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Kubernetes Cookbook Practical solutions to container
orchestration 2nd Edition Hideto Saito Digital Instant
Download
Author(s): Hideto Saito; Hui-Chuan Chloe Lee; Ke-Jou Carol Hsu
ISBN(s): 9781788836876, 1788836871
Edition: 2
File Details: PDF, 23.59 MB
Year: 2018
Language: english
Kubernetes Cookbook
Second Edition

Practical solutions to container orchestration

Hideto Saito
Hui-Chuan Chloe Lee
Ke-Jou Carol Hsu

BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI
Kubernetes Cookbook
Second Edition
Copyright © 2018 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form
or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations
embedded in critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented.
However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the
authors, nor Packt Publishing or its dealers and distributors, will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to
have been caused directly or indirectly by this book.

Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products
mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy
of this information.

Commissioning Editor: Gebin George

Acquisition Editor: Divya Poojari
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First published: June 2016

Second edition: May 2018

Production reference: 1290518

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

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ISBN 978-1-78883-760-6

www.packtpub.com
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 Contributors

About the authors

Hideto Saito has around 20 years of experience in the computer industry. In 1998, while
working for Sun Microsystems Japan, he was impressed by Solaris OS, OPENSTEP, and
Sun Ultra Enterprise 10000 (also known as StarFire). He then decided to pursue UNIX and
macOS operating systems. In 2006, he relocated to southern California as a software
engineer to develop products and services running on Linux and macOS X. He was
especially renowned for his quick Objective-C code when he was drunk. He is also an
enthusiast of Japanese anime, drama, and motorsports, and he loves Japanese Otaku
culture.

Hui-Chuan Chloe Lee is a DevOps and software developer. She has worked in the
software industry on a wide range of projects for over five years. As a technology
enthusiast, she loves trying and learning about new technologies, which makes her life
happier and more fulfilling. In her free time, she enjoys reading, traveling, and spending
time with the people she loves.

Ke-Jou Carol Hsu has three years of experience working as a software engineer and is
currently a PhD student in the area of computer systems. Not only involved programming,
she also enjoys getting multiple applications and machines perfectly working together to
solve big problems. In her free time, she loves movies, music, cooking, and working out.
About the reviewer
Stefan Lapers started his career almost 20 years ago as a support engineer and quickly
grew into Linux/Unix system engineering, security, and network positions. Over the years,
he accumulated experience in developing, deploying, and maintaining hosted applications
while working for great customers, such as MTV and TMF. In his spare time, he enjoys
spending time with his family, tinkering with electronics, and flying model helicopters.

Packt is searching for authors like you

If you're interested in becoming an author for Packt, please visit authors.packtpub.com
and apply today. We have worked with thousands of developers and tech professionals,
just like you, to help them share their insight with the global tech community. You can
make a general application, apply for a specific hot topic that we are recruiting an author
for, or submit your own idea.
 Table of Contents
Preface 1
Chapter 1: Building Your Own Kubernetes Cluster 7
Introduction 7
Exploring the Kubernetes architecture 7
Getting ready 8
How to do it... 8
Kubernetes master 9
API server (kube-apiserver) 10
Scheduler (kube-scheduler) 10
Controller manager (kube-controller-manager) 10
Command-line interface (kubectl) 10
Kubernetes node 11
kubelet 12
Proxy (kube-proxy) 12
How it works... 13
etcd 13
Kubernetes network 14
See also 14
Setting up the Kubernetes cluster on macOS by minikube 14
Getting ready 16
How to do it... 16
How it works... 18
See also 21
Setting up the Kubernetes cluster on Windows by minikube 22
Getting ready 22
How to do it... 23
How it works... 27
See also 32
Setting up the Kubernetes cluster on Linux via kubeadm 33
Getting ready 33
How to do it... 35
Package installation 35
Ubuntu 35
CentOS 36
System configuration prerequisites 36
CentOS system settings 37
Booting up the service 37
Network configurations for containers 39
Getting a node involved 40
How it works... 41
Table of Contents

See also 42
Setting up the Kubernetes cluster on Linux via Ansible (kubespray) 43
Getting ready 43
Installing pip 44
Installing Ansible 45
Installing python-netaddr 46
Setting up ssh public key authentication 46
How to do it... 48
Maintaining the Ansible inventory 49
Running the Ansible ad hoc command to test your environment 50
Ansible troubleshooting 51
Need to specify a sudo password 52
Need to specify different ssh logon user 53
Need to change ssh port 53
Common ansible issue 53
How it works... 54
See also 58
Running your first container in Kubernetes 58
Getting ready 58
How to do it... 60
Running a HTTP server (nginx) 61
Exposing the port for external access 62
Stopping the application 63
How it works… 63
See also 66
Chapter 2: Walking through Kubernetes Concepts 67
Introduction 67
An overview of Kubernetes 68
Linking Pods and containers 71
Getting ready 71
How to do it... 72
How it works... 74
See also 77
Managing Pods with ReplicaSets 78
Getting ready 79
How to do it... 80
Creating a ReplicaSet 80
Getting the details of a ReplicaSet 82
Changing the configuration of a ReplicaSet 83
Deleting a ReplicaSet 84
How it works... 85
There's more... 88
See also 88
Deployment API 89
Getting ready 89
How to do it... 91

[ ii ]
Table of Contents

How it works... 94
Using kubectl set to update the container image 95
Updating the YAML and using kubectl apply 96
See also 98
Working with Services 99
Getting ready 100
How to do it... 101
Creating a Service for different resources 102
Creating a Service for a Pod 102
Creating a Service for a Deployment with an external IP 104
Creating a Service for an Endpoint without a selector 105
Creating a Service for another Service with session affinity 107
Deleting a Service 108
How it works... 109
There's more... 111
See also 114
Working with volumes 115
Getting ready 116
How to do it... 116
emptyDir 116
hostPath 119
NFS 120
glusterfs 122
downwardAPI 124
gitRepo 127
There's more... 128
PersistentVolumes 128
Using storage classes 132
gcePersistentDisk 133
awsElasticBlockStore 136
See also 140
Working with Secrets 140
Getting ready 141
How to do it... 141
Creating a Secret 141
Working with kubectl create command line 141
From a file 142
From a directory 143
From a literal value 143
Via configuration file 144
Using Secrets in Pods 144
By environment variables 144
By volumes 145
Deleting a Secret 147
How it works... 147
There's more... 147
Using ConfigMaps 147
Mounting Secrets and ConfigMap in the same volume 149
See also 150

[ iii ]
Table of Contents

Working with names 150

Getting ready 150
How to do it... 151
How it works... 154
See also 155
Working with Namespaces 156
Getting ready 157
How to do it... 158
Creating a Namespace 158
Changing the default Namespace 159
Deleting a Namespace 161
How it works… 162
There's more... 162
Creating a LimitRange 162
Deleting a LimitRange 166
See also 166
Working with labels and selectors 166
Getting ready 167
How to do it... 167
How it works... 170
Equality-based label selector 171
Set-based label selector 172
There's more... 173
Linking Service to Pods or ReplicaSets using label selectors 173
Linking Deployment to ReplicaSet using the set-based selector 175
See also 177
Chapter 3: Playing with Containers 178
Introduction 178
Scaling your containers 178
Getting ready 179
How to do it... 180
Scale up and down manually with the kubectl scale command 180
Horizontal Pod Autoscaler (HPA) 182
How it works... 185
There is more… 185
See also 186
Updating live containers 186
Getting ready 186
How to do it... 187
Deployment update strategy – rolling-update 189
Rollback the update 193
Deployment update strategy – recreate 194
How it works... 195
There's more... 196
See also 198

[ iv ]
Table of Contents

Forwarding container ports 198

Getting ready 199
How to do it... 200
Container-to-container communication 200
Pod-to-Pod communication 204
Working with NetworkPolicy 205
Pod-to-Service communication 209
External-to-internal communication 213
Working with Ingress 214
There's more... 218
See also 220
Ensuring flexible usage of your containers 220
Getting ready 220
How to do it... 222
Pod as DaemonSets 222
Running a stateful Pod 225
How it works... 229
Pod recovery by DaemonSets 229
Pod recovery by StatefulSet 230
There's more... 232
See also 237
Submitting Jobs on Kubernetes 237
Getting ready 237
How to do it... 237
Pod as a single Job 238
Create a repeatable Job 240
Create a parallel Job 241
Schedule to run Job using CronJob 243
How it works... 245
See also 245
Working with configuration files 245
Getting ready 245
YAML 246
JSON 246
How to do it... 247
How it works... 251
Pod 251
Deployment 251
Service 251
See also 252
Chapter 4: Building High-Availability Clusters 253
Introduction 253
Clustering etcd 253
Getting ready 254
How to do it... 255
Static mechanism 256

[v]
Table of Contents

Discovery mechanism 260

kubeadm 264
kubespray 264
Kops 265
See also 265
Building multiple masters 265
Getting ready 267
How to do it... 267
Setting up the first master 268
Setting up the other master with existing certifications 269
Adding nodes in a HA cluster 270
How it works... 271
See also 275
Chapter 5: Building Continuous Delivery Pipelines 276
Introduction 276
Moving monolithic to microservices 276
Getting ready 277
How to do it... 278
Microservices 279
Frontend WebUI 282
How it works... 284
Microservices 285
Frontend WebUI 286
Working with the private Docker registry 289
Getting ready 290
Using Kubernetes to run a Docker registry server 290
Using Amazon elastic container registry 292
Using Google cloud registry 293
How to do it... 293
Launching a private registry server using Kubernetes 294
Creating a self-signed SSL certificate 294
Creating HTTP secret 295
Creating the HTTP basic authentication file 295
Creating a Kubernetes secret to store security files 296
Configuring a private registry to load a Kubernetes secret 297
Create a repository on the AWS elastic container registry 299
Determining your repository URL on Google container registry 300
How it works... 301
Push and pull an image from your private registry 301
Push and pull an image from Amazon ECR 303
Push and pull an image from Google cloud registry 305
Using gcloud to wrap the Docker command 305
Using the GCP service account to grant a long-lived credential 306
Integrating with Jenkins 308
Getting ready 308
How to do it... 309
Setting up a custom Jenkins image 310

[ vi ]
Table of Contents

Setting up Kubernetes service account and ClusterRole 311

Launching the Jenkins server via Kubernetes deployment 312
How it works... 314
Using Jenkins to build a Docker image 316
Deploying the latest container image to Kubernetes 322
Chapter 6: Building Kubernetes on AWS 325
Introduction 325
Playing with Amazon Web Services 325
Getting ready 326
Creating an IAM user 326
Installing AWS CLI on macOS 329
Installing AWS CLI on Windows 330
How to do it... 331
How it works... 332
Creating VPC and Subnets 332
Internet gateway 334
NAT-GW 336
Security group 338
EC2 339
Setting up Kubernetes with kops 343
Getting ready 343
How to do it... 344
How it works... 346
Working with kops-built AWS cluster 347
Deleting kops-built AWS cluster 348
See also 348
Using AWS as Kubernetes Cloud Provider 348
Getting ready 349
How to do it... 350
Elastic load balancer as LoadBalancer service 350
Elastic Block Store as StorageClass 354
There's more... 356
Managing Kubernetes cluster on AWS by kops 357
Getting ready 357
How to do it... 358
Modifying and resizing instance groups 358
Updating nodes 358
Updating masters 360
Upgrading a cluster 361
There's more... 364
See also 364
Chapter 7: Building Kubernetes on GCP 365
Playing with GCP 365
Getting ready 365
Creating a GCP project 366
Installing Cloud SDK 368

[ vii ]
Table of Contents

Installing Cloud SDK on Windows 368

Installing Cloud SDK on Linux and macOS 370
Configuring Cloud SDK 371
How to do it... 372
Creating a VPC 373
Creating subnets 374
Creating firewall rules 375
Adding your ssh public key to GCP 376
How it works... 376
Launching VM instances 377
Playing with Google Kubernetes Engine 381
Getting ready 381
How to do it… 385
How it works… 388
See also 391
Exploring CloudProvider on GKE 392
Getting ready 392
How to do it… 392
StorageClass 392
Service (LoadBalancer) 394
Ingress 397
There's more… 403
See also 403
Managing Kubernetes clusters on GKE 403
Getting ready 404
How to do it… 404
Node pool 404
Multi-zone and regional clusters 410
Multi-zone clusters 410
Regional clusters 411
Cluster upgrades 412
See also 414
Chapter 8: Advanced Cluster Administration 415
Introduction 415
Advanced settings in kubeconfig 416
Getting ready 417
How to do it... 418
Setting new credentials 419
Setting new clusters 420
Setting contexts and changing current-context 421
Cleaning up kubeconfig 422
There's more... 423
See also 423
Setting resources in nodes 423
Getting ready 424
How to do it... 425

[ viii ]
Table of Contents

Configuring a BestEffort pod 426

Configuring a Guaranteed pod 428
Configuring a Burstable pod 429
How it works... 430
See also 432
Playing with WebUI 432
Getting ready 432
How to do it... 433
Relying on the dashboard created by minikube 433
Creating a dashboard manually on a system using other booting tools 433
How it works... 437
Browsing your resource by dashboard 438
Deploying resources by dashboard 441
Removing resources by dashboard 445
See also 445
Working with the RESTful API 445
Getting ready 446
How to do it... 448
How it works... 451
There's more... 452
See also 453
Working with Kubernetes DNS 453
Getting ready 453
How to do it... 454
DNS for pod 454
DNS for Kubernetes Service 456
DNS for StatefulSet 458
How it works... 461
Headless service when pods scale out 462
See also 465
Authentication and authorization 465
Getting ready 465
How to do it... 466
Authentication 467
Service account token authentication 467
X509 client certs 470
OpenID connect tokens 472
Authorization 475
Role and RoleBinding 475
ClusterRole and ClusterRoleBinding 476
Role-based access control (RBAC) 478
Admission control 479
NamespaceLifecycle 480
LimitRanger 480
ServiceAccount 480
PersistentVolumeLabel (deprecated from v1.8) 480
DefaultStorageClass 480
DefaultTolerationSeconds 481

[ ix ]
Table of Contents

ResourceQuota 481
DenyEscalatingExec 481
AlwaysPullImages 481
There's more… 482
Initializers (alpha) 482
Webhook admission controllers (beta in v1.9) 482
See also 483
Chapter 9: Logging and Monitoring 484
Introduction 484
Working with EFK 484
Getting ready 485
How to do it... 485
Setting up EFK with minikube 486
Setting up EFK with kubespray 488
Setting up EFK with kops 491
How it works... 493
There's more... 496
See also 501
Working with Google Stackdriver 501
Getting ready 501
How to do it... 502
How it works... 506
See also 507
Monitoring master and node 508
Getting ready 508
How to do it... 509
How it works... 510
Introducing the Grafana dashboard 511
Creating a new metric to monitor Pod 513
There's more... 516
Monitoring your Kubernetes cluster on AWS 516
Monitoring your Kubernetes cluster on GCP 517
See also 518
Other Books You May Enjoy 520
Index 523

[x]
 Preface
With the trend of microservices architecture in the recent years, a monolithic application is
refactored into multiple microservices. Container simplifies the deployment of the
application build from microservices. Container management, automation, and
orchestration have become crucial problems. Kubernetes is here to solve these.

This book is a practical guide that provides step-by-step tips and examples to help you
build and run your own Kubernetes cluster in both private and public clouds. Following
along with the book will lead you to understanding how to deploy and manage your
application and services in Kubernetes. You will also gain a deep understanding of how to
scale and update live containers, and how to do port forwarding and network routing in
Kubernetes. You will learn how to build a robust high-availability cluster with the book's
hands-on examples. Finally, you will build a Continuous Delivery pipeline by integrating
Jenkins, Docker registry, and Kubernetes.

Who this book is for

If you've been playing with Docker containers for a while and want to orchestrate your
containers in a modern way, this book is the right choice for you. This book is for those who
already understand Docker and container technology, and want to explore further to find
better ways to orchestrate, manage, and deploy containers. This book is perfect for going
beyond a single container and working with container clusters, learning how to build your
own Kubernetes, and making it work seamlessly with your Continuous Delivery pipeline.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Building Your Own Kubernetes Cluster, explains how to build your own
Kubernetes cluster with various deployment tools and run your first container on it.

Chapter 2, Walking through Kubernetes Concepts, covers both basic and advanced concepts
we need to know about Kubernetes. Then, you will learn how to combine them to create
Kubernetes objects by writing and applying configuration files.
Preface

Chapter 3, Playing with Containers, explains how to scale your containers up and down and
perform rolling updates without affecting application availability. Furthermore, you will
learn how deploy containers for dealing with different application workloads. It will also
walk you through best practices of configuration files.

Chapter 4, Building High-Availability Clusters, provides information on how to build High

Availability Kubernetes master and etcd. This will prevent Kubernetes components from
being the single point of failure.

Chapter 5, Building Continuous Delivery Pipelines, talks about how to integrate Kubernetes
into an existing Continuous Delivery pipeline with Jenkins and private Docker registry.

Chapter 6, Building Kubernetes on AWS, walks you through AWS fundamentals. You will
learn how to build a Kuberentes cluster on AWS in few minutes.

Chapter 7, Building Kubernetes on GCP, leads you to the Google Cloud Platform world. You
will learn the GCP essentials and how to launch a managed, production-ready Kubernetes
cluster with just a few clicks.

Chapter 8, Advanced Cluster Administration, talks about important resource management in

Kubernetes. This chapter also goes through other important cluster administration, such as
Kubernetes dashboard, authentication, and authorization.

Chapter 9, Logging and Monitoring, explains how to collect both system and application logs
in Kubernetes by using Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana (ELK). You will also learn how
to leverage Heapster, InfluxDB, and Grafana to monitor your Kubernetes cluster.

To get the most out of this book

Throughout the book, we use at least three servers with a Linux-based OS to build all of the
components in Kubernetes. At the beginning of the book, you could use one machine,
whether it is Linux or Windows, to learn about the concepts and basic deployment. From a
scalability point of view, we recommend you start with three servers in order to scale out
the components independently and push your cluster to the production level.

[2]
Preface

Download the example code files

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Download the color images

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Conventions used
There are a number of text conventions used throughout this book.

[3]
Preface

CodeInText: Indicates code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames,
file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles. Here is an
example: "Prepare the following YAML file, which is a simple Deployment that launches
two nginx containers."

A block of code is set as follows:

# cat 3-1-1_deployment.yaml
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
name: my-nginx

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines
or items are set in bold:
Annotations: deployment.kubernetes.io/revision=1
Selector: env=test,project=My-Happy-Web,role=frontend
Replicas: 5 desired | 5 updated | 5 total | 5 available | 0
unavailable
StrategyType: RollingUpdate

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

//install kubectl command by "kubernetes-cli" package
$ brew install kubernetes-cli

Bold: Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see onscreen. For
example, words in menus or dialog boxes appear in the text like this. Here is an example:
"Installation is straightforward, so we can just choose the default options and click Next."

Warnings or important notes appear like this.

Tips and tricks appear like this.

[4]
Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
that there was approaching an hour which was annually set apart for
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and a sense of its prodigious strength and awful gloom overwhelmed
her. On the top of the wall, holding by an iron railing, there stood a
man with a rifle trailing behind him. He was looking down into the
yard inside. His attitude of watchfulness, his weapon, the unseen
thing that was being thus fiercely guarded, provoked in her such a
revulsion that she came to a standstill.
What in the name of mercy had she come here for? She began
to tremble. The man with the flowers came up to her and halted.
From the prison there came at this instant the loud clang of a bell,
and succeeding this a prolonged and resonant murmur which
seemed to increase. Miss Eunice looked hastily around her. There
were several people who must have heard the same sounds that
reached her ears, but they were not alarmed. In fact, one or two of
them seemed to be going to the prison direct. The courage of our
philanthropist began to revive. A woman in a brick house opposite
suddenly pulled up a window-curtain and fixed an amused and
inquisitive look upon her.
This would have sent her into a thrice-heated furnace. “Come, if
you please,” she commanded the man, and she marched upon the
jail.
She entered at first a series of neat offices in a wing of the
structure, and then she came to a small door made of black bars of
iron. A man stood on the farther side of this, with a bunch of large
keys. When he saw Miss Eunice he unlocked and opened the door,
and she passed through.
She found that she had entered a vast, cool, and lofty cage, one
hundred feet in diameter; it had an iron floor, and there were several
people strolling about here and there. Through several grated
apertures the sunlight streamed with strong effect, and a soft breeze
swept around the cavernous apartment.
Without the cage, before her and on either hand, were three
more wings of the building, and in these were the prisoners’
corridors.
At the moment she entered, the men were leaving their cells,
and mounting the stone stairs in regular order, on their way to the
chapel above. The noisy files went up and down and to the right and
to the left, shuffling and scraping and making a great tumult. The
men were dressed in blue, and were seen indistinctly through the
lofty gratings. From above and below and all around her there came
the metallic snapping of bolts and the rattle of moving bars; and so
significant was everything of savage repression and impending
violence, that Miss Eunice was compelled to say faintly to herself, “I
am afraid it will take a little time to get used to all this.”
She rested upon one of the seats in the rotunda while the chapel
services were being conducted, and she thus had an opportunity to
regain a portion of her lost heart. She felt wonderfully dwarfed and
belittled, and her plan of recovering souls had, in some way or other,
lost much of its feasibility. A glance at her bright flowers revived her
a little, as did also a surprising, long-drawn roar from over her head,
to the tune of “America.” The prisoners were singing.
Miss Eunice was not alone in her intended work, for there were
several other ladies, also with supplies of flowers, who with her
awaited until the prisoners should descend into the yard and be let
loose before presenting them with what they had brought. Their
common purpose made them acquainted, and by the aid of chat and
sympathy they fortified each other.
Half an hour later the five hundred men descended from the
chapel to the yard, rushing out upon its bare broad surface as you
have seen a burst of water suddenly irrigate a road-bed. A hoarse
and tremendous shout at once filled the air, and echoed against the
walls like the threat of a volcano. Some of the wretches waltzed and
spun around like dervishes, some threw somersaults, some folded
their arms gravely and marched up and down, some fraternized,
some walked away pondering, some took off their tall caps and sat
down in the shade, some looked towards the rotunda with
expectation, and there were those who looked towards it with
contempt.
There led from the rotunda to the yard a flight of steps. Miss
Eunice descended these steps with a quaking heart, and a turnkey
shouted to the prisoners over her head that she and others had
flowers for them.
No sooner had the words left his lips, than the men rushed up
pell-mell.
This was a crucial moment.
There thronged upon Miss Eunice an army of men who were
being punished for all the crimes in the calendar. Each individual
here had been caged because he was either a highwayman, or a
forger, or a burglar, or a ruffian, or a thief, or a murderer. The
unclean and frightful tide bore down upon our terrified missionary,
shrieking and whooping. Every prisoner thrust out his hand over the
head of the one in front of him, and the foremost plucked at her
dress.
 She had need of courage. A sense of danger and contamination
impelled her to fly, but a gleam of reason in the midst of her
distraction enabled her to stand her ground. She forced herself to
smile, though she knew her face had grown pale.
She placed a bunch of flowers into an immense hand which
projected from a coarse blue sleeve in front of her; the owner of the
hand was pushed away so quickly by those who came after him that
Miss Eunice failed to see his face. Her tortured ear caught a rough
“Thank y’, miss!” The spirit of Miss Crofutt revived in a flash, and her
disciple thereafter possessed no lack of nerve.
She plied the crowd with flowers as long as they lasted, and a
jaunty self-possession enabled her finally to gaze without flinching at
the mass of depraved and wicked faces with which she was
surrounded. Instead of retaining her position upon the steps, she
gradually descended into the yard, as did several other visitors. She
began to feel at home; she found her tongue, and her color came
back again. She felt a warm pride in noticing with what care and
respect the prisoners treated her gifts; they carried them about with
great tenderness, and some compared them with those of their
friends.
Presently she began to recall her plans. It occurred to her to
select her two or three villains. For one, she immediately pitched
upon a lean-faced wretch in front of her. He seemed to be old, for his
back was bent and he leaned upon a cane. His features were large,
and they bore an expression of profound gloom. His head was sunk
upon his breast, his lofty conical cap was pulled over his ears, and
his shapeless uniform seemed to weigh him down, so infirm was he.
Miss Eunice spoke to him. He did not hear; she spoke again. He
glanced at her like a flash, but without moving; this was at once
followed by a scrutinizing look. He raised his head, and then he
turned toward her gravely.
The solemnity of his demeanor nearly threw Miss Eunice off her
balance, but she mastered herself by beginning to talk rapidly. The
prisoner leaned over a little to hear better. Another came up, and two
or three turned around to look. She bethought herself of an incident
related in Miss Crofutt’s book, and she essayed its recital. It
concerned a lawyer who was once pleading in a French criminal
court in behalf of a man whose crime had been committed under the
influence of dire want. In his plea he described the case of another
whom he knew who had been punished with a just but short
imprisonment instead of a long one, which the judge had been at
liberty to impose, but from which he humanely refrained. Miss Eunice
happily remembered the words of the lawyer: “That man suffered like
the wrong-doer that he was. He knew his punishment was just.
Therefore there lived perpetually in his breast an impulse toward a
better life which was not suppressed and stifled by the five years he
passed within the walls of the jail. He came forth and began to labor.
He toiled hard. He struggled against averted faces and cold words,
and he began to rise. He secreted nothing, faltered at nothing, and
never stumbled. He succeeded; men took off their hats to him once
more; he became wealthy, honorable, God-fearing. I, gentlemen, am
that man, that criminal.” As she quoted this last declaration, Miss
Eunice erected herself with burning eyes and touched herself
proudly upon the breast. A flush crept into her cheeks, and her
nostrils dilated, and she grew tall.
She came back to earth again, and found herself surrounded
with the prisoners. She was a little startled.
“Ah, that was good!” ejaculated the old man upon whom she had
fixed her eyes. Miss Eunice felt an inexpressible sense of delight.
Murmurs of approbation came from all of her listeners, especially
from one on her right hand. She looked around at him pleasantly.
But the smile faded from her lips on beholding him. He was
extremely tall and very powerful. He overshadowed her. His face
was large, ugly, and forbidding; his gray hair and beard were
cropped close, his eyebrows met at the bridge of his nose and
overhung his large eyes like a screen. His lips were very wide, and,
being turned downwards at the corners, they gave him a dolorous
expression. His lower jaw was square and protruding, and a pair of
prodigious white ears projected from beneath his sugar-loaf cap. He
seemed to take his cue from the old man, for he repeated his
sentiment.
“Yes,” said he, with a voice which broke alternately into a roar
and a whisper, “that was a good story.”
“Y-yes,” faltered Miss Eunice, “and it has the merit of being t-
rue.”
He replied with a nod, and looked absently over her head while
he rubbed the nap upon his chin with his hand. Miss Eunice
discovered that his knee touched the skirt of her dress, and she was
about to move in order to destroy this contact, when she
remembered that Miss Crofutt would probably have cherished the
accident as a promoter of a valuable personal influence, so she
allowed it to remain. The lean-faced man was not to be mentioned in
the same breath with this one, therefore she adopted the superior
villain out of hand.
She began to approach him. She asked him where he lived,
meaning to discover whence he had come. He replied in the same
mixture of roar and whisper, “Six undered un one, North Wing.”
Miss Eunice grew scarlet. Presently she recovered sufficiently to
pursue some inquiries respecting the rules and customs of the
prison. She did not feel that she was interesting her friend, yet it
seemed clear that he did not wish to go away. His answers were
curt, yet he swept his cap off his head, implying by the act a certain
reverence, which Miss Eunice’s vanity permitted her to exult at.
Therefore she became more loquacious than ever. Some men came
up to speak with the prisoner, but he shook them off, and remained
in an attitude of strict attention, with his chin on his hand, looking
now at the sky, now at the ground, and now at Miss Eunice.
In handling the flowers her gloves had been stained, and she
now held them in her fingers, nervously twisting them as she talked.
In the course of time she grew short of subjects, and, as her listener
suggested nothing, several lapses occurred; in one of them she
absently spread her gloves out in her palms, meanwhile wondering
how the English girl acted under similar circumstances.
 Suddenly a large hand slowly interposed itself between her eyes
and her gloves, and then withdrew, taking one of the soiled trifles
with it.
She was surprised, but the surprise was pleasurable. She said
nothing at first. The prisoner gravely spread his prize out upon his
own palm, and after looking at it carefully, he rolled it up into a tight
ball and thrust it deep in an inner pocket.
This act made the philanthropist aware that she had made
progress. She rose insensibly to the elevation of patron, and she
made promises to come frequently and visit her ward and to look in
upon him when he was at work; while saying this she withdrew a
little from the shade his huge figure had supplied her with.
He thrust his hands into his pockets, but he hastily took them out
again. Still he said nothing and hung his head. It was while she was
in the mood of a conqueror that Miss Eunice went away. She felt a
touch of repugnance at stepping from before his eyes a free woman,
therefore she took pains to go when she thought he was not looking.
She pointed him out to a turnkey, who told her he was expiating
the sins of assault and burglarious entry. Outwardly Miss Eunice
looked grieved, but within she exulted that he was so emphatically a
rascal.
When she emerged from the cool, shadowy, and frowning prison
into the gay sunlight, she experienced a sense of bewilderment. The
significance of a lock and a bar seemed greater on quitting them
than it had when she had perceived them first. The drama of
imprisonment and punishment oppressed her spirit with tenfold
gloom now that she gazed upon the brilliancy and freedom of the
outer world. That she and everybody around her were permitted to
walk here and there at will, without question and limit, generated
within her an indefinite feeling of gratitude; and the noise, the colors,
the creaking wagons, the myriad voices, the splendid variety and
change of all things excited a profound but at the same time a
mournful satisfaction.
 Midway in her return journey she was shrieked at from a
carriage, which at once approached the sidewalk. Within it were four
gay maidens bound to the Navy-Yard, from whence they were to sail,
with a large party of people of nice assortment, in an experimental
steamer, which was to be made to go with kerosene lamps, in some
way. They seized upon her hands and cajoled her. Wouldn’t she go?
They were to sail down among the islands (provided the oil made the
wheels and things go round), they were to lunch at Fort Warren, dine
at Fort Independence, and dance at Fort Winthrop. Come, please
go. Oh, do! The Germanians were to furnish the music.
Miss Eunice sighed, but shook her head. She had not yet got the
air of the prison out of her lungs, nor the figure of her robber out of
her eyes, nor the sense of horror and repulsion out of her
sympathies.
At another time she would have gone to the ends of the earth
with such a happy crew, but now she only shook her head again and
was resolute. No one could wring a reason from her, and the
wondering quartet drove away.

II
Before the day went, Miss Eunice awoke to the disagreeable fact
that her plans had become shrunken and contracted, that a certain
something had curdled her spontaneity, and that her ardor had flown
out at some crevice and had left her with the dry husk of an intent.
She exerted herself to glow a little, but she failed. She talked
well at the tea-table, but she did not tell about the glove. This matter
plagued her. She ran over in her mind the various doings of Miss
Crofutt, and she could not conceal from herself that that lady had
never given a glove to one of her wretches; no, nor had she ever
permitted the smallest approach to familiarity.
Miss Eunice wept a little. She was on the eve of despairing.
 In the silence of the night the idea presented itself to her with a
disagreeable baldness. There was a thief over yonder that
possessed a confidence with her.
They had found it necessary to shut this man up in iron and
stone, and to guard him with a rifle with a large leaden ball in it.
This villain was a convict. That was a terrible word, one that
made her blood chill.
She, the admired of hundreds and the beloved of a family, had
done a secret and shameful thing of which she dared not tell. In
these solemn hours the madness of her act appalled her.
She asked herself what might not the fellow do with the glove?
Surely he would exhibit it among his brutal companions, and perhaps
allow it to pass to and fro among them. They would laugh and joke
with him, and he would laugh and joke in return, and no doubt he
would kiss it to their great delight. Again, he might go to her friends,
and, by working upon their fears and by threatening an exposure of
her, extort large sums of money from them. Again, might he not
harass her by constantly appearing to her at all times and all places
and making all sorts of claims and demands? Again, might he not,
with terrible ingenuity, use it in connection with some false key or
some jack-in-the-box, or some dark-lantern, or something, in order to
effect his escape; or might he not tell the story times without count to
some wretched curiosity-hunters who would advertise her folly all
over the country, to her perpetual misery?
She became harnessed to this train of thought. She could not
escape from it. She reversed the relation that she had hoped to hold
toward such a man, and she stood in his shadow, and not he in hers.
In consequence of these ever-present fears and sensations,
there was one day, not very far in the future, that she came to have
an intolerable dread of. This day was the one on which the sentence
of the man was to expire. She felt that he would surely search for
her; and that he would find her there could be no manner of doubt,
for, in her surplus of confidence, she had told him her full name,
inasmuch as he had told her his.
 When she contemplated this new source of terror, her peace of
mind fled directly. So did her plans for philanthropic labor. Not a
shred remained. The anxiety began to tell upon her, and she took to
peering out of a certain shaded window that commanded the square
in front of her house. It was not long before she remembered that for
good behavior certain days were deducted from the convicts’ terms
of imprisonment. Therefore, her ruffian might be released at a
moment not anticipated by her. He might, in fact, be discharged on
any day. He might be on his way towards her even now.
She was not very far from right, for suddenly the man did appear.
He one day turned the corner, as she was looking out at the
window fearing that she should see him, and came in a diagonal
direction across the hot, flagged square.
Miss Eunice’s pulse leaped into the hundreds. She glued her
eyes upon him. There was no mistake. There was the red face, the
evil eyes, the large mouth, the gray hair, and the massive frame.
What should she do? Should she hide? Should she raise the
sash and shriek to the police? Should she arm herself with a knife?
or—what? In the name of mercy, what? She glared into the street.
He came on steadily, and she lost him, for he passed beneath her. In
a moment she heard the jangle of the bell. She was petrified. She
heard his heavy step below. He had gone into the little reception
room beside the door. He crossed to a sofa opposite the mantel. She
then heard him get up and go to a window, then he walked about,
and then sat down; probably upon a red leather seat beside the
window.
Meanwhile the servant was coming to announce him. From
some impulse, which was a strange and sudden one, she eluded the
maid, and rushed headlong upon her danger. She never
remembered her descent of the stairs. She awoke to cool
contemplation of matters only to find herself entering the room.
Had she made a mistake, after all? It was a question that was
asked and answered in a flash. This man was pretty erect and self-
assured, but she discerned in an instant that there was needed but
the blue woollen jacket and the tall cap to make him the wretch of a
month before.
He said nothing. Neither did she. He stood up and occupied
himself by twisting a button upon his waistcoat. She, fearing a threat
or a demand, stood bridling to receive it. She looked at him from top
to toe with parted lips.
He glanced at her. She stepped back. He put the rim of his cap
in his mouth and bit it once or twice, and then looked out at the
window. Still neither spoke. A voice at this instant seemed
impossible.
He glanced again like a flash. She shrank, and put her hands
upon the bolt. Presently he began to stir. He put out one foot, and
gradually moved forward. He made another step. He was going
away. He had almost reached the door, when Miss Eunice
articulated, in a confused whisper, “My—my glove; I wish you would
give me my glove.”
He stopped, fixed his eyes upon her, and after passing his
fingers up and down upon the outside of his coat, said, with
deliberation, in a husky voice, “No, mum. I’m goin’ fur to keep it as
long as I live, if it takes two thousand years.”
“Keep it!” she stammered.
“Keep it,” he replied.
He gave her an untranslatable look. It neither frightened her nor
permitted her to demand the glove more emphatically. She felt her
cheeks and temples and her hands grow cold, and midway in the
process of fainting she saw him disappear. He vanquished quietly.
Deliberation and respect characterized his movements, and there
was not so much as a jar of the outer door.
Poor philanthropist!
This incident nearly sent her to a sick-bed. She fully expected
that her secret would appear in the newspapers in full, and she lived
in dread of the onslaught of an angry and outraged society.
 The more she reflected upon what her possibilities had been and
how she had misused them, the iller and the more distressed she
got. She grew thin and spare of flesh. Her friends became
frightened. They began to dose her and to coddle her. She looked at
them with eyes full of supreme melancholy, and she frequently wept
upon their shoulders.
In spite of her precautions, however, a thunderbolt slipped in.
One day her father read at the table an item that met his eye. He
repeated it aloud, on account of the peculiar statement in the last
line:—
“Detained on suspicion.—A rough-looking fellow, who gave the
name of Gorman, was arrested on the high-road to Tuxbridge
Springs for suspected complicity in some recent robberies in the
neighborhood. He was fortunately able to give a pretty clear account
of his late whereabouts, and he was permitted to depart with a
caution from the justice. Nothing was found upon him but a few
coppers and an old kid glove wrapped in a bit of paper.”
Miss Eunice’s soup spilled. This was too much, and she fainted
this time in right good earnest; and she straightway became an
invalid of the settled type. They put her to bed. The doctor told her
plainly that he knew she had a secret, but she looked at him so
imploringly that he refrained from telling his fancies; but he ordered
an immediate change of air. It was settled at once that she should go
to the “Springs”—to Tuxbridge Springs. The doctor knew there were
young people there, also plenty of dancing. So she journeyed thither
with her pa and her ma and with pillows and servants.
They were shown to their rooms, and strong porters followed
with the luggage. One of them had her huge trunk upon his shoulder.
He put it carefully upon the floor, and by so doing he disclosed the
ex-prisoner to Miss Eunice and Miss Eunice to himself. He was
astonished, but he remained silent. But she must needs be
frightened and fall into another fit of trembling. After an awkward
moment he went away, while she called to her father and begged
piteously to be taken away from Tuxbridge Springs instantly. There
was no appeal. She hated, hated, HATED Tuxbridge Springs, and
she should die if she were forced to remain. She rained tears. She
would give no reason, but she could not stay. No, millions on millions
could not persuade her; go she must. There was no alternative. The
party quitted the place within the hour, bag and baggage. Miss
Eunice’s father was perplexed and angry, and her mother would
have been angry also if she had dared.
They went to other springs and stayed a month, but the patient’s
fright increased each day, and so did her fever. She was full of
distractions. In her dreams everybody laughed at her as the one who
had flirted with a convict. She would ever be pursued with the tale of
her foolishness and stupidity. Should she ever recover her self-
respect and confidence?
She had become radically selfish. She forgot the old ideas of
noble-heartedness and self-denial, and her temper had become
weak and childish. She did not meet her puzzle face to face, but she
ran away from it with her hands over her ears. Miss Crofutt stared at
her, and therefore she threw Miss Crofutt’s book into the fire.
After two days of unceasing debate, she called her parents, and
with the greatest agitation told them all.
It so happened, in this case, that events, to use a railroad
phrase, made connection.
No sooner had Miss Eunice told her story than the man came
again. This time he was accompanied by a woman.
“Only get my glove away from him,” sobbed the unhappy one,
“that is all I ask!” This was a fine admission! It was thought proper to
bring an officer, and so a strong one was sent for.
Meanwhile the couple had been admitted to the parlor. Miss
Eunice’s father stationed the officer at one door, while he, with a
pistol, stood at the other. Then Miss Eunice went into the apartment.
She was wasted, weak, and nervous. The two villains got up as she
came in, and bowed. She began to tremble as usual, and laid hold
upon the mantelpiece. “How much do you want?” she gasped.
The man gave the woman a push with his forefinger. She
stepped forward quickly with her crest up. Her eyes turned, and she
fixed a vixenish look upon Miss Eunice. She suddenly shot her hand
out from beneath her shawl and extended it at full length. Across it
lay Miss Eunice’s glove, very much soiled.
“Was that thing ever yours?” demanded the woman, shrilly.
“Y-yes,” said Miss Eunice, faintly.
The woman seemed (if the apt word is to be excused)
staggered. She withdrew her hand, and looked the glove over. The
man shook his head, and began to laugh behind his hat.
“And did you ever give it to him?” pursued the woman, pointing
over her shoulder with her thumb.
Miss Eunice nodded.
“Of your own free will?”
After a moment of silence she ejaculated, in a whisper, “Yes.”
“Now wait,” said the man, coming to the front; “’nough has been
said by you.” He then addressed himself to Miss Eunice with the
remains of his laugh still illuminating his face.
“This is my wife’s sister, and she’s one of the jealous kind. I love
my wife” (here he became grave), “and I never showed her any kind
of slight that I know of. I’ve always been fair to her, and she’s always
been fair to me. Plain sailin’ so far; I never kep’ anything from her—
but this.” He reached out and took the glove from the woman, and
spread it out upon his own palm, as Miss Eunice had seen him do
once before. He looked at it thoughtfully. “I wouldn’t tell her about
this; no, never. She was never very particular to ask me; that’s where
her trust in me came in. She knowed I was above doing anything out
of the way—that is—I mean—” He stammered and blushed, and
then rushed on volubly. “But her sister here thought I paid too much
attention to it; she thought I looked at it too much, and kep’ it secret.
So she nagged and nagged, and kept the pitch boilin’ until I had to
let it out: I told ’em” (Miss Eunice shivered). “‘No,’ says she, my
wife’s sister, ‘that won’t do, Gorman. That’s chaff, and I’m too old a
bird.’ Ther’fore I fetched her straight to you, so she could put the
question direct.”
 He stopped a moment as if in doubt how to go on. Miss Eunice
began to open her eyes, and she released the mantel. The man
resumed with something like impressiveness:
“When you last held that,” said he, slowly, balancing the glove in
his hand, “I was a wicked man with bad intentions through and
through. When I first held it I became an honest man, with good
intentions.”
A burning blush of shame covered Miss Eunice’s face and neck.
“An’ as I kep’ it my intentions went on improvin’ and improvin’, till
I made up my mind to behave myself in future, forever. Do you
understand?—forever. No backslidin’, no hitchin’, no slippin’-up. I
take occasion to say, miss, that I was beset time and again; that the
instant I set my foot outside them prison-gates, over there, my old
chums got round me; but I shook my head. ‘No,’ says I, ‘I won’t go
back on the glove.’”
Miss Eunice hung her head. The two had exchanged places, she
thought; she was the criminal and he the judge.
“An’ what is more,” continued he, with the same weight in his
tone, “I not only kep’ sight of the glove, but I kep’ sight of the
generous sperrit that gave it. I didn’t let that go. I never forgot what
you meant. I knowed—I knowed,” repeated he, lifting his forefinger,
—“I knowed a time would come when there wouldn’t be any
enthoosiasm, any ‘hurrah,’ and then perhaps you’d be sorry you was
so kind to me; an’ the time did come.”
Miss Eunice buried her face in her hands and wept aloud.
“But did I quit the glove? No, mum. I held on to it. It was what I
fought by. I wasn’t going to give it up, because it was asked for. All
the police-officers in the city couldn’t have took it from me. I put it
deep into my pocket and I walked out. It was differcult, miss. But I
come through. The glove did it. It helped me stand out against
temptation when it was strong. If I looked at it, I remembered that
once there was a pure heart that pitied me. It cheered me up. After a
while I kinder got out of the mud. Then I got work. The glove again.
Then a girl that knowed me before I took to bad ways married me,
and no questions asked. Then I just took the glove into a dark corner
and blessed it.”
Miss Eunice was belittled.
A noise was heard in the hall-way. Miss Eunice’s father and the
policeman were going away.
The awkwardness of the succeeding silence was relieved by the
moving of the man and the woman. They had done their errand, and
were going.
Said Miss Eunice, with the faint idea of making a practical
apology to her visitor, “I shall go to the prison once a week after this,
I think.”
“Then may God bless ye, miss,” said the man. He came back
with tears in his eyes and took her proffered hand for an instant.
Then he and his wife’s sister went away.
Miss Eunice’s remaining spark of charity at once crackled and
burst into a flame. There is sure to be a little something that is bad in
everybody’s philanthropy when it is first put to use; it requires to be
filed down like a faulty casting before it will run without danger to
anybody. Samaritanism that goes off with half a charge is sure to do
great mischief somewhere; but Miss Eunice’s, now properly
corrected, henceforth shot off at the proper end, and inevitably hit
the mark. She purchased a new Crofutt.
 BAYARD TAYLOR
1825–1878

Bayard Taylor, in the ’60’s and ’70’s, was among the best known of our men of
letters. Typical American in enterprise and resource, he gave most of his life to
foreign lands and letters. Views Afoot (1846), which has sent across the Atlantic
hundreds of young Americans like him in large ambition and small purse, was the
first of a series extending through his life. For a really Viking spirit of travel urged
him over the habitable globe, from Africa to Iceland, from California to Japan. The
store of observations first made newspaper correspondence. His profession was
journalism. Some of the material was subsequently cast in lectures; most of it
appeared finally in books. Thus his trip across the world (1851–1853) to join Perry
furnished, first, copy for the New York “Tribune,” then many popular lectures, and
finally The Lands of the Saracen (1854) and A Visit to India, China and Japan
(1855). His wide knowledge of foreign societies and his intimate acquaintance with
Germany brought him naturally into public life as minister to Berlin (1877–1878).
Admirable journalist, Taylor was not content with journalism. In 1863 at Gotha,
where he had found a wife in 1857, he was deep in the study of Goethe. From
1868–1870, after intervening travels, he gave himself to the translation of “Faust.”
Lecturing then at Cornell as Professor of German Literature, he went back to
Germany to pursue Goethe still further at Weimar. So his knowledge of
Scandinavia was of the literature as well as of the land.
His great ambition, and doubtless his measure of success, was poetry. From
his youthful ventures in Philadelphia almost to the day of his death he published
verse; and the recognition of the public appears in the choice of him to read the
Harvard Φ Β Κ poem in 1850 and the National Ode at the Centennial Exposition of
1876. Since his death this part of his work has been so far slighted that there is
some need of recalling his consistently high aim and the technical mastery evinced
by performances so widely different as the delicious parodies of The Echo Club
and the noble rendering of “Faust.” No criticism of Taylor as a poet should obscure
the fact that his “Faust” takes rank with the few great verse translations.
Taylor’s versatility achieved also a lesser, but still a considerable, success in
novels and tales. The interest aroused by the lively opening of Who Was She? is
sustained with no little art. Perhaps the import would be more poignant if it were
less dangerously near to abstract proposition; but it is very human.
 WHO WAS SHE?
[From the “Atlantic Monthly” September, 1874]
COME, now, there may as well be an end of this! Every time I meet
your eyes squarely, I detect the question just slipping out of them. If
you had spoken it, or even boldly looked it; if you had shown in your
motions the least sign of a fussy or fidgety concern on my account; if
this were not the evening of my birthday, and you the only friend who
remembered it; if confession were not good for the soul, though
harder than sin to some people, of whom I am one,—well, if all
reasons were not at this instant converged into a focus, and burning
me rather violently, in that region where the seat of emotion is
supposed to lie, I should keep my trouble to myself.
Yes, I have fifty times had it on my mind to tell you the whole
story. But who can be certain that his best friend will not smile—or,
what is worse, cherish a kind of charitable pity ever afterwards—
when the external forms of a very serious kind of passion seem
trivial, fantastic, foolish? And the worst of all is that the heroic part
which I imagined I was playing proves to have been almost the
reverse. The only comfort which I can find in my humiliation is that I
am capable of feeling it. There isn’t a bit of a paradox in this, as you
will see; but I only mention it, now, to prepare you for, maybe, a little
morbid sensitiveness of my moral nerves.
The documents are all in this portfolio, under my elbow. I had
just read them again completely through, when you were
announced. You may examine them as you like, afterwards: for the
present, fill your glass, take another Cabaña, and keep silent until
my “ghastly tale” has reached its most lamentable conclusion.
The beginning of it was at Wampsocket Springs, three years ago
last summer. I suppose most unmarried men who have reached, or
passed, the age of thirty—and I was then thirty-three—experience a
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