hair, shook his head like a lion, and plunged like a blooded courser into the very meat and marrow of his subject.

“Christ was insulted on Sunday last. This church was empty at service time, and all had forsaken Him to pay tribute to a woman’s vindictively immoral work. You who have built this religious palace to the glory of a mighty and eternal God, betrayed Him for the devil.[Pg 8] For hark me, I tell you, that he who so prostitutes true art, be it man or woman, pandering to the depraved tastes of modern society, is but an agent of the King of Hell!

“‘A Grecian Temptress’ was, or is, its theme. A woman of form almost divine, enticing a youth of purity to voluptuous sin, while in the veiled background stands a Satan, holding sway over the temptress, while she is but serving her Master in alluring souls to the regions of perpetual darkness.

“All true art leads to God. The tree, the earth, the sparrow, the eagle, the wheat, the stars, the beasts, man, are parts of a great and mighty network of machinery. All false art leads to God’s enemy, and sin, selfishness, voluptuousness, temptation and passion, carry with them and in them the seed of their own punishment. How dare these bold and brazen creatures, under the name of art, lay before the multitude chapters from their own devilish and inconsistent lives? Yet the sin is not theirs alone. You who hear me are equally guilty, because you encourage them by your countenance and patronage to continue in their base course of debauching the public taste. We seek in vain for purity and find it swiftly fleeing, while in its place there is rising up a craving for sensationalism which is even reaching the pulpit itself!

“Why should we follow ancient Greece? As long as the Athenian was stalwart, patriotic, full of rugged simplicity, the influence of Greece was all powerful in shaping the thought of the world and in moulding its history. But when its brave warriors, orators and poets sank into luxurious excesses, succumbing to vice, vying with each other in the mere promotion of enjoyment, its influence waned, its people degenerated, until today it is a memory[Pg 9] only serving to teach the world, that its people as a nation were unfit to survive. And when Grecian methods permeated Rome and Judea, these nations, too, became practically blotted out. Shall we permit American valor, patriotism and healthful vigor to have engrafted upon it these ideas so fatal to Greece, Rome and Judea? Shall we permit, by such an education of public morals, a gradual loss of respect of all those pure ideals taught by Him, who preached the sermon on the mount?” He paused here, but no one stirred.

“But this is not all. These Bohemian rebels, who create and produce and publish these things do worse than this. They make their own universe, enact their own laws, defy mankind, and yet society grovels at their feet and elevates all such so-called gifted creatures to a pedestal high above the church itself! They are worshiped, and Christ, who made for man the most agonizingly sublime sacrifice of which the mind can conceive, is insulted, neglected and made a common mockery!

“This woman Ouida Angelo, who gave to the world ‘A Grecian Temptress,’ who is she? A luring siren whose devotion to all that is voluptuous and sensual, reveals in her work only that which characterizes her ignoble life. She should be driven forth from achievements, that alike disgrace herself, art and humanity. Instead of worshiping her with idolatrous affection, we should freeze her with a monstrous condemnation.”

Again he ceased and staggered almost out of the pulpit as though filled to the quick with some strange emotion.

A rustling gown with a queenly woman under it arose from a cushioned pew and majestically stepped down the aisle to the door.

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She was Ouida Angelo, the sculptress!

Just then a startling crash was heard, and the pane of glass, upon which had been exquisitely done the face of the Madonna, fell and broke into countless pieces.

The sermon on “The Nude in Art” had done its work, and Monday’s papers were full of it.

CHAPTER II. FROM POVERTY TO WEALTH.

Ivan Strogoff was a Russian nobleman at the University of St. Petersburg. Together with many of his noble colleagues, he imbibed radical theories concerning freedom and the abuses practiced by the imperial government. Added to this, he married a pretty but poor Polish girl, who died in giving birth to a son, Paul. Ivan one day was arrested, secretly tried and condemned to Siberia. He, however, bought his freedom from corrupt public officials, and fled to New York with his son. Then he began a battle with the world in which starvation and misery constantly held the upper hand. Nothing succeeded with him. He could gain no foothold. His nature, naturally honest and bright, became soured, until at times he actually hated even his son, Paul. The latter was a noble specimen of physical humanity, and apparently seemed to thrive on the hardships which both father and son seemed compelled by cruel fate to endure. This continued until Paul was about 10 years old. Then it was that Ivan brought home one night a long envelope,[Pg 11]

and while Paul slept in their garret in the slums, Ivan, his father, sat long into the night, until the candle burned out in the socket, reading documents with long, gold seals on them. It was a promise from an influential Russian official, toward a restoration of Strogoff’s estates, if the exile should return and swear anew his allegiance to the Czar. Now Strogoff’s vain struggles in the new world had sobered him. Many of the wild dreams of youth had disappeared, and he was ready and quite prepared to accept good fortune again, even if it meant a sacrifice of those poetic dreams that had caused the misfortunes of his earlier days.

He had but enough money left to barely get back to St. Petersburg alone, and the great question was: What could be done with Paul? He finally saw the keeper of the lodging, and received every assurance that Paul would be cared for until his father could send for him. So Ivan kissed the sleeping boy, and ere the sun had started on his course, was on the broad Atlantic, his brain busy with teeming projects for the newer and noble future that seemed to spread out before him.

Politics in Russia, however, are even worse and more complicated than in New York under Tammany. By the time Ivan reached the seat of Russia government, his friend had lost imperial favor. The plots against the life of the Czar had rendered a restoration to wealth and power of great difficulty, and almost an impossibility. Then began a struggle which slowly but surely sapped the vital energy of the returned exile. Each day brought forth fresh complications. Three times during a period of ten years the poor devil was compelled to fly to save himself from the enforcement of the old sentence, that[Pg 12] like the sword of Damocles, hung over him. But with a perseverance worthy of all admiration, he persisted, and something he could not define, would not let him die. To add to his misery, Paul had apparently been swallowed up, and never again while life remained, did the doubly unfortunate man ever hear of the boy he had abandoned to the cold charity of the New York lodging house keeper.

At length the great day came! Ivan Strogoff was ushered into the presence of the Czar, kissed the imperial hand, and once again trod his ancestral halls. But the struggle was too hard. All vitality had been sapped up in the battle, and the exile died before he had had time to enjoy his return to prosperity.

Upon his bed of death he gathered to himself that trusty friend who had been faithful, and conjured him to search out Paul and in some way compensate him for the terrible injustice inflicted upon the abandoned boy. “Seek him out in poverty or shame, and win from his lips my forgiveness, or I shall not rest in Heaven or in Hell.” Consoled by the sacred promise of his friend so died he, and nature was gracious to vex his tired soul no more, for truly had the man endured an undue share of the mortal grief. But so is the world, and no man can measure the amount of agony he can live through. He who fears death is a criminal and a coward. A man should so live his life that death is the most welcome gift of nature.

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CHAPTER III. PAUL BECOMES A THIEF.

The next morning after Paul’s father had gone, the lad arose, dressed himself and waited for breakfast, of course in vain.

“Come, boy,” said the lodging house keeper, “eat with me.”

“Where is my father?” said Paul.

“Gone.”

“Gone where?”

“Far away, boy; even over the ocean. He will send for you.”

Paul said nothing. He did not even shed a tear, as many a lad would have done. There was the blood of the Cossack in his rugged nature. Even at his small age he did not and would not wear his heart upon his ragged coat sleeve. But he was full of bitter thought. He became a miniature stoic. He munched his humble breakfast in silence.

At first he was treated with a fair degree of kindness by his rough, rude and miserly guardian, but when days, weeks and months came and with them no remittance from the struggling father in Russia, the guardian of the lad became sour, morose, vindictive and cruel. One day he beat the boy, and became greatly enraged because he could not make Paul cry or show by word or sign that the beating gave him pain. Paul stood the abuse like a[Pg 14] dog, but he grew. One day, feeling within his loins the strength of a lusty young giant, he arose and whipped his persecutor like David did Goliath, and fled out into the fathomless streets of New York.

That night he avoided the police and slept in a dry goods box in an alley. He awoke cold and shivering. His stomach ached with hunger. Health, youth and vigor conferred on him a monstrous desire to eat. As he sat in his alley he heard the growl of a dog. Looking up, he saw a plate full of meat scraps. The dog growled with satisfaction at his contemplated feast. Now, it seemed a strange and unjust thing to Paul that a dog should enjoy plenty, while he, a human being, had nothing. So with the instinct of the barbarian, he proceeded to dispute the dog’s right to the whole of the tempting banquet. So the boy and the dog fought desperately for the food. The boy won. But even then Paul was too honest to appropriate it all. He fairly and justly divided with his late foe. So if Paul was a thief, he differed from the common kind. The banker and stockbroker steal on a large scale, for the excitement afforded in legalized robbery. The boy stole from necessity. He and the dog in silent sympathy became friends, and went out in the world together.

That night they slept in a boat, and in the morning were out at sea, their craft having been attached to a schooner. They were discovered and taken on board, where Paul was put to work. He, however, got back to New York. He never parted with the dog. They had a great time in starving together. Paul held horses, blacked boots, sold newspapers, carried satchels, and, in spite of all hardships, privations and miseries, grew up tall, muscular and of wondrous physical beauty. He[Pg 15] never was a thief but once, and had spent some years of devotion in paying his victim for the theft.

One day Paul was passing a great brown stone palace. A man was carrying in huge blocks of marble. He called on the boy to help him. Paul readily assented.

In one of the rooms stood a majestic woman. When Paul’s eyes fell upon the vision he dropped his burden, and as it crashed upon the floor he stood like one transfixed. To his starving, neglected, hungry soul it seemed as though some goddess had dropped to the earth from the stars, and the woman looked at him with uncommon interest.

In a voice that thrilled him with unknown, undefinable, undreamed-of longings, she said, “I want you.”

“Yes,” he said, as in a dream.

Thenceforth Paul Strogoff entered the household of Ouida Angelo, the sculptress, as a model. For the first time in his life, he felt that he was human.

CHAPTER IV. THE GREAT SENSATION.

Monday’s papers were full of Dr. Nugent’s sermon, and its sensational termination. Tongues wagged fierce concerning the artistic creation, its creator, and the fearless, the eloquent divine.

[New York Herald.]

“The sensation of the season has arisen out of ‘A Grecian Temptress,’ by Ouida Angelo. Only crude,[Pg 16] narrow and dogmatic opinion condemns. The liberal and artistic world welcomes the work and its producer, and New York is to be congratulated upon the priceless possession of a genius who has obliterated sex in the grandness of her conceptions, in the boldness of her execution and in her wondrous grasp of poetic imagination. Dr. Nugent has made a fearful mistake, and his attack upon the work and the woman in his pulpit yesterday, was the pursuit of a course altogether at variance with his usual conservatism. He has, if possible, defeated his very object by the bitterness of his denunciation. For it is a known fact that New York breaks its neck to see anything which is even nastily described, and ‘A Grecian Temptress’ will now be viewed by thousands who, but for the preacher’s invective, would never have known of its existence. The learned doctor of divinity in future would do well to confine himself to biblical subjects, and

leave artistic discussion to those who can appreciate.”

[New York Post.]