The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1865, by Ticknor and Fields, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

Transcriber's Note: Minor typos have been corrected and footnotes moved to the end of the article. Table of contents has been created for the HTML version.

THE STORY OF A YEAR.

My story begins as a great many stories have begun within the last three years, and indeed as a great many have ended; for, when the hero is despatched, does not the romance come to a stop?

In early May, two years ago, a young couple I wot of strolled homeward from an evening walk, a long ramble among the peaceful hills which inclosed their rustic home. Into these peaceful hills the young man had brought, not the rumor, (which was an old inhabitant,) but some of the reality of war,—a little whiff of gunpowder, the clanking of a sword; for, although Mr. John Ford had his campaign still before him, he wore a certain comely air of camp-life which stamped him a very Hector to the steady-going villagers, and a very pretty fellow to Miss Elizabeth Crowe, his companion in this sentimental stroll. And was he not attired in the great brightness of blue and gold which befits a freshly made lieutenant? This was a strange sight for these happy Northern glades; for, although the first Revolution had boomed awhile in their midst, the honest yeomen who defended them were clad in sober homespun, and it is well known that His Majesty's troops wore red.

These young people, I say, had been roaming. It was plain that they had wandered into spots where the brambles were thick and the dews heavy,—nay, into swamps and puddles where the April rains were still undried. Ford's boots and trousers had imbibed a deep foretaste of the Virginia mud; his companion's skirts were fearfully bedraggled. What great enthusiasm had made our friends so unmindful of their steps? What blinding ardor had kindled these strange phenomena: a young lieutenant scornful of his first uniform, a well-bred young lady reckless of her stockings?

Elizabeth (as I shall not scruple to call her outright) was leaning upon her companion's arm, half moving in concert with him, and half allowing herself to be led, with that instinctive acknowledgment of dependence natural to a young girl who has just received the assurance of lifelong [Pg 258]protection. Ford was lounging along with that calm, swinging stride which often bespeaks, when you can read it aright, the answering consciousness of a sudden rush of manhood. A spectator might have thought him at this moment profoundly conceited. The young girl's blue veil was dangling from his pocket; he had shouldered her sun-umbrella after the fashion of a musket on a march: he might carry these trifles. Was there not a vague longing expressed in the strong expansion of his stalwart shoulders, in the fond accommodation of his pace to hers,—her pace so submissive and slow, that, when he tried to match it, they almost came to a delightful standstill,—a silent desire for the whole fair burden?

They made their way up a long swelling mound, whose top commanded the sunset. The dim landscape which had been brightening all day to the green of spring was now darkening to the gray of evening. The lesser hills, the farms, the brooks, the fields, orchards, and woods, made a dusky gulf before the great splendor of the west. As Ford looked at the clouds, it seemed to him that their imagery was all of war, their great uneven masses were marshalled into the semblance of a battle. There were columns charging and columns flying and standards floating,—tatters of the reflected purple; and great captains on colossal horses, and a rolling canopy of cannon-smoke and fire and blood. The background of the clouds, indeed, was like a land on fire, or a battle-ground illumined by another sunset, a country of blackened villages and crimsoned pastures. The tumult of the clouds increased; it was hard to believe them inanimate. You might have fancied them an army of gigantic souls playing at football with the sun. They seemed to sway in confused splendor; the opposing squadrons bore each other down; and then suddenly they scattered, bowling with equal velocity towards north and south, and gradually fading into the pale evening sky. The purple pennons sailed away and sank out of sight, caught, doubtless, upon the brambles of the intervening plain. Day contracted itself into a fiery ball and vanished.

"That is an allegory," said the young man, as the sun went under, looking into his companion's face, where a pink flush seemed still to linger: "it means the end of the war. The forces on both sides are withdrawn. The blood that has been shed gathers itself into a vast globule and drops into the ocean."

"I'm afraid it means a shabby compromise," said Elizabeth. "Light disappears, too, and the land is in darkness."

"Only for a season," answered the other. "We mourn our dead. Then light comes again, stronger and brighter than ever. Perhaps you'll be crying for me, Lizzie, at that distant day."

"Oh, Jack, didn't you promise not to talk about that?" says Lizzie, threatening to anticipate the performance in question.

Jack took this rebuke in silence, gazing soberly at the empty sky. Soon the young girl's eyes stole up to his face. If he had been looking at anything in particular, I think she would have followed the direction of his glance; but as it seemed to be a very vacant one, she let her eyes rest.

"Uglier than ever. I shall be all incrusted with mud and gore. And then I shall be magnificently sun-burnt, and I shall have a beard."

"Oh, you dreadful!" and Lizzie gave a little shout. "Really, Jack, if you have a beard, you'll not look like a gentleman."

"To be sure. I mean to alter my face as you do your misfitting garments,—take in on one side and let out on the other. Isn't that the process? I shall crop my head and cultivate my chin."

"You've a very nice chin, my dear, and I think it's a shame to hide it."[Pg 259]

"Oh, the vanity!" cried Lizzie, "the vanity of men in their faces! Talk of women!" and the silly creature looked up at her lover with most inconsistent satisfaction.

"Oh, the pride of women in their husbands!" said Jack, who of course knew what she was about.

"You're not my husband, Sir. There's many a slip"——But the young girl stopped short.

"'Twixt the cup and the lip," said Jack. "Go on. I can match your proverb with another. 'There's many a true word,' and so forth. No, my darling: I'm not your husband. Perhaps I never shall be. But if anything happens to me, you'll take comfort, won't you?"

"Oh, but you must; otherwise, Lizzie, I should think our engagement inexcusable. Stuff! who am I that you should cry for me?"

"Thank you for your great love, my dear. That's a delightful illusion. But I hope Time will kill it, in his own good way, before it hurts any one. I know so many men who are worth infinitely more than I—men wise, generous, and brave—that I shall not feel as if I were leaving you in an empty world."

"Oh, my dear friend!" said Lizzie, after a pause, "I wish you could advise me all my life."

"Take care, take care," laughed Jack; "you don't know what you are bargaining for. But will you let me say a word now? If by chance I'm taken out of the world, I want you to beware of that tawdry sentiment which enjoins you to be 'constant to my memory.' My memory be hanged! Remember me at my best,—that is, fullest of the desire of humility. Don't inflict me on people. There are some widows and bereaved sweethearts who remind me of the peddler in that horrible murder-story, who carried a corpse in his pack. Really, it's their stock in trade. The only justification of a man's personality is his rights. What rights has a dead man?—Let's go down."

"No," said Lizzie, swallowing a sob, unnoticed by her companion in the sublime egotism of protection; "I like it."

"Very well," said the young man, "I want my memory to help you. When I am down in Virginia, I expect to get a vast deal of good from thinking of you,—to do my work better, and to keep straighter altogether. Like all lovers, I'm horribly selfish. I expect to see a vast deal of shabbiness and baseness and turmoil, and in the midst of it all I'm sure the inspiration of patriotism will sometimes fail. Then I'll think of you. I love you a thousand times better than my country, Liz.—Wicked? So much the worse. It's the truth. But if I find your memory makes a milksop of me, I shall thrust you out of the way, without ceremony,—I shall clap you into my box or between the leaves of my Bible, and only look at you on Sunday."

"I shall be very glad, Sir, if that makes you open your Bible frequently," says Elizabeth, rather demurely.

"I shall put one of your photographs against every page," cried Ford; "and then I think I shall not lack a text for my meditations. Don't you know how Catholics keep little pictures of their adored Lady in their prayer-books?"

"Yes, indeed," said Lizzie; "I should think it would be a very soul-stirring picture, when you are marching to the front, the night before a battle,—a poor, stupid girl, knitting stupid socks, in a stupid Yankee village."

Oh, the craft of artless tongues! Jack strode along in silence a few moments, splashing straight through a puddle; then, ere he was quite clear of it, he stretched out his arm and gave his companion a long embrace.

"And pray what am I to do," resumed Lizzie, wondering, rather proudly perhaps, at Jack's averted face, "while[Pg 260] you are marching and countermarching in Virginia?"

"Your duty, of course," said Jack, in a steady voice, which belied a certain little conjecture of Lizzie's. "I think you will find the sun will rise in the east, my dear, just as it did before you were engaged."

"By duty I don't mean anything disagreeable, Liz," pursued the young man. "I hope you'll take your pleasure, too. I wish you might go to Boston, or even to Leatherborough, for a month or two."

"Fun? I'm sure you're welcome to it all. As for me, I mean to make a new beginning."

"Oh, of everything. In the first place, I shall begin to improve my mind. But don't you think it's horrid for women to be reasonable?"

"Horrid,—yes, and hard too. But I mean to become so. Oh, girls are such fools, Jack! I mean to learn to like boiled mutton and history and plain sewing, and all that. Yet, when a girl's engaged, she's not expected to do anything in particular."

"She'll say you've been very unwise. No, she won't: she never speaks so to you. She'll say I've been very dishonest or indelicate, or something of that kind. No, she won't either: she doesn't say such things, though I'm sure she thinks them. I don't know what she'll say."

"No, I think not, Lizzie, if you indulge in such conjectures. My mother never speaks without thinking. Let us hope that she may think favorably of our plan. Even if she doesn't"——

Jack did not finish his sentence, nor did Lizzie urge him. She had a great respect for his hesitations. But in a moment he began again.

"I was going to say this, Lizzie: I think for the present our engagement had better be kept quiet."

Lizzie's heart sank with a sudden disappointment. Imagine the feelings of the damsel in the fairy-tale, whom the disguised enchantress had just empowered to utter diamonds and pearls, should the old beldame have straightway added that for the present mademoiselle had better hold her tongue. Yet the disappointment was brief. I think this enviable young lady would have tripped home talking very hard to herself, and have been not ill pleased to find her little mouth turning into a tightly clasped jewel-casket. Nay, would she not on this occasion have been thankful for a large mouth,—a mouth huge and unnatural,—stretching from ear to ear? Who wish to cast their pearls before swine? The young lady of the pearls was, after all, but a barnyard miss. Lizzie was too proud of Jack to be vain. It's well enough to wear our own hearts upon our sleeves; but for those of others, when intrusted to our keeping, I think we had better find a more secluded lodging.

"You see, I think secrecy would leave us much freer," said Jack,—"leave you much freer."

"Oh, Jack, how can you?" cried Lizzie. "Yes, of course; I shall be falling in love with some one else. Freer! Thank you, Sir!"

"Nay, Lizzie, what I'm saying is really kinder than it sounds. Perhaps you will thank me one of these days."

"I confess I like to take account of[Pg 261] possibilities. Don't you know mathematics are my hobby? Did you ever study algebra? I always have an eye on the unknown quantity."

"No, I never studied algebra. I agree with you, that we had better not speak of our engagement."

"That's right, my dear. You're always right. But mind, I don't want to bind you to secrecy. Hang it, do as you please! Do what comes easiest to you, and you'll do the best thing. What made me speak is my dread of the horrible publicity which clings to all this business. Nowadays, when a girl's engaged, it's no longer, 'Ask mamma,' simply; but, 'Ask Mrs. Brown, and Mrs. Jones, and my large circle of acquaintance,—Mrs. Grundy, in short.' I say nowadays, but I suppose it's always been so."

"Very well, we'll keep it all nice and quiet," said Lizzie, who would have been ready to celebrate her nuptials according to the rites of the Esquimaux, had Jack seen fit to suggest it.

"I know it doesn't look well for a lover to be so cautious," pursued Jack; "but you understand me, Lizzie, don't you?"

"God bless you! My prudence, you see, is my best strength. Now, if ever, I need my strength. When a man's a-wooing, Lizzie, he is all feeling, or he ought to be; when he's accepted, then he begins to think."

"Nay, to devise means to keep his sweetheart from repenting. Let me be frank. Is it the greatest fools only that are the best lovers? There's no telling what may happen, Lizzie. I want you to marry me with your eyes open. I don't want you to feel tied down or taken in. You're very young, you know. You're responsible to yourself of a year hence. You're at an age when no girl can count safely from year's end to year's end."

"Well, I'm on the way to it. I'm a pretty old boy. I mean what I say. I may not be entirely frank, but I think I'm sincere. It seems to me as if I'd been fibbing all my life before I told you that your affection was necessary to my happiness. I mean it out and out. I never loved any one before, and I never will again. If you had refused me half an hour ago, I should have died a bachelor. I have no fear for myself. But I have for you. You said a few minutes ago that you wanted me to be your adviser. Now you know the function of an adviser is to perfect his victim in the art of walking with his eyes shut. I sha'n't be so cruel."

Lizzie saw fit to view these remarks in a humorous light. "How disinterested!" quoth she: "how very self-sacrificing! Bachelor indeed! For my part, I think I shall become a Mormon!"—I verily believe the poor misinformed creature fancied that in Utah it is the ladies who are guilty of polygamy.

Before many minutes they drew near home. There stood Mrs. Ford at the garden-gate, looking up and down the road, with a letter in her hand.

"Something for you, John," said his mother, as they approached. "It looks as if it came from camp.—Why, Elizabeth, look at your skirts!"

"I know it," says Lizzie, giving the articles in question a shake. "What is it, Jack?"

"Marching orders!" cried the young man. "The regiment leaves day after to-morrow. I must leave by the early train in the morning. Hurray!" And he diverted a sudden gleeful kiss into a filial salute.

They went in. The two women were silent, after the manner of women who suffer. But Jack did little else than laugh and talk and circumnavigate the parlor, sitting first here and then there,—close beside Lizzie and on the opposite side of the room. After a while Miss Crowe joined in his laughter, but I think her mirth might have been resolved into articulate heart-beats. After tea she went to bed, to give Jack; opportunity for his last filial épanchements.[Pg 262] How generous a man's intervention makes women! But Lizzie promised to see her lover off in the morning.

"Nonsense!" said Mrs. Ford. "You'll not be up. John will want to breakfast quietly."

Elizabeth went up stairs buoyant with her young love. It had dawned upon her like a new life,—a life positively worth the living. Hereby she would subsist and cost nobody anything. In it she was boundlessly rich. She would make it the hidden spring of a hundred praiseworthy deeds. She would begin the career of duty: she would enjoy boundless equanimity: she would raise her whole being to the level of her sublime passion. She would practise charity, humility, piety,—in fine, all the virtues: together with certain morceaux of Beethoven and Chopin. She would walk the earth like one glorified. She would do homage to the best of men by inviolate secrecy. Here, by I know not what gentle transition, as she lay in the quiet darkness, Elizabeth covered her pillow with a flood of tears.

Meanwhile Ford, down-stairs, began in this fashion. He was lounging at his manly length on the sofa, in his slippers.

"Pipes don't make ashes.—Mother, what do you think?" he continued, between the puffs of his smoking; "I've got a piece of news."

"I hope you'll think it so. I've been engaging myself"—puff,—puff—"to Lizzie Crowe." A cloud of puffs between his mother's face and his own. When they cleared away, Jack felt his mother's eyes. Her work was in her lap. "To be married, you know," he added.

In Mrs. Ford's view, like the king in that of the British Constitution, her only son could do no wrong. Prejudice is a stout bulwark against surprise. Moreover, Mrs. Ford's motherly instinct had not been entirely at fault. Still, it had by no means kept pace with fact. She had been silent, partly from doubt, partly out of respect for her son. As long as John did not doubt of himself, he was right. Should he come to do so, she was sure he would speak. And now, when he told her the matter was settled, she persuaded herself that he was asking her advice.

"I am not sure of Lizzie's heart," said Mrs. Ford, who, it may be well to add, was very sure of her own.

"I think Lizzie's shallow," said Mrs. Ford; and there was that in her tone which betokened some satisfaction with this adjective.

"Hang it! she is shallow," said Jack. "But when a thing's shallow, you can see to the bottom. Lizzie doesn't pretend to be deep. I want a wife, mother, that I can understand. That's the only wife I can love. Lizzie's the only girl I ever understood, and the first I ever loved. I love her very much,—more than I can explain to you."

"Yes, I confess it's inexplicable. It seems to me," she added, with a bad smile, "like infatuation."

Jack did not like the smile; he liked it even less than the remark. He smoked steadily for a few moments, and then he said,—

"Well, mother, love is notoriously obstinate, you know. We shall not be able to take the same view of this subject: suppose we drop it."

There was a pause. The young man[Pg 263] smoked, and his mother sewed, in silence.

"I think my position, as Lizzie's guardian," resumed Mrs. Ford, "entitles me to an interest in the matter."

"Will you allow me to say," said Mrs. Ford, after a while, "that I think this a little selfish?"

"Allow you? Certainly, if you particularly desire it. Though I confess it isn't very pleasant for a man to sit and hear his future wife pitched into,—by his own mother, too."

"I beg your pardon," and John spoke more gently. "You mustn't be surprised at anything from an accepted lover.—I'm sure you misconceive her. In fact, mother, I don't believe you know her."

Mrs. Ford nodded, with an infinite depth of meaning; and from the grimness with which she bit off the end of her thread it might have seemed that she fancied herself to be executing a human vengeance.

"Her best friend," said Mrs. Ford, "is the one who flatters her least. I see it all, John. Her pretty face has done the business."

"Mother," said he, "you are very much mistaken. I'm not a boy nor a fool. You trust me in a great many things; why not trust me in this?"

"My dear son, you are throwing yourself away. You deserve for your companion in life a higher character than that girl."

I think Mrs. Ford, who had been an excellent mother, would have liked to give her son a wife fashioned on her own model.

"Oh, come, mother," said he, "that's twaddle. I should be thankful, if I were half as good as Lizzie."

"It's the truth, John, and your conduct—not only the step you've taken, but your talk about it—is a great disappointment to me. If I have cherished any wish of late, it is that my darling boy should get a wife worthy of him. The household governed by Elizabeth Crowe is not the home I should desire for any one I love."

"I'm sorry," said Jack. And he got up and began to walk about the room. "Well, well, mother," he said at last, stopping in front of Mrs. Ford, "we don't understand each other. One of these days we shall. For the present let us have done with discussion. I'm half sorry I told you."

"I'm glad of such a proof of your confidence. But if you hadn't, of course Elizabeth would have done so."

"I think we had better let the matter stand," continued her son. "I'm not afraid of time. But I wish to make a request of you: you won't mention this conversation to Lizzie, will you? nor allow her to suppose that you know of our engagement? I have a particular reason."

II.

I have no intention of following Lieutenant Ford to the seat of war. The exploits of his campaign are recorded[Pg 264] in the public journals of the day, where the curious may still peruse them. My own taste has always been for unwritten history, and my present business is with the reverse of the picture.

After Jack went off, the two ladies resumed their old homely life. But the homeliest life had now ceased to be repulsive to Elizabeth. Her common duties were no longer wearisome: for the first time, she experienced the delicious companionship of thought. Her chief task was still to sit by the window knitting soldiers' socks; but even Mrs. Ford could not help owning that she worked with a much greater diligence, yawned, rubbed her eyes, gazed up and down the road less, and indeed produced a much more comely article. Ah, me! if half the lovesome fancies that flitted through Lizzie's spirit in those busy hours could have found their way into the texture of the dingy yarn, as it was slowly wrought into shape, the eventual wearer of the socks would have been as light-footed as Mercury. I am afraid I should make the reader sneer, were I to rehearse some of this little fool's diversions. She passed several hours daily in Jack's old chamber: it was in this sanctuary, indeed, at the sunny south window, overlooking the long road, the wood-crowned heights, the gleaming river, that she worked with most pleasure and profit. Here she was removed from the untiring glance of the elder lady, from her jarring questions and commonplaces; here she was alone with her love,—that greatest commonplace in life. Lizzie felt in Jack's room a certain impress of his personality. The idle fancies of her mood were bodied forth in a dozen sacred relics. Some of these articles Elizabeth carefully cherished. It was rather late in the day for her to assert a literary taste,—her reading having begun and ended (naturally enough) with the ancient fiction of the "Scottish Chiefs." So she could hardly help smiling, herself, sometimes, at her interest in Jack's old college tomes. She carried several of them to her own apartment, and placed them at the foot of her little bed, on a book-shelf adorned, besides, with a pot of spring violets, a portrait of General McClellan, and a likeness of Lieutenant Ford. She had a vague belief that a loving study of their well-thumbed verses would remedy, in some degree, her sad intellectual deficiencies. She was sorry she knew so little: as sorry, that is, as she might be, for we know that she was shallow. Jack's omniscience was one of his most awful attributes. And yet she comforted herself with the thought, that, as he had forgiven her ignorance, she herself might surely forget it. Happy Lizzie, I envy you this easy path to knowledge! The volume she most frequently consulted was an old German "Faust," over which she used to fumble with a battered lexicon. The secret of this preference was in certain marginal notes in pencil, signed "J.". I hope they were really of Jack's making.

Lizzie was always a small walker. Until she knew Jack, this had been quite an unsuspected pleasure. She was afraid, too, of the cows, geese, and sheep,—all the agricultural spectra of the feminine imagination. But now her terrors were over. Might she not play the soldier, too, in her own humble way? Often with a beating heart, I fear, but still with resolute, elastic steps, she revisited Jack's old haunts; she tried to love Nature as he had seemed to love it; she gazed at his old sunsets; she fathomed his old pools with bright plummet glances, as if seeking some lingering trace of his features in their brown depths, stamped there as on a fond human heart; she sought out his dear name, scratched on the rocks and trees,—and when night came on, she studied, in her simple way, the great starlit canopy, under which, perhaps, her warrior lay sleeping; she wandered through the green glades, singing snatches of his old ballads in a clear voice, made tuneful with love,—and as she sang, there mingled with the everlasting murmur of the trees the faint sound of a muffled bass, borne upon the south wind like a distant drum-beat, responsive to a bugle. So she led for some months a very pleasant idyllic life,[Pg 265] face to face with a strong, vivid memory, which gave everything and asked nothing. These were doubtless to be (and she half knew it) the happiest days of her life. Has life any bliss so great as this pensive ecstasy? To know that the golden sands are dropping one by one makes servitude freedom, and poverty riches.

In spite of a certain sense of loss, Lizzie passed a very blissful summer. She enjoyed the deep repose which, it is to be hoped, sanctifies all honest betrothals. Possible calamity weighed lightly upon her. We know that when the columns of battle-smoke leave the field, they journey through the heavy air to a thousand quiet homes, and play about the crackling blaze of as many firesides. But Lizzie's vision was never clouded. Mrs. Ford might gaze into the thickening summer dusk and wipe her spectacles; but her companion hummed her old ballad-ends with an unbroken voice. She no more ceased to smile under evil tidings than the brooklet ceases to ripple beneath the projected shadow of the roadside willow. The self-given promises of that tearful night of parting were forgotten. Vigilance had no place in Lizzie's scheme of heavenly idleness. The idea of moralizing in Elysium!

It must not be supposed that Mrs. Ford was indifferent to Lizzie's mood. She studied it watchfully, and kept note of all its variations. And among the things she learned was, that her companion knew of her scrutiny, and was, on the whole, indifferent to it. Of the full extent of Mrs. Ford's observation, however, I think Lizzie was hardly aware. She was like a reveller in a brilliantly lighted room, with a curtainless window, conscious, and yet heedless, of passers-by. And Mrs. Ford may not inaptly be compared to the chilly spectator on the dark side of the pane. Very few words passed on the topic of their common thoughts. From the first, as we have seen, Lizzie guessed at her guardian's probable view of her engagement: an abasement incurred by John. Lizzie lacked what is called a sense of duty; and, unlike the majority of such temperaments, which contrive to be buoyant on the glistening bubble of Dignity, she had likewise a modest estimate of her dues. Alack, my poor heroine had no pride! Mrs. Ford's silent censure awakened no resentment. It sounded in her ears like a dull, soporific hum. Lizzie was deeply enamored of what a French book terms her aises intellectuelles. Her mental comfort lay in the ignoring of problems. She possessed a certain native insight which revealed many of the horrent inequalities of her pathway; but she found it so cruel and disenchanting a faculty, that blindness was infinitely preferable. She preferred repose to order, and mercy to justice. She was speculative, without being critical. She was continually wondering, but she never inquired. This world was the riddle; the next alone would be the answer.

So she never felt any desire to have an "understanding" with Mrs. Ford. Did the old lady misconceive her? it was her own business. Mrs. Ford apparently felt no desire to set herself right. You see, Lizzie was ignorant of her friend's promise. There were moments when Mrs. Ford's tongue itched to speak. There were others, it is true, when she dreaded any explanation which would compel her to forfeit her displeasure. Lizzie's happy self-sufficiency was most irritating. She grudged the young girl the dignity of her secret; her own actual knowledge of it rather increased her jealousy, by showing her the importance of the scheme from which she was excluded. Lizzie, being in perfect good-humor with the world and with herself, abated no jot of her personal deference to Mrs. Ford. Of Jack, as a good friend and her guardian's son, she spoke very freely. But Mrs. Ford was mistrustful of this semi-confidence. She would not, she often said to herself, be wheedled against her principles. Her principles! Oh for some shining blade of purpose to hew down such stubborn stakes! Lizzie had no thought of flattering her companion. She never deceived[Pg 266] any one but herself. She could not bring herself to value Mrs. Ford's good-will. She knew that Jack often suffered from his mother's obstinacy. So her unbroken humility shielded no unavowed purpose. She was patient and kindly from nature, from habit. Yet I think, that, if Mrs. Ford could have measured her benignity, she would have preferred, on the whole, the most open defiance. "Of all things," she would sometimes mutter, "to be patronized by that little piece!" It was very disagreeable, for instance, to have to listen to portions of her own son's letters.

These letters came week by week, flying out of the South like white-winged carrier-doves. Many and many a time, for very pride, Lizzie would have liked a larger audience. Portions of them certainly deserved publicity. They were far too good for her. Were they not better than that stupid war-correspondence in the "Times," which she so often tried in vain to read? They contained long details of movements, plans of campaigns, military opinions and conjectures, expressed with the emphasis habitual to young sub-lieutenants. I doubt whether General Halleck's despatches laid down the law more absolutely than Lieutenant Ford's. Lizzie answered in her own fashion. It must be owned that hers was a dull pen. She told her dearest, dearest Jack how much she loved and honored him, and how much she missed him, and how delightful his last letter was, (with those beautifully drawn diagrams,) and the village gossip, and how stout and strong his mother continued to be,—and again, how she loved, etc., etc., and that she remained his loving L. Jack read these effusions as became one so beloved. I should not wonder if he thought them very brilliant.

The summer waned to its close, and through myriad silent stages began to darken into autumn. Who can tell the story of those red months? I have to chronicle another silent transition. But as I can find no words delicate and fine enough to describe the multifold changes of Nature, so, too, I must be content to give you the spiritual facts in gross.

John Ford became a veteran down by the Potomac. And, to tell the truth, Lizzie became a veteran at home. That is, her love and hope grew to be an old story. She gave way, as the strongest must, as the wisest will, to time. The passion which, in her simple, shallow way, she had confided to the woods and waters reflected their outward variations; she thought of her lover less, and with less positive pleasure. The golden sands had run out. Perfect rest was over. Mrs. Ford's tacit protest began to be annoying. In a rather resentful spirit, Lizzie forbore to read any more letters aloud. These were as regular as ever. One of them contained a rough camp-photograph of Jack's newly bearded visage. Lizzie declared it was "too ugly for anything," and thrust it out of sight. She found herself skipping his military dissertations, which were still as long and written in as handsome a hand as ever. The "too good," which used to be uttered rather proudly, was now rather a wearisome truth. When Lizzie in certain critical moods tried to qualify Jack's temperament, she said to herself that he was too literal. Once he gave her a little scolding for not writing oftener. "Jack can make no allowances," murmured Lizzie. "He can understand no feelings but his own. I remember he used to say that moods were diseases. His mind is too healthy for such things; his heart is too stout for ache or pain. The night before he went off he told me that Reason, as he calls it, was the rule of life. I suppose he thinks it the rule of love, too. But his heart is younger than mine,—younger and better. He has lived through awful scenes of danger and bloodshed and cruelty, yet his heart is purer." Lizzie had a horrible feeling of being blasée of this one affection. "Oh, God bless him!" she cried. She felt much better for the tears in which this soliloquy ended. I fear she had begun to doubt her ability to cry about Jack.[Pg 267]

III.

Christmas came. The Army of the Potomac had stacked its muskets and gone into winter-quarters. Miss Crowe received an invitation to pass the second fortnight in February at the great manufacturing town of Leatherborough. Leatherborough is on the railroad, two hours south of Glenham, at the mouth of the great river Tan, where this noble stream expands into its broadest smile, or gapes in too huge a fashion to be disguised by a bridge.

"Mrs. Littlefield kindly invites you for the last of the month," said Mrs. Ford, reading a letter behind the tea-urn.

It suited Mrs. Ford's purpose—a purpose which I have not space to elaborate—that her young charge should now go forth into society and pick up acquaintances.

Two sparks of pleasure gleamed in Elizabeth's eyes. But, as she had taught herself to do of late with her protectress, she mused before answering.

"It is my desire that you should go," said Mrs. Ford, taking silence for dissent.

"I intend to go," said Lizzie, rather grimly. "I am much obliged to Mrs. Littlefield."

For the rest of the week the two stitched together over muslins and silks, and were very good friends. Lizzie could scarcely help wondering at Mrs. Ford's zeal on her behalf. Might she not have referred it to her guardian's principles? Her wardrobe, hitherto fashioned on the Glenham notion of elegance, was gradually raised to the Leatherborough standard of fitness. As she took up her bedroom candle the night before she left home, she said,—

"I thank you very much, Mrs. Ford, for having worked so hard for me,—for having taken so much interest in my outfit. If they ask me at Leatherborough who made my things, I shall certainly say it was you."

Mrs. Littlefield treated her young friend with great kindness. She was a good-natured, childless matron. She found Lizzie very ignorant and very pretty. She was glad to have so great a beauty and so many lions to show.

One evening Lizzie went to her room with one of the maids, carrying half a dozen candles between them. Heaven forbid that I should cross that virgin threshold—for the present! But we will wait. We will allow them two hours. At the end of that time, having gently knocked, we will enter the sanctuary. Glory of glories! The faithful attendant has done her work. Our lady is robed, crowned, ready for worshippers.

I trust I shall not be held to a minute description of our dear Lizzie's person and costume. Who is so great a recluse as never to have beheld young ladyhood in full dress? Many of us have sisters and daughters. Not a few of us, I hope, have female connections of another degree, yet no less dear. Others have looking-glasses. I give you my word for it that Elizabeth made as pretty a show as it is possible to see. She was of course well-dressed. Her skirt was of voluminous white, puffed and trimmed in wondrous sort. Her hair was profusely ornamented with curls and braids of its own rich substance. From her waist depended a ribbon, broad and blue. White with coral ornaments, as she wrote to Jack in the course of the week. Coral ornaments, forsooth! And pray, Miss, what of the other jewels with which your person was decorated,—the rubies, pearls, and sapphires? One by one Lizzie assumes her modest gimcracks: her bracelet, her gloves, her handkerchief, her fan, and then—her smile. Ah, that strange crowning smile!

An hour later, in Mrs. Littlefield's pretty drawing-room, amid music, lights, and talk, Miss Crowe was sweeping a grand curtsy before a tall, sallow man, whose name she caught from her hostess's redundant murmur as Bruce. Five minutes later, when the honest matron gave a glance at her newly started enterprise[Pg 268] from the other side of the room, she said to herself that really, for a plain country-girl, Miss Crowe did this kind of thing very well. Her next glimpse of the couple showed them whirling round the room to the crashing thrum of the piano. At eleven o'clock she beheld them linked by their finger-tips in the dazzling mazes of the reel. At half-past eleven she discerned them charging shoulder to shoulder in the serried columns of the Lancers. At midnight she tapped her young friend gently with her fan.

"Your sash is unpinned, my dear.—I think you have danced often enough with Mr. Bruce. If he asks you again, you had better refuse. It's not quite the thing.—Yes, my dear, I know.—Mr. Simpson, will you be so good as to take Miss Crowe down to supper?"

After the proper interval, Mr. Bruce called to pay his respects to Mrs. Littlefield. He found Miss Crowe also in the drawing-room. Lizzie and he met like old friends. Mrs. Littlefield was a willing listener; but it seemed to her that she had come in at the second act of the play. Bruce went off with Miss Crowe's promise to drive with him in the afternoon. In the afternoon he swept up to the door in a prancing, tinkling sleigh. After some minutes of hoarse jesting and silvery laughter in the keen wintry air, he swept away again with Lizzie curled up in the buffalo-robe beside him, like a kitten in a rug. It was dark when they returned. When Lizzie came in to the sitting-room fire, she was congratulated by her hostess upon having made a "conquest."

"So he is, my dear," said Mrs. Littlefield; "Mr. Bruce is a perfect gentleman. He's one of the finest young men I know. He's not so young either. He's a little too yellow for my taste; but he's beautifully educated. I wish you could hear his French accent. He has been abroad I don't know how many years. The firm of Bruce and Robertson does an immense business."

"And I'm so glad," cries Lizzie, "he's coming to Glenham in March! He's going to take his sister to the water-cure."

"Then Robert Bruce is your man," laughs Mr. Littlefield. "He's as tall as a bell-tower. And he's got a bell-clapper in his head, too."

"I believe I will go and take off my things," remarks Miss Crowe, flinging up her curls.

Of course it behooved Mr. Bruce to call the next day and see how Miss Crowe had stood her drive. He set a veto upon her intended departure, and presented an invitation from his sister for the following week. At Mrs. Littlefield's instance, Lizzie accepted the invitation, despatched a laconic note to Mrs. Ford, and stayed over for Miss Bruce's party. It was a grand affair. Miss Bruce was a very great lady: she treated Miss Crowe with every attention. Lizzie was thought by some persons to look prettier than ever. The vaporous gauze, the sunny hair, the coral, the sapphires, the smile, were displayed with renewed success. The master of the house was unable to dance; he was summoned to sterner duties. Nor could Miss Crowe be induced to perform, having hurt her foot on the ice. This was of course a disappointment; let us hope that her entertainers made it up to her.

On the second day after the party, Lizzie returned to Glenham. Good Mr. Littlefield took her to the station, stealing a moment from his precious business-hours.

"There are your checks," said he; "be sure you don't lose them. Put them in your glove."[Pg 269]

"Mr. Littlefield, how can you? I've a reticule, Sir. But I really don't want you to stay."

"Well, I confess," said her companion.—"Hullo! there's your Scottish chief! I'll get him to stay with you till the train leaves. He may be going. Bruce!"

Bruce's tall figure came striding towards them. He was astounded to find that Miss Crowe was going by this train. Delightful! He had come to meet a friend who had not arrived.

"Littlefield," said he, "you can't be spared from your business. I will see Miss Crowe off."

When the elder gentleman had departed, Mr. Bruce conducted his companion into the car, and found her a comfortable seat, equidistant from the torrid stove and the frigid door. Then he stowed away her shawls, umbrella, and reticule. She would keep her muff? She did well. What a pretty fur!

"It's just like your collar," said Lizzie. "I wish I had a muff for my feet," she pursued, tapping on the floor.

"Why not use some of those shawls?" said Bruce; "let's see what we can make of them."

And he stooped down and arranged them as a rug, very neatly and kindly. And then he called himself a fool for not having used the next seat, which was empty; and the wrapping was done over again.

"I would tell you to sit down there"; and she indicated the seat facing her. He took it. "Now you'll be sure to," said Elizabeth.

"I'm afraid I shall, unless I put the newspaper between us." And he took it out of his pocket. "Have you seen the news?"

"No," says Lizzie, elongating her bonnet-ribbons. "What is it? Just look at that party."

"There's not much news. There's been a scrimmage on the Rappahannock. Two of our regiments engaged,—the Fifteenth and the Twenty-Eighth. Didn't you tell me you had a cousin or something in the Fifteenth?"

"Not a cousin, no relation, but an intimate friend,—my guardian's son. What does the paper say, please?" inquires Lizzie, very pale.

Bruce cast his eye over the report. "It doesn't seem to have amounted to much; we drove back the enemy, and recrossed the river at our ease. Our loss only fifty. There are no names," he added, catching a glimpse of Lizzie's pallor,—"none in this paper at least."

"We can try," said Bruce. And he bought a "Herald," and unfolded it. "Yes, there is a list," he continued, some time after he had opened out the sheet. "What's your friend's name?" he asked, from behind the paper.

At last Bruce lowered the sheet, and showed a face in which Lizzie's pallor seemed faintly reflected.

"There is such a name among the wounded," he said; and, folding the paper down, he held it out, and gently crossed to the seat beside her.

Lizzie took the paper, and held it close to her eyes. But Bruce could not help seeing that her temples had turned from white to crimson.

"Yes, but that proves nothing. Those things are most unreliable. Do hope for the best."

Lizzie made no answer. Meanwhile passengers had been brushing in, and the car was full. The engine began to[Pg 270] puff, and the conductor to shout. The train gave a jog.

"You'd better go, Sir, or you'll be carried off," said Lizzie, holding out her hand, with her face still hidden.

Lizzie gave him a rapid look, with a deepened flush. He had fancied that she was shedding tears. But those eyes were dry; they held fire rather than water.

Bruce's offer had cost him a blush, too. He had been prepared to back it with the assurance that he had business ahead, and, indeed, to make a little business in order to satisfy his conscience. But Lizzie's answer was final.

"Very well," said he, "good bye. You have my real sympathy, Miss Crowe. Don't despair. We shall meet again."

The train rattled away. Lizzie caught a glimpse of a tall figure with lifted hat on the platform. But she sat motionless, with her head against the window-frame, her veil down, and her hands idle.

She had enough to do to think, or rather to feel. It is fortunate that the utmost shock of evil tidings often comes first. After that everything is for the better. Jack's name stood printed in that fatal column like a stern signal for despair. Lizzie felt conscious of a crisis which almost arrested her breath. Night had fallen at midday: what was the hour? A tragedy had stepped into her life: was she spectator or actor? She found herself face to face with death: was it not her own soul masquerading in a shroud? She sat in a half-stupor. She had been aroused from a dream into a waking nightmare. It was like hearing a murder-shriek while you turn the page of your novel. But I cannot describe these things. In time the crushing sense of calamity loosened its grasp. Feeling lashed her pinions. Thought struggled to rise. Passion was still, stunned, floored. She had recoiled like a receding wave for a stronger onset. A hundred ghastly fears and fancies strutted a moment, pecking at the young girl's naked heart, like sandpipers on the weltering beach. Then, as with a great murmurous rush, came the meaning of her grief. The flood-gates of emotion were opened.

At last passion exhausted itself, and Lizzie thought. Bruce's parting words rang in her ears. She did her best to hope. She reflected that wounds, even severe wounds, did not necessarily mean death. Death might easily be warded off. She would go to Jack; she would nurse him; she would watch by him; she would cure him. Even if Death had already beckoned, she would strike down his hand: if Life had already obeyed, she would issue the stronger mandate of Love. She would stanch his wounds; she would unseal his eyes with her kisses; she would call till he answered her.

Lizzie reached home and walked up the garden path. Mrs. Ford stood in the parlor as she entered, upright, pale, and rigid. Each read the other's countenance. Lizzie went towards her slowly and giddily. She must of course kiss her patroness. She took her listless hand and bent towards her stern lips. Habitually Mrs. Ford was the most undemonstrative of women. But as Lizzie looked closer into her face, she read the signs of a grief infinitely more potent than her own. The formal kiss gave way: the young girl leaned her head on the old woman's shoulder and burst into sobs. Mrs. Ford acknowledged those tears with a slow inclination of the head, full of a certain grim pathos: she put out her arms and pressed them closer to her heart.

"I have a telegram from the surgeon of the regiment"; and Mrs. Ford held out a paper.

Lizzie took it and read: "Lieutenant[Pg 271] Ford dangerously wounded in the action of yesterday. You had better come on."

"I should like to go myself," said Lizzie: "I think Jack would like to have me."

"Nonsense! A pretty place for a young girl! I am not going for sentiment; I am going for use."

Lizzie leaned her head back in her chair, and closed her eyes. From the moment they had fallen upon Mrs. Ford, she had felt a certain quiescence. And now it was a relief to have responsibility denied her. Like most weak persons, she was glad to step out of the current of life, now that it had begun to quicken into action. In emergencies, such persons are tacitly counted out; and they as tacitly consent to the arrangement. Even to the sensitive spirit there is a certain meditative rapture in standing on the quiet shore, (beside the ruminating cattle,) and watching the hurrying, eddying flood, which makes up for the loss of dignity. Lizzie's heart resumed its peaceful throbs. She sat, almost dreamily, with her eyes shut.

IV.

It was a week before Lizzie heard from Mrs. Ford. The letter, when it came, was very brief. Jack still lived. The wounds were three in number, and very serious; he was unconscious; he had not recognized her; but still the chances either way were thought equal. They would be much greater for his recovery nearer home; but it was impossible to move him. "I write from the midst of horrible scenes," said the poor lady. Subjoined was a list of necessary medicines, comforts, and delicacies, to be boxed up and sent.

For a while Lizzie found occupation in writing a letter to Jack, to be read in his first lucid moment, as she told Mrs. Ford. This lady's man-of-business came up from the village to superintend the packing of the boxes. Her directions were strictly followed; and in no point were they found wanting. Mr. Mackenzie bespoke Lizzie's admiration for their friend's wonderful clearness of memory and judgment. "I wish we had that woman at the head of affairs," said he. "'Gad, I'd apply for a Brigadier-Generalship."—"I'd apply to be sent South," thought Lizzie. When the boxes and letter were despatched, she sat down to await more news. Sat down, say I? Sat down, and rose, and wondered, and sat down again. These were lonely, weary days. Very different are the idleness of love and the idleness of grief. Very different is it to be alone with your hope and alone with your despair. Lizzie failed to rally her musings. I do not mean to say that her sorrow was very poignant, although she fancied it was. Habit was a great force in her simple nature; and her chief trouble now was that habit refused to work. Lizzie had to grapple with the stern tribulation of a decision to make, a problem to solve. She felt that there was some spiritual barrier between herself and repose. So she began in her usual fashion to build up a false repose on the hither side of belief. She might as well have tried to float on the Dead Sea. Peace eluding her, she tried to resign herself to tumult. She drank deep at the well of self-pity, but found its waters brackish. People are apt to think that they may temper the penalties of misconduct by self-commiseration, just as they season the long aftertaste of beneficence by a little spice of self-applause. But the Power of Good is a more grateful master than the Devil. What bliss to gaze into the smooth gurgling wake of a good deed, while the comely bark sails on with floating pennon! What horror to look into the muddy sediment which floats round the piratic keel! Go, sinner, and dissolve it with your tears! And you, scoffing friend, there is the way out! Or would you prefer the window? I'm an honest man forevermore.[Pg 272]

One night Lizzie had a dream, a rather disagreeable one,—which haunted her during many waking hours. It seemed to her that she was walking in a lonely place, with a tall, dark-eyed man who called her wife. Suddenly, in the shadow of a tree, they came upon an unburied corpse. Lizzie proposed to dig him a grave. They dug a great hole and took hold of the corpse to lift him in; when suddenly he opened his eyes. Then they saw that he was covered with wounds. He looked at them intently for some time, turning his eyes from one to the other. At last he solemnly said, "Amen!" and closed his eyes. Then she and her companion placed him in the grave, and shovelled the earth over him, and stamped it down with their feet.

He of the dark eyes and he of the wounds were the two constantly recurring figures of Lizzie's reveries. She could never think of John without thinking of the courteous Leatherborough gentleman, too. These were the data of her problem. These two figures stood like opposing knights, (the black and the white,) foremost on the great chess-board of fate. Lizzie was the wearied, puzzled player. She would idly finger the other pieces, and shift them carelessly hither and thither; but it was of no avail: the game lay between the two knights. She would shut her eyes and long for some kind hand to come and tamper with the board; she would open them and see the two knights standing immovable, face to face. It was nothing new. A fancy had come in and offered defiance to a fact; they must fight it out. Lizzie generously inclined to the fancy, the unknown champion, with a reputation to make. Call her blaséeif you like, this little girl, whose record told of a couple of dances and a single lover, heartless, old before her time. Perhaps she deserves your scorn. I confess she thought herself ill-used. By whom? by what? wherein? These were questions Miss Crowe was not prepared to answer. Her intellect was unequal to the stern logic of human events. She expected two and two to make five: as why should they not for the nonce? She was like an actor who finds himself on the stage with a half-learned part and without sufficient wit to extemporize. Pray, where is the prompter? Alas, Elizabeth, that you had no mother! Young girls are prone to fancy that when once they have a lover, they have everything they need: a conclusion inconsistent with the belief entertained by many persons, that life begins with love. Lizzie's fortunes became old stories to her before she had half read them through. Jack's wounds and danger were an old story. Do not suppose that she had exhausted the lessons, the suggestions of these awful events, their inspirations, exhortations,—that she had wept as became the horror of the tragedy. No: the curtain had not yet fallen, yet our young lady had begun to yawn. To yawn? Ay, and to long for the afterpiece. Since the tragedy dragged, might she not divert herself with that well-bred man beside her?

Elizabeth was far from owning to herself that she had fallen away from her love. For my own part, I need no better proof of the fact than the dull persistency with which she denied it. What accusing voice broke out of the stillness? Jack's nobleness and magnanimity were the hourly theme of her clogged fancy. Again and again she declared to herself that she was unworthy of them, but that, if he would only recover and come home, she would be his eternal bond-slave. So she passed a very miserable month. Let us hope that her childish spirit was being tempered to some useful purpose. Let us hope so.

She roamed about the empty house with her footsteps tracked by an unlaid ghost. She cried aloud and said that she was very unhappy; she groaned and called herself wicked. Then, sometimes, appalled at her moral perplexities, she declared that she was neither wicked nor unhappy; she was contented, patient, and wise. Other girls had lost their lovers: it was the present way of life. Was she weaker than most[Pg 273] women? Nay, but Jack was the best of men. If he would only come back directly, without delay, as he was, senseless, dying even, that she might look at him, touch him, speak to him! Then she would say that she could no longer answer for herself, and wonder (or pretend to wonder) whether she were not going mad. Suppose Mrs. Ford should come back and find her in an unswept room, pallid and insane? or suppose she should die of her troubles? What if she should kill herself?—dismiss the servants, and close the house, and lock herself up with a knife? Then she would cut her arm to escape from dismay at what she had already done; and then her courage would ebb away with her blood, and, having so far pledged herself to despair, her life would ebb away with her courage; and then, alone, in darkness, with none to help her, she would vainly scream, and thrust the knife into her temple, and swoon to death. And Jack would come back, and burst into the house, and wander through the empty rooms, calling her name, and for all answer get a death-scent! These imaginings were the more creditable or discreditable to Lizzie, that she had never read "Romeo and Juliet." At any rate, they served to dissipate time,—heavy, weary time,—the more heavy and weary as it bore dark foreshadowings of some momentous event. If that event would only come, whatever it was, and sever this Gordian knot of doubt!

The days passed slowly: the leaden sands dropped one by one. The roads were too bad for walking; so Lizzie was obliged to confine her restlessness to the narrow bounds of the empty house, or to an occasional journey to the village, where people sickened her by their dull indifference to her spiritual agony. Still they could not fail to remark how poorly Miss Crowe was looking. This was true, and Lizzie knew it. I think she even took a certain comfort in her pallor and in her failing interest in her dress. There was some satisfaction in displaying her white roses amid the apple-cheeked prosperity of Main Street. At last Miss Cooper, the Doctor's sister, spoke to her:—

"How is it, Elizabeth, you look so pale, and thin, and worn out? What you been doing with yourself? Falling in love, eh? It isn't right to be so much alone. Come down and stay with us awhile,—till Mrs. Ford and John come back," added Miss Cooper, who wished to put a cheerful face on the matter.

For Miss Cooper, indeed, any other face would have been difficult. Lizzie agreed to come. Her hostess was a busy, unbeautiful old maid, sister and housekeeper of the village physician. Her occupation here below was to perform the forgotten tasks of her fellow-men,—to pick up their dropped stitches, as she herself declared. She was never idle, for her general cleverness was commensurate with mortal needs. Her own story was, that she kept moving, so that folks couldn't see how ugly she was. And, in fact, her existence was manifest through her long train of good deeds,—just as the presence of a comet is shown by its tail. It was doubtless on the above principle that her visage was agitated by a perpetual laugh.

Meanwhile more news had been coming from Virginia. "What an absurdly long letter you sent John," wrote Mrs. Ford, in acknowledging the receipt of the boxes. "His first lucid moment would be very short, if he were to take upon himself to read your effusions. Pray keep your long stories till he gets well." For a fortnight the young soldier remained the same,—feverish, conscious only at intervals. Then came a change for the worse, which, for many weary days, however, resulted in nothing decisive. "If he could only be moved to Glenham, home, and old sights," said his mother, "I should have hope. But think of the journey!" By this time Lizzie had stayed out ten days of her visit.

One day Miss Cooper came in from a walk, radiant with tidings. Her face, as I have observed, wore a continual smile, being dimpled and punctured all over with merriment,—so that, when an[Pg 274] unusual cheerfulness was super-diffused, it resembled a tempestuous little pool into which a great stone has been cast.

"Guess who's come," said she, going up to the piano, which Lizzie was carelessly fingering, and putting her hands on the young girl's shoulders. "Just guess!"

"Oh, dear, no, not that! How stupid of me! I mean Mr. Bruce, your Leatherborough admirer."

"True as I live. He's come to bring his sister to the Water-Cure. I met them at the post-office."

Lizzie felt a strange sensation of good news. Her finger-tips were on fire. She was deaf to her companion's rattling chronicle. She broke into the midst of it with a fragment of some triumphant, jubilant melody. The keys rang beneath her flashing hands. And then she suddenly stopped, and Miss Cooper, who was taking off her bonnet at the mirror, saw that her face was covered with a burning flush.

That evening, Mr. Bruce presented himself at Doctor Cooper's, with whom he had a slight acquaintance. To Lizzie he was infinitely courteous and tender. He assured her, in very pretty terms, of his profound sympathy with her in her cousin's danger,—her cousin he still called him,—and it seemed to Lizzie that until that moment no one had begun to be kind. And then he began to rebuke her, playfully and in excellent taste, for her pale cheeks.

"Isn't it dreadful?" said Miss Cooper. "She looks like a ghost. I guess she's in love."

"He must be a good-for-nothing lover to make his mistress look so sad. If I were you, I'd give him up, Miss Crowe."

"You don't now," said Miss Cooper. "You're smiling and blushing. A'n't she blushing, Mr. Bruce?"

"I think Miss Crowe has no more than her natural color," said Bruce, dropping his eye-glass. "What have you been doing all this while since we parted?"

"Yes. I took one more dreary drive all alone,—over that same road, you know. And I stopped at the farm-house again, and saw the old woman we had the talk with. She remembered us, and asked me what had become of the young lady who was with me before. I told her you were gone home, but that I hoped soon to go and see you. So she sent you her love"——

"Wasn't it? And then she made a certain little speech; I won't repeat it, or we shall have Miss Cooper talking about your blushes again."

"Several times. I called on her the day before I left town, to see if she had any messages for you."

"Oh, she's as jolly as ever. She sent you her love, and hoped you would come back to Leatherborough very soon again. I told her, that, however it might be with the first message, the second should be a joint one from both of us."

"You're very kind. I should like very much to go again.—Do you like Mrs. Littlefield?"

"Ah, I'm afraid you mean she doesn't backbite. We've always found plenty to talk about."

"We have talked about Mr. Bruce,—haven't we, Elizabeth?" said Miss Cooper, who had her own notion of being agreeable.

It was not an altogether bad notion, perhaps; but Bruce found her interruptions rather annoying, and insensibly allowed them to shorten his visit. Yet, as it was, he sat till eleven o'clock,—a stay quite unprecedented at Glenham.

When he left the house, he went splashing down the road with a very elastic tread, springing over the starlit puddles, and trolling out some sentimental ditty. He reached the inn, and went up to his sister's sitting-room.

Late one afternoon, at dusk, about three weeks after Mr. Bruce's arrival, Lizzie was sitting alone by the fire, in Miss Cooper's parlor, musing, as became the place and hour. The Doctor and his sister came in, dressed for a lecture.

"I'm sorry you won't go, my dear," said Miss Cooper. "It's a most interesting subject: 'A Year of the War.' All the battles and things described, you know."

"Well, well, if you're tired of the war, we'll leave you in peace. Kiss me good-bye. What's the matter? You look sick. You are homesick, a'n't you?"

"Well, we'll tell you all about it. Will they have programmes, James? I'll bring her a programme.—But you really feel as if you were going to be ill. Feel of her skin, James."

"No, you needn't, Sir," said Lizzie. "How queer of you, Miss Cooper! I'm perfectly well."

And at last her friends departed. Before long the servant came with the lamp, ushering Mr. Mackenzie.

"Yes, Miss. I've just got a letter stating that Mr. John is growing worse and worse, and that they look for his death from hour to hour.—It's very sad," he added, as Elizabeth was silent.

"How long she is reading it!" thought her visitor. "You can't see so far from the light, can you, Miss?"

"Yes, she's the one to be pitied," said Lizzie. "Well!" and she gave him back the letter.

"I thought you'd like to see it," said Mackenzie, drawing on his gloves; and then, after a pause,—"I'll call[Pg 276] again, Miss, if I hear anything more. Good night!"

Lizzie got up and lowered the light, and then went back to her sofa by the fire.

Half an hour passed; it went slowly; but it passed. Still lying there in the dark room on the sofa, Lizzie heard a ring at the door-bell, a man's voice and a man's tread in the hall. She rose and went to the lamp. As she turned it up, the parlor-door opened. Bruce came in.

"I was sitting in the dark," said Lizzie; "but when I heard you coming, I raised the light."

"I saw your friends going out," pursued Bruce; "so I knew I should find you alone.—What are you doing here in the dark?"

"I've just received very bad news from Mrs. Ford about her son. He's much worse, and will probably not live."

Bruce was silent awhile. He was a stranger to the young officer, and felt that he had nothing to offer beyond the commonplace expressions of sympathy and surprise. Nor had he exactly the measure of his companion's interest in him.

"And, oh, Mr. Bruce," continued Lizzie, "he was so clever and good and generous! I wish you had known him."

"I wish I had. But what do you mean by injustice? Were these qualities denied him?"

"Where's the injustice, then? It ought to be enough for him that you should think so highly of him."

Bruce was a little puzzled by his companion's manner. He watched her, as she sat with her cheek on her hand, looking at the fire. There was a long pause. Either they were too friendly or too thoughtful for the silence to be embarrassing. Bruce broke it at last.

"Miss Crowe," said he, "on a certain occasion, some time ago, when you first heard of Mr. Ford's wounds, I offered you my company, with the wish to console you as far as I might for what seemed a considerable shock. It was, perhaps, a bold offer for so new a friend; but, nevertheless, in it even then my heart spoke. You turned me off. Will you let me repeat it? Now, with a better right, will you let me speak out all my heart?"

Lizzie heard this speech, which was delivered in a slow and hesitating tone, without looking up or moving her head, except, perhaps, at the words "turned me off." After Bruce had ceased, she still kept her position.

She dropped her hand, raised her head, and looked at him a moment: he thought he saw the glow of tears in her eyes. Then she sank back upon the sofa with her face in the shadow of the mantel-piece.

"Ah, Elizabeth! am I such a poor speaker. How shall I make it plain? When I saw your friends leave home half an hour ago, and reflected that you would probably be alone, I determined to go right in and have a talk with you that I've long been wanting to have. But first I walked half a mile up the road, thinking hard,—thinking how I should say what I had to say. I made up my mind to nothing, but that somehow or other I should say it I would trust,—I do trust to your frankness, kindness, and sympathy, to a feeling corresponding to my own. Do you understand[Pg 277] that feeling? Do you know that I love you? I do, I do, I do! You must know it. If you don't, I solemnly swear it. I solemnly ask you, Elizabeth, to take me for your husband."

While Bruce said these words, he rose, with their rising passion, and came and stood before Lizzie. Again she was motionless.

"Does it take you so long to think?" said he, trying to read her indistinct features; and he sat down on the sofa beside her and took her hand.

"As sure as that I breathe. Now, Elizabeth, make me as sure that I am loved in return."

"What seems strange? Why should it? For a month I've been trying, in a hundred dumb ways, to make it plain; and now, when I swear it, it only seems strange!"

"I love you for what you are,—for your deep, kind heart,—for being so perfectly a woman."

Lizzie drew away her hand, and her lover rose and stood before her again. But now she looked up into his face, questioning when she should have answered, drinking strength from his entreaties for her replies. There he stood before her, in the glow of the firelight, in all his gentlemanhood, for her to accept or reject. She slowly rose and gave him the hand she had withdrawn.

And then, as if this effort was beyond her strength, she half staggered back to the sofa again. And still holding her hand, he sat down beside her. And there they were still sitting when they heard the Doctor and his sister come in.

For three days Elizabeth saw nothing of Mr. Mackenzie. At last, on the fourth day, passing his office in the village, she went in and asked for him. He came out of his little back parlor with his mouth full and a beaming face.

"Capital!" said he, looking hard at her, while he put on his spectacles. "She writes that Mr. John—won't you take a seat?—has taken a sudden and unexpected turn for the better. Now's the moment to save him; it's an equal risk. They were to start for the North the second day after date. The surgeon comes with them. So they'll be home—of course they'll travel slowly—in four or five days. Yes, Miss, it's a remarkable Providence. And that noble young man will be spared to the country, and to those who love him, as I do."

"I had better go back to the house and have it got ready," said Lizzie, for an answer.

The request was obeyed. That same day Lizzie went home. For two days she found it her interest to overlook, assiduously, a general sweeping, scrubbing, and provisioning. She allowed herself no idle moment until bed-time. Then—But I would rather not be the chamberlain of her agony. It was the easier to work, as Mr. Bruce had gone to Leatherborough on business.

On the fourth evening, at twilight, John Ford was borne up to the door on his stretcher, with his mother stalking beside him in rigid grief, and kind, silent friends pressing about with helping hands.

"Home they brought her warrior dead,
She nor swooned nor uttered cry."

It was, indeed, almost a question, whether Jack was not dead. Death is not thinner, paler, stiller. Lizzie moved about like one in a dream. Of course, when there are so many sympathetic friends, a man's family has nothing to do,—except exercise a little self-control. The women huddled Mrs. Ford to bed; rest was imperative; she was[Pg 278] killing herself. And it was significant of her weakness that she did not resent this advice. In greeting her, Lizzie felt as if she were embracing the stone image on the top of a sepulchre. She, too, had her cares anticipated. Good Doctor Cooper and his sister stationed themselves at the young man's couch.

The Doctor prophesied wondrous things of the change of climate; he was certain of a recovery. Lizzie found herself very shortly dealt with as an obstacle to this consummation. Access to John was prohibited. "Perfect stillness, you know, my dear," whispered Miss Cooper, opening his chamber-door on a crack, in a pair of very creaking shoes. So for the first evening that her old friend was at home Lizzie caught but a glimpse of his pale, senseless face, as she hovered outside the long train of his attendants. If we may suppose any of these kind people to have had eyes for aught but the sufferer, we may be sure that they saw another visage equally sad and white. The sufferer? It was hardly Jack, after all.

When Lizzie was turned from Jack's door, she took a covering from a heap of draperies that had been hurriedly tossed down in the hall: it was an old army-blanket. She wrapped it round her, and went out on the verandah. It was nine o'clock; but the darkness was filled with light. A great wanton wind—the ghost of the raw blast which travels by day—had arisen, bearing long, soft gusts of inland spring. Scattered clouds were hurrying across the white sky. The bright moon, careering in their midst, seemed to have wandered forth in frantic quest of the hidden stars.

Lizzie nestled her head in the blanket, and sat down on the steps. A strange earthy smell lingered in that faded old rug, and with it a faint perfume of tobacco. Instantly the young girl's senses were transported as they had never been before to those far-off Southern battle-fields. She saw men lying in swamps, puffing their kindly pipes, drawing their blankets closer, canopied with the same luminous dusk that shone down upon her comfortable weakness. Her mind wandered amid these scenes till recalled to the present by the swinging of the garden-gate. She heard a firm, well-known tread crunching the gravel. Mr. Bruce came up the path. As he drew near the steps, Lizzie arose. The blanket fell back from her head, and Bruce started at recognizing her.

"Are you one of Mr. Ford's watchers?" he continued, coming up the steps; "how is he?"

Still she was silent. Bruce put out his hands to take hers, and bent forward as if to kiss her. She half shook him off, and retreated toward the door.

"Good heavens!" cried Bruce; "what's the matter? Are you moonstruck? Can't you speak?"

"No,—no,—not to-night," said Lizzie, in a choking voice. "Go away,—go away!"

She stood holding the door-handle, and motioning him off. He hesitated a moment, and then advanced. She opened the door rapidly, and went in. He heard her lock it. He stood looking at it stupidly for some time, and then slowly turned round and walked down the steps.

The next morning Lizzie arose with the early dawn, and came down stairs. She went into the room where Jack lay, and gently opened the door. Miss Cooper was dozing in her chair. Lizzie crossed the threshold, and stole up to the bed. Poor Ford lay peacefully sleeping. There was his old face, after all,—his strong, honest features refined, but not weakened, by pain. Lizzie softly drew up a low chair, and sat down beside him. She gazed into his face,—the dear and honored face into which she had so often gazed in health. It was strangely handsomer: body stood for less. It seemed to Lizzie, that, as the fabric of her lover's soul was more clearly revealed,—the veil of the temple rent wellnigh in twain,—she could read the justification of all her old worship.[Pg 279] One of Jack's hands lay outside the sheets,—those strong, supple fingers, once so cunning in workmanship, so frank in friendship, now thinner and whiter than her own. After looking at it for some time, Lizzie gently grasped it. Jack slowly opened his eyes. Lizzie's heart began to throb; it was as if the stillness of the sanctuary had given a sign. At first there was no recognition in the young man's gaze. Then the dull pupils began visibly to brighten. There came to his lips the commencement of that strange moribund smile which seems so ineffably satirical of the things of this world. O imposing spectacle of death! O blessed soul, marked for promotion! What earthly favor is like thine? Lizzie sank down on her knees, and, still clasping John's hand, bent closer over him.

The smile grew more intense. The poor fellow drew out his other hand, and slowly, feebly placed it on Lizzie's head, stroking down her hair with his fingers.

"Yes, yes," she murmured; "you know me, don't you? I am Lizzie, Jack. Don't you remember Lizzie?"

"This is home, you know," said Lizzie; "this is Glenham. You haven't forgotten Glenham? You are with your mother and me and your friends. Dear, darling Jack!"

Still he went on, stroking her head; and his feeble lips tried to emit some sound. Lizzie laid her head down on the pillow beside his own, and still his hand lingered caressingly on her hair.

"Yes, you know me," she pursued; "you are with your friends now forever,—with those who will love and take care of you, oh, forever!"

"Yes, yes, my dear boy, but your wounds are healing. I will love you and nurse you forever."

"Yes, Lizzie, our old promise," said Jack: and his hand fell upon her neck, and with its feeble pressure he drew her closer, and she wet his face with her tears.

"I am sure you excite him, my dear. It is best he should have none of his family near him,—persons with whom he has associations, you know."

Here the Doctor was heard gently tapping on the window, and Lizzie went round to the door to admit him.

She did not see Jack again all day. Two or three times she ventured into the room, but she was banished by a frown, or a finger raised to the lips. She waylaid the Doctor frequently. He was blithe and cheerful, certain of Jack's recovery. This good man used to exhibit as much moral elation at the prospect of a cure as an orthodox believer at that of a new convert: it was one more body gained from the Devil. He assured Lizzie that the change of scene and climate had already begun to tell: the fever was lessening, the worst symptoms disappearing. He answered Lizzie's reiterated desire to do something by directions to keep the house quiet and the sick-room empty.

Soon after breakfast, Miss Dawes, a neighbor, came in to relieve Miss Cooper, and this indefatigable lady transferred her attention to Mrs. Ford. Action was forbidden her. Miss Cooper was delighted for once to be able to lay down the law to her vigorous neighbor, of whose fine judgment she had always stood in awe. Having bullied Mrs. Ford into taking her breakfast in the little sitting-room, she closed the doors, and prepared for "a good long talk." Lizzie was careful not to break in upon this interview. She had bidden her patroness good morning, asked after her health, and received one of her temperate osculations. As she passed the invalid's door, Doctor Cooper came out and asked her to go and look for a certain roll of bandages, in Mr. John's trunk, which had been carried into another room. Lizzie hastened to perform this task. In fumbling through the contents of the trunk,[Pg 280] she came across a packet of letters in a well-known feminine handwriting. She pocketed it, and, after disposing of the bandages, went to her own room, locked the door, and sat down to examine the letters. Between reading and thinking and sighing and (in spite of herself) smiling, this process took the whole morning. As she came down to dinner, she encountered Mrs. Ford and Miss Cooper, emerging from the sitting-room, the good long talk being only just concluded.

For all answer Mrs. Ford gave a look—I had almost said a scowl—so hard, so cold, so reproachful, that Lizzie was transfixed. But suddenly its sickening meaning was revealed to her. She turned to Miss Cooper, who stood pale and fluttering beside the mistress, her everlasting smile glazed over with a piteous, deprecating glance; and I fear her eyes flashed out the same message of angry scorn they had just received. These telegraphic operations are very rapid. The ladies hardly halted: the next moment found them seated at the dinner-table with Miss Cooper scrutinizing her napkin-mark and Mrs. Ford saying grace.

Dinner was eaten in silence. When it was over, Lizzie returned to her own room. Miss Cooper went home, and Mrs. Ford went to her son. Lizzie heard the firm low click of the lock as she closed the door. Why did she lock it? There was something fatal in the silence that followed. The plot of her little tragedy thickened. Be it so: she would act her part with the rest. For the second time in her experience, her mind was lightened by the intervention of Mrs. Ford. Before the scorn of her own conscience, (which never came,) before Jack's deepest reproach, she was ready to bow down,—but not before that long-faced Nemesis in black silk. The leaven of resentment began to work. She leaned back in her chair, and folded her arms, brave to await results. But before long she fell asleep. She was aroused by a knock at her chamber-door. The afternoon was far gone. Miss Dawes stood without.

"Elizabeth, Mr. John wants very much to see you, with his love. Come down very gently: his mother is lying down. Will you sit with him while I take my dinner?—Better? Yes, ever so much."

He was propped up with pillows. His pale cheeks were slightly flushed. His eyes were bright. He raised himself, and, for such feeble arms, gave Lizzie a long, strong embrace.

"Dear Jack, they wouldn't let me come near you. I begged and prayed. And I wanted so to go to you in the army; but I couldn't. I wish, I wish I had!"

"You wouldn't have liked it, Lizzie. I'm glad you didn't. It's a bad, bad place."

"Can I do anything for you, dear?" asked the young girl. "I would work my life out. I'm so glad you're better!"

"Lizzie," said he, at last, "I sent for you to look at you.—You are more wondrously beautiful than ever. Your hair is brown,—like—like nothing; your eyes are blue; your neck is white. Well, well!"

He lay perfectly motionless, but for his eyes. They wandered over her with a kind of peaceful glee, like sunbeams playing on a statue. Poor Ford lay, indeed, not unlike an old wounded Greek, who at falling dusk has crawled into a temple to die, steeping the last dull interval in idle admiration of sculptured Artemis.

"You say more than you mean.[Pg 281] There should be perfect truth between us. Dear Lizzie, I am not going to get well. They are all very much mistaken, I am going to die. I've done my work, Death makes up for everything. My great pain is in leaving you. But you, too, will die one of these days; remember that. In all pain and sorrow, remember that."

"But there is something more," pursued Jack. "Life is as good as death. Your heart has found its true keeper; so we shall all three be happy. Tell him I bless him and honor him. Tell him God, too, blesses him. Shake hands with him for me," said Jack, feebly moving his pale fingers. "My mother," he went on,—"be very kind to her. She will have great grief, but she will not die of it. She'll live to great age. Now, Lizzie, I can't talk any more; I wanted to say farewell. You'll keep me farewell,—you'll stay with me awhile,—won't you? I'll look at you till the last. For a little while you'll be mine, holding my hands—so—until death parts us."

Jack kept his promise. His eyes were fixed in a firm gaze long after the sense had left them.

In the early dawn of the next day, Elizabeth left her sleepless bed, opened the window, and looked out on the wide prospect, still cool and dim with departing night. It offered freshness and peace to her hot head and restless heart. She dressed herself hastily, crept down stairs, passed the death-chamber, and stole out of the quiet house. She turned away from the still sleeping village and walked towards the open country. She went a long way without knowing it. The sun had risen high when she bethought herself to turn. As she came back along the brightening highway, and drew near home, she saw a tall figure standing beneath the budding trees of the garden, hesitating, apparently, whether to open the gate. Lizzie came upon him almost before he had seen her. Bruce's first movement was to put out his hands, as any lover might; but as Lizzie raised her veil, he dropped them.

"Yes, Mr. Bruce," said Lizzie, "I'll give you my hand once more,—in farewell."

"Elizabeth!" cried Bruce, half stupefied, "in God's name, what do you mean by these crazy speeches?"

"I mean well. I mean kindly and humanely to you. And I mean justice to my old—old love."

She went to him, took his listless hand, without looking into his wild, smitten face, shook it passionately, and then, wrenching her own from his grasp, opened the gate and let it swing behind her.

"No! no! no!" she almost shrieked, turning about in the path. "I forbid you to follow me!"

THE FROZEN HARBOR.

When Winter encamps on our borders,
And dips his white beard in the rills,
And lays his shield over highway, and field,
And pitches his tents on the hills,—
In the wan light I wake, and see on the lake,
Like a glove by the night-winds blown,
With fingers that crook up creek and brook,
His shining gauntlet thrown.
[Pg 282]

Then over the lonely harbor,
In the quiet and deadly cold
Of a single night, when only the bright,
Cold constellations behold,
Without trestle or beam, without mortise or seam,
It swiftly and silently spread
A bridge as of steel, which a Titan's heel
In the early light might tread.

Where Morning over the waters
Her web of splendor spun,
Till the wave, all a-twinkle with ripple and wrinkle,
Hung shimmering in the sun,—
Where the liquid lip at the breast of the ship
Whispered and laughed and kissed,
And the long, dark streamer of smoke from the steamer
Trailed off in the rose-tinted mist,—

Now all is gray desolation,
As up from the hoary coast,
Over snow-fields and islands her white arms in silence
Outspreading like a ghost,
Her feet in shroud, her forehead in cloud,
Pale walks the sheeted Dawn:
The sea's blue rim lies shorn and dim,
In the purple East withdrawn.

Where floated the fleets of commerce,
With proud breasts cleaving the tide,—
Like emmet or bug with its burden, the tug
Hither and thither plied,—
Where the quick paddles flashed, where the dropped anchor plashed,
And rattled the running chain,
Where the merchantman swung in the current, where sung
The sailors their far refrain,—

Behold! when ruddy Aurora
Peeps from her opening door,
Faint gleams of the sun like fairies run
And sport on a crystal floor;
Upon the river's bright panoply quivers
The noon's resplendent lance;
And by night through the narrows the moon's slanted arrows
Icily sparkle and glance.

Flown are the flocks of commerce,
Like wild swans hurrying south;
The lighter, belated, is frozen, full-freighted,
Within the harbor's mouth;
The brigantine, homeward bringing
Sweet spices from afar,
All night must wait with her fragrant freight
Below the lighthouse star.
[Pg 283]

The ships at their anchors are frozen,
From rudder to sloping chain:
Rock-like they rise: the low sloop lies
An oasis in the plain.
Like reeds here and there, the tall masts bare
Upspring: as on the edge
Of a lawn smooth-shaven, around the haven
The shipping grows like sedge.

Here, weaving the union of cities,
With hoar wakes belting the blue,
From slip to slip, past schooner and ship,
The ferry's shuttles flew:—
Now, loosed from its stall, on the yielding wall
The steamboat paws and rears;
The citizens pass on a pavement of glass,
And climb the frosted piers.

Where, in the November twilight,
To the ribs of the skeleton bark
That stranded lay in the bend of the bay,
Motionless, low, and dark,
Came ever three shags, like three lone hags,
And sat o'er the troubled water,
Each nursing apart her shrivelled heart,
With her mantle wrapped about her,—

Now over the ancient timbers
Is built a magic deck;
Children run out with laughter and shout
And dance around the wreck;
The fisherman near his long eel-spear
Thrusts in through the ice, or stands
With fingers on lips, and now and then whips
His sides with mittened hands.

Alone and pensive I wander
Far out from the city-wharf
To the buoy below in its cap of snow,
Low stooping like a dwarf;
In the fading ray of the dull, brief day
I wander and muse apart,—
For this frozen sea is a symbol to me
Of many a human heart.

I think of the hopes deep sunken
Like anchors under the ice,—
Of souls that wait for Love's sweet freight
And the spices of Paradise:
Far off their barks are tossing
On the billows of unrest,
And enter not in, for the hardness and sin
That close the secret breast.
[Pg 284]

I linger, until, at evening,
The town-roofs, towering high,
Uprear in the dimness their tall, dark chimneys,
Indenting the sunset sky,
And the pendent spear on the edge of the pier
Signals my homeward way,
As it gleams through the dusk like a walrus's tusk
On the floes of a polar bay.

Then I think of the desolate households
On which the day shuts down,—
What misery hides in the darkened tides
Of life in yonder town!
I think of the lonely poet
In his hours of coldness and pain,
His fancies full-freighted, like lighters belated,
All frozen within his brain.

And I hearken to the moanings
That come from the burdened bay:
As a camel, that kneels for his lading, reels,
And cannot bear it away,
The mighty load is slowly
Upheaved with struggle and pain
From centre to side, then the groaning tide
Sinks heavily down again.

So day and night you may hear it
Panting beneath its pack,
Till sailor and saw, till south wind and thaw,
Unbind it from its back.
O Sun! will thy beam ever gladden the stream
And bid its burden depart?
O Life! all in vain do we strive with the chain
That fetters and chills the heart?

Already in vision prophetic
On yonder height I stand:
The gulls are gay upon the bay,
The swallows on the land;—
'Tis spring-time now; like an aspen-bough
Shaken across the sky,
In the silvery light with twinkling flight
The rustling plovers fly.

Aloft in the sunlit cordage
Behold the climbing tar,
With his shadow beside on the sail white and wide,
Climbing a shadow-spar!
Up the glassy stream with issuing steam
The cutter crawls again,
All winged with cloud and buzzing loud,
Like a bee upon the pane.[Pg 285]

The brigantine is bringing
Her cargo to the quay,
The sloop flits by like a butterfly,
The schooner skims the sea.
O young heart's trust, beneath the crust
Of a chilling world congealed!
O love, whose flow the winter of woe
With its icy hand hath sealed!

Learn patience from the lesson!
Though the night be drear and long,
To the darkest sorrow there comes a morrow,
A right to every wrong.
And as, when, having run his low course, the red Sun
Comes charging gayly up here,
The white shield of Winter shall shiver and splinter
At the touch of his golden spear,—

Then rushing under the bridges,
And crushing among the piles,
In gray mottled masses the drift-ice passes,
Like seaward-floating isles;—
So Life shall return from its solstice, and burn
In trappings of gold and blue,
The world shall pass like a shattered glass,
And the Heaven of Love shine through.

AT ANDERSONVILLE.

Drake Talcott, a Union prisoner, marched with other prisoners seventy-five miles to Danville, on thirteen crackers. They travelled from there to Andersonville, six days by rail, on four crackers a day, and, as a consequence of the rations, came in due course of time to a general sense of emptiness, and an incorrigible tendency to think of roast beef, boiled chicken, fried oysters, and other like dainties; and many of the prisoners, after battling awhile with the emptiness and the mental tendency, fell down exhausted, and were stowed away in the wagons following on in the rear of the train. But Talcott, though with youth and the brawn and muscle and lusty craving vitality of an athlete against him in the cracker point of view, possessed likewise a mighty will, and a stubborn, tenacious endurance, nowise weakened by the discipline of two years of camp and battle; and not only marched with courage and elasticity, but actually set himself, out of the abundance of his resources, to spur the flagging spirits of his comrades, as they huddled in disconsolate confusion about the little station at Andersonville.

"Boys," said our orator, "the Rebels keep their best generals for their Home Guard. Lee and Early, and the rest of the crew, are lambs and sucking doves to Generals Starvation, Wear-'em-out, and Grumble,—especially that last-named fellow, who is the worst of the three, because he comes under our[Pg 286] own colors, and we feel shy about firing on our own men. I believe we are all too apt to think that muscles are the vital forces, and that man lives by beef; but, boys, muscles are only hammers, and it takes a thought to raise them; and though beef is good eating, and we should all like a slice uncommonly, let me tell you, when it isn't to be had, that backbone is the next thing to it, and it is surprising how long a man can live on it. For it is the brain that is the commander-in-chief, and does the strategy and the planning for this precious life that we all set such store by,—the brain, that I used to think a lazy bummer, that lived at the stomach's expense; and when the quartermaster—that's the stomach—telegraphs up that he's fairly cleaned out, not a half-ration left, says our little commander, cool and calm, 'Serve out grit and backbone to the troops, and send out the senses on a scout.' And, men, if you've got the grit, and keep on the sharp look-out, you are likely to get on; but shut down on grumbling,—that's a luxury for fellows that get three meals a day; for while you are busy about that, Starvation and Wear-'em-out will sail in at you, and once you get weak in the knees, and limp in the back, and dizzy in the head, you're played out. Remember, we aren't going to Belle Isle. I don't know anything about Andersonville, but it can't be so bad as that hole."

"So you scarecrows come to look after us," retorted Drake, quick as light: at which poor piece of wit the soldiers were pleased to laugh vociferously,—the irritating laugh that assumes your defeat, without granting you a hearing,—before which the man in authority, not having the art of looking like a fool with propriety, retreated, reddening and snarling, but turned on the platform of the cars, and flung back this Parthian arrow at the laughing Yankees:—

"You're a bad lot of men, saucy as the Devil; but I reckon you'll get the impudence taken out of you here, d——d quick!"

"It is all you have left them to take, anyhow," said a voice,—and "That's so," chorused the crowd; and the whistle sounding, the Captain, whose reign was over, departed, hard-hit and growling, but left, so to speak, his sting behind him: for the last of his speech had one terrible merit,—it was true.

The prisoners, over a thousand strong, were formed in line and ordered to march. As they tramped along the dusty road, they strained their eyes, eagerly, but furtively, for the first show of their prison. Seeing tents on the left, there was a little stir among them, but that proved to be a Rebel camp; then some one spied heights topped with cannon, and "Now," said they, "we are close upon it," and then stopped short for wonder, for here the road ended, ran butt against the wall of a huge roofless inclosure, made of squared pines set perpendicularly and close together in the ground.

The word ran down the line like a shiver, and the men stood mute, eying each other doubtfully. And now, if I could, I would get at your hearts, you who read this, and you should not read mistily, and hold the story at loose ends as it were, but feel by the answering throb within yourselves what thoughts gnawed at the hearts of these men under their brave show of indifference: for though these be facts, facts written are disembodied, and, like spirits, have no power to speak to you, unless you give them the voice of your sympathy; and without that, I question which touches you most deeply, a thousand rats following the Pied Piper of Hamelin, and wondering, as he neared the wharves, where the Deuse they were going, or the thousand Union soldiers standing stunned before a gate from which should have wailed forth, as they[Pg 287] filed through, "Leave all hope behind!"

They were hardly in, when there was a scramble, and a cry of "Rations!" and came lumbering a train of wagons, bringing the day's supplies. There were at this time under torture twenty-eight thousand prisoners,—more than the population of Hartford; and as the Southern Confederacy, a Christian association, and conducting itself with many appeals to Christian principle, believes the wind is tempered to the shorn lamb, and so shears the Yankees as close as possible, these men had all been formally fleeced of such worldly gear as blankets, money, and extra clothing. Some further shearing there had been also, but irregular, depending chiefly on the temper of the captors,—stripping them sometimes to shirt and drawers, leaving them occasionally jacket and shoes; so now most were barefooted, most in rags, and some had not even rags. They had lain on the bare earth, sodden with damp or calcined into dust, and borne storm and heat helplessly, without even the shelter of a board, till they were burned and wasted to the likeness of haggard ghosts; most had forgotten hope, many decency; some were dying, and crawled over the ground with a woful persistency that it would have broken your heart to see; they were all fasting, for the day's rations, tossed to them the afternoon before, had been devoured, as was the custom, at a single meal, and proved scant at that; and they crowded wolfishly about the wagons, the most miserable, pitiable mob that ever had mothers, wives, and sisters at home to pray for them.

The new comers looked on amazed, and "How about Belle Isle now?" they said bitterly to Drake. He, poor fellow, was having his first despondent chill, and sneering at himself for having it, after all his fine talk about "backbone"; and finding reasons for despair thicken, the harder he tried to make elbow-room for hope, till altogether confounded at the muddle, he flung up thought, with "Brain's full and stomach's empty, and it's ill talking between a full man and a fasting," and set about cooking his rations. "But first catch your hare," cries Mrs. Glass. Drake had his hare, such as it was, but found something quite as important lacking,—wood.

"I say, my friend, where do we find fuel?" he asked of a man sitting quietly on the ground.

"Where the Israelites found the straw for their bricks," was the answer. "There is no special provision made, unless it be an occasional permit to forage outside, under——Hold off there!—don't touch that, man, unless you want to be cooked yourself for supper!—that's the 'dead line'!"

Drake drew back from a light railing running parallel with the inclosure, on which he had nearly laid his hand.

"The new way to pay old debts, and put a Yankee out of the world cheap. Show so much as your little finger outside of that, and the guard nails you with a bullet; and as they like that sort of thing, they blaze away whenever they get a chance,—which is once or twice a day,—for our men expose themselves voluntarily. When Satan said, 'Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life,' he hadn't invented the Stockade Prison."

The man who said these things, in a quiet, unexcited way, as if discussing some abstraction of the schools, not murder, was too wan and wasted, too shrunken and despairing, to afford a guess as to what manner of man he might have been, and too unkempt and ragged for any inference concerning his rank, having neither jacket, cap, nor shoes, matted hair and beard, torn shirt and ragged trousers: but his look of resolved patience, and an occasional smile while he talked, sadder than tears, made Drake's stout heart twinge with pain. "A strong soul in a feeble body," he said to himself, as he walked on; and furthermore, "The man that can smile here like that is near heaven, and fit for it."

Presently he came on a farmer selling wood by the stick, price in proportion to its size, and as many times its value[Pg 288] as the Rebel, by his own showing, exceeds the Yankee. Drake had money, spite of shearing and searching. He had hidden it——But I forbear to tell of what ingenious shift he had availed himself, for I remember, that, spite of its well-known loyalty, the "Atlantic Monthly" runs the blockade. First he passed the man, prudence pulling him by the sleeve, and searched lynx-eyed for chips or twigs, over ground scoured daily, in such faint hope as his, by thousands; but he might as well have dragged a brook for the wreck of a seventy-four among its pebbles. Having wasted a precious half-hour of fading daylight, he came back to the dealer to find his stock on the rise; for the influx of new comers had produced an upward tendency in a market sensitive as that of Wall Street. Lest it should swell quite beyond the compass of his pocket, he made haste to buy,—scores of meagre wretches looking anxiously on. That pitiful sight made his heart sore again; and he hardly persuaded himself to take his wood and be off, till he remembered the poor fellow whom he had left resigned and hopeless, sitting quietly on the ground while all was eager stir about him, and hurried back to the spot where he had seen him to find him gone. He had crawled away, and was lost in that great throng.

Not to be balked entirely, Drake shared his firing with those around him; and Virtue, in place of her usual promissory note, gave him his reward instantly, in the shape of a tin cup belonging to one of the party, and their sole cooking-utensil,—for the prison authorities furnish none. His rations—a day's rations, remember—were eight ounces of Indian meal, cob and kernel ground together, (as with us for pigs,) and sour, (a common occurrence,) and two ounces of condemned pork (not to appear again in our pages, as it proved too strong even for poor Drake's hunger). He brought water in the cup from a ditch that traversed the inclosure, and filtered it through a bit of cloth torn from his shirt; and the meal being mixed with this water, (salt was not even hinted at, the market price of that article being four dollars a pound at Andersonville,) it was placed on a strip of wood before the fire, to bake up to the half-raw point, that being the highest perfection attainable in Drake's kitchen: for a range and a steady heat find the baking of meal, so mixed, no easy matter. Eight ounces of meal make a cake six inches long, five broad, and half an inch thick: that is to say, Drake's dinner and supper for that day, and his breakfast and dinner for the next day, were in the mass six inches long, five inches broad, and half an inch thick. Give the figures an Indian-meal consistency, you who are not of that order of Stoics that endures its neighbor's sufferings without a groan. Try the experiment in your own kitchen. One baking will carry conviction farther than batches of statistics. Drake being famished chose to take four meals in one,—improvident man! That done, he went to bed: quite an elaborate arrangement, as practised among us, what with taking off of clothes, and possibly washing and combing, and pulling up of sheets and coverlets, and fitting of pillows to neck and shoulders; but nothing can be more simple than the way they do it there. You just lie down wherever you are,—and sleep, if you can. Drake could and did sleep most soundly.

This was our hero's first taste of prison-life. But a little reading and much talk about camp-fires and behind earth-works—when there was a lull in the storm of shot and shell—had etched out for him certain crude theories, for which he was as ready to do battle as any other hot-headed lad of twenty-three. "Starvation is the masked battery that plays the Deuse with us all," he insisted; "and we must take that, or be taken out—feet foremost. As for your 'how,' good Incredulity and Unbelief, where there is an end, and the will to reach it, the means are tolerably sure to be lying around loose somewhere." But examinations for candidates, and the hundred-pound hail, and the sharp beak of the ram for the untried monitor, are facts for theories; and without the[Pg 289] proof of these, none of the three have the positive value of a skillet that has been tried. We have Drake's theory. Here are the facts.

No cooking-utensils were allowed the prisoner; no blankets were allowed the prisoner; no shelter of any sort was allowed the prisoner; no tools or materials to construct a shelter were allowed the prisoner; no means of living as a civilized man were allowed the prisoner; no way of helping himself as a savage was allowed the prisoner. The rations were at all times insufficient, and frequently so foul that starvation itself could not swallow them: consequence, stomach and body weakened by a perpetual hunger, and in many cases utter inability to retain food, good or bad. More than that, the sluggish water-course that served as their reservoir crept across their pen foul and thick with the débris of the Rebel camp above, and in the centre filtered through the spongy ground, and creamed and mantled and spread out loathsomely into a hateful swamp; and the fierce sun, beating down on its slimy surface, drew from its festering pools and mounds of refuse a vapor of death, and the prisoners breathed it; and the reek of unwashed and diseased bodies crowding close on each other, and the sickening, pestilential odor of a huge camp without sewerage or system of policing, made the air a horror, and the prisoners breathed it.

Drake woke, stifling with the heat and horrible steam, and turning and throwing out his arm, only yet half awake, struck on something cold and stiff: the corpse of some poor fellow who had died there in the night beside him. Drake, in a two years' campaign, had grown familiar with death, but could not yet receive him as a bed-fellow, and scrambled up in sickening horror to a day in which there was no breakfast to eat, no arms to clean, no shoes to black, no dress to change, no work of any sort to do, no letters to write or hope for, no books to read, no dinner to prepare, at least till four p.m., when they served out rations,—nothing to fix the eye, or offer subject of thought, but the general and utter wretchedness. Nor could Drake and his fellows take refuge in that unconscious self-gratulation with which we see the miseries of our neighbors; for the future here threw shadows backward. That skeleton, (I use the word not in the exaggerated sense in which we are apt to apply it, but advisedly; and I mean a living human being, whose skin is literally drawn over hideously projecting bones, and who, having actually lost all rounding-out and filling of flesh, has grown transparent, so that by holding an arm in the light you may see the blood-vessels and the inner edges of the bones,)—this skeleton lying there was, perhaps, what Drake should be two months hence; those men quarrelling, hyena-like, for the "job" of burying their dead comrades, that scarred old man moaning for a compass, because he had lost his way and could not find the North, were not lower or more pitiful than Drake might yet be: for stout heart and brave blood and quick brain have no charm against famine, pestilence, and a steady pressure of misery in all possible forms.

The majority of his comrades sank helplessly into this quaking bog. Out of fifty captured of his regiment, Williams, a delicate lad, sickened at once; Dean, a stout old Scotchman, was close on idiocy in a month; Allan, the color-bearer, was shot by the guard,—he had slipped near the dead line, and fallen with his head outside; fourteen were dead of disease; twelve more sank in rayless, hopeless apathy; and Drake—was busy on "A History of the Stockade Prison." The way in which he got the idea and his stationery is worth telling.

There had fallen upon him a dread of motion,—a sombre endurance,—a discouraged sense of thirty thousand hopeless men dragging him down to despair,—a dark cloud that shut out God and home and help,—an inability to compose and fix his drowsy, reeling thought, that spun off dizzily to times at school, and love and laughter at home, and lapsed itself in forgetfulness, and ceased to be[Pg 290] even dreamy speculation. Drake, in short, was going to the bottom with his theory about his neck, when a "Providence,"—the modern way of dodging an acknowledgment to God, whom, by the by, our poor boy had quite omitted in his little theory of self-preservation,—in the curious shape of an official blunder, stepped in to his rescue. A cook-house was in erection without the limits of their pen, and, though no carpenter, Drake was set with others to work under guard. The first glimpse of the open country, stretching away to meet the low horizon, brought back the half-forgotten thought of Freedom; and the very trail of her robe is so glorious, that even this poor savage liberty of rock and clod roused in him anew wit to devise and courage to endure. He worked then so merrily and with such good heart, that an admiring inspector more than hinted "at the pity it was to see a decent young fellow like him shut up in the pen yonder."

"Why don't you come over to us, then? The Confederacy gives good wages. Our Government knows how to pay its men."

"Right there!" retorted Drake. "The Confederacy pays its servants in death and ruin, which, as you say, are the just wages of a traitor. As for me, I want no more of Georgia soil than will make me a grave. That is as much as a man can own here now and be honest."

It was then, from some occult connection of ideas too subtile for searching out, that he imagined, first, a history of the Stockade Prison. He secured a number of long, thin boards, and planed them smooth, for foolscap, pointed bits of wood for pens, manufactured his ink from the rust of some old nails, and made himself a knife by grinding two pieces of iron hoop one upon the other, and, his work on the cook-house at an end, set bravely about his history, when Fate nipped it, as she has done many a more promising one before it; for even when on the final flourish of his title, he heard a sound between a groan and a sigh, and, turning, saw Corny Keegan, a strapping Irishman, and sergeant in his regiment, lying near him. Drake put the tail on his n, and then some uneasy consciousness would have him look again over the edge of his board at the sergeant; for, though there were scores of men lying within view on the ground, there was something in the "give" and laxity of Corny's posture that augured ill for him in Drake's experienced eyes, and, laying the history aside, he went over and kneeled down beside him. The man's eyes were closed, and a dull, yellowish pallor had taken the place of the usual brick tint of his face. Drake essayed to lift his heavy head and shoulders; but Corny settled back again with a groan.

"Och! wurra! Musther Talcott, lave me alone. It's dead I am, kilt intirely, wid the wakeness. Divil's the bit of wood I've had these two days, and not a cint or a frind to the fore, and I'm jist afther mixin' the male here with wather, thinkin' to ate it that way, but it stuck in me throat, and I'm all on a thrimble, and it's a gone man is Corny Keegan; though it's not fur meself that I'd make moan, sence it's aisier dyin' than livin', only the ould mother and Mary that'll fret and——Holy Mother! there comes the sickness, bad scran to it!"

You see now how it happened unto the History of the Stockade Prison to vanish in smoke; for Drake, having neither wood nor the money to buy it, made a fire with his precious boards, and baked Corny's raw meal in a cake, which the poor fellow devoured with a half-starved avidity that made Drake ashamed of the reluctance with which he had offered up his sacrifice. A little corner of his cake Corny left untouched, saying,—

"What poor creature?" asked Drake; but Corny's eyes were fixed on the pens and ink, and the sorry remains of his foolscap,—a half-strip of board.[Pg 291]

"Och! murther! Musther Talcott, and wuz it thim bits of board ye's writin' on? and ye's burned thim fur me, afther all the throuble ye took wid thim? and to think of the thick head of me, to ate up all that illigant histhry, when I'd heerd the boys talkin' on it, by the same token, and bad scran to me! The Lord be good to ye fur your kindness, Musther Talcott, and make your bed as soft as your heart is, and give ye a line in the Book of Life fur the one I've ate, and"——

"Thrue for you; and I'm a baste fur forgettin' him, and him starvin' the while. It's jist Cap'n Ireland, if ye chance to mind him. He was the illigant officer and the kind-hearted man; and to see him now! If ye'll come away, Musther Talcott, I'm quite done wid the wakeness, and it's jist over here beyant that he's lyin', poor jontleman, that'll not be long lyin' anywhere out of his grave."

Corny pointed, as he spoke, to a man, or, rather, a bundle of rags having some faint outlines of humanity, on the ground before them,—limbs out helplessly, face set and ghastly, hardly a stir among his tatters to assure them that he yet breathed; and Drake recognized with a thrill of horror, though more wan, more woful, more shadow-like, if possible, the man who had so moved his compassion on the night of his arrival. Keegan knelt beside him, and put his corner of cake to the sufferer's mouth, saying, "Ate a bit, Cap'n dear; thry now"; and then, seeing that the food rested on white and quiet lips,—"Cap'n, don't ye hear me? It's Corny, that spoke wid ye a while back. Saints be merciful to us, he's gone!"

"He is not so happy," said Drake, savagely; "he has only fainted. He has days of such torture as this before him. It would be a mercy to him, and I'm not sure but good religion, to put him outside of the dead line. I wonder why they don't tie us to the cannon's mouth at once. Here! you! guard, there! holla!"

This last was addressed to a soldier in the Rebel gray, who was proceeding leisurely past, but who, on hearing himself so unceremoniously summoned, turned and came slowly towards them.

"Here is a man," said Drake, passionately, "who is dying, not because it pleases God to take him, but because it pleases you to starve him. We have no wood to make a fire, no food to give him, unless it is this scrap of meal that he cannot swallow; but you can save him, and will, if you are a man, and have a man's heart under that dress."

The soldier stared, but, being a phlegmatic animal, heard him quietly to the end, and opened his jaws to answer with due deliberation.

"If you don't like our rules, you shouldn't have come here, you know. And we haven't any orders about wood: you are to look out for yourselves. As for the man, if he's sick, why don't you take him to the stockade yonder, where the doctor is examining for admittance to the hospital?—though I don't see the use: he's too far gone."

Drake and Corny lifted the poor wasted frame, that seemed all too frail to hold the nickering, struggling breath, and carried it to a small stockade crowded with men desirous to enter the hospital. The first assistant to whom they applied was a nervous porcupine, fretted with overwork, and repulsed them roughly.

"What is the use of bringing a dead man here? We have enough living ones on hand."

"Och, and that's no raison, sence it's aisy to see thim's the kind you like best," muttered Corny; but Drake silenced him hastily.

"Keep a civil tongue, Corny. They're the masters here; and it will only be the worse for poor Ireland, if you anger them. Here's another; we'll try him."

But Number Two was Sir Imperturbability, and, without even looking towards them, answered, in a hard, even tone, "Our number is filled; you are too late," and, without lifting an eyelash, went on with his work.[Pg 292]

Drake grew white to the lips. The great veins started out on his forehead, and his fingers worked nervously; but it was Corny's turn to interfere.

"Musther Talcott, sure and ye'll not mind what that spalpeen's saying; and there's the docthor himself beyant, and a kind and pleasant jontleman he is. Jist lift the Cap'n, aisy now, and we'll see what the docthor'll say to him."

For the third time, then, Drake made his appeal in behalf of the poor fellow at his feet. The doctor heard him kindly, but answered, as his assistant had done, that their number was full for the day, and was moving on, when Talcott caught him by the arm.

"Doctor," he said, sternly, "one of your assistants refuses my comrade because he is a dying man; another tells me, as you have done, that your number is full for the day. Your own eyes can tell you, that, if not dying now, he will be before to-morrow, of want and exposure. I know nothing of your rules; but I do know, that, if my comrade's life is to be saved, it is to be saved now, and that you have the means, if means there are, for its salvation; and let the awful guilt of the cruelty that brought him here weigh down whose neck it will, as there is a God above us, I do not see how you can write yourself free of murder, or think your hands clean from blood, if you send him back to die."

"God forbid! God forbid!" answered the doctor, shrinking from Drake's vehemence. "You are unjust, young man; it is not my will, but my power to help, that is limited. However, he shall not be sent back; we will do for him what we can, if I have to lodge him in my own house."

"And didn't I tell ye the docthor was the kind jontleman?" cried Corny, joyfully. "Though the hospital is no sich great matther: jist a few tints; but thin he'll be gettin' a bed there, and belike a dhrap of whiskey or a sup of porridge: and if he gits on, it's you he has to thank for it; fur if it hadn't been fur your prachement, my sowl, the docthor would have turned him off, too; and long life to you, says Corny Keegan, and may you niver be needin' anybody's tongue to do the like fur you!"

Drake made no answer; after the fever comes the chill, and he was thinking drearily of the smouldering "History," and of the intolerable leaden hours stretching out before him; but it was not in Corny's nature to remain silent.

"It's the ould jontleman wid the scythe that takes us down, afther all, Musther Talcott; the hours and hours that we sit mopin', wid our fingers as limp as a lady's, and our stomachs clatterin' like an impty can, and sorra a thing to think of but the poor crathurs that's dead, rest their souls! and whin our turn's comin; and it's wishin' I am that it was in the days of the fairies, and that the quane of thim ud jist give us a call, till I'd ask her if she'd iver a pipe and its full of tobacky about her,—or, failin' that, if she'd hoppen to have a knife in her pocket, till I cut out the ould divil Jeff on the gallows, and give him what he'd git, if we iver put our hands on him."

"A knife," repeated Drake, starting from his abstraction, and fumbling in his pocket, from which he drew an old bit of iron. "I am not the queen of the fairies; but with this you can hang Jeff and his cabinet in effigy, if you choose, and can find the material to carve."

"Arrah, and that's aisy, wid illigant bones like these, that chips off like marble or wud itself; but I'm misdoubtin' I'm robbin' ye, Musther Talcott."

"I have another," said Drake, producing it; and as he did so, there breathed upon him, like a breeze from home, a recollection of the dim light shining in an old library down on a broad-leaved volume resting on a carved rack,—of a brown-tressed girl who stood with him before it, her head just at his shoulder, looking at the cathedral on its page,—of the chance touch of a little hand on his,—of the brush of a perfumed sleeve,—of the flitting color in her clear cheek,—of a subtile magic, interweaving blush, perfume, picture, and thought of Alice. Dainty pinnacle and massive arch and carved buttress were photographed on[Pg 293] his brain, and arch and pinnacle and buttress could be notched out in bone by his poor skill,—and if he died, some kindly comrade should carry it to Alice, and it should tell her what he had left unsaid,—and if he lived, he would take it to her himself, and it should serve him for the text of his story. That the carving of a design so intricate, on so minute a scale, must prove tedious argued in its favor; and putting off mourning weeds for his history, he took to this new love with a complacency that excited Corny's special admiration.

"Sure, and it's a beautiful thing is religion; and the Divil fly away wid me, if I don't be afther gittin' it meself! Here's Musther Talcott: if he was fur carving a fort or a big gun, the eyes and the face of him would be little but scowls and puckers; and there he sits, though it's only the dumb likeness of a church that he's at, by the same token that it's no bigger than me thumb, and, by the howly piper, you'd think the light that flings away from the big colored windy down the church was stramin' in his face, he looks so paceful-like; and he no betther than a heretic nayther, though he's the heart of a good Catholic, as no one knows betther than meself."

Indeed, Corny's gratitude never grew cold. Few sentences of his that did not end, like the one just quoted, in eulogiums on "Musther Talcott." If Drake was busy with his cathedral, there sat Corny, a few paces distant, hacking at Jeff Davis. If Drake, who had resolved himself into a sort of duo-decimo edition of the Sanitary Commission, was about his work of mercy, there was Corny, a shadow at his heels, bringing water, lifting the poor groaning wretches, and adding his word of comfort. "Cheer up, honey, and do jist as Musther Talcott says; for it's nixt to iverything that he knows, and thim things that he don't know isn't worth a body's attintion." And when Drake himself was ailing, it was Corny who tended him with terrified solicitude, foraged for his wood, and cooked his rations. "When Drake was ailing!"—that was often. His courage was undaunted, his hope perhaps higher, but he had grown perceptibly weak and languid; and there were days—many, alas!—when he lay quietly on the ground, giving an occasional lazy touch to his cathedral, while Corny, as he laughingly said, ruled in his stead.

It was on one of these days that there arose a sudden stir and commotion throughout the camp, a deep and joyful hum, that went from mouth to mouth; and men were seen running hastily from all quarters, the rush setting towards the gate, and drawing in even the sick, who crawled and hobbled along with the stream, at the risk of being trampled by the excited throng, struggling and crowding on pellmell. While Drake looked on in surprise, Corny made his appearance, his eyes sparkling with pleasure.

"News, Musther Talcott dear! an ye wuz dyin', here's news to put the strength in yer legs! Letthers from home, and they say there's five thousand on 'em; and there's an officer chap, wid a mouth like a thrap, countin' 'em as if he was a machine, for all the wuruld, and bad 'cess to him! wid the poor boys crowdin', and heart-famished for only a look at thim, the crumpled things, for it's batthered they is! and he, the spalpeen, won't let one of 'em touch 'em, and no more feelin' with him than if he was a gun, instead of the son of one; and I'm cock-sure I read yer name, Musther Talcott, and there's mine too on the back of a letther, and that's from Mary, hurra! and God bless her! and come, Musther Talcott, fur they'll be dalin' out the letthers or iver we get there."

Drake rose at once; but a description of his sensations, as he hastily made his way towards the throng that surged about the imperturbable official like a sea, is beyond the power of words. The overwhelming surprise and joy of a man who in that evil den had almost forgotten home and the possibility of hearing from it, and his agonizing uncertainty, could be fathomed only by the poor wretches suffering like him, who anxiously[Pg 294] pressed on the Rebel officer, and clutched at the letters, and fell back sick with impatience and suspense at his formal delay. At last he opened his grim jaws. The men listened breathlessly.

An instant's stunned pause, and then half a dozen voices speaking together: "Why, man, you must have had ten cents on each of these letters, before they crossed the lines"; and "How can we pay postage?" "He knows we have no money"; "What good will the bits of paper do him at all, at all?" But the man kept on like an automaton.

"My orders are to collect ten cents on each letter; and I am here to obey orders, not to argue."

Meanwhile those in the rear ranks had heard indistinctly or not at all, and pressed on those in front to know the meaning of the sudden recoil,—for the men had instinctively given back,—and being told, buzzed it on to those behind them; and there began in the crowd a low, deep hum, growing louder, as muttering rose to curses,—growing fiercer, for there is nothing half so savage as despair that has been fooled with a hope,—swelling into a wave of indignation that swept and swayed the whole throng with it, and seemed an instant to threaten and topple over the officer in their midst. But it came to nought. The prudent nudged their neighbors, "With the cannon, boys, they can rake us on all sides"; and the angrier ones fell apart in little groups, and talked in whispers, and glared menacingly at the guard, but made no further demonstration. Those who were happy enough to possess the money received their letters: the feebler ones crawled away with tears furrowing their wan cheeks; and the unmoved official thrust the remaining letters of mother, father, wife, and children of these men into the bags before their longing eyes; and even while the miserable men flung themselves before him, and with outstretched hands tried to hold him back, the gate clanged after him.

Drake, who long ago had spent his little hoard, had received this terrible blow in entire silence, and turned to go without comment or answer to Corny's vociferations. But eyes were dim, or head was reeling; for a few paces on he stumbled, and would have fallen over a soldier lying in his path, but for Corny, who was close behind him, and who at once assailed the man over whom Drake had tripped, and who still lay quietly, without even a stir or motion of his head.

"Ye lazy spalpeen! what the Divil are ye stretched out there for, to break dacent folk's necks over the length of ye? Stir yourself, or I'll"——Then with a sudden and total change of tone, as he looked more closely into the quiet face, "The Saints pity us! it's Cap'n Ireland; and in the name of Hiven, how came yer Honor here on the——Och! Lord forgive me! Talking to a dead corpse! Och! wurra! wurra! Musther Talcott, it's dead he is, sure! kilt this time intirely!"

"You may well say killed," said a soldier who had joined them. "If ever a man committed murder, then that man did that kicked him out of the hospital to die."

"What is that?" demanded Drake, who had seemed in a sort of stupor, but roused out of it fiercely at the man's last words. "Do you know what you are saying?"

"I think I ought," returned the soldier. "I was in the hospital at the time; I'm only just out; and I saw it myself. The assistant surgeon stops at his bed, where he laid only just breathing like, and says he, 'What man is this? I've seen him before'; and says some one, 'His name is Ireland'; and says the surgeon, like a flash, 'Ireland? Ireland of the —th? Do you know what that is? It is a colored regiment, and this Abolition scoundrel is the captain of it. I knew I had seen him. Here! put him out; let him go and herd with the rest'; and when some one said he was dying any way, said the surgeon, with a string of oaths, 'Put him out, I tell you; the bed is too[Pg 295] good for him'; and then, Sir, when the poor young gentleman, who was dizzy-like, and didn't understand, fell down beside the door, from weakness, that—that infernal brute kicked him, and swore at him, as vermin that cumbered the ground; and the men brought him away here, Sir, it's two days back, and he's just passed away"; and kneeling beside the body, and lifting the poor wasted hands, "I swear, if ever I get back, to revenge his death, and never to let sword or pistol drop while this cursed Rebellion is going on."

"Amin!" said Corny, solemnly, and "Amen" formed itself on Drake's white lips; but by some curious mental process his thoughts would wander away from the stiffening body before him to a vision of home, and Sabbaths when sweet-toned bells called quiet families to church, and little children playing about the doorsteps, and peaceful women in sunny houses, and gay girls waving on men to battle through glittering streets, and prayers, and looks of love, and songs, and flowers, and Alice; and in on this rolled suddenly a sense of what was actually around him, as under a calm sky and out of a still sea swoops sometimes suddenly some huge wave in on the quiet beach. He saw about him rags, filth, men sick, men dying, men dead, men groaning, men cursing, men gibbering. There rose up before him the grim succession of days of hunger, pain, sorrow, and loneliness, already past; there came upon him a terrible threatening of days to come, yet worse,—without hope or relief, unless at the dead line. He rose, staggering, and with a wild and desperate look that startled Corny.

"Fur the Lord's sake, wud ye desthroy yerself?" cried the faithful fellow, throwing his arms about him to hold him fast. "Och, honey! ye're a heretic, and the good Lord's a Catholic; but thin He made us all, and He has pity on the poor crathurs that's sufferin' here, or His heart's harder nor Corny's: the Saints forgive me fur such a spache! Pray, Musther Talcott, pray"——

"Pray!" exclaimed Drake; "is there a God looking down here?"—and dropping on his knees, he gasped out,—

"O God! if Thou dost yet hear, save me—from going mad!" and fell forward at Corny's feet, senseless.

He was carried to the hospital, and lay there weeks, lost in the delirium of a fever; and every morning there peered in at the inner door of the stockade a huge shock of hair, and a red, anxious face, with,—

"The top of the mornin' to ye, docthor, and it's ashamed I am to be afther throublin' ye so often; but will yer Honor plase to tell me how Musther Talcott is the day?"—and having received the desired information, Corny would take himself off with blessings "on his Honor, that had consideration for the feelings of the poor Irishman."

"I have good news for you, Corny," said the kindly doctor. "Talcott is out of danger."

"But I have better news yet," continued the doctor, watching Corny closely. "His name is on the list of exchanged prisoners, and he will be sent home on Thursday next."

"Is he, yer Honor?" very hesitatingly; and then, suddenly clearing up, "and hurra fur that, too! and I'm an ongrateful baste to be sorry that he's to be clear of this hole,—bad scran to it!—and long life till him, and a blessin' go wid him! and if"—choking—"we don't mate on earth, sure the Lord won't kape him foriver in purgatory, and he so kind and feelin' for the sick."

"Me?—and was it me yer Honor was sayin'? Och, Hivin bless ye fur that word!—and it's not laughin' at me is yer Honor? Sure ye'd niver have the[Pg 296] heart to chate a poor boy like that. All the Saints be praised! I'm a man agin, and not a starvin' machine; and I shall see ye, Mary, mavourneen! but, och, the poor boys that we're lavin'! Hurra! how iver will I ate three males a day, and slape under a blanket, and think of thim on the ground and starvin' by inches!"

During the remainder of his stay, Corny balanced between joy and his selfishness in being joyful, in a manner sufficiently ludicrous,—breaking out one moment in the most extravagant demonstration, to be twitched from it the next by a penitential spasm. As for Drake, hardly yet clear of the shadows that haunted his fever, he but mistily comprehended the change that was before him; and it will need weeks and perhaps months of home-nursing and watching before body and mind can win back their former strength and tone.

Meanwhile, people of the North, what of the poor boys left behind at Andersonville, starving, as Corny said, by inches, with the winter before them, and their numbers swelled by the hundreds that a late Rebel paper gleefully announces to be on their way from more Northern prisons?

DOCTOR JOHNS.

VII.

It was not easy in that day to bring together the opinions of a Connecticut parish that had been jostled apart by a parochial quarrel, and where old grievances were festering. Indeed, it is never easy to do this, and unite opinions upon a new comer, unless he have some rare gift of eloquence, which so dazes the good people that they can no longer remember their petty griefs, or unless he manage with rare tact to pass lightly over the sore points, and to anoint them by a careful hand with such healing salves as he can concoct out of his pastoral charities. Mr. Johns had neither art nor eloquence, as commonly understood; yet he effected a blending of all interests by the simple, earnest gravity of his character. He ignored all angry disputation; he ignored its results. He came as a shepherd to a deserted sheepfold; he came to preach the Bible doctrines in their literalness. He had no reproofs, save for those who refused the offers of God's mercy,—no commendation, save for those who sought His grace whose favor is life everlasting. There were no metaphysical niceties in his discourses, athwart which keen disputants might poise themselves for close and angry conflict; he recognized no necessities but the great ones of repentance and faith; and all the mysteries of the Will he was accustomed to solve by grand utterance of that text which he loved above all others,—however much it may have troubled him in his discussion of Election,—"whosoever will, let him come and drink of the water of life freely."

Inheriting as he did all the religious affinities of his mother, these were compacted and made sensitive by years of silent protest against the proud worldly sufficiency of his father, the Major. Such qualities and experience found repose in the unyielding dogmas of the Westminster divines. At thirty the clergyman was as aged as most men of forty-five,—seared by the severity of his opinions, and the unshaken tenacity with which he held them. He was by nature a quiet, almost a timid man; but over the old white desk and crimson cushion, with the choir of singers in his front and the Bible under his hand, he grew into wonderful boldness. He cherished an exalted idea of the dignity of his office,—a dignity which[Pg 297] he determined to maintain to the utmost of his power; but in the pulpit only did the full measure of this exaltation come over him. Thence he looked down serenely upon the flock of which he was the appointed guide, and among whom his duty lay. The shepherd leading his sheep was no figure of speech for him; he was commissioned to their care, and was conducting them—old men and maidens, boys and gray-haired women—athwart the dangers of the world, toward the great fold. On one side always the fires of hell were gaping; and on the other were blazing the great candlesticks around the throne.

But when, on some occasion, he had, under the full weight of his office, inveighed against a damning evil, and, as he fondly hoped by the stillness in the old meeting-house, wrought upon sinners effectually, it was disheartening to be met by some hoary member of his flock, whom perhaps he had borne particularly in mind, and to be greeted cheerfully with, "Capital sermon, Mr. Johns! those are the sort that do the business! I like those, parson!" The poor man, humiliated, would bow his thanks. He lacked the art (if it be an art) to press the matter home, when he met one of his parishioners thus. Indeed, his sense of the importance of his calling and his extreme conscientiousness gave him an air of timidity outside the pulpit, which offered great contrast to that which he wore in the heat of his sermonizing. Not that he forgot the dignity of his position for a moment, but he wore it too trenchantly; he could never unbend to the free play of side-talk. Hence he could not look upon the familiar spirit of badinage in which some of his brethren of the profession indulged, without serious doubts of their complete submission to the Heavenly King. Always the weight of his solemn duties pressed sorely on him; always amid pitfalls he was conducting his little flock toward the glories of the Great Court. There is many a man narrowed and sharpened by metaphysical inquiry to such a degree as to count the indirection and freedom of kindly chat irksome, and the occasion of a needless blunting of that quick mental edger with which he must scathe all he touches. But the stiffness of Mr. Johns was not that of constant mental strain; he did not refine upon his dogmas; but he gave them such hearty entertainment, and so inwrapped his spirit with their ponderous gravity, that he could not disrobe in a moment, or uncover to every chance comer.

It is quite possible that by reason of this grave taciturnity the clergyman won more surely upon the respect of his people. "He is engrossed," said they, "with greater matters; and in all secular affairs he recognizes our superior discernment." Thus his inaptitude in current speech was construed by them into a delicate flattery. They greatly relished his didactic, argumentative sermonizing, since theirs was a religion not so much of the sensibilities as of the intellect. They agonized toward the truth, if not by intense thinking, yet by what many good people are apt to mistake for it,—immense endurance of the prolix thought of others.

If the idea of universal depravity had been ignored,—as it sometimes is in these latitudinarian days,—or the notion of any available or worthy Christian culture, as distinct from a direct and clearly defined agency, both as to time and force, of the Spirit, had been entertained, he would have lost half of the elements by which his arguments gained logical sequence. But, laboring his way from stake to stake of the old dogmas of the Westminster divines, he fastened to them stoutly, and swept round from each as a centre a great scathing circle of deductions, that beat wofully upon the heads of unbelievers. And if a preacher attack only unbelievers, he has the world with him, now as then; it is only he who has the bad taste to meddle with the caprices of believers who gets the raps and the orders of dismissal.

Thus it happened that good Mr. Johns came to win the good-will of all the parish of Ashfield, while he challenged[Pg 298] their respect by his uniform gravity. It is even possible that a consciousness of a certain stateliness and stiffness of manner became in some measure a source of pride to him, and that he enjoyed, in his subdued way, the disposition of the lads of the town to give him a wide pass, instead of brushing brusquely against him, as if he were some other than the parson.

"We are fairly settled in a pleasant home upon the main street. The meeting-house, which you will remember, is near by; and I have, by the blessing of God, a full attendance every Lord's day. They listen to my poor sermons with commendable earnestness; and I trust they may prove to them 'a savor of life unto life.' We also find the people of the town neighborly and kind. Squire Elderkin has proved particularly so, and is a very energetic man in all matters relating to the parish. I fear greatly, however, that he still lacks the intimate favor of God, and has not humbled himself to entire submission. Yet he is constant in his observance of nearly all the outward forms of devotion and of worship; and we hear of his charities in every house we enter. Strange mystery of Providence, that he should not long since have been broken down by grace, and become in all things a devout follower of the Master! I hope yet to see him brought a humble suppliant into the fold. His wife is a most excellent person, lowly in her faith, and zealous of good works. The same may also be said of their worthy maiden sister, Miss Joanna Meacham, who is, of a truth, a matron in Israel. Rachel and myself frequently take tea at their house; and she is much interested in the little family of Elderkins, who, I am glad to say, enjoy excellent advantages, and such of them as are of proper age are duly taught in the Shorter Westminster Catechism.

"Deacon Tourtelot, another of our neighbors, is a devout man; and Dame Tourtelot (as she is commonly called) is a woman of quite extraordinary zeal and capacity. Their daughter Almira is untiring in attendance, and aids the services by singing treble. Deacon Simmons, who lives at quite a distance from us, is represented to be a man of large means and earnest in the faith. He has a large farm, and also a distillery, both of which are said to be managed with great foresight and prudence. I trust that the reports which I hear occasionally of his penuriousness are not wholly true, and that in due time his hand will be opened by divine grace to a more effectual showing forth of the deeds of charity. I do not allow myself to entertain any of the scandals which unfortunately belong more or less to every parish, and which so interrupt the growth of that Christian love which is the parent of all virtues; and I trust that these good people may come in time to see that it is better to live together in harmony than to foment those bickerings which have led so recently to the dismissal of my poor brother in the Gospel. Our home affairs are, I believe, managed prudently,—the two servants being most excellent persons, and my little Rachel a very sunbeam in the house."

And the little sunbeam writes to Mrs. Handby at about the same date,—we will say from six to eight months after their entry,—

"Everything goes on delightfully, dear mamma. Esther is a good creature, and helps me wonderfully. You would laugh to see me fingering the raw meats at the butcher's cart to choose nice pieces, which I really can do now; and it is fortunate I can, for the goodman Benjamin knows positively nothing of such things, and I am sure wouldn't be able to tell mutton from beef.

"The little parlor is nicely furnished; there is an elegant hair sofa, and over the mantel is the portrait of Major Johns; and then the goodman has insisted upon hanging under the looking-glass my old sampler in crewel, with a gilt frame around it; on the table is the illustrated 'Pilgrim's Progress' papa gave me, and a volume of 'Calmet's[Pg 299] Dictionary' I have taken out of the study—it is full of such beautiful pictures,—and 'Mrs. Hannah More' in full gilt. The big Bible you gave us, the goodman says, is too large for easy handling; so it is kept on a stand in the corner, with the great fly-brush of peacock's feathers hanging over it. I have put charming blue chintz curtains in the spare chamber, and arranged everything there very nicely; so that, before a certain event, you must be sure to come and take possession.

"Last night we took tea again with the Elderkins, and Mrs. Elderkin was as kind to me as ever, and Miss Meacham is an excellent woman, and the little ones are loves of children; and I wish you could see them. But you will, you know, quite soon. Sometimes I fall to crying, when I think of it all; and then the goodman comes and puts his hand on my head, and says,—'Rachel! Rachel, my dear! is this your gratitude for all God's mercies?' And then I jump up, and kiss his grave face, and laugh through my tears. He is a dear good man. This is all very foolish, I suppose; but, mamma, isn't it the way with all women?

"Dame Tourtelot is a great storm of a creature, and she comes down upon us every now and then, and advises me about the housekeeping and the table, and the servants, and Benjamin,—giving me a great many good hints, I suppose; but in such a way, and calling me 'my child,' as makes me feel good for nothing, and as if I were not fit to be mistress. Miss Almira is a quiet thing, and has a piano. She dresses very queerly, and, I have been told, written poetry for the 'Hartford Courant,' over two stars—* *. She seems a good creature, though, and comes to see us often. The chaise is a great comfort, and our old horse Dobbins is a good, sober horse. Benjamin often takes me with him in his drives to see the parishioners who live out of town. He tells me about the trees and the flowers, and a thousand matters I never heard of. Indeed, he is a good man, and he knows a world of things."

The tender-hearted, kind soul makes her way into the best graces of the people of Ashfield: the older ones charmed with that blithe spirit of hers, and all the younger ones mating easily with her simple, outspoken naturalness. She goes freely everywhere; she is not stiffened by any ceremony, nor does she carry any stately notions of the dignity of her office,—some few there may be who wish that she had a keener sense of the importance of her position; she even bursts unannounced into the little glazed corner of the Tew partners, where she prattles away with the sedate Mistress Tew in good, kindly fashion, winning that stiff old lady's heart, and moving her to declare to all customers that the parson's wife has no pride about her, and is "a dear little thing, to be sure!"

On summer evenings, Dobbins is to be seen, two or three times in the week, jogging along before the square-topped chaise, upon some highway that leads into the town, with the parson seated within, with slackened rein, and in thoughtful mood, from which he rouses himself from time to time with a testy twitch and noisy chirrup that urge the poor beast into a faster gait. All the while the little wife sits beside him, as if a twittering sparrow had nestled itself upon the same perch with some grave owl, and sat with him side by side, watching for the big eyes to turn upon her, and chirping some pretty response for every solemn utterance of the wise old bird beside her.

VIII.

On the return from one of these parochial drives, not long after their establishment at Ashfield, it happened that the good parson and his wife were not a little startled at sight of a stranger lounging familiarly at their door. A little roof jutted out over the entrance to the parsonage, without any apparent support, and flanking the door were two plank seats, with their ends toward the street, cut away into the shape of[Pg 300] those "settles" which used to be seen in country taverns, and which here seemed to invite a quiet out-of-door gossip. But the grave manner of the parson had never invited to a very familiar use of this loitering-place, even by the most devoted of the parishioners; and the appearance of a stranger of some two-and-thirty years, with something in his manner, as much as in his dress, which told of large familiarity with the world, lounging upon this little porch, had amazed the passers-by, as much as it now did the couple who drove up slowly in the square-topped chaise.

"He seems very much at home, my dear,"—as indeed he does, with his feet stretched out upon the bench, and eyeing curiously the approaching vehicle.

As it draws near, his observation being apparently satisfactory, he walks briskly down to the gate, and greets the parson with,—

"And this is Mrs. Johns, I suppose," says the stranger, bowing graciously, "Allow me, Madam"; and he assists her to alight. "Your husband and myself were old college-friends, partners of the same bench, and I've used no ceremony, you see, in finding him out."

Rachel, eyeing him furtively, with a little rustic courtesy, "is glad to see any of her husband's old friends."

"I am very glad to see you, Maverick; but I thought you were out of the country."

"So I have been, Johns; am home only upon a visit, and hearing by accident that you had become a clergyman—as I always thought you would—and were settled hereabout, I determined to run down and see you before sailing again."

"You must stop with me. Rachel, dear, will you have the spare room made ready for Mr. Maverick?"

"My dear Madam, don't give yourself the least trouble; I am an old traveller, and can make myself quite comfortable at the tavern yonder; but if it's altogether convenient, I shall be delighted to pass the night under the roof of my old friend. I shall be off to-morrow noon," continued he, turning to the parson, "and until then I want you to put off your sermons and make me one of your parishioners."

Frank Maverick, as he had said, had shared the same bench with Johns in college; and between them, unlike as they were in character, there had grown up a strong friendship,—one of those singular intimacies which bind the gravest men to the most cheery and reckless. Maverick was forever running into scrapes and consulting the cool head of Johns to help him out of them. There was never a tutor's windows to be broken in, or a callithumpian frolic, (which were in vogue in those days,) but Maverick bore a hand in both; and somehow, by a marvellous address that belonged to him, always managed to escape, or at most to receive only some grave admonition from the academic authorities. Johns advised with him, (giving as serious advice then as he could give now,) and added from time to time such assistance in his studies as a plodding man can always lend to one of quick brain, who makes no reckoning of time.

Upon a certain occasion Maverick had gone over with Johns to his home, and the Major had taken an immense fancy to the buoyant young fellow, so full of spirits, and so charmingly frank. "If your characters could only be welded together," he used to say to his son, "you would both be the better for it; he a little of your gravity, and you something of his rollicking carelessness."[Pg 301] This bound Johns to his friend more closely than ever. There was, moreover, great honesty and conscientiousness in the lad's composition: he could beat in a tutor's window for the frolic of the thing, and by way of paying off some old grudge for a black mark; but there was a strong spice of humanity at the bottom even of his frolics. It happened one day, that his friend Ben Johns told him that one of the bats which had done terrible execution on the tutor's windows had also played havoc on his table, breaking a bottle of ink, and deluging some half-dozen of the tutor's books; "and do you know," said Johns, "the poor man who has made such a loss is saving up all his pay here for a mother and two or three fatherless children?"

"The Deuse he is!" said Maverick, and his hand went to his pocket, which was always pretty full. "I say, Johns, don't peach on me, but I think I must have thrown that bat, (which Johns knew to be hardly possible, for he had only come up at the end of the row,) and I want you to get this money to him, to make those books good again. Will you do it, old fellow?"

This was the sort of character to win upon the quiet son of the Major. "If he were only more earnest," he used to say,—"if he could give up his trifling,—if he would only buckle down to serious study, as some of us do, what great things he might accomplish!" A common enough fancy among those of riper years,—as if all the outlets of a man's nerve-power could be dammed into what shape the possessor would!

Maverick was altogether his old self this night at the parsonage. Rachel listened admiringly, as he told of his travel and of his foreign experiences. He was the son of a merchant of an Eastern seaport who had been long engaged in the Mediterranean trade with a branch house at Marseilles; and thither Frank had gone two or three years after leaving college, to fill some subordinate post, and finally to work his way into a partnership, which he now held. Of course he had not lived there those seven or eight years last past without his visit to Paris; and his easy, careless way of describing what he had seen there in Napoleon's day—the fêtes, the processions, the display—was a kind of talk not often heard in a New England village, and which took a strong hold upon the imagination of Rachel.

"Well, well, I don't know," says Maverick; "I think I have seen a good deal of faith in the Popish churches."

"Faith in images; faith in the Virgin; faith in mummery," says Johns, with a sigh. "'Tis always the scarlet woman of Babylon!"

"I know," says Maverick, smiling, "these things are not much to your taste; but we have our Protestant chapels, too."

"Not much better, I fear," says Johns. "They are sadly impregnated with the Genevese Socinianism."

This was about the time that the orthodox Louis Empaytaz was suffering the rebuke of the Swiss church authorities for his "Considerations upon the Divinity of Jesus Christ." Aside from this, all the parson's notions of French religion and of French philosophy were of the most aggravated degree of bitterness. That set of Voltaire, which the Major, his father, had once purchased, had not been without its fruit,—not legitimate, indeed, but most decided. The books so cautiously put out of sight—like all such—had caught the attention of the son; whereupon his mother had given him so terrible an account of French infidelity, and such a fearful story of Voltaire's dying remorse,—current in orthodox circles,—as had caught strong hold upon the mind of the boy. All Frenchmen he had learned to look upon as the children of Satan, and their language as the language of hell. With these sentiments very sincerely entertained, he regarded his poor friend as one living at the very door-posts of Pandemonium, and hoped, by God's mercy, to throw around him even now a little of the[Pg 302] protecting grace which should keep him from utter destruction. But though this was uppermost in his mind, it did not forbid a grateful outflow of his old sympathies and expressions of interest in all that concerned his friend. It seemed to him that his easy refinement of manner, in such contrast with the ceremonious stiffness of the New England customs of speech, was but the sliming over of the Serpent's tongue, preparatory to a dreadful swallowing of soul and body; and the careless grace of talk, which so charmed the innocent Rachel, appeared to the exacting Puritan a token of the enslavement of his old friend to sense and the guile of this world.

Nine o'clock was the time for evening prayers at the parsonage, which under no circumstances were ever omitted; and as the little clock in the dining-room chimed the hour, Mr. Johns rose to lead the way from his study, where they had passed the evening.

"Most certainly," says Maverick, rising. "I should be sorry not to have this little scene of New England life to take back with me: it will recall home pleasantly."

The servants were summoned, and the parson read in his wonted way a chapter,—not selected, but designated by the old book-mark, which was carried forward from day to day throughout the sacred volume. In his prayer the parson asked specially for Divine Grace to overshadow all those journeying from their homes,—to protect them,—to keep alive in their hearts the teachings of their youth,—to shield them from the insidious influences of sin and of the world, and to bring them in God's own good time into the fold of the elect.

Shortly after prayers Rachel retired for the night. The parson and his old friend talked for an hour or more in the study, but always as men whose thoughts were unlike; Maverick filled and exuberant with the prospects of this life; and the parson, by a settled purpose, which seemed like instinct, making all his observations bear upon futurity.

"It is quite probable," says Maverick. "I am doing exceedingly well; the climate, bating some harsh winds in winter, is enjoyable. Why shouldn't I?"

"It's a question to put to your conscience," says Johns, "not to me. A man can but do his duty, as well there as here perhaps. A little graft of New Englandism may possibly work good. Do you mean to marry in France, Maverick?"

A shade passed over the face of his friend; but recovering himself, with a little musical laugh, he said,—

"By the way," said Maverick,—"you will excuse me,—but you will be having a family by and by,"—at which the parson fairly blushed,—"you must let me send over some little gift for your first boy; it sha'n't be one that will harm him, though it comes from our heathen side of the world."

"Live such a life, my friend, that I could say to any boy of mine, 'Follow the example of that man.'"

"Ah," said Maverick, with his easy, infectious laugh, "that's more than I can promise. To tell the truth, Johns, I don't believe I could by any possibility fall into the prim, stiff ways which make a man commendable hereabout. Even if I were religiously disposed, or should ever think of adopting your profession, I fancy I should take to the gown and[Pg 303] liturgy, as giving a little freer movement to my taste. You don't like to think of that, I'll wager."

"I know I might," said Maverick, thoughtfully; "I greatly fear I shall. Yet it's not altogether a bad life I'm looking forward to, Johns: we'll say ten or fifteen more years of business on the other side; marrying sometime in the interval,—certainly not until I have a good revenue; then, possibly, I may come over among you again, establish a pretty home in the neighborhood of one of your towns; look after a girl and boy or two, who may have come into the family; get the title of Squire; give fairly to the missionary societies; take my place in a good big family-pew; dabble in politics, perhaps, so that people shall dub me 'Honorable': isn't that a fair show, Johns?"

"As for yourself," continued Maverick, "they'll give you the title of Doctor after a few years!"—The parson raised his hand, as if to put away the thought.—"I know," continued his friend, "you don't seek worldly honors: but they will drift upon you; they'll all love you hereabout, in spite of your seriousness (the parson smiled); you'll have your house full of children; you'll be putting a wing here and a wing there; and when I come back, twenty years hence, if I live, I shall find you comfortably gray, and your pretty wife in spectacles, knitting mittens for the youngest boy, and the oldest at college, and your girls grown into tall village belles;—but, Johns, don't, I beg, be too strict with them; you can't make a merry young creature the better by insisting upon seriousness; you can't crowd goodness into a body by pounding upon it. What are you thinking of, Johns?"

The parson was sitting with his eyes bent upon a certain figure in the green and red Scotch carpet.

"Thinking, Maverick, that in twenty years' time, if alive, we may be less fit for heaven than we are to-day."

There was a pitying kindliness in the tone of the minister, as he said this, which touched Maverick.

"There's no doubt on your score, Johns, God bless you! But we must paddle our own boats: I dare say you'll come out a long way before me; you always did, you know. Every man to his path."

"Yes, I know," says Maverick, with a gay smile upon his face, which the parson remembered long after, "we are the goats; but you must have a little pity on us, for all that."

Next morning, before the minister was astir, Maverick was strolling about the garden and the village street, and at breakfast appeared with a little bunch of violets he had gathered from Rachel's flower-patch, and laid them by her plate. (It was a graceful attention, that not even the clergyman had ever paid to her.) And he further delighted her with a description of some floral fête which he had witnessed at Marseilles, in the year of the Restoration.

"Perhaps so; one can never say. The French express their joy with flowers, and they bury their grief with flowers. I like them for it; I think there's a ripe philosophy in it."

At noon Maverick left upon the old swaying stage-coach,—looking out, as he passed, upon the parsonage, with its quaintly panelled door, and its diamond lights, of which he long kept the image in his mind. That brazen knocker he seemed to hear in later years, beating,—beating as if his brain lay under it.

"I think Mr. Frank Maverick is a most charming man," said the pretty Mrs. Johns to her husband.

"He is, Rachel, and generous and[Pg 304] open-hearted,—and yet, in the sight of Heaven, I fear, a miserable sinner."

IX.

In December of the year 1820 came about a certain event of which hint has been already given by the party chiefly concerned; and Mrs. Johns presented her husband with a fine boy, who was in due time christened—Reuben.

Mrs. Handby was present at this eventful period, occupying the guest-chamber, and delighting in all the little adornments that had been prepared by the loving hands of her daughter; and upon the following Sabbath, Mr. Johns, for the first time since his entrance upon the pastoral duties of Ashfield, ventured to repeat an old sermon. Dame Tourtelot had been present on the momentous occasion, with such a tempest of suggestions in regard to the wrappings and feeding of the new comer, that the poor mother had quietly begged the good clergyman to decoy her, on her next visit, into his study. This he did, and succeeded in fastening her with a discussion upon the import of the word baptize, in which he was in a fair way of being carried by storm, if he had not retreated under cover of his Greek Lexicon.

Mrs. Elderkin had been zealous in neighborly offices, and had brought, in addition to a great basket of needed appliances, a silver porringer, which, with wonderful foresight, had been ordered from a Hartford jeweller in advance. The out-of-door man, Larkin, took a well-meaning pride in this accession to the family,—walking up and down the street with a broad grin upon his face. He also became the bearer, in behalf of the Tew partners, of a certain artful contrivance of tin ware for the speedy stewing of pap, which, considering that the donors were childless people, was esteemed a very great mark of respect for the minister.

Would it be strange, if the father felt a new ambition stirring in him, as he listened from his study to that cry of a child in the house? He does feel it, and struggles against it. Are not all his flock his spiritual children? and is he not appointed of Heaven to lead them toward the rest which is promised? Should that babe be more to him than a hundred others who are struggling through life's snares wearily? It may touch him, indeed, cruelly to think it; but is not the soul of the most worthless person of his parish as large in the eye of the Master as this of his first-born? Shall these human ties supplant the spiritual ones by which we are all coheirs of eternal death or of eternal life? And in this way the minister schools himself against too demonstrative a joy or love, and prays God silently that His gift may not be a temptation.

For all this, however, there is many a walk which would have been taken of old under the orchard trees now transferred to the chamber, where he paces back and forth with the babe in his arms, soothing its outcry, as he thinks out his discourse for the following Sabbath.

In due time Mrs. Handby returns to her home. The little child pushes through its first month of venturesome encounter with the rough world it has entered upon bravely; and the household is restored to its uniform placidity. The affairs of the parish follow their accustomed course. From time to time there are meetings of the "Consociation," or other ministerial assemblages, in the town, when the parsonage is overflowing, and Rachel, with a simple grace, is compelled to do the honors to a corps of the Congregational brotherhood. As for the parson, he was like a child in all household matters. Over and over he would invite his brethren flocking in from the neighboring villages to pass the night with him, when Rachel would decoy him into a corner, and declare, with a most pitiable look of distress, that not a bed was unoccupied in the house. Whereupon the[Pg 305] goodman would quietly take his hat, and trudge away to Squire Elderkin's, or, on rarer occasions, to Deacon Tourtelot's, and ask the favor of lodging with them one of his clerical brethren.

At other times, before some such occasion of clerical entertainment, the little housewife, supported by Esther with broom and a great array of mops, would wait upon the parson in his study and order him away to his walk in the orchard,—an order which the poor man never ventured to resist; but, taking perhaps a pocket volume of Doddridge, or of Cowper,—the only poet he habitually read,—he would sally out with hat and cane,—this latter a gift of an admiring parishioner, which it pleased Rachel he should use, and which she always brought to him at such times, with a little childish mime of half-entreaty and half-command that it was not in his heart to resist, and which on rare occasions (that were subject of self-accusation afterward) provoked him to an answering kiss. At which Rachel:—

"Now go and leave us, please; there's a good man! And mind," (shaking her forefinger at him,) "dinner at half past twelve: Larkin will blow the shell."

The parson, as he paced back and forth under the apple-trees, out of sight, and feeling the need of more vigorous exercise than his usual meditative gait afforded, would on occasions brandish his cane and assume a military air and stride, (he remembered the Major's only too well,) getting in a glow with the unusual movement, and in the heat of it thanking God for all the blessings that had befallen him: a pleasant home; a loving wife; a little boy to bear the name, in which, with all his spiritual tendencies, he yet took a very human pride; health,—and he whisked his cane as vigorously as ever the Major had done his cumbrous sword,—the world's comforts; a congregation that met him kindly, that listened kindly. Was he not leading them in the path of salvation, and rejoicing in the leadership?

And then, to himself,—"Be careful, careful, Benjamin Johns, that you take not too great a pride in this work and home of yours. You are but an instrument in greater hands; He doeth with you what seemeth Him best. Let not the enticements of the world be too near your thought." In this way it was that the minister pruned down all the shoots of his natural affections, lest they might prove a decoy to him, and wrapped himself ever more closely in the rigors of his chosen theology.

As the boy Reuben grows, and gains a firmer footing, he sometimes totters beside the clergyman in these orchard walks, clinging blindly to his hand, and lifting his uncertain feet with great effort over the interrupting tufts of grass, unheeded by the minister, who is pondering some late editorial of the "Boston Recorder." But far oftener the boy is with the mother, burying his face in that dear lap of hers,—lifting the wet face to have tears kissed away and forgotten. And as he thrives and takes the strength of three or four years, he walks beside her under the trees of the village street, clad in such humble finery as the Handby grandparents may have bestowed; and he happens oftenest, on these strolls with Rachel, into the hospitable home of the Elderkins, where there are little ones to romp with the boy. Most noticeable of all, just now, one Philip Elderkin, (of whom more will have to be said as this story progresses,) only a year the senior of Reuben, but of far stouter frame, who looks admiringly on the minister's child, and as he grows warm in play frights him with some show of threat, which makes the little Reuben run for cover to the arms of Rachel. Whereat the mother kisses him into boldness, and tells him that Phil is a good boy and means no harm to him.

Often, too, in the square-topped chaise, the child is seated on a little stool between the parson and his wife, as they drive away upon their visits to the outskirts of the parish,—puzzling them with those strange questions which come from a boy just exploring his way into the world of talk.

"Benjamin," says Rachel, as they[Pg 306] were nearing home upon one of these drives, "Reuben is quite a large boy now, you know; have you ever written to your friend, Mr. Maverick? You remember he promised a gift for him."

"Never," said the minister, whose goodness rarely took the shape of letter-writing,—least of all where the task would seem to remind of a promised favor.

"I would write, Benjamin; it might be something that would be of service to Reuben. Please don't forget it, Benjamin."

In the autumn of 1824,—the minister of Ashfield being still in good favor with nearly all his parishioners, and his wife Rachel being still greatly beloved,—a rumor ran through the town, one day, that there was serious illness at the parsonage, the Doctor's horse and saddle-bags being observed in waiting at the front gate for two hours together. Following close upon this, the Tew partners reported—having received undoubted information from Larkin, who still kept in his old service—that a daughter was born to the minister, but so feeble that there were grave doubts if the young Rachel could survive. The report was well founded; and after three or four days of desperate struggle with life, the poor child dropped away. Thus death came into the parsonage with so faint and shadowy a tread, it hardly startled one. The babe had been christened in the midst of its short struggle, and in this the father found such comfort as he could; yet reckoning the poor, fluttering little soul as a sinner in Adam, through whom all men fell, he confided it with a great sigh to God.

It would have been well, if his grief had rested there. But two days thereafter there was a rumor on the village street,—flying like the wind, as such rumors do, from house to house,—"The minister's wife is dead!"

"I want to know!" said Mrs. Tew, lifting herself from her task of assorting the mail, and removing her spectacles in nervous haste. "Do tell! It a'n't possible! Miss Johns dead?"

"Yes," says Larkin, "as true as I live, she's dead"; and his voice broke as he said it,—the kind little woman had so won upon him.

Squire Elderkin, like a good Christian, came hurrying to the parsonage to know what this strange report could mean. The study was unoccupied. With the familiarity of an old friend he made his way up the cramped stairs. The chamber-door was flung wide open: there was no reason why the whole parish might not come in. The nurse, sobbing in a corner, was swaying back and forth, her hands folded across her lap. Reuben, clinging to the coverlet, was feeling his way along the bed, if by chance his mother's hand might catch hold upon his; and the minister standing with a chair before him, his eyes turned to heaven (the same calm attitude which he took at his evening prayer-meeting) was entreating God to "be over his house, to strengthen him, to pour down his Spirit on him, to bind up the bruised hearts,—to spare,—spare"——

Even the stout Squire Elderkin withdraws outside the door, that he may the better conceal his emotion.

The death happened on a Friday. The Squire, after a few faltering expressions of sympathy, asked regarding the burial. "Should it not be on Sunday?"

"Not on Sunday," says Mr. Johns; "God help me, Squire,—but this is not a work of necessity or mercy. Let it be on Monday."

"On Monday, then," said Elderkin,—"and let me take the arrangement of it all off your thought; and we will provide some one to preach for you on the Sabbath."

"No, Mr. Elderkin, no; I am always myself in the pulpit. I shall find courage there."

And he did. A stranger would not have suspected that the preacher's wife lay dead at home; the same unction[Pg 307] and earnestness that had always characterized him; the same unyielding rigidity of doctrine: "Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish."

Once only—it was in the reading of the last hymn in the afternoon service—his voice broke, and he sat down half through. But as the song rose under the old roof of the meeting-house, his courage rose with it. He seemed ashamed of the transitory weakness. What right had he to bring private griefs to such a place? What right had the leader to faint, when the army were pressing forward to the triumph God had promised to the faithful? So it was in a kind of ecstasy that he rose, and joined with a firm, loud voice in the final doxology.

One or two of the good old ladies, with a sad misconception of the force that was in him, and of the divine aid which seemed vouchsafed to him during the service, came to him, as he passed out, to give him greeting and a word of condolence. For that time only he passed them by, as if they had been wooden images. His spirit had been strained to its uttermost, and would bear no more. He made his way home with an ungainly, swift gait,—home to the dear bedside,—down upon his knees,—struggling with his weakness,—praying.

At the tea-hour Esther knocked; but in vain. An hour after, his boy came,—came at the old woman's suggestion, (who had now the care of him,) and knelt by his side.

"Nay, Reuben, little one, blaspheme not: His ways are not as our ways. Kiss her now, and we will sit down to our supper."

And so they passed out together to their lonely repast. It had been a cheerful meal in days gone, this Sunday's supper. For the dinner, owing to the scruples of the parson, was but a cold lunch always; and in the excited state in which the preacher found himself between services, there was little of speech; even Reuben's prattle, if he ventured upon it, caught a quick "Hist!" from the mamma. But with the return of Esther from the afternoon Bible-class, there was a big fire lighted in the kitchen, and some warm dishes served, such as diffused an appetizing odor through the house. The clergyman, too, wore an air of relief, having preached his two sermons, and showing a capital appetite, like most men who have acquitted themselves of a fatiguing duty. Besides which, the parson guarded that old New England custom of beginning his Sabbath at sundown on Saturday,—so that, by the time the supper of Sunday was fairly over, Reuben could be counting it no sin, if he should steal a run into the orchard. Nay, it is quite probable that the poor little woman who was dead had always welcomed cheerily the opened door of Sunday evening, and the relaxing gravity, as night fell, of her husband's starched look.

What wonder, if she had loved, even as much as the congregational singing, the music of the birds at the dusk of a summer's day? It was hard measure which many of the old divines meted out, in excluding from their ideas of worship all alliance with the charms of Nature, or indeed with any beauties save those which were purely spiritual. It is certain that the poor woman had enjoyed immensely those Sabbath-evening strolls through the garden and orchard, hand in hand with Reuben and the minister,—with such keen and exhilarating sense of God's goodness, of trust in Him, of hope, as was not invariably wakened by the sermons of her Benjamin.

On the evening of which we speak, the father and son walked down the orchard alone. The birds sang their merriest as day closed in; and as they turned upon their walk, and the good man saw through the vista of garden[Pg 308] and orchard a bright light flitting across an upper window of his house, the mad hope flashed upon him for an instant (such baseless fancies will sometimes possess the calmest minds) that she had waked,—his Rachel,—and was there to meet him. The next moment the light and the hope were gone. His fingers gave such a convulsive grip upon the hand of his little boy that Reuben cried out with pain, "Papa, papa, you hurt me!"

ANCIENT MINING ON THE SHORES OF LAKE SUPERIOR.

In the month of March, 1848, Samuel O. Knapp and J.B. Townsend discovered, from tracks in the snow, that a hedgehog had taken up his winter-quarters in a cavity of a ledge of rocks, about twelve miles from Ontonagon, Lake Superior, in the neighborhood of the Minnesota Copper Mine. In order to capture their game, they procured a pick and shovel, and commenced an excavation by removing the vegetable mould and rubbish that had accumulated about the mouth of what proved to be a small cavern in the rock. At the depth of a few feet they discovered numerous stone hammers or mauls; and they saw that the cavern was not a natural one, but had been worked out by human agency, and that the stone implements, found in great profusion in and about it, were the tools used in making the excavation. Further examination developed a well-defined vein of native copper running through the rock; and it was evidently with a view of getting this metal that this extensive opening had been made.

This was the first instance where "ancient diggings"—as they are familiarly called in the Lake Superior region—were ever recognized as such; and this artificial cavern presents the most conclusive proofs that a people in the remote past worked those mines. Upon the discovery of this mine, attention was at once directed to numerous other cavities and depressions in the surface of the earth at this and other points, and the result was that nearly a hundred ancient pits were found, and in all of them mining-tools of various kinds. These ancient mines or pits are not restricted to one locality, but extend over the entire length of the copper region, from the eastern extremity of Keweenaw Point to the Porcupine Mountains, a distance of nearly one hundred miles.

In some of the ancient diggings, the stone hammers have the marks of hard usage, fractured or battered faces, and a large proportion of them are broken and unfit for use; but in other pits the hammers are all sound, and many of them have the appearance of never having been used. These hammers, or mauls, which are of various sizes, and not uniform in shape, are water-worn stones, of great hardness, similar in all respects to those that are found in abundance on the shore of the Lake, or in the gravel-banks of that region. They are generally trap-rock, embracing the varieties of gray, porphyritic, hornblendic, sienitic, and amygdaloidal trap, and appear to have had no labor expended upon them except the chiselling of a groove around the middle for the purpose of attaching a withe to serve as a handle. In a few instances, I have noticed small hammers, usually egg-shaped, without a groove; and the battered or worn appearance at one end was all that induced the belief that they were ever used for hammering.

These hammers are usually from six to eight inches in length, and from eight to twelve inches in circumference, and[Pg 309] weigh from four to eight pounds; but I have measured specimens that were twenty-four inches in circumference at the groove, and would weigh thirty pounds. It seems hardly probable that one man could wield so ponderous a tool; and from the fact that some of the large mauls have two grooves around them, it is presumed that two men were employed in using them.

Stone hammers are found in all the ancient diggings, and in some instances the number is almost incredible. From the pits near the Minnesota mines it is estimated that ten cart-loads have been removed; I was informed that a well there was entirely stoned up with them, and from the great number still remaining I am inclined to believe the report. A still greater number are said to have been found at the Mesnard and Pontiac Mines, in the Portage Lake district. Farther east, in the vicinity of the Cliff and Central Mines, they are also abundant; and it would seem, from the circumstance of their being invariably found in the pits, that the law among the ancient miners was similar to the one adopted by the adventurers in California a few years since, who established their claims by leaving their tools upon the land or in the pits where they were digging for gold.

In addition to the stone implements, copper chisels, wedges, or "gads," are often found in the abandoned mines; and in the vicinity, as well as in places more remote, other copper relics are found, consisting of knives, spear-points, and rings, like the bracelets of the present day. In a collection at the Douglas House, in Houghton, Portage Lake, are ornaments of this kind, and also some spear-heads, nicely wrought and similar in shape and size to the blade of a spontoon. But I have never seen a copper relic that had the appearance of having been melted. They invariably appear to have been cut and hammered into shape from a mass of native copper.

Colonel Charles Whittlesey, of Cleveland, Ohio, who has examined these "ancient diggings," has several interesting relics, some of which he has figured and described in the thirteenth volume of the "Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge." In the Vermont State Cabinet is a spear-head of native copper, about six inches long, which was found in Williston, Vermont, in 1843.

It may be proper here to remark, that the copper in these relics is tougher than that which has been fused, and so is the native copper of Lake Superior; and occasionally in these copper relics blotches and grains of native silver are found. These circumstances serve to establish the fact, that the material of which the implements were made was obtained at Lake Superior; for there, and nowhere else in America, is native silver found in grains, and sometimes in considerable masses, imbedded in a matrix of native copper. I well remember, when a boy, reading an article relating to the "Lost Arts," in which the fact was stated, that a piece of metal consisting of pure copper and silver had been found in Hamilton County, Ohio, and that a copper knife had been found in one of the ancient mounds at Marietta, which had distinct blotches of pure silver in it. The writer of the article claimed that the people who manufactured that knife were in the possession of an art, now lost, by which copper and silver could be melted and indiscriminately mixed, but upon cooling would separate and remain distinct and pure, instead of forming an alloy. The discovery of native copper and silver similarly associated in the Lake Superior mines has not only destroyed this theory, but has established beyond a doubt the locality whence that copper knife, and other relics found in the ancient mounds and elsewhere, were obtained.

Billets of wood that bear the marks of a tolerably sharp-cutting tool are often found in the old mines where water has been suffered to remain since their abandonment. In the Waterbury Mine wooden shovels were found about three and one half feet long, some of[Pg 310] which were much worn upon the blade, and appeared as though they had been used for scraping together and throwing out the refuse rock and dirt from the mine.[A] At the same locality a wooden bowl was found, the side being so worn as to show conclusively that it had been used for baling water from the mine. Similar implements have been found at the mines in the Portage Lake and Ontonagon districts. When first found, these wooden implements appear sound, and being thoroughly saturated with water are heavy and can be handled without breaking; but when dried they often crack and warp so as to retain little of their original form and appearance. It is to be regretted that but few of these wooden relics were saved and properly preserved by those who found them. In a few instances the wooden withe or handle has been found attached to the hammers, but upon being dried they usually fall to pieces.

At the Hilton Mine in the Ontonagon district, in October, 1863, as the men were removing the vegetable mould that had accumulated in one of the old pits, they found at the depth of about nine feet a leather bag, which was eleven inches long and seven inches wide. It was lying upon a mass of native copper which the ancient miners had unsuccessfully attempted to remove from its parent vein. The bag was in a remarkable state of preservation, the leather being quite pliable and as tough as sheepskin. It was made up with the hair inside, was sewed across the bottom and up one side with a leather string, and near the top holes were cut and a leather string inserted to close the mouth by drawing it together. The bag was empty, but from its appearance I judged that it had been used for transporting copper or other mineral,—the leather in places showing marks of much service, and the hair being almost entirely worn off. I was unable to determine what kind of skin it was, but inclined to the belief that it was from the walrus, as the short, stubby hairs more closely resembled those of that animal than of any other with which I am acquainted. At the time I saw the bag,—the day after it was discovered,—it was in the possession of C. M. Sanderson, Esq., the agent of the Knowlton Mine; but I hear it has since been taken to Boston and sold.

In several of the ancient mines considerable masses of pure copper detached from the main lode have been found, which were left there by those who mined it. At the Central Mine, not far from Eagle Harbor, a mass of copper was found in one of these old pits that weighed forty-six tons. Every portion of the surface was smooth, and appeared as though it had been hammered by those who detached it from its original vein. In the Mesnard Mine, in the Portage Lake district, a detached mass of copper was found that weighed eighteen tons, hammered smooth like the mass before named.

But the most interesting specimen was found in an old pit near the Minnesota Mine. In removing the accumulated leaves and vegetable mould, the workmen, at the depth of eighteen feet, discovered a mass of copper ten feet long, three feet wide, and more than a foot thick, weighing six tons. On removing the earth around the mass, it was found to rest upon skids, or timbers, piled up to the height of about five feet. These timbers, having been constantly covered with water, were in a good state of preservation, and at the ends showed plainly the marks of the tool used in cutting them. It was thought by those who saw the billets when they were plump, that they were a species of oak; but the few remaining pieces which I have seen were so cracked and shrivelled that I have been unable to form an opinion as to the kind of wood. This mass of copper, like all others found in those ancient pits, was divested of all its ragged points, and hammered perfectly smooth. There was nothing in its appearance to show that it had ever been cut from another mass; but upon clearing[Pg 311] out the rubbish from the bottom of the mine, which was about twenty-six feet below the surface, a vein of pure metal was found from which this had evidently been taken.

A few unfinished jobs have been found in these ancient pits, which throw some light upon the manner in which the work was carried on. In two instances there were projecting masses somewhat resembling urns, or inverted short-necked bottles, and completely smoothed by hammering, especially at the thinner portion or neck. It appears that the ancient miners first removed the rock from around the veins of copper. This was done by building fires upon or about it, and, when heated, crumbling it by throwing on water. By means of stone mauls the fragments were broken up and removed. When the vein was sufficiently exposed on all sides, a point was selected where the copper was thinner or narrower than the average of the vein. Here they commenced cutting off a mass, and by patient and long-continued hammering severed the two portions of the vein. In all the ancient mines which I have visited there is abundant evidence that fire was extensively used in the removal of rock; for not only do the rocks give proof of having been heated, but charcoal and ashes are invariably found at the bottom of all the rock excavations.

In general, the mining was done by surface openings along the line of the outcrop of the vein; but occasionally adits are driven into the rock, similar to the one first discovered at the Minnesota Mine before alluded to.

The surface mines are usually nearly filled with leaves and vegetable mould that have accumulated during the centuries that have elapsed since their abandonment, and till within a few years a heavy growth of timber covered the land; hence the numerous slight depressions that occurred along the line of the vein excited no suspicion that they were artificial excavations. By the closest observers they were regarded as natural depressions, caused either by the disintegration of the underlying rock or the peculiar manner in which the overlying drift was deposited. In many of these depressions, which have proved to be abandoned mines, trees of enormous size are found growing, some of which are ascertained, by counting their concentric rings, to be four hundred years old. At the Hilton Mine, directly over the leather bag before alluded to, there was a hemlock-tree about three feet in diameter. I noticed the stump of a tree nearly four feet in diameter in a gap near the Rockland Mine, where a hill had been actually cut asunder by these ancient miners, and a deep valley formed by the removal of the rock. Until very recently this valley was not recognized as an ancient mine; for, being ten rods in width, and cutting nearly at right angles across the strata of the rock that formed the hill, it was considered too extensive to have been made by human hands, and was supposed to be the result of natural causes. But about two years since, during a very dry time, a destructive fire swept through the woods, and so completely burned up all the vegetable matter accumulated there as to expose the underlying rock, and reveal its true character. After the fire had done its work, it was found that copper veins, which had been worked, ran through the rock in the gap, and that the great bank upon the south side of the hill, which was supposed to be a terraced gravel bank, proved to be a vast accumulation of "attle," or refuse stone, that had been taken from the artificial gap and deposited there. The stones forming this immense pile are generally small, and appear to have been broken up by heating to facilitate their removal from the mine, and possibly may have been again broken, with the hope of finding copper in them. In the midst of the pile I noticed several stone hammers, or mauls, some of them measuring twenty inches in girth around their grooves, and one I brought away weighing thirty pounds.

When examining this locality, I was struck with a significant fact, tending[Pg 312] to show the long time that must have elapsed since the abandonment of these mines. I noticed in many instances that the artificial groove around the hammers was nearly obliterated upon the upper side, while upon the lower side, less exposed to the abrading agency of the atmosphere and rains, the groove presented a comparatively fresh appearance, and even the slight markings made by the tool that cut them were quite distinct. When I removed the overlying rock, and found a grooved maul in a protected spot, the groove was generally as fresh as though it had been made but a few months before. The compact nature of the stone of which these hammers are made, and their ability to resist the action of weather and moisture, prove conclusively that much time has been required to disintegrate their surface so as to obliterate the artificial work which has been expended upon them.

I feel unwilling to leave this subject without instituting an inquiry relative to the time when these mines were wrought, and the people who worked them. Many who have been taught to regard the present roving tribes of Indians as instinctively wise in matters of medicine and mining are ready to award to that race the credit of having worked these mines; but, inasmuch as even a traditional knowledge of their existence was unknown to the Indians at the time the Jesuit missionaries visited that region in the sixteenth century, we incline to the opinion that an other and distinct race worked them. I am unable to see why the descendants of a people residing in the same country, and subject to the same wants, should abandon the half-worked mines which their ancestors had opened, and even fail to hand down to their posterity a tradition of their existence. If copper was in such demand that the ancestors of the present race of Chippeways were induced to work so perseveringly to obtain it, why did not the children continue to work, at least enough to finish the jobs already commenced by their progenitors? We cannot consistently attribute the Herculean labor expended on these mines to the ancestors of the indolent race of North American Indians. We incline, rather, to the opinion that the miners were the mound-builders, who resided south of the mines, and ultimately found a home in Mexico. The condition in which the mines were left favors this theory; for in many instances unfinished jobs are found,—as in the case of the mass of copper upon skids at the Minnesota Mine, and the half-severed veins in other mines. May we not reasonably suppose that the miners came from the South and worked during the summer months, returning to their homes in winter? The circumstance that no traces of their habitations or burial-places have ever been discovered in the immediate vicinity of the mines leads to the inference that they came from a distance; and the fact that copper rings, chisels, and knives, and occasionally stone hammers, are found in the ancient mounds that extend in an unbroken line from Ohio to Mexico, induces the belief that the ancient miners and the ancient mound-builders were the same people.

It is said that artificial mounds are found in British America; and I was informed of one upon the banks of the Ontonagon River, about six miles from its mouth, but was unable to visit the spot. It is well known that they are quite abundant in Wisconsin, and extend the entire length of the Mississippi Valley.

It is a noticeable fact that as we proceed south we find the mounds generally larger and more symmetrical than those in more northern latitudes. It would seem that the people who constructed those in British America, in moving southward, (for we strongly suspect that this people originally crossed Behring's Strait from Asia,) improved in their style of building, and, on arriving at the Ohio River, had so far improved as to be able to construct those interesting works at Marietta, Moundville, and other points in that region. It was not till about the time they reached[Pg 313] the Ohio Valley that they manufactured pottery. In that valley, and thence to Mexico, fragments of earthen ware are very common; and in the mounds entire vessels are not unfrequently found. Upon reaching Mexico, the mounds are seen to be still further improved in size and form, and specimens of ancient pottery are more abundant. The great mound or pyramid at Cholula, which is a fair type of the mounds in Mexico, is fourteen hundred and twenty-three feet square at the base, and one hundred and seventy-seven feet high, being larger than the celebrated pyramids of Egypt. This immense structure is said to have been built by the Toltecs, a people who, according to tradition, as communicated to the Spaniards, entered Mexico from the North in the year A.D. 648, and established their capital on the northern confines of the great valley of Mexico, at Tula, the remains of which city were visible, and a record made of them, at the time of the Conquest by Cortés.

This people were said to have possessed a good knowledge of agriculture, and were well instructed in many useful mechanic arts. They mixed gold and copper, and were experts in working these metals. For a period of four hundred years they occupied the territory of Mexico or Anahuac; but secession, and the attendant evils of war, pestilence, and famine, greatly reduced their numbers, and the race disappeared from the land to give place to their successors, the Aztecs, who also emigrated from the North. Remnants of the Toltec race are said to have migrated still farther south, and to have spread over Central America; and the remarkable correspondence of dates inclines us to the belief that the famous Manco Capac, whom the Peruvians worshipped as the founder of their empire, may have been a wanderer from that once happy, but then unfortunate people. The useful arts, which he made known to the semi-barbarous people among whom he settled, instead of originating in the great luminary of the day, and being brought to earth by a "child of the Sun," as they were taught, are far more likely to have been cultivated by the Toltecs in the days of their prosperity, and, on the dissolution of their government, transmitted by those who, fearing the result, had fled and taken refuge with the credulous Peruvians. Whether the stupendous ruins of temples found at Mitla, Palenque, and Uxmal were the work of the Toltecs or the Aztecs, is immaterial. It is sufficient for the purposes of this paper to show that a people inhabited Mexico prior to and at the time of the Conquest, who were far in advance of the roving tribes of Indians that subsisted in the more northern and eastern portions of North America.

At the time of the conquests of Mexico and Peru, numerous cities were found in those countries, and magnificent temples and palaces abounded, some of which were richly decorated with massive images of solid gold, others ornamented with fantastic and sometimes hideous figures carved out of the solid rock. But what is remarkable, no iron implements were used, nor did the inhabitants have the least knowledge of its use, notwithstanding iron ore was plentifully distributed through the country in which they lives. Not a trace of iron has ever been found in those grand ruins of Yucatan visited by Stephens and Catherwood; nor do the ruins of the holy city, Cuzco, give evidence that implements of iron were used in its construction. But the people of these countries were acquainted with many of the metals, and the Spanish invaders found numerous silver, tin, and copper mines that had been worked by them. All the deep, winding galleries of these mines were driven without the aid of iron, steel, or gunpowder. It is said that an alloy of tin and copper was used for their edge-tools; and with the aid of a silicious sand or dust, they were enabled to cut and polish amethysts, emeralds, porphyry, and other hard substances. With these implements the elaborate carving in the stone temples of Palenque and the other ruined cities of Central America was executed. The[Pg 314] great calendar-stone, which in 1790 was disinterred in the city of Mexico, was nicely wrought out of a block of dark porphyry, that is estimated to have weighed fifty tons, and must have been transported several leagues; for the nearest point where porphyry of that character is found is upon the shores of Lake Chalco, many miles distant from the city of Mexico. In the absence of iron, some tough metal would be in requisition for the tools and machinery necessary in the execution and removal of such a gigantic and elaborate work. In many abandoned quarries in Mexico and Central America unfinished blocks of granite and porphyry are found, which are supposed to have been the work of the Toltecs, and abandoned by them at the time of the invasion of the fierce Aztec. Assuming this to be the fact, we can readily conceive why the half-raised mass of copper in the Minnesota Mine should also be abandoned; for a people suddenly scattered as the Toltecs were—so suddenly as to leave temples half finished, and blocks of stone half hewn—would have no further use for copper tools; and hence the raw material would no longer have a value. In the abandoned quarries near Mitla, amid fragments of pillars and architraves and half-finished blocks of granite, copper axes, chisels, and wedges were found in abundance; but the same inordinate love of money that prompted adventurers to flock to Chiriqui, a few years since, to rob the ancient burying-grounds of their golden idols, induced others to search the old quarries and mines of Mexico and Central America, and take from them any relics that were intrinsically valuable.

In Mexico, the mounds were built so that their summits were visible from every portion of the surrounding city, in order that the inhabitants might continually have in view the sacred fires that were ever kept burning on each side of the sacrificial altar. The same is strikingly true of the mounds at the West; for they are invariably placed so that their summits occupy a commanding position,—a circumstance that has induced many to suppose them to have been built for military purposes, and to have served as watch-towers. But when we reflect that the attacks of savage or half-civilized peoples are usually made in the night-time, we shall hardly suppose these structures were raised for any such purpose. The Pyramid of Cholula is composed of alternate layers of brick and clay, or possibly of burnt and unburnt brick; and others in Mexico are built of unburnt brick. Many of the mounds in the West are of clay,—perhaps of unburnt brick,—in situations where clay is not so abundant as other earths.

I recollect visiting Circleville, Ohio, when it was really a Circle-ville. An octagonal court-house stood upon an ancient mound, and the dwellings and stores were built upon an ancient circular wall of earth that encompassed an area around the mound. South of this circular inclosure, and joining it, was a square inclosure of several acres, surrounded by a wall about ten feet high. What is remarkable, this square wall—and we presume the same is true also of the mound and circular wall—was built of clay, perhaps of unburnt brick, that must have been transported a considerable distance; for no clay exists upon that alluvial bottom, and the nearest point where it is found is three fourths of a mile distant, across a considerable creek. On a subsequent visit to this place, I found the people using the clay from the wall of the square inclosure for making brick, and streets had been cut across the circular inclosure, so that the city is no longer entitled to the name of Circleville. In many instances, the ruined cities of Central America have inclosures resembling those at Circleville, surrounding the Teocallis, or sacred temples, which almost invariably stand upon mounds, or, as they are commonly called, pyramids.

With these many points of resemblance, the conclusion is irresistible, that the mounds of the West were but the germs of the more symmetrical pyramids[Pg 315] of Mexico and Central America, and that the people who constructed them were, in intelligence and civilization, far in advance of the roving tribes of North American Indians who inhabited the country at the time of its discovery.

If it be true, as tradition informs us, that the Toltecs were a cultivated race, even more advanced than the Aztecs who occupied Mexico at the time of the Conquest, we may reasonably suppose that a metal so valuable to them as copper would be in great demand, and that mines of it, even at a remote distance, would be worked by a people, the construction of whose religious temples and royal palaces, and, it would seem, their nationality even, depended upon its possession.

Other evidence might be adduced to show that the extensive mining-pits on the shores of Lake Superior were not the work of the indolent and untutored race of Indians who now inhabit that region, nor of their ancestors, but of a people comparatively well acquainted with the mechanic arts. Our article, however, has already extended beyond the limits contemplated. I therefore leave the subject, with the hope that the few hints here thrown out may awaken other and abler minds to its investigation.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] See Col. Whittlesey's Report, Vol. XIII. Smithsonian Contributions.

TO A POET ON HIS BIRTHDAY,

FEBRUARY 27.

O singer, musical and strong,
Why should a faint and faltering line
Seek through the happy realms of song
To celebrate thy voice divine?

The tribute bears its own reply,
And speaks for many a voiceless one,
Of hearts disburdened of a sigh
Wherever thy brave accents run;

And blessing brings for youthful hours,
When maidens dreamed their early dreams,
And boys awakened, crowned with flowers,
Plucked walking by thy sunlit streams;

For all of Nature's pictured calm,
The children's hour, the fireside scene,
For our frail lives' undying psalm,
And wandering sweet Evangeline;

Praises for all; yet first for thee,
O lover with the kindling eye!
Quick to discern the minstrelsy
Where planets sway and star-fires die.

O prophet of a nobler world!
Thy song shall cheer the hill and plain,
Till sunset's glowing wings are furled
On faded joys and vanished pain.

NEEDLE AND GARDEN.

THE STORY OF A SEAMSTRESS WHO LAID DOWN HER NEEDLE AND BECAME A STRAWBERRY-GIRL.

WRITTEN BY HERSELF.

CHAPTER III.

My experience as a seamstress thus far subjected me to mere trials of temper, or mortifications of personal pride, but never to the calamities which sometimes fall so heavily on others in a like position. Hence, while spared the latter, I was too much disposed to magnify the former: for, let our trials be few and light as they may, we are generally prone to consider them the greatest that could befall. The griefs of others, their losses, their calamities, as has often been well said, we can all bear with surprising fortitude: it is only our own that we are disposed to regard as unendurable. But in this time of discouragement there were cases brought to my notice, the severity of which fairly humbled me in the dust, filling my heart with thankfulness at the exemption extended to us, and showing me that afflictions are really great or insignificant only by comparison.

One sleety wintry night the low wail of a new-born infant was heard issuing from a bundle of ragged clothing which some poor creature had laid down on the doorstep of a house in a small by-street not many squares from our own. The house was occupied in part by a man named Varick, who had a wife and several children. This man had been an industrious mechanic, but had for two years been pursuing the downward path to ruin, a confirmed victim of the bottle. He had been forced by the destitution thus brought upon himself to abandon a snug abode in a decent street for the squalor of a rickety shell in a mean locality, and was now prostrate on his bed, dying of rapid consumption. By what mysterious providence a new-born babe should thus be sent to such a man's door is beyond my comprehension. But the wife of Varick, softer of heart than its mother, took in the shivering waif, adopted it in place of one only a few weeks older, which she had buried two days previous, and resisted all urgency of the few friends she had to send it to the almshouse.

My mother had long known Mrs. Varick. She regarded her with great interest, and had frequently visited the family, watching the progress of her husband's decline, and sympathizing with her in her incessant labor as a seamstress. Varick did nothing but drink,—she did nothing but work. The trials, the sufferings, the absolute privations which she underwent for two years, it would be difficult to describe. Her domestic labors, with the care of a sick husband, watching him by night as well as by day, left her little time or energy to devote to the needle. Yet she toiled unceasingly for the shops. Scanty indeed were their prices, scantier were her earnings, and scantier still the daily fare which the poor needle-woman was able to set before her children. Many times they cried themselves to sleep with hunger. I doubt not that the dying husband shared in these privations, as well as suffered for want of many comforts which his situation demanded. Strangely enough, in the midst of this accumulated misery, the woman's heart went out with an unconquerable sympathy for the foundling so unexpectedly left at her door. So far from proving an additional incumbrance, it seemed to be a positive comfort.

Hearing of the circumstance, my mother went immediately to see the[Pg 317] family, taking me with her. They were quartered in a single large room of an old frame-house which was crowded with tenants of all descriptions. We found Varick on his bed, evidently very near his end. But, alas! the unhappy man, expressed the utmost horror of dying. He made no request for spiritual aid or counsel,—no mention of religion, no reference to eternity. The Saviour's name, or any allusion to the salvation which came by him, never passed his lips. Every thought was of the earth,—how to live, not how to die. I shuddered as I saw and heard him. At intervals he reached out his hand impatiently for a vial of medicine, then inquired when the doctor would come. His whole dependence was on the arm of flesh. Neither wife nor visitor ventured to direct his attention to the fact of his rapidly approaching end; for he was stubborn and repulsive. The door seemed to be shut, no more to be opened,—we could do nothing for him.

Yet while this horrible scene was passing before us, there were loud noises in the next room, penetrating the thin board partition at the head of Varick's bed. A drunken brawl was going on, with oaths and imprecations that alarmed all but the sick man and his wife, with now and then a sharp pounding on the partition, as if some one's head were being violently beaten against it. Overhead another similar disturbance occurred. Then there was a crowd of squalid faces peering in at the windows at us; for decent visitors were rare in the depraved locality of that forlorn tenant-house. Altogether, the scene sickened and almost frightened me.

My mother gave Mrs. Varick a basket filled with simple comforts she had brought with her; and we were about taking our leave, when the door opened, and a religious-looking man, dressed in black, entered the room, bowed to us, spoke familiarly to Mrs. Varick, and approached the bedside of the dying man. Presently he sank upon his knees, and in language most appropriate to the spiritual hardness and destitution of poor Varick, invoked the Throne of Grace in his behalf. Though the outcries and turmoil around and above were continued, yet I lost no word of this deeply affecting prayer. It touched my heart and heightened the solemnity of the occasion. My own supplications went up in silence to the mercy-seat on behalf of the dying man. I knew that my mother's would be equally fervent; and from the reverential responses of the sobbing wife, it was clear to me that hers were not withheld.

She was standing very near to me when the minister rose to his feet. Turning to her, he said in a low voice,—

"Madam, I perceive that you are to have a funeral here very shortly. I am an undertaker, and shall be glad to take charge of furnishing the coffin and whatever else may be needed."

He put a card into her hand, and left us. I cannot describe the revulsion of feeling which this uncouth and abrupt transition from spiritual to carnal things occasioned in my mind. The shock was so violent as to dissipate at once the solemn impression which the man's excellent prayer had made. The heart-stricken wife could make no reply, except by tears. It was well that the dying man was unable to catch the mercenary drift of the religious exercises he had heard.

That night he died. When we reached there the next morning, several of the low crowd who herded in other apartments of this great tenement-house were already offering to bargain with the widow for her husband's clothes. The thing was so inexpressibly shocking that my mother interposed and compelled them to desist and leave us alone. By degrees we learned more of the actual condition of the family. It appeared that Varick had in better days become a member of a beneficial society which allowed forty dollars to a widow for the funeral expenses of her husband. The harpies of the tenement-house had become acquainted with this circumstance, and while one set was seeking to obtain possession of the dead man's clothes, another was practising every art to steal from the widow the little beneficiary[Pg 318] fund with which he was to be buried. Through all her difficulties the poor needle-woman had managed to pay the society's dues, foreseeing what the end would be, and she was now entitled to draw the forty dollars. My mother immediately obtained from her an order for the money, drew it, kept it from the rapacious set who watched for it, and made it an efficient means of immediate comfort.

The ministerial undertaker was of course present at the funeral. He was evidently as keen after business as he was powerful in prayer. When the hour for moving from the house had arrived, he approached the widow and whispered to her that he could not think of letting the coffin leave the premises until some one had become surety for the payment of his bill! My mother and myself both sat near the widow, and heard this extraordinary and ill-timed demand. I was amazed and disgusted at the indecency of the man in not urging it at the proper time, and pressing it at so improper a one. But my mother told him to proceed, and that she would pay the bill.

All these enormities were new things to me. I had seen nothing, I had imagined nothing, so every way terrible as came within my notice under the squalid roof of this poor needle-woman. But my mother had long been in the habit of penetrating into the abodes of the sick and destitute; and though shocked by the new combination of religion and trade which she here witnessed, yet she regarded it only as a fresh development of the selfishness and hypocrisy of human nature. This poor woman and her family must live. How, thought I, is she to do so in this season of declining prices of the only work she is able to perform? If she could survive such a crisis so uncomplainingly, and be willing to take to her bosom the helpless foundling left upon her doorstep, what cause was there for me to complain? Sorrows gathered all round her pathway, while only blessings clustered about mine. I learned a lesson of thankfulness that has never been forgotten.

If there had been need of such exhibitions of positive distress as teachers of contentment, others were not wanting within my little circle. One of my cousins, a girl of my own age, ambitious to support herself, had been successful in obtaining a situation as saleswoman in a highly fashionable shop, where the most costly goods were sold in large quantities, and to which, of course, the most dashing customers resorted. I always thought her a truly beautiful girl. She was tall and eminently graceful, her face expressing the virtue and intelligence of her mind: for I cannot understand that true beauty can exist without these corresponding mental harmonies, any more than a shadow without the substance.

My taste in such matters may be defective, because it lacks the cultivation which fashion gives. Such as I possess is altogether natural. To my primitive apprehension, therefore, the attractions of a finely formed neck or arm receive no addition from being encircled by chains of gold or bracelets of pearls. When charmed with the appearance of a beautiful woman in simple robes, who is there, if told that the profuse expenditure that would have been required to cover her with brilliants had been employed in charity,—that she had used it as a fund to relieve the wants of the needy, to minister to the sick, to comfort the widow, to support and educate the destitute orphan,—who is there that would not feel the loftier emotions of his nature mingling with his admiration?

At home my cousin had been seated at her needle, but in her new employment she found herself compelled to stand. There was neither bench nor chair nor stool behind the counter, on which she could for a moment rest a body which had never been accustomed to so long-continued and unnatural a strain upon its powers. It was the peremptory order of the wealthy proprietor that no girl employed in the shop should on any occasion sit down. There were soft stools for the repose of customers who had money to spend,[Pg 319] but not even a block for the weary saleswoman who had money to earn. The rich lady, who had promenaded the street until fatigued by the exertion of displaying her new bonnet over miles of pavement, came in and rested herself while pricing goods she did not intend to buy. There was a seat for all such. The unoccupied saleswoman had been seeking relief from the strain upon her muscles by leaning back against the shelves, but on the entrance of a customer she must be all obsequiousness. While she might have rested, she was unfeelingly forbidden to do so. Now the customer must be waited on, no matter how completely she may be overcome by fatigue or prostrated by lassitude. Either was sufficient to destroy her spirits; the combination of the two, springing from a fixed cause, was sure to undermine her health.

My cousin suffered keenly from this almost unexampled cruelty. She came home at night worn out by the strain upon her muscular system. Her spine was the seat of a chronic uneasiness. All day she was upon her feet, being allowed no other rest than such as she might get by leaning against the shelving. At the week's end she was fairly overcome. Sunday was hardly a day of recreation, because she was rarely free from pain induced by this unintermitted standing. All this was suffered for the sum of four dollars a week. It is true that she had earned less at her needle, but then her health had been remarkable for its robustness. Her increased earnings now were the price of that health.

Nor were others among the saleswomen less dangerously affected than herself. Some, of feeble organization, quickly broke down, under this unnatural discipline, and abandoned the shop, sometimes rendered temporary invalids, sometimes permanently disabled, while but few returned to fill their thankless places. Reading, while in the shop, whether employed or not, was out of the question, as that also was strictly prohibited. There was therefore no recreation either of body or mind, even when it might have been harmlessly permitted. It was either work or absolute idleness, but in no case rest or relaxation.

Under this monstrous system of torture my cousin at length broke down so completely that she, too, was compelled to leave the establishment. Her resolute spirit led her to endure it too long. When she did give up, it was in the hope that entire rest would bring relief. But it never came. Her physical organization, strong as it was by nature, had been so deranged that recuperation was impossible. Medicine could do nothing for her. A curvature of the spine had been established,—she soon became unable to sit up,—and at this writing she lies comparatively helpless in her bed, still beautiful in her helplessness. Her health was permanently ruined by the barbarism of a man so destitute of sympathy for a working-girl as to deny her the cheap privilege of sitting down when she could do him no good by standing up. Yet the great establishment is still continued, with all its gorgeous display of plate-glass windows, its polished counters, its wealth of costly goods, and its long array of tortured saleswomen.

These instances of complicated affliction among needle-women by no means embrace all that came under my notice. They were so numerous that it was impossible for me to avoid seeing and feeling that no such grief had been permitted to come over me. I trust that my heart was sufficiently grateful for this immunity,—for I became satisfied, that, if we were to thank God for all His blessings, we should have little time to complain of misfortunes. I know that I endeavored to be so. I labored to take a cheering view of what we then considered a very gloomy prospect. And this disposition to contrast our condition with that of others, while it taught me wisdom, brought with it a world of consolation. I saw that there was a bright side to everything,—that the sky was oftener blue than black; and my floral experiences in the garden taught me that it was the sunshine, and[Pg 320] not the cloud, that makes the flower. It became my study to look only on the bright side of things, convinced, that, if the present were a little overcast, there was a future for us that would be all delightful. I was full of hope; and the eye of hope can discover a star in the thickest darkness, a rainbow even in the blackest cloud.

Hence I went cheerfully to learn the art of operating a sewing-machine, in which I soon became so expert as to prove a profitable pupil. There were from a dozen to twenty learners beside myself, some few of whom were educated and agreeable girls, the daughters of families moving in genteel circles, who had come there with a sensible ambition to acquire a thorough knowledge of the art. With these I formed a very pleasant acquaintance, so that my apprenticeship of a few weeks, instead of being a dull and lifeless probation, calculated to depress my spirits, was really an agreeable episode in my quiet career, cheering by its new associations, and invigorating by reason of the unmistakable evidences occurring almost daily that a sewing-girl was probably the last machine whose labor was to become obsolete.

The fame of these schools for female operatives went all over the country, and attracted crowds of visitors. Some of these were fine ladies of superficial minds, who came from mere curiosity, so as to be able to say that they had seen a sewing-machine. I was often struck with the shallow, unmeaning questions which these butterflies of fashion propounded to us. Some of them made the supercilious, but disreputable boast, that they had never taken a stitch in the whole course of their lives. But the great throng of inquirers consisted of women who had families dependent on their needles, and of young girls like myself, obliged also to depend upon the labor of their fingers. All such were deeply interested in the new art, and their inquiries were practical and to the point. They expressed the same astonishment, on seeing the rapidity with which the machine performed its work, that I had felt when first beholding it.

With so great a throng continually around us, asking questions, stopping the machines to examine the sewing, and begging for scraps with a row of stitches made in them, which they might take away to inspect at leisure, as well as to exhibit to others, there were days when the pupils were able to produce only a very small amount of work. But we soon discovered that this deficiency made but little difference to our teacher. The school was in reality a mere show-shop, a place of exhibition established by the machine-makers, in which to display and advertise their wares more thoroughly to the public. We pupils were the unconscious mouthpieces of the manufacturers. We paid the teacher for the privilege of learning to work the machines, and the manufacturers paid her a commission for all that she disposed of. Between the two sets of contributors to her purse she must have done a profitable business. She was at no expense except for rent, as the manufacturers loaned her the machines, while we did all the work. She had more orders for the latter than we could get through with, as the demand from the tailors was so urgent as to show very plainly that the great proportion of all the future sewing was to be done by the machine instead of by hand.

When I first went into this schoolroom I noticed a number of unemployed machines arranged in one part of it. After a week's apprenticeship, I observed some of them leaving the room every day, while new ones came in to occupy the vacant places. The first had been sold, the last were also to be disposed of, and this active sale continued as long as I remained. The fact was very apparent, that this public exhibition of the capacity of the new machine was operating on the community as the most efficient mode of advertising that could have been adopted. The machines went everywhere, over city and country, even at the monstrous prices demanded for them. Many fashionable ladies became purchasers, thinking, no doubt, that[Pg 321] clothing could be made up by merely cutting it out and placing it before the machine.

Thus the most ingeniously potent agencies were invoked to bring the new invention rapidly and extensively into use. Its real merit happened to be such that it fulfilled all the promises with which it had been presented to the public. Hence it became a fixture in every great establishment where sewing-women were usually employed. As the latter acquired a knowledge of the machine, each of these establishments became a school in which new hands were converted into skilful operatives, until the primary schools, like that where I had been instructed, were abandoned from lack of pupils.

But I picked up a great many useful ideas at the school, besides acquiring, as already remarked, a new and assured confidence in the future prospects of the sewing-woman. It seemed clear to my mind, that, under the new order of things, the needle was still to be plied by her; whatever work it was to do would be superintended and directed by her. It was in reality only a new turn given to an old employment. Moreover, it struck me that more of it would be called for than ever, because I had noticed that the speed of the machine in making stitches had already led to putting treble and quadruple the usual number into some garments. Having achieved the useful, it was quickly applied to the ornamental. Clothing was not to be made up, in the future, as plainly as it had been in the past. Hence the prospect of more work being required involved the probability of a greater demand for female labor. But whether it was to be more remunerative,—whether the sewing-girl who might turn out ten times as much in a day as she formerly did would receive an increase of wages in any degree proportioned to the increase of work performed, was a problem which the future alone could solve. I did not believe that any such measure of justice would be accorded to her. It would be to the men, but not to the women. Yet I was willing to take the future on trust, for it now looked infinitely brighter than ever.

Among the pupils of this school was a young lady of twenty, whose affable and sociable disposition won strongly on my admiration, while her robust good sense commanded my utmost respect. The machines we operated were close to each other, so that I had the good fortune to have constant opportunities of conversing with her. Her name was Effie Logan, and she was one of three daughters of a merchant who had acquired an ample competency. In company with his wife, he came once or twice a week to visit the school and see his daughter at work. With great consideration for me, Miss Effie introduced me to her parents, at the same time adding some highly complimentary explanations as to who I was, and how attentive I had been in teaching her to use the machine. This adoption of me as her friend established a sort of good feeling in the parents toward me, so that at each visit to the school they greeted me in a way so cordial as greatly to attach me to them. It was an unexpected kindness from an entirely new quarter, and increased my affection for Miss Effie.

Her parents, it appeared, were having all their children taught an art or profession of some kind. One of the daughters, having a talent for drawing, was learning the art of engraving on wood. The youngest, being passionately fond of flowers, and possessed of great artistic genius, was a regular apprentice in an artificial-flower manufactory. Miss Effie, the eldest, had had her musical talent so cultivated under a competent master, that she was now qualified to act as organist in a church, or to teach a class of pupils at the piano; but not satisfied with this, she had insisted on being instructed in the use of the sewing-machine. Both she and her parents seemed so wholly free from the false pride which wealth so frequently engenders in the American mind, that she came, without the least hesitation, to a public school, and sat down as a learner beside the very humblest[Pg 322] of us. When her parents came to inspect her work, I am certain they were gratified with all they saw of what she was doing.

I confess that the whole conduct of this family was as great a surprise to me as it was a comfort and encouragement. Mrs. Logan always made the kindest inquiries about my parents, but in the politest way imaginable,—no impertinent questions, but such as showed that she felt some interest in me. I think that Effie must have spoken very favorably of me to her parents when at home, but I could not understand why, as I was not near so affable and pleasant in my manners as she was. But an intimacy had grown up between us; she had won my whole confidence; and as confidence usually begets confidence, so she probably took to me from the force of that harmony of thought and feeling which comes spontaneously from communion of congenial souls.

One day the teacher of the school had been called out on other business, leaving me to attend to visitors and customers. The throng that morning was so great that it was full two o'clock before I found time to sit down, hungry enough, to the slight dinner I had brought with me in a little basket. I had taken only the first mouthful, when Miss Effie came in from dining at home. She drew her chair close up to me, her sweet face blooming with the roses of perfect health, and her bright eyes sparkling with animation and intelligence. Much as I admired and loved her, I thought she had never before looked so perfectly beautiful.

"Lizzie," she said, taking in her hand a spool of cotton to adjust on her machine, "how I like this work! Pa intends to buy me a machine as soon as I have completed my apprenticeship here. He don't believe there is any real gentility in the idleness of a girl who, because she happens to be rich, or to have great expectations, chooses to do nothing but fritter away her time on company and parties and dress and trifles unworthy of a sensible woman. He has brought us all up to think as he does. He tells us that every woman should be so educated, that, if at any time compelled by reverse of fortune to support herself, she would be able to do so. Why, he made us all learn the old story of the Basket-Maker before we were ten years old. It was only last week that he said there was no knowing what might happen to us girls,—you know, Lizzie, there are three of us,—that some day we might possibly be married."

I am sure that the faintest of all innocent blushes rose up from the half-conscious heart of the truly lovely speaker as she uttered the word, giving to her cheeks a tinge of crimson that added new beauty to the soft expression which her countenance habitually wore.

"Possibly, did you say, Miss Effie?" I interposed. "You might have said probably,—but would have been nearer the truth, if you had said certainly."

"Oh, Lizzie, how you talk!" she rejoined; and there was an unmistakable deepening of her blushes. But in a moment she resumed:—

"Pa remembers how his mother was left a widow with five young children, but with neither trade nor money, and how both she and he had to struggle for a mere subsistence, she at keeping boarders, and he as apprentice to a mean man, who gave him only the smallest weekly pittance. He says that we shall never go out into the world as destitute of resources as his mother was, and so we all have what may really be called trades. My brother is in the counting-house, keeping the books, and is provided for. But you don't know how we have all been laughed at by our acquaintances, and sneered at by impudent people, who, though not at all acquainted with us, undertake to prescribe what we should and what we should not do. They call us work-women! With them, work of any kind is regarded as degrading, especially if done by a woman, and more especially if she is to be paid for it."

"Ah, Miss Effie, you have touched the weak spot of our national character," I responded.[Pg 323]

"Yes," she resumed, "it is the misfortune of American women to entertain the idea that working for a living is dishonorable, and never to be done, unless one be driven to it by actual want. Why, even when positively suffering for want of food and fuel, I have known some to conceal or disguise the fact of their working for others by all sorts of artifice. To suffer in secret was genteel enough, but to work openly was disgraceful! A girl of my acquaintance was accidentally discovered to be selling her work at a public depository, and forthwith went to apologizing for doing so, as if she had been guilty of a crime, instead of having nobly striven to earn a living. The ridiculous pride of another seduced her into a falsehood: she declared that the work she had been selling for her own support was for the benefit of a church. This senseless pride exists in all classes. From the sham gentility it spreads to the daughters of workingmen. They are educated to consider work as a disgrace, and hence the idle lives so many of them lead. It is the strangest thing imaginable, that parents who rose from poverty to independence by the hardest kind of bodily labor should thus bring up their children. No such teaching was ever given to me. I can sit here at my machine, and look the finest lady of my acquaintance in the face. She may some day wish that she had been my fellow-apprentice."

"Where do our girls learn this notion of its being disgraceful for a woman to support herself?" I inquired.

"Learn it? It is taught them everywhere," she responded. "I sometimes think it is born with them. They drink it in with their mother's milk. They grow up with it as a daily lesson,—the lesson of avoiding work, and of considering it delicate and genteel and refined to say that they never cooked a meal, or swept the parlor, or took a stitch with the needle, actually priding themselves upon the amount of ignorance of useful things that they can exhibit. They make the grand mistake of assuming that sensible men will admire them for this display of folly. So they drag on until there occurs a prospect of marriage, when they suddenly wake up to a consciousness of their utter unfitness to become the head of a family. Why, I know at this moment a young lady of this description, who expects in a few months to become a wife, and whose cultivated ignorance of household duties is now the ridicule of her mother's cook and chambermaid. The prospect of marriage alarmed her for her total ignorance of domestic duties. She had never made her own bed, or dusted the furniture; and as to getting up a dinner, she knew even less than a squaw. She is now vainly seeking to acquire, within a few months, those branches of domestic knowledge which she has been a whole life neglecting and despising. She hated work: it was not genteel. Yet she is eagerly plunging into marriage with the first man who has offered himself, foolish enough, no doubt, to suppose that in her new position she will have even less to look after. Formerly, she did nothing: now, she expects to do even less.

"But what," continued Miss Effie, "is this poor creature to do, if death or poverty or vice should overtake her husband, and she should be thrown on her own slender resources? She is driven, to seek employment of some kind,—to attend in a shop, (for somehow that is considered rather more genteel than, most other occupations,) or to sew, or to fold books, or do something else. But she knows nothing of these several arts; and employers want skilled labor, not novices. She once boasted that she had never been obliged to work, and now she realizes how much such absurd boasting is worth. What then? Why, greater privation and suffering, because of her total unfitness for any station in which she might otherwise, obtain a living,—the extremity of this destitution being sometimes such that she is driven to the last shame to which female virtue can be made to submit."

"You say, Miss Effie, that these foolish[Pg 324] lessons are taught by the mothers; but do the fathers inculcate no wiser ones? Have they nothing to say as to the proper training of their daughters?" I inquired, deeply interested in all she said. She knew a great deal more than I did. And why should she not know more? Was she not full two years older?

"The fathers do, in many cases, teach better lessons than these; but their good effects are too commonly neutralized by the persistent vanity and pride of the mothers. Even the fathers are too neglectful of the future welfare of their daughters. The sons are suitably cared for, because of the generally accepted understanding that every man must support himself. They are therefore trained to a profession, or to some useful branch of business. But the daughters are expected to be supported by their future husbands, hence are taught to wait and do nothing until the husbands come along. If these conveniences should offer within a reasonable time, and do well and prosper, the result is agreeable enough. But no sort of provision is made for the husband's not showing himself, or, if he does, for his subsequent loss by death, or for his turning out either unfortunate or a vagabond. Even the daughter's natural gifts, often very brilliant ones, are left uncultivated. If she has a talent for music, she receives only a superficial knowledge of the piano, instead of such an education as would qualify her to teach. No one expects her to work, it is true; but why not fit her for it, nevertheless? Another develops a talent for nursing, the rare and priceless qualification of being efficient in the sick-room. Why not cultivate this talent, and enlarge its value by the study of medicine? The parents are rich enough to give to these talents the fullest development. They do so with those of their sons; why refuse in the case of their daughters? Our sex renders us comparatively helpless, excluding us from many avenues to profitable employment where we should be at all times welcome, if the unaccountable pride of parents did not shut us out by refusing to have us so taught that we could enter them. The prejudice against female labor begins with parents; and the unreflecting vanity and rashness of youth give it a fatal hold on us. My parents have never entertained it. They have taught us that there is more to be proud of in being dependent solely on our own exertions than in living idle lives on either their means or those of any husband who may happen to have enough of his own."

"It is very odd, Miss Effie," I replied, "for you to entertain these opinions, they are so different from those of rich people; and it is very encouraging to me to hear you express them. But I should have expected nothing less noble from you, you are so good and generous."

"Why, Lizzie, what do you mean?" she exclaimed. "It is not goodness, but merely common sense. What brought me here to be a pupil in this school? Not the desire to do good to others, but to improve myself,—a little selfishness, after all."

"But," I inquired, "will this unnatural prejudice against the respectability of female labor ever die out? You know that I am to be a sewing-girl, not from choice, like you, but from necessity. You learn the use of a machine only as a prop to lean upon in a very remote contingency; I, to make it the staff for all my future life. You will continue to be a lady,—indeed, Miss Effie, you never can be anything else,—but I shall be only a sewing-girl. The prejudice will never attach to you, but it will always cling to me. How cruel it seems that the world should consider as ladies all who can afford to be idle, and all working-women as belonging to a lower class, because God compels them to labor for the life He has given them!"

"Dear Lizzie," she exclaimed, in tones so modulated to extreme softness as to show that her feelings had been deeply touched both by the matter and the manner of my inquiry, "you must banish all such thoughts from your mind. For His own wise purposes,[Pg 325] God has placed you in a position in which you have a mission of some kind to fulfil. That position is an honorable one, because it requires you to labor, and it is none the less honorable because others are not required to do so. They also have their several missions, which we cannot understand. If it be regarded as mean for women to work, it is in the pride of man that so false a standard of respectability has been set up, not in the word or wisdom of God. To which shall we pay the most respect? The former, we know, brings constant bitterness; the latter, we know equally well, is unchangeably good. As it is our duty to submit to it here, so, through the Saviour, is it our only trust hereafter. It is not labor that degrades us, but temper, behavior, character. If all these be vicious, can mere money or exemption from labor make them respectable? You know it cannot.

"You," she continued, in a tone so impressive, that, even amid the clatter of twenty machines around me, not a word was lost,—"you may be sure that this prejudice against women working for their own support will never die out. It is one of those excrescences of the human mind that cannot be extirpated. It is a distortion of the reasoning faculty itself, unworthy of a sensible person, and is generally exhibited only by those who, while boasting of exemption for themselves, have really little or nothing else to boast of. It is the infirmity of small minds, not a peculiarity of great ones. Prejudices are like household vermin, and the human mind is like the traps we set for them. They get in with the greatest facility, but find it impossible to get out. Beware of entertaining them yourself, Lizzie. Shun everything like repining at what you call your position as a sewing-girl. Take care of your conscience, for it will be your crown. Labor for contented thoughts and aspirations, for they will bring you rest. Your heart can be made happy in itself, if you so choose, and your best happiness will always be found within your own bosom."

"Do not misunderstand me, Miss Effie," I replied; "I was not repining, but merely asking an explanation. My mother has sought to teach me not only contentment, but thankfulness for for my condition."

"Indeed," she responded, "both you and I have abundant cause for thankfulness to God for the multitude of mercies He is extending to us. You know how this poor girl behind us, Lucy Anderson, is situated," raising her hand and pointing over her shoulder toward a thin, pale girl of seventeen, who was working a machine.

"Well," said Miss Effie, "that girl's mother was a washerwoman." She did the heavy washing for a very rich man's family. They put her into an open shed, on a cold, damp pavement. This work she had been doing for them for several years, in the same bleak place, and in all weathers. While warm and comfortable herself, the pampered mistress of the family gave no thought to the dangerous exposure to which she subjected this slave of the washtub. Thus working all day, in thin shoes, on damp bricks, and while a penetrating easterly rain was falling, the poor woman was next morning laid up with the worst form of rheumatism. Medicine and nursing were of no avail. She became bedridden,—the disease attacked all the joints of her frame, ossification succeeded, and in the end she was unable to move either her body or limbs. Every joint was stiff and rigid. The vital organs alone were spared. For twelve years she has been in that condition,—she is so now,—my mother saw her only yesterday. Can you imagine anything more terrible? Poor, dependent on her daily earnings, with young children around her, and a widow, only think of her agonies of mind and body! Yet, among the vital powers still left to this afflicted woman, was the power to approach the Throne of Grace in prayer so acceptable that the answer was that peace which passeth all understanding. The body had been disabled; but[Pg 326] the mind had been quickened to a new and saving activity, she had drawn nearer to God."

What could I do but listen in mute attention to this heart-awakening recital? I looked round at Lucy Anderson in lively sympathy with what I had heard. How little did her appearance give token of the deep domestic grief that must have settled upon her young heart! How deceptive is the human countenance! Though pale and fragile, yet her face sparkled with cheerfulness.

Miss Effie went on with her story; she was mistress of the art of conversation; and conversation is sometimes a serious matter; for there are persons with whom an hour's talk would weaken one more than a day's fasting, but not so with Miss Effie. She resumed by saying,

"Would you believe that the rich family in whose service this poor washerwoman destroyed her health have never called, nor even sent, to know how she was getting on? When she first failed to take her usual two-days' stand at the washtub, they inquired the reason of her absence, but there all concern ended. They sought out a new drudge; the gap was filled to their liking, and the world moved on as gayly as aforetime. They gave up no personal ease or comfort that they might see or minister to the suffering woman ; they denied themselves no luxury for her sake. Yet the money they spent in giving a single party would have kept this family for a twelvemonth. The cost of their ostentatious greenhouse would have paid for a nurse, and educated the two orphan boys until able to go to trades. They had seen these twin boys tied to the washtub in their own bleak shed, that the mother might pursue her labor without interruption; yet as they gave no thought to the widow, so the orphans never intruded on their recreations. Now, Lizzie, such people are unprofitable servants in the sight of God. And if the ostrich were to strip off their feathers, the silkworm their dresses, the kid their gloves, and the marten demand his furs, what would be their state in the sight of man? Bare unto nakedness! This unlawful love for lawful things is one of the besetting snares of the great enemy of souls."

If I had ever been addicted to repining, or had had no lessons to teach me how wrong the habit was, here was a new one to induce contentment. But I had been preserved from all such temptations. The strong good sense displayed by Miss Logan in our frequent conversations not only informed my understanding on a variety of subjects, but gave my thoughts a new turn, and powerfully encouraged me to perseverance. She infused into me new life and cheerfulness. Such women are the jewels of society. Their strong minds, regulated by a judicious education at the hands of sensible parents, become brilliant as well as trustworthy guides to all who may be fortunate enough to come within the circle which they illuminate. It is such women that have been, and must continue to be, the mothers of great men. Mind must be transmissible by inheritance, and chiefly from the mother; else the histories of statesmen, heroes, and distinguished men in the various walks of life, would not so uniformly record the virtues of the women from whose maternal teachings their eminence was to be traced.

The company of sewing-girls collected together in this school-room was of course a very miscellaneous one. The faces were changing almost daily, some by expiration of their apprenticeship, and some by being sent away as troublesome, incompetent, or vicious. All who left us had their places immediately filled from a list of candidates which the teacher had in a book, so that, while one throng of learners was departing, another was entering. If one could have gone into the domestic history of all the girls who came and went even during my short stay, he would have found some experiences to surpass anything that has ever occurred to me. I do not know how it happened, but most of these girls were quite desirous of making my acquaintance, and of their own[Pg 327] motion became extremely sociable. I was sociable in return, from an instinct of my nature. I never lost anything by thus meeting them halfway in the endeavor to be polite and affable, but on the contrary learned much, gained much, and secured invaluable friends. Nor did I ever repel the amicable approaches even of the most humble, as I very early discovered that none were so ignorant as not to be able to communicate some little item of knowledge to which I had been a stranger.

There was a lady among these pupils who was in many respects very different from all the others. I think her age must have been at least thirty-five. I did not ask if it were so; and as she never mentioned it herself, that circumstance was hint enough for me to remain silent. I never could understand why so many women are so amusingly anxious to conceal their age, sometimes becoming quite affronted when even a conjecture is hazarded on the subject. This lady was unmarried; perhaps that may have been one reason for her unwillingness to speak of her age. But was not I unmarried, and what repugnance have I ever felt to avowing mine?

However, Miss Hawley was extremely sociable with me, though certainly old enough to be my mother, and made me the depositary of many incidents in her life. She was the eldest of three sisters, all orphans, all unmarried, all dependent on themselves for a living, and all, at one time, so absurdly proud, that, in the struggle to keep up appearances, and conceal from their acquaintances the fact that they were doing this or that thing for a maintenance, they subjected themselves to privations which embarrassed much of their efforts, while they failed to secure the concealment they sought. Though women of undoubted sense and excellent education, yet they acted as foolishly as the ostrich, which, when hunted to cover, thrusts his head into a bush, and is weak enough to think that his whole body is concealed, when it stands out not only a target, but a fixed one, for the hunter's rifle. So these women took it for granted, that, if they ran to the cover of a chamber from which all visitors should be excluded, their acquaintances would be ignorant of how they occupied their time, or by what means they lived.

Yet they could not fail to be aware that everybody who knew anything of them knew their history also,—that it was notorious that their father, a merchant, had died not worth a cent, and that they had been compelled to abandon the fine house in which he had kept up a style so expensive as greatly to increase the hardship of their subsequent destitution. Like a thousand others, he had lived up to the limit of his income. No doubt, all of them might have been well married, but for the lavish habits as to fashion and expenditure in which they indulged themselves. These might be afforded by their father so long as his annual gains continued large. But the many worthy young men who visited and admired them refused to entertain the idea of marriage with girls whose mere personal outfit cost a sum equal to the year's salary of a first-class clerk, or the annual profits of one who had just commenced business for himself. They held that the girl whose habits were so expensive should bring with her a fortune large enough to support them, or remain as she was, taking the sure consequences on her own shoulders, and not throwing them on theirs. They were in fact afraid of girls who manifestly had no prudence, no economy, and who appeared to be wholly unconscious that the only admiration worth securing is that of the good and wise.

But the vices of the old mode of living clung to them in their new and humbler abode, keeping them slaves to a new set of appearances. They had never done any work of consequence, hardly their own sewing. What was even worse, they had been brought up to consider work, for a lady, disgraceful. Women might work, but not ladies; or when the latter undertook it, they ceased to be such, and certainly so, if working for a living. No pride could have been more tyrannous or absurd[Pg 328] than this. For a whole year after their father's death, it ruled them with despotic supremacy. They prided themselves on doing nothing, and subsisted on the sale of trinkets, jewelry, and books, which they had acquired in palmier days. The circle of acquaintances for whose good opinion they submitted to these humiliating sacrifices knew all the while that the life they were living was a sham; but they themselves seemed wholly unconscious of it, as well as of the light in which it was regarded by those about them.

Why should such a woman come to a school like this, where a willingness to work was a condition of admission, and that work to be done in public? What could bring about so strange a reversal of thought and habit? One of her sisters had recently died, after a protracted illness, during which her heart had been mercifully smitten with a conviction of the hollowness and sinfulness of her previous life. Its idle, trifling, aimless tendency had been set before her in all its emptiness. She saw that she had been living without God, bound up in the love of temporal things, and so effectually ensnared by worldly pride that her whole fear had been of man, instead of her Creator. Thus in mercy called to judgment, that grace, of whose saving efficacy we have the divine assurance, brought repentance of sin, and led her to the Saviour, and, abasing herself at his cross, the heavy burden was lifted from her heart. Her condemnation of the frivolous lives that she and her sisters had been leading was so earnest and impressive, that, aided by the continual prayers of a truly contrite heart for pardon for herself and awakened consciences for them, they also were brought to Christ. This mighty transformation accomplished, her mission seemed to be fulfilled, and she passed into the unseen world in peaceful assurance of forgiveness and acceptance. Thus, though our lots are cast in places seemingly diverse and barren, each has his own specific duty to perform, some appointed mission to fulfil, though exactly what it is may not be apparent to us. As fellow-workers in the world, if we make it our chief study to do the Master's will, that which is thus required of us will in His own time so unfold itself to our spiritual understanding that we cannot be deceived respecting it.

I am satisfied that between the functions of life, as developed in the material and moral world, there is an analogy as instructive as it is beautiful. It overcomes external circumstances by the power of an invisible law. Philosophers have discovered that the human body maintains a uniform temperature, whether it shiver in the snow-hut of the Esquimaux, or drip with perspiration in the cane-fields of the tropics. But let life depart, and it falls to that of the surrounding objects. Decay immediately begins. So, when religious vitality is maintained in the heart, the corrupting influences of the world remain inoperative. This vitality having been infused into the heart of Miss Hawley, the fervor of her spirit rose to a higher temperature than that of all surrounding objects. She could no longer assimilate with them.

If her strong personal pride, her obsequious deference to appearances and the opinion of the world, were henceforth overcome or kept in subjection, it was only as she took up the cross in obedience to the convictions of duty. She told me it was the hardest trial of her life to come to this public school; it was the greatest cross to her natural affections she had ever experienced. But the bitterness of the cup had now measurably passed away from her. Strength came with animating promptitude as the answer to prayer. Her spiritual life became more healthy and vigorous as her approaches to the mercy-seat were humble and frequent. Cheerfulness became an ever-present attendant. She had put all pride behind her, and because of her abasement had risen above the world. Henceforth she was to support herself by her own acknowledged labor. She had been so changed by the grace of God in her heart, that she regarded with astonishment the secret insincerities[Pg 329] she had formerly been guilty of in seeking to conceal the extent of the necessity to which she had been reduced. I have never seen nor heard of her since I left the school; but the remembrance of her subdued and patient spirit cannot soon be effaced.

How true it is, as some one has beautifully said, that infinite toil would not enable us to sweep away a mist, but that by ascending a little we may often look over it altogether,—and that so it is with our moral improvement! We wrestle fiercely with vicious habits that would have no hold on us, if we ascended to a higher moral atmosphere. Another has declared that at five years of age the father begins to rub the mother out of his child; that at ten the schoolmaster rubs out the father; that at twenty a trade or a profession rubs out the schoolmaster; that at twenty-five the world rubs out all its predecessors, and gives a new education, till we are old enough and wise enough to take religion and common sense for our pastors, when we employ the rest of our lives in unlearning what we have previously learned.

The contrast between the two ladies with whom I was thus fortunate enough to become intimately acquainted was so remarkable that it could not fail to make an impression on me. It was evident that education, the training which each had received at the parental fireside, had led them into widely divergent paths of thought and conduct. Both were possessed of sterling good sense; both had lived in affluence; both, so far as mere school-learning was concerned, had been thoroughly educated. Had Miss Logan received the same training as Miss Hawley, it may be fairly assumed that she would have fallen a victim to the same pride and folly; and had the latter been trained at home as carefully and as sensibly as the former, who can doubt, that, with the same substratum of good sense, she would have proved as great a comfort to herself and as shining an example to others? I am sure it was a lesson to me, convincing me anew, that, where faith and works do not go together, both are wanting, and that, if they once part company, each of them must die.

When, at the termination of my brief apprenticeship, the time came for me to leave the school and to part from Miss Effie,—she to go to her elegant home, I to the little old brick house in the fields, and with prospects so entirely different from hers,—I am sure it was the hardest trial I had yet been called upon to bear. I should never see her again. I had no longings for the life she led; for as yet I had harbored no other thought than that of perfect contentment with my own. But her society was so delightful, the tone of her mind so lofty, her condescension so grateful, her whole manners so captivating, that I looked upon her as my guide, philosopher, and friend, and I cried bitterly when I left her.

MEMORIES OF AUTHORS.

A SERIES OF PORTRAITS FROM PERSONAL ACQUAINTANCE.

MISS LANDON.

With unmingled pain I write the name of Lætitia Elizabeth Landon,—the L. E. L., whose poems were for so long a period the delight of all readers, old and young.

We were among the few friends who knew her intimately. But it was not in her nature to open her heart to any one; her large organ of "secretiveness" was her bane; she knew it and deplored it; it was the origin of that misconception which embittered her whole life, the mainspring of that calumny which made fame a mockery and glory a deceit. But I may say, that, when slander was busiest with her reputation, we had the best means to confute it,—and did. For some years there was not a single week during which, on some day or other, morning or evening, she was not a guest at our house; yet this blight in her spring-time undoubtedly led to the fatal marriage which eventuated in her mournful and mysterious death.

The calumny was of that kind which most deeply wounds a woman. How it originated, it was at the time, and is of course now, impossible to say. Probably its source was nothing more than a sneer, but it bore Dead-Sea fruit. A slander more utterly groundless never was propagated. It broke off an engagement that promised much happiness with a gentleman, then eminent, and since famous, as an author: not that he at any time gave credence to the foul and wicked rumor; but to her "inquiry" was a sufficient blight, and by her the contract was annulled.

The utter impossibility of its being other than false could have been proved, not only by us, but by a dozen of her intimate friends, whose evidence would have been without question and conclusive. She was living in a school for young ladies: seen daily by the ladies who kept that school, and by the pupils. In one of her letters to Mrs. Hall, she writes, "I have lived nearly all my life, since childhood, with the same people. The Misses Lance were strict, scrupulous, and particular,—moreover, from having kept a school so long, with habits of minute observation. The affection they feel for me can hardly be undeserved. I would desire nothing more than to refer to their opinion." Dr. Thomson, her constant medical friend and adviser, testified long afterwards to her "estimable qualities, generous feelings, and exalted virtues." It would, indeed, have been easy to obtain proof abundant; but in such cases the very effort to lessen the evil augments it; there was no way of fighting with a shadow; it was found impossible to trace the rumor to any actual source. Few then, and perhaps none now, can tell how deeply the poisoned arrow entered her heart. If ever woman was, Lætitia Landon was, "done to death by slanderous tongues."

I have touched upon this theme reluctantly,—perhaps it might have been omitted altogether,—but it seems to me absolutely necessary, in order to comprehend the character of the poet towards her close of life, and the secret of her marriage, which so "unequally yoked" her to one utterly unworthy.

Here is a passage from one of her letters to Mrs. Hall,—without a date,—but it must have been written in 1837, when she was suffering terribly under the blight of evil tongues:—

"I have long since discovered that I must be prepared for enmity I have never provoked, and unkindness I have little deserved. God knows, that, if, when I do go into society, I meet with more homage and attention than most, it is dearly bought. What is my life?[Pg 331] One day of drudgery after another; difficulties incurred for others, which have ever pressed upon me; health, which every year, by one severe illness after another, shows is taxed beyond its strength; envy, malice, and all uncharitableness: these are the fruits of a successful literary career for a woman."

She was slow to believe that false and bitter words could harm her. At first they seemed but to inspire her with a dangerous bravery in her innocence, and to increase a practice we always deplored, of saying things for effect in which she did not believe. It was no use telling her this; she would argue that a conversation of facts would be as dull as a work on algebra, and that all she did was to put her poetry into practice. In these moods you might as well attempt to imprison a sunbeam as keep her to matter-of-fact; and the misery was, that gradually the number of detractors increased, who caught up these "effective" scraps, and set them in circulation.

She was not more than fifteen years old when the letters "L. E. L."—appended to some verses in the "Literary Gazette"—riveted public attention; and when it became known that the author was scarcely in her teens, a full gush of popularity burst upon her that might have turned older heads and steadier dispositions. She became a "lion," courted and flattered and fêted; yet never was she misled by the notion that popularity is happiness, or lip-service the true homage of the heart.

She was residing at Old Brompton, when her first poem appeared in the "Literary Gazette," which Mr. Jerdan had not long previously established. It would be difficult to conceive the enthusiasm excited by the magical three letters appended to the poems, whenever they appeared. Mr. Jerdan was a near neighbor of the Landons, and he thus refers to their residence at Old Brompton:—

"My cottage overlooked the mansion and grounds of Mr. Landon, the father of 'L. E. L.,' at Old Brompton, a narrow lane only dividing our residences. My first recollection of the future poetess is that of a plump girl, grown enough to be almost mistaken for a woman, bowling a hoop round the walks, with a hoop-stick in one hand and a book in the other, reading as she ran, and as well as she could managing both exercise and instruction at the same time."

She was born on the 14th of August, 1802, at Hans Place, Chelsea, where her father, a junior partner in the prosperous house of Adair, army-agents, then resided. And in that locality, with few brief intervals, the whole of her life was passed.

When we first knew her, in 1825, she lived with her grandmother in Sloane Street; subsequently she was a boarder in the school-establishment of the Misses Lance, at No. 22, Hans Place, the house in which she had been a pupil when but six years old; and here she was residing up to within a few months of her marriage, when, in consequence of the retirement of the Misses Lance, she became an inmate in the family of Mrs. Sheddon.

Her grandmother's grave was, if I recollect rightly, the third that was made in the graveyard of Holy Trinity, Brompton. Her lines on this "new" churchyard will be remembered. I attended the old lady's funeral, Mrs. Hall having received from Miss Landon this letter:—

"I have had time to recover the first shock,—and it was great weakness to feel so sorry, though even now I do not like to think of her very sudden death. I am thankful for its giving her so little confinement or pain; she had never known illness, and would have borne it impatiently,—a great addition to suffering. I am so very grateful to Mr. Hall, for I really did not know what to do. Her funeral is fixed for Friday; the hour will be arranged to his and Mr. Jerdan's convenience."

Mrs. Hall supplies me with the following particulars concerning her early acquaintance and intercourse with Miss Landon.[Pg 332]

"I forget how it came about, but my husband was introduced to a certain little Miss Spence, who, on the strength of having written something about the Highlands, was most decidedly BLUE, when blue was by no means so general a color as it is at present. She had a lodging of two rooms in Great Quebec Street, and 'patronized' young littérateurs, inviting them to her 'humble abode,' where tea was made in the bedroom, and where it was whispered the butter was kept cool in the wash-handbasin! There were 'lots' of such-like small scandals about poor Miss Spence's 'humble abode'; still people liked to go; and my husband was invited, with a sort of apology to poor me, who, never having published anything at that time, was considered ineligible; it was 'a rule,' and Miss Spence, in her 'humble abode,' lived by rule.

"Of course I had an account of the party when Mr. Hall came home. I coveted to know who was there, and what everybody wore and said. I was told that Lady Caroline Lamb was there, enveloped in the folds of an ermine cloak, which she called a 'cat-skin,' and that she talked a great deal about a periodical she wished to get up, to be called 'Tabby's Magazine'; and with her was an exceedingly haughty, brilliant, and beautiful girl, Rosina Wheeler,—since well known as Lady Bulwer Lytton,—and who sat rather impatiently at the feet of her eccentric 'Gamaliel.' Miss Emma Roberts was one of the favored ladies, and Miss Spence (who, like all 'Leo-hunters,' delighted in novelty) had just caught the author of 'The Mummy,' Jane Webb, who was as gentle and unpretending then as she was in after-years, when, laying aside romance for reality, she became a great helper of her husband, Mr. London, in his laborious and valuable works. When I heard Miss Benger was there, in her historic turban, I thought how fortunate that I had remained at home! I had always a terror of tall, commanding women, who blink down upon you, and have the unmistakable air about them of 'Behold me! have I not pronounced sentence upon Queen Elizabeth, and set my mark on the Queen of Scots?' Still, I quite appreciated the delight of meeting under the same roof so many celebrities, and was cross-questioning my husband, when he said, 'But there was one lady there whom I promised you should call on to-morrow.'

"Imagine my mingled delight and dismay!—delight at the bare idea of seeing her, who must be wellnigh suffocated with the perfume of her own 'Golden Violet,' the idol of my imagination,—dismay! for what should I say to her? what would she say to me?

"And yet I can hardly realize the sweep of years that have gone over so many who have since become near and dear to us. At that first visit, I saw Lætitia Landon in her grandmamma's modest lodging in Sloane Street,—a bright-eyed, sparkling, restless little girl, in a pink gingham frock,—grafting clever things on commonplace nothings, frolicking from subject to subject with the playfulness of a spoiled child,—her dark hair put back from her low, but sphere-like forehead, only a little above the most beautiful eyebrows that a painter could imagine, and falling in curls around her slender throat. We were nearly of the same age, but I had been almost a year married, and if I had not supported myself on my dignity as a married woman, should have been more than nervous, on my first introduction to a 'living poet,' though the poet was so different from what I had imagined. Her movements were as rapid as those of a squirrel. I wondered how anyone so quick could be so graceful. She had been making a cap for grandmamma, and would insist upon the old lady's putting it on, that I might see 'how pretty it was.' To this grandmamma (Mrs. Bishop) objected,—she 'couldn't' and she 'wouldn't' try it on,—'how could Lætitia be so silly?'—and then Lætitia put the great beflowered, beribboned thing on her own dainty little head, with a grave[Pg 333] look, like a cloud on a rose, and folding her pretty little hands over her pink frock, made what she called a 'Sir Roger de Coverley' curtsy, skipping backwards into the bedroom, and rushing in again, having deposited out of sight the cap she was so proud of constructing, took my hands in hers, and asked me 'if we should be friends.'

"'Friends!' I do not think that during the long intimacy that followed that child-like meeting, extending from the year '26 to her leaving England in '38, during which time I saw her frequently every day, and certainly every week,—I do not think she ever loved me as I loved her,—how could she?—but I was proud of the confidence and regard she did accord me, and would have given half my own happiness to shelter her from the envy and evil that embittered the spring and summer-time of her blighted life. It always seemed to me impossible not to love her, not to cherish her. Perhaps the greatest magic she exercised was, that, after the first rush of remembrance of all that wonderful young woman had written had subsided, she rendered you completely oblivious of what she had done by the irresistible charm of what she was. You forgot all about her books,—you only felt the intense delight of life with her; she was penetrating and sympathetic, and entered into your feelings so entirely that you wondered how 'the little witch' could read you so readily and so rightly,—and if, now and then, you were startled, perhaps dismayed, by her wit, it was but the prick of a diamond arrow. Words and thoughts that she flung hither and thither, without design or intent beyond the amusement of the moment, come to me still with a mingled thrill of pleasure and pain that I cannot describe, and that my most friendly readers, not having known her, could not understand.

"When I knew her first, she certainly looked much younger than she was. When we talked of ages, which we did the first day, I found it difficult to believe she was more than seventeen,—she was so slight, so fragile, so girlish in her gestures and manners. In after-days I often wondered what made her so graceful. Her neck was short, her shoulders high. You saw these defects at the first glance, just as you did that her nose was retroussé, and that she was underhung, which ought to have spoiled the expression of her mouth,—but it did not; you saw all this at once, but you never thought about it after the first five minutes. Her complexion was clear, her hair dark and silken, and the lashes that sheltered her gray eyes long and slightly upturned. Her voice was inexpressibly sweet and modulated, but there was a melancholy cadence in it,—a fall so full of sorrow that I often looked to see if tears were coming: no, the smile and eyes were beaming in perfect harmony, but it was next to impossible to believe in her happiness, with the memory of that cadence still in the ear.

"Like all workers I have known intimately, she had a double existence, an inner and an outer life. Many times, when I have witnessed her suffering, either from those spasmodic attacks that sapped the foundation of her life, or from the necessity for work to provide for the comforts and luxuries of those who never spared her, I have seen her enter the long, narrow room that opened on the garden at Hans Place, and flash upon a morning visitor as if she had not a pain or a care in the world, dazzling the senses and captivating the affections of some new acquaintance, as she had done mine, and sending them away in the firm belief of her individual happiness, and the conviction that the melancholy which breathes through her poems was assumed, and that her real nature was buoyant and joyous as that of a lark singing between earth and heaven! If they could but have seen how the cloud settled down on that beaming face, if they had heard the deep-drawn sigh of relief that the little play was played out, and noted the languid step with which she mounted to her attic, and gathered her young limbs on the common seat, opposite the common[Pg 334] table, whereon she worked, they would have arrived at a directly opposite and a too true conclusion, that the melancholy was real, the mirth assumed.

"My next visit to her was after she left her grandmamma's, and went to reside at 22, Hans Place. Miss Emma Roberts and her sister at that time boarded in Miss Lance's school, and Miss Landon found there a room at the top of the house, where she could have the quiet and seclusion her labor required, and which her kind-natured, but restless grandmother prevented. She never could understand how 'speaking one word to Letty, just one word, and not keeping her five minutes away from that desk, where she would certainly grow humped or crooked,' could interfere with her work! She was one of those stolid persons who are the bane of authors, who think nothing of the lost idea, and the unravelling of the web, when a train of thought is broken by the 'only one word,' 'only a moment,' which scatters thoughts to the wind,—thoughts that can no more be gathered home than the thistledown that is scattered by a passing breeze.

"She continued to reside in that unostentatious home, obedient to the rules of the school as the youngest pupil, dining with the children at their early hour, and returning to her sanctuary, whence she sent forth rapidly and continuously what won for her the adoration of the young and the admiration of the old. But though she ceased to reside with her grandmother, she was most devoted in her attentions to her aged relative, and trimmed her caps and bonnets and quilled her frills as usual. I have seen the old lady's borders and ribbons mingled with pages of manuscript, and known her to put aside a poem to 'settle up' grandmamma's cap for Sunday. These were the minor duties in which she indulged; but her grandmother owed the greater part, if not the entire, of her comfort to the generous and unselfish nature of that gifted girl. Her mother I never saw: morally right in all her arrangements, she was mentally wrong,—and the darling poet of the public had no loving sympathy, no tender care from her. L. E. L. had passed through the sufferings of a neglected childhood, and but for the love of her grandmother she would have known next to nothing of the love of motherhood. Thus she was left alone with her genius: for admiration, however grateful to a woman's senses, never yet filled a woman's heart.

"When I first knew her, and for some time after, she was childishly untidy and negligent in her dress: her frocks were tossed on, as if buttons and strings were unnecessary incumbrances,—one sleeve off the shoulder, the other on,—and her soft, silky hair brushed 'any how': but Miss Emma Roberts, whose dress was always in good taste, determined on her reformation, and gradually the young poet, as she expressed it, 'did not know herself.' I use the epithet 'young,' because she was wonderfully youthful in appearance, and positively as she grew older looked younger,—her delicate complexion, the transparent tenderness of her skin, and the playful expression of her child-like features adding to the deception.

"I was one day suddenly summoned to Hans Place, and drawn into a consultation on the important subject of a fancy-ball, which Miss Landon and Miss Emma Roberts had 'talked over' Miss Lance to let them give to their friends. They wished me to appear as the 'wild Irish girl,' or the genius of Erin, with an Irish harp, to which I was to sing snatches of the melodies. Miss Spence was there in consultation, as she 'knew everybody.' She congratulated me on my début as an authoress, (I had recently published my first book, 'Sketches of Irish Character,') and politely added, 'Now you are one of us, I shall be happy to receive you at my humble abode.'

"I begged to decline the proposal concerning the wild Irish girl and the Irish harp, but agreed to carry a basket of flowers. Certainly the fête-givers worked 'with a will,' turned the great house 'out of windows,' converting[Pg 335] the two school-rooms, big and little, into a ball-room, and decorating it richly with green leaves and roses, real and artificial. I congratulated them on the prospect. 'Yes,' said Miss Landon, 'the mechanical getting-up is all very well; I wish all that is termed "dashing" did not lie in the tomb of the Duchess of Gordon. A quadrille is but still life put into motion. Our faces, like our summers, want sunshine. Old Froissart complained in his day, that the English, after their fashion, "s'amusent moult tristement." A ball-room is merely "Arithmetic and the use of figures taught here." A young lady in a quadrille might answer,—"I am too busy to laugh,—I am making my calculations." And yet ours is not a marrying age; the men have discovered that servants and wives are so expensive,—still a young lady's delight in a ball, if not raisonnable, has always—quelque raison! and I am determined, if I die in the cause, that ours shall be a success!' Her conversation was always epigrammatic.

"It seems absurd that a ball should be the first great event of my literary life. There I saw for the first time many persons who became in after-years intimate friends, and whose names are now parts of the history of the literature of their country. 'Mr.' Edward Bulwer, then on the threshold of fame, 'came out' in military uniform. L. E. L. assured me he was very clever, had written a novel, and 'piles of poetry,' and would be wonderful soon, but that he was much too handsome for an author; at which opinion, little Miss Spence, in a plum-pudding sort of turban, with a bird-of-paradise bobbing over the front, and a fan even larger than poor Lady Morgan's, agitated her sultana's dress, and assured me that 'nothing elevated the expression of beauty so much as literature,' and that 'young things, like many of the present company, would not look as well in ten years!' Mr. Bulwer was certainly pronounced by the ladies the handsomest youth in the room. The gentlemen endeavored to put him down as 'effeminate,' but all in vain. They called him 'a fair, delicate, very, very young man,'—'a boy,' in fact. I remember wondering at the searching expression of his large, wandering, bluish eyes, that seemed looking in and out at everybody and at everything. The lady of his love was there, and she ought to have been dressed as the Sultana poor Miss Spence burlesqued. Nature had bestowed on her an Oriental style of beauty, and she would have come out well in Oriental costume; but she chose the dress of a Swiss peasant, which, being more juvenile, brought her nearer to her lover's age. She certainly was radiantly beautiful. She had a mouth like 'chiselled coral,' and eyes fierce as an eagle's or tender as a dove's, as passion moved her. Her uncle, Sir John Milly Doyle, then an old man of mark in the military world, was naturally proud of his beautiful charge, and companioned her that evening.

"Miss Benger's turban was a formidable rival to that of Miss Spence. The historian was long and lanky, according to the most approved historical fashion; consequently her turban was above the crowd, while poor Miss Spence's was nearly crushed by it, and was all too frequently shoved on one side by the whirling dancers. At last, in despair, she donned a handkerchief, tying it under her chin, and wherever she went she wished the gentle-hearted Miss Webb to follow, appealing after this fashion to the merry crowd:—'Please let me pass; I am Miss Spence, and this lady is Miss Webb, author of "The Mummy,"—"The Mummy," Sir.' But Miss Webb effected her escape; and the last time I saw little Miss Spence that evening, she had scrambled up into one of those so-called 'education-chairs,' in which poor girls were compelled to sit bolt upright for several hours of the day, by way of keeping their shoulders flat and strengthening their spine.

"I remember 'Father Prout of Watergrass Hill' that evening,—then a smooth-faced, rosy-cheeked young man. Jane and Anna Maria Porter joined[Pg 336] the party late in the evening. They came from Esher, and, though not in direct fancy-dresses, added to the effect of the gathering. Jane was dressed in black, which was only relieved by a diamond sparkling on her throat. Her sweet, melancholy features and calm beauty contrasted well with the bright sunshine of her sister's round, girlish face. She was dressed in white, soft blue gauze floating round her like a haze. L. E. L. (who personated a flower-girl in a white chip hat) called the sisters 'the Evening and Morning Stars.' I was so proud of a compliment Jane paid me on my new dignity of authorship,—a compliment from the author of the 'Scottish Chiefs,'—the book that in childhood I had read stealthily by moonlight, coiled up in my nursery-window, just near enough to the sea to hear its music, while the fate of Sir William Wallace made my heart pant and my tears flow!

"I saw there for the first time Julia Pardoe. She had just returned from Portugal, and was escorted by her little, round father, the Major. She was then in her dawn of life and literature, having published two volumes about Portugal,—a pretty little fairy of a girl, with a wealth of flaxen hair, a complexion made up of lilies and roses, with tiny feet in white satin bottines with scarlet heels, and a long, sweeping veil of blue gauze spangled with silver stars. I think she dressed as some Portuguese or Spanish character; for I remember a high comb in her hair. I can only now recall her floating about under the blue gauze veil.

"I remember one group of Quakers among the glittering throng, who looked sufficiently quaint to attract attention, while the matron of the party said clever, caustic things, differing in quality as well as quantity from the sparkling, playful jests and repartees, that, as the evening passed, were flung about by Mr. Jerdan, the popular editor of the 'Literary Gazette,' the oracle of that time, and stammered forth by Dr. Maginn. "The Doctor" and Mr. Jerdan and Theodore Hook entered together, three men of mark, from whom much was expected—after supper.

"The Quaker matron was Mrs. Trollope, a portly lady, of any age between thirty and forty, staid and sedate, as became her character, and attentive to her 'thees' and 'thous,' which lent their cloak for plain speaking, of which she was not chary. She frequently admonished her daughters—perhaps adopted for the evening—against the vanities by which they were encompassed on every side,—satirizing and striking home, but never exhibiting ill-temper or actual bitterness. The character was well sustained throughout the evening, and occasioned quite as much fear as fun. When Theodore Hook asked her, according to the fashion of those days, to take wine with him, she answered, 'Friend, I think thou hast had enough already, and so have I.' There was nothing particularly wise or witty in the words; but their truth was so evident, and the manner in which they were spoken so clear and calm, that they were followed by a roar of laughter that for a little time upset the mighty humorist, though, in the extempore song in which he rallied, he did not forget that

'He had just received a wallop
From the would-be Quaker Trollope.'

"We enjoyed most thoroughly the intercourse commenced thus early in our married life with the spirits of our time; and I remember entering into grave debate with L. E. L. whether it would be possible for us to give a party that might be, as it were, the shadow of hers. A fancy-ball was out of the question. We proposed a conversazione, with first-rate music; but in that Miss Landon could not sympathize. 'It was all very well,' she said; 'I had a talent for listening; she had not; and if I must have music, let there be a room where the talkers could congregate, and neither disturb others nor be themselves disturbed.' The only thing she disliked in dancing was the trial of keeping time; and to do this, she was obliged to count.

"The conversazione was determined[Pg 337] on, and the invitations issued; and then my husband and I began to count the cost. Of course, if done, it must be well done. The method was not clear; it was very cloudy; and there was only one way to make it clear. We were but 'children of a larger growth,' and we had a 'money-box,'—not one of those pretty cedar inventions, with a lock and key and a slit in the cover, that we now use at bazaars, but a big, shapeless, roundabout thing of earthen-ware, with a slit in the middle. We had intended its contents should gratify another fancy, but now it would be the very thing to sacrifice; so we locked ourselves into the drawing-room, placed the box on the hearth-rug, and in a moment the brown roundabout was smashed,—and there was quite a heap of silver, and a little brightening of gold! We had never put in any gold. We were astonished, and counted our treasure with great delight. My husband accused me of conveying the gold by some cunning art into the box; and I was indignant that he should have done so without my knowledge. A quarrel was imminent, when we thought perhaps it was the hand of the dear mother that had dropped in the gold. Yes, that was her ruse; and we would have it that the party cost us nothing, because the contents of the money-box never had been counted on: it was a treasure-trove,—nothing more. We were particularly anxious to be thought prudent; and, in our triumph, (for the party, every one said, was a brilliant success,) we communicated the fact to L. E. L. that the party had cost nothing! She laughed, and determined to set up a money-box, on her own account; but, poor girl, her money was anticipated by her dependants before she received it.

"I remember once meeting her coming out of Youngman's shop, in Sloane Street, and walking home with her. 'I have been,' she said, 'to buy a pair of gloves,—the only money spent on myself out of the three hundred pounds I received for "Romance and Reality."' That same day she spoke of having lived in Sloane Street when a child. Her mother's ménage must have been curiously conducted; for I remember her saying, 'On Sundays my brother and myself were often left alone in the house with one servant, who always went out, locking us in; and we two children used to sit at the open parlor-window to catch the smell of the one-o'clock dinners that went past from the bake-house, well knowing that no dinner awaited us.'"

In the zenith of her fame, and towards her terrible close of life, the personal appearance of Miss Landon was highly attractive. Though small of stature, her form was remarkably graceful; and in society she paid special attention to dress. She would have been of perfect symmetry, were it not that her shoulders were rather high.

There were few portraits of Miss Landon painted, although she was acquainted with many artists, and had intense love of Art. Her friend Maclise painted her three or four times; but I know of no other portraits of her, except that by Mr. Pickersgill, which I always thought the most to resemble her, albeit the likeness is not flattering.

She first met the Ettrick Shepherd at our house. When Hogg was presented to her, he looked earnestly down at her, for perhaps half a minute, and then exclaimed, in a rich, manly, Scottish voice, "Eh, I did na think ye'd been sae bonnie. I've said mony hard things aboot ye. I'll do sae na mair. I did na think ye'd been sae bonnie."

Mrs. Opie, who also met her at our dwelling, paid her a questionable compliment,—that she was "the prettiest butterfly she had ever seen": and I remember the staid Quaker shaking her finger at the young poetess, and remarking, "What thou art saying thou dost not mean."

Miss Jewsbury, (the elder sister of the accomplished authoress, Geraldine,) whose fate somewhat resembled her own, said of her, "She was a gay and[Pg 338] gifted thing"; but Miss Jewsbury knew her only "in the throng."

In short, I have rarely known a woman so entirely fascinating as Miss Landon; and this arose mainly from her large sympathy. She was playful with the young, sedate with the old, and considerate and reflective with the middle-aged. She could be tender and she could be severe, prosaic or practical, and essentially of and with whatever party she happened to be among. I remember this faculty once receiving an illustration. She was taking lessons in riding, and had so much pleased the riding-master that at parting he complimented her by saying,—"Well, Madam, we are all born with a genius for something, and yours is for horsemanship."

One of the many writers who mourned her wrote,—"Apart from her literary abilities and literary labors, she was, in every domestic relation of life, honorable, generous, dutiful, self-denying,—zealous, disinterested, and untiring in her friendship."

Her industry was wonderful. She was perpetually at work, although often—nay, generally—with little of physical strength, and sometimes utterly prostrated by illness. Yet the work must be done, as her poems and prose were usually for periodical publications, and a given day of the month it was impossible to postpone.

Poetry she wrote with great ease and rapidity. In one of her letters to Mrs. Hall she says,—"I write poetry with far more ease than I do prose. In prose, I often stop and hesitate for a word; in poetry, never. Poetry always carries me out of myself. I forget everything in the world but the subject that has interested my imagination. It is the most subtile and insinuating of pleasures; but, like all pleasures, it is dearly bought. It is always succeeded by extreme depression of spirits, and an overpowering sense of bodily fatigue." And in one of her letters to me, she observes,—"Writing poetry is like writing one's own native language, and writing prose is like writing in a strange tongue." In fact, she could have improvised admirable verses without hesitation or difficulty.

She married Mr. Maclean, then Governor of the Gold Coast [B],—a man who neither knew, felt, nor estimated her value. He wedded her, I am convinced, only because he was vain of her celebrity; and she married him only because he enabled her to change her name, and to remove from that society in which just then the old and infamous slander had been revived. There was in this case no love, no esteem, no respect,—and there could have been no discharge of duty that was not thankless and irksome.

They were married a fortnight, at least, before the wedding was announced, even to friends. A sad story was some time afterwards circulated,—the truth of which I have no means of knowing,—that Mr. Maclean had been engaged to a lady in Scotland, which engagement he had withdrawn, and that she was in the act of sealing a letter to him when her dress caught fire, and she was burnt to death.

The last time I saw L. E. L. was in Upper Berkeley Street, Connaught Square, on the 27th of June, 1838, soon after her marriage, when she was on the eve of her fatal voyage. A farewell party was given to some of her friends by Mrs. Sheddon, with whom she then boarded,—the Misses Lance having resigned their school. When the proper time arrived, there was a whisper round the table, and, as I was the oldest of her friends present, it fell to my lot to propose her health. I did so with the warmth I felt. The chances were that we should never meet again; and I considered myself free to speak of her in terms such as could not but have gratified any husband,—except the husband she had chosen,—and sought to convey to Maclean's mind the high respect, as well as affection, with which we all regarded her. The[Pg 339] reader may imagine the chill that came over the party when Maclean rose to return thanks. He merely said, "If Mrs. Maclean has as many friends as Mr. Hall says she has, I only wonder they allowed her to leave them." One by one the guests rose and departed, with a brief and mournful farewell. Probably not one of them all ever saw her again.

She sailed with her husband for Africa on the 5th of July, 1838. On the 15th of August she landed, and on the 15th of October she was dead!—dying, according to a coroner's jury, "of having incautiously taken a dose of prussic acid."

The circumstances of her death will be forever a mystery; for her husband has since "died and made no sign"; but no one ever heard of her having had this horrible medicine in her possession. Dr. Thomson, who made up her medicine-chest, and who had been her attendant for many years, declared he never prescribed it for her; and it was next to impossible she could have possessed it. To the various rumors that arose out of her death I do not allude. I do not believe she committed suicide; nay, I am sure she did not, although I know she was most wretched in her mournful banishment, most miserable in her changed condition, and that, if her past years had been gloomy, her future was very dark; but I believe that poison in some shape—not from the small vial which it was said was found in her hand—was administered by the African woman who is known to have been her predecessor,—one of those

"Children of the South
With whom revenge is virtue."

The following letter from L. E. L. was received by Mrs. Hall on the 3d of January, 1839. It is without a date. On the 1st we had heard of her death. It was a "ship-letter," but the mark of the place at which it was posted is indistinct.

"My Dear Mrs. Hall,—I must send you one of my earliest epistles from the tropics; and as a ship is just sailing, I will write, though it can only be a few hurried lines. I can tell you my whole voyage in three words,—six weeks' sea-sickness; but I am now as well as possible, and have been ever since I landed. The castle is a very noble building, and all the rooms large and cool, while some would be pretty even in England. That where I am writing is painted a deep blue, with some splendid engravings; indeed, fine prints seem quite a passion with the gentlemen here. Mr. Maclean's library is filled up with bookcases of African mahogany, and portraits of distinguished authors. I, however, never approach it without due preparation and humility, so crowded is it with scientific instruments, telescopes, chronometers, barometers, gasometers, etc., none of which may be touched by hands profane. On three sides, the batteries are dashed against by the waves; on the fourth is a splendid land view. The hills are covered to the top with what we should call wood, but is here called bush. This dense mass of green is varied by some large, handsome, white houses belonging to different gentlemen, and on two of the heights are small forts built by Mr. Maclean. The cocoa-trees with their long fan-like leaves are very beautiful. The natives seem to be obliging and intelligent, and look very picturesque with their fine dark figures, with pieces of the country cloth flung round them. They seem to have an excellent ear for music: the band plays all the old popular airs, which they have caught from some chance hearing. The servants are very tolerable, but they take so many to work. The prisoners do the scouring, and fancy three or four men cleaning a room that an old woman in England would do in an hour,—besides the soldier who stands by, his bayonet drawn in his hand. All my troubles have been of a housekeeping kind, and no one could begin on a more plentiful stock of ignorance than myself. However, like Sindbad the Sailor in the cavern, I begin to see daylight. I have numbered and labelled my keys,[Pg 340] (their name is Legion,) and every morning I take my way to the store, give out flour, sugar, butter, etc., and am learning to scold, if I see any dust or miss customary polish on the tables. I am actually getting the steward of the ship, who is my right hand, to teach me how to make pastry. I will report progress in the next. We live almost entirely on ducks and chickens; if a sheep be killed, it must be eaten the same day. The bread is very good, palm wine being used for yeast; and yams are an excellent substitute for potatoes. The fruit generally is too sweet for my liking; but the oranges and pine-apples are delicious. You cannot think the complete seclusion in which I live; but I have a great resource in writing, and I am very well and very happy. But I think even more than I expected, if that be possible, of my English friends."

Your truly affectionate
L. E. Maclean.

She had signed her name "L. E. Landon," but had erased "Landon," and written in "Maclean," adding, "How difficult it is to leave off an old custom!"

Poor girl! She thus fulfilled her own mournful prediction, though speaking of another:—

Where my father's bones are lying,
There my bones will never lie!

* * * *

Mine shall be a lonelier ending,
Mine shall be a wilder grave,
Where the shout and shriek are blending,
Where the tempest meets the wave:
Or perhaps a fate more lonely,
In some drear and distant ward,
Where my weary eyes meet only
Hired nurse and sullen guard.

FOOTNOTES:

[B] She was married on the 7th of June, 1838, to Mr. Maclean, at St. Mary's, Bryanston Square,—her brother, the Rev. Whittington Landon, officiating. The bride was given away by her long and attached friend, Sir Bulwer Lytton.

OUR OLDEST FRIEND.

Read to "The Boys of '29," Jan. 5, 1865.

I give you the health of the oldest friend
That, short of eternity, earth can lend,—
A friend so faithful and tried and true
That nothing can wean him from me and you.

When first we screeched in the sudden blaze
Of the daylight's blinding and blasting rays,
And gulped at the gaseous, groggy air,
This old, old friend stood waiting there.

And when, with a kind of mortal strife,
We had gasped and choked into breathing life,
He watched by the cradle, day and night,
And held our hands till we stood upright.

From gristle and pulp our frames have grown
To stringy muscle and solid bone;
While we were changing, he altered not;
We might forget, but he never forgot.

He came with us to the college class,—
Little cared he for the steward's pass!
All the rest must pay their fee,
But the grim old dead-head entered free.
[Pg 341]

He stayed with us while we counted o'er
Four times each of the seasons four;
And with every season, from year to year,
The dear name Classmate he made more dear.

He never leaves us,—he never will,
Till our hands are cold and our hearts are still;
On birthdays, and Christmas, and New-Year's too,
He always remembers both me and you.

Every year this faithful friend
His little present is sure to send;
Every year, wheresoe'er we be,
He wants a keepsake from you and me.

How he loves us! he pats our heads,
And, lo! they are gleaming with silver threads;
And he's always begging one lock of hair,
Till our shining crowns have nothing to wear.

At length he will tell us, one by one,
"My child, your labor on earth is done;
And now you must journey afar to see
My elder brother,—Eternity!"

And so, when long, long years have passed,
Some dear old fellow will be the last,—
Never a boy alive but he
Of all our goodly company!

When he lies down, but not till then,
Our kind Class-Angel will drop the pen
That writes in the day-book kept above
Our lifelong record of faith and love.

So here's a health in homely rhyme
To our oldest classmate, Father Time!
May our last survivor live to be
As bald, but as wise and tough as he!

EDWARD EVERETT.

At the funeral of Mr. Everett, on the 19th of January, the persons who acted as pall-bearers, and accompanied the body to the grave, had been appointed to that service by the government of the city of Boston.

They represented respectively the Commonwealth, the City, the Supreme Bench, the University, the American Academy, the Historical Society, the Public Library, the Union Club, and the United States Army and Navy. The officers of the Army and Navy highest in rank on this station represented these services; the other organizations were represented, in each case, by their highest officers.

"It is impracticable for the President and the Cabinet to leave the capital to attend the funeral.

"The President of the United States and the heads of departments tender to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts their condolence on the lamented death of Edward Everett, who was worthy to be enrolled among the noblest of the nation's benefactors."

Why do you call that man a private citizen, to whom every officer in the Nation, in the Commonwealth, and in the City, unites in paying homage? Why do you select the leading man in every class of service to be present to represent you at his open grave?

The true answer to these questions, and the true explanation of the universal feeling expressed in public and in private when he died, are not found without reference to some traits of moral constitution, to which it is well, I believe, to call attention now. To those traits of character,—as shown through life,—rather than to specific gifts of intellectual power, is Mr. Everett's singularly varied success to be ascribed. You may say, if you please, that it requires a very rare mental genius and even very rare physical endowment to carry out the behests of such resolution as I am to describe. This, of course, is true. But unless you have the moral determination which compels your vivid mind to plan, and your well-built machine to work for you, you get no such life. The secret—if it is to be called such—of this wonderful life, is the determination to do the special thing which at the moment is to be done. Mr. Everett was no admirer of Carlyle. But long before Carlyle began to tell men "to do the thing that came next them," Mr. Everett had been doing it, with a steady confidence that he could do it. Now the things that come next men in America are very various. That is the reason why he has been doing very various things. That is the reason why President and Cabinet, Navy and Army, University, Bench, and Academy, City and Commonwealth, meet, by their first representatives, at his grave, in recognition of specific service of the most eminent character which he has rendered to each of them, and which it would be a shame for them to fail to own.

In a little sketch of his college life, which he once sent me, there is an estimate—made at the age of sixty-one—of his own standing when he was a Sophomore, in comparison with some of his classmates. Some of those he names have passed on before him; two of them remain with us, to be honored always for the fruits of that scholarship which he observed so young. I think there can be nothing wrong in publishing a recollection, which, by accident, gives a hint as to the method of his own after-life to which I have alluded.

"I was considered, I believe, as taking rank among the few best scholars of the [Sophomore] class, although there was no branch in which I was not equalled—and in several I was excelled—by some of my classmates, except perhaps Metaphysics. Thus, I was surpassed[Pg 343] by Cooper in Latin, but he was wholly deficient in Mathematics, and regarded with pity, not altogether unmixed with contempt, all who had a taste for that study. Story, a brother of Mr. Justice Story, excelled me in Greek, but he neglected everything else, and seemed to get at the Greek rather by intuition than study. Fuller, Gray, and Hunt were my superiors in Mathematics; but in other studies I was the rival of Fuller, and Hunt made no pretensions to general scholarship;—for the branch in which he excelled he had a decided genius. Gilman was a more practised writer than I; so was Damon; and Frothingham greatly excelled me in speaking, and was in everything a highly accomplished scholar. If I had any strong point, it was that of neglecting no branch and doing about equally well in all."

He had occasion enough to show in all life that it is a very strong point, this "of neglecting no branch, and doing equally well in all." And in his estimates of other men, I think,—though he was more charitable in his judgments than any man I have ever known,—he always had latent the feeling that men could do almost anything they really resolved to do. You could never persuade him that a public speaker could not learn to speak well. He did not pretend that all men could speak equally well, but he really thought that it was the duty of a man, who meant to speak in public, to train himself, in voice, in intonation, in emphasis, so as to speak simply, and without attracting attention to any failure. He thought any man could do this as truly as any man could acquire a good handwriting. And any one who knew him knows that he considered this art as easily attained as the arts by which we clean our faces or our hands.[C]

Starting upon life with this principle, that he would do what had to be done,—if nobody else appeared to do it,—and that he could do it, too,—he soon found himself with work enough on his hands. English's flippant attack on the New Testament Scriptures appeared while Mr. Everett was minister of Brattle-Street Church. Because it appeared, he considered it his place to defend the New Testament against that specific attack; and he did it. The "Defence of Christianity," which he then published, is of value, chiefly as a piece of controversy belonging to the history of opinion in this neighborhood at that moment. Controversy has long since taken other grounds. For that purpose, at that moment, the book did its work completely. It exhausted the points which Mr. English raised, and exhausted them in a way which required very patient study. Mr. Everett once said that to compile the chapter on the quotations of the Old Testament by the New Testament writers, he went through the whole of the Mischna in the edition of Surenhusius, in six volumes folio. This chapter, I may say in passing, is the chapter of most permanent value in the "Defence." Now this "Defence," the work of a boy of twenty years of age, was written in the midst of the demands made upon the popular preacher in one of the largest parishes in Boston, in a few months' time,—sent to the printer chapter by chapter. And Mr. Everett said of it, in after-life, that, if it did not seem like affectation, he would say that it was relaxation from the work he was doing in the pulpit. I have no doubt it was. I have no thought that he was specially fitted for that work. It illustrates rather his moral force of determination. He thought that particular charge of Mr. English's ought to be answered. Nobody else answered it. And therefore he did it himself. He knew he could do it, if it must be done. If he had not prepared for it, he must prepare for it then.

But the reader will observe, I hope, that he does not in the "Defence" attempt anything else than the task he had assigned. Here is no general Apology. It is no discussion of the Evidences. It is a specific duty,—which[Pg 344] he had assigned to himself,—cleanly, neatly, and thoroughly done. He knew what he was going to do, when he began; and he knew, when he had finished what he could do. His victories, his life through, will all be found, I think, to illustrate that sort of steady, but determined resolution,—determined, in the sense that, before he began, the bounds were established for the work which was to be done.

When he went to Congress, for instance, in 1824, he had been widely known, in this part of the country at least, as a scholar who had travelled in Europe, and as one of the leaders in the movement in favor of the Greeks. Very naturally, Mr. Taylor appointed him on the Committee on Foreign Relations, and in that capacity he served all the time he was in the House. "I devoted myself," he said of that part of his life, "mainly to the discharge of that part of the public business which was intrusted to me"; that is, to the foreign relations. There were enough other interests in those years to which he might have devoted himself. But this was the sub-department which had been assigned to him, and therefore he devoted himself to it. If it had been Indian Affairs, or the Militia, he would have devoted himself to either of those; and I think he would have distinguished himself in either of them as much as he did in the other.

In this connection, it is to be observed, that, though few men worked as rapidly or as easily as he, this same moral determination appeared in the resoluteness with which he refused to do anything till he was satisfied with his own preparation. The thing might not require any, and then he made none. But if it was an occasion which he thought deserved preparation, no haste nor pressure nor other excuse availed to induce him to attempt what he had not made the fit preparation for. I think nothing really made him so indignant with us who were his juniors, as that we would half do things, instead of taking time to do them as well as we could. Yet, when the necessity came, he could achieve things that no other man would have dreamed of on such short notice. There are stories of his feats in this way which need not be repeated here.

I have heard people speak of his political life, especially of late years, as if it were a great riddle; and, in eulogies on him since his death, I find men speaking as if he underwent some great revulsion of character when Fort Sumter was attacked in 1861. I think there is no such mystery about it. The secret—if secret it is to be called—of his politics was blazoned in almost every speech he ever made, if people could only train themselves to think that a public man really believes what he says. It was this, that at heart he believed in the people. He believed they had virtue enough and good sense enough to carry them through any difficulty they would ever get into. He did not believe in total depravity. He did not, therefore, believe in theirs. And when he had any appeal to make to the people, he appealed to their supposed virtue, and not to their supposed vices,—he spoke to their good sense, and not to their folly. Mr. Emerson says somewhere, that he gave people no new thoughts. I do not think this is true. It is, however, very certain that he gave them no buncombe. He believed in them, in their good sense, and in their average virtue. He knew that everything depended on them. He was eager to educate the people, therefore, and all the people. He did not believe it possible to educate any of them too well. And if you had asked him, the day he died, what had been the central idea of his life, he would have said it was the education of the people. His life was full of it. His speeches were full of it. Nothing so provoked him as any snobbism which wanted to hinder it. When he was President of the College,—I think in 1848,—there was a black boy in the High School at Cambridge, fitting for college. Some gentlemen in Alabama, who had sons there, or on their way there, wrote to Mr. Everett to remonstrate against the boy's entering. He replied, that the College[Pg 345] was endowed to educate all comers; that, if the black boy could pass his examination, as he hoped he could, he would be admitted; and that, if, as they seemed to suppose, all the white students withdrew, the College would then be conducted on its endowments for the black boy alone. And that was no exceptional reply. It was his way of looking at such things.

Now it is very true that a man like that makes no demagogue appeals to the people. He will not be apt to ally himself with any specially radical party. He will never say that an unwashed man has as good chance for godliness as a washed man, because he will not believe it. He will never say that an ignorant man's vote is as good as a sensible man's, because he will not believe that. But in any question where the rights of men are on one side and the rights of classes on the other, he will pronounce for the rights of men. Accordingly, his verdict was stiffly against the Missouri Compromise in 1820 and 1821. He said it was unwise and unjust. When, in 1836, it came time, under that Compromise, to admit the State of Arkansas,—the next Slave State after Missouri,—he said that we were not bound to admit her with slavery, that the Compromise was not binding, and never could be made binding; it was unwise and unjust. Because he had said so, he considered himself estopped from saying that it was binding, and sacred, and inviolable, and all that, in 1854, when the rest of us made it into a new-found palladium of liberty. He would not argue the Nebraska question on the Compromise, but on the original principles of the popular rights involved. It is the same confidence in the people which shines through the letter to Baron Hülsemann, which he wrote at the request of Mr. Webster, and through his answer to the proposal of the Three Powers that we should guaranty Cuba to Spain. It may be necessary for popular freedom that Spain shall not have Cuba. The same thing is in all his reviews of the Basil Halls and other travellers. I do not suppose he liked a dirty table-cloth better than Mrs. Trollope did. I do not suppose he liked a Virginia fence better than Cobbett did. But he knew that table-cloths could be washed, and Virginia fences changed in time for hedges and walls. And he was willing to wait for such changes,—even with all the elegance people talk of,—if he were sure that the education of the people was going forward, and the lines of promotion were kept open.

When, therefore, the issue of 1861 came, there was no question, to anybody who knew him well, where he would stand. He would stand with the democratic side against the aristocratic side. And the issue of this war is the issue between democracy and oligarchy. Persons who did not believe in the people did not stand on the democratic side. Persons who thought a republican government had been forced on us by misfortune, and that we must simply make the best of it, did not stand there. They did not believe that this time the people could get through. So they thought it best to stop before beginning. He knew the people could go through anything. So he thought it best to hold firm to the end.

Some of the most amusing of the details of his early life, which, with his wonderful memory, he was rather fond of relating, belong to his experiences in education.

Here is his account of his first attendance at the central town-school of Dorchester, after he had left a dame-school.

"In this school, on first entering it, I was placed at the bottom of the lowest class; but even that was a position beyond my previous attainments. Unable to spell the words which formed the lesson, I used, when they came down to me from the boy above, to say just what he did, not being far enough advanced to insinuate a blunder of my own. But in the course of a few months I made great progress. In writing I was rather forward. I can remember writing 1799 at the bottom of the page in my copybook; and this is the oldest date which as a date I can recollect. I was then[Pg 346] five years old.[D] My father having, as a reward for my improvement, promised me a boughten 'writing-book,' as it was called, instead of a sheet of paper folded at home, with which children usually began, the brilliant prospect melted me almost to tears.

"Each boy in those days provided his own 'ink-horn,' as it was called. Mine was a ponderous article of lead, cast by myself at the kitchen fire, with a good deal of aid from the hired man who was employed in the summer to work the little farm. For pens we bought two goose-quills fresh from the wing, for a cent; older boys paid that sum for a single 'Dutch quill.'...

"In the year 1802, a new district school-house was built near our residence, to which I was transferred from the school on the meeting-house hill. It was kept by Mr. Wilkes Allen, afterwards a respectable clergyman at Chelmsford. I was now between eight and nine years old. My eldest brother had left school, and was in a counting-room in Boston; my second brother had entered college; and as we were, almost all of us little folks at Mr. Allen's, I was among the most advanced. I began the study of arithmetic at this time, using Pike as the text-book. I recollect proceeding to the extraction of the cube-root, without the slightest comprehension of the principle of that or any of the simplest arithmetical operations. I could have comprehended them, had they been judiciously explained, but I could not penetrate them without aid. At length I caught a glimpse of the principle of decimals. I thought I had made a discovery as confidently as Pythagoras did when he demonstrated the forty-seventh proposition of the first book of Euclid. I was proportionately annoyed when I afterwards discovered that I had been anticipated in finding out that 'a decimal is a fraction whose denominator is a unit with as many ciphers annexed as the numerator has places,' or rather in finding out precisely what this meant."

"I was thirteen years old in April, and entered a Freshman the following August, being the youngest member of my class. I lived the first year with my classmate, Charles P. Curtis, in a wooden building standing at the corner of the Main and Church Streets. It was officially known as the 'College House,' but known by the students as 'Wiswall's Den,' or, more concisely, 'The Den,'—whether from its comfortless character as a habitation or from some worse cause I do not know. There was a tradition that it had been the scene of a horrid domestic tragedy, and that it was haunted by the ghosts of the Wiswalls; but I cannot say that during the twelvemonth I lived in 'The Den' this tale was confirmed by my own experience.

"We occupied the southwest corner-chamber, up two flights of stairs,—a room about fourteen feet square, in which were contained two beds and the rest of our furniture, and our fuel, which was wood, and was kept under the beds. Two very small closets afforded a little additional space; but the accommodations were certainly far from brilliant. A good many young men who go to college are idlers; some, worse than idlers. I suppose my class in this respect was like other classes; but there was a fair proportion of faithful, studious students, and of well-conducted young men. I was protected in part, perhaps, by my youth, from the grosser temptations. I went through the prescribed studies of the year—which were principally a few books of Livy and Horace for the Latin, and 'Collectanea Græca Majora' for the Greek—about as well as most of the class; but the manner in which the ancient languages were then studied was deplorably superficial. It was confined to the most cursory reading of the text.[Pg 347] Besides the Latin and Greek languages, we had a weekly recitation in Lowth's English Grammar, and in the Hebrew Grammar, without points; also in Arithmetic and History, the last from Millot's Compend as a text-book. In all these branches there was an entire want of apparatus; and the standard, compared with that which now exists, was extremely low. And yet, in all respects, I imagine a great improvement had taken place, in reference to college education, on the state of things which existed in the previous generation. The intense political excitement of the Revolutionary period seems to have unsettled the minds of men from the quiet pursuits of life."

Reminiscences like these of his own lead one to speak of his memory, which was of all kinds, and wonderful in all. His memory for things was as remarkable as that for words,—a parallel I have known in very few men. In this double memory lay his power, which often excited the surprise of other speakers, of introducing into a discourse which he had written out, and, as men said, committed to memory, a passage purely extempore, so precisely that no patch could be observed at the junctures. The truth is, that it was not a matter of much account with him whether he had written out a statement of a fact or not. He was sure of the fact. And in simple narrative he was as willing to use extempore language as language prepared. Mr. Emerson says, in some not very flattering criticisms on him,—"It was remarked, for a man who threw out so many facts, he was seldom convicted of a blunder." I do not think he had any system of training memory, beyond that of using it and calling on it pitilessly, which is, I believe, the central rule regarding it.

Here is a curious story of a feat of memory, in his sketch of his Sophomore year.

"I have mentioned Metaphysics as a study in which I succeeded. I mean, of course, only that I prepared myself thoroughly in the text-books. Watts's Logic was the first book studied in this branch,—not a very inviting treatise, compared with that of Archbishop Whately, but easily comprehended, and not repulsive. The account of the syllogistic method amused me; and the barbarous stanza describing the various syllogistic modes and figures dwelt for a long time in my memory, and has not wholly faded away. Locke's 'Essay concerning Human Understanding' came next. This was more difficult. I recollect we used to make sport of the first sentence in the 'Epistle to the Reader,' which was, 'I here put into thy hands what has been the diversion of some of my idle and heavy hours: if it has the good luck to prove so of any of thine, and thou hast but half so much pleasure in reading as I had in writing it, thou wilt as little think thy money, as I do my pains, ill bestowed.' I cannot say that we any of us derived much diversion from it; but I overcame its difficulty by the resolute purpose to accomplish whatever was required. We recited from it three times a day, the four first days of the week, the recitation of Thursday afternoon being a review of the rest. We were expected to give the substance of the author's remarks, but were at liberty to condense them, and to use our own words. Although the style of Mr. Locke is not remarkably compact, it required a greater maturity of mind than is possessed by many boys of fourteen to abridge his paragraphs, or state his principles or their illustrations more concisely than he does himself. I had at that time a memory which recoiled from nothing; and I soon found that the shortest process was to learn the text by heart nearly verbatim. I recollect particularly, on one occasion of the review on Thursday afternoon, that I was called upon to recite early, and, commencing with the portion of the week's study which came next, I went on repeating word for word and paragraph after paragraph, and finally, not being stopped by our pleased tutor,[E] page after page, till I finally went through in that way the greater part[Pg 348] of the eleven recitations of the week. The celebrated passage on the Memory happened to be included. A portion of it, after the lapse of forty-seven years, remains in my recollection as distinctly as it did the day after I learned it. I refer to the passage beginning, 'Thus the ideas, as well as children, of our youth often die before us; and our minds represent to us those tombs to which we are approaching, where, though the brass and marble remain, yet the inscriptions are effaced by time, and the imagery moulders away.'

"I may observe, that, beautiful as is this language beyond anything else in the work of Locke, it will not stand the test of criticism. There is no resemblance between what befalls the ideas and the children of our youth; and supposing there were such a resemblance, there is not the slightest analogy between the premature decease of the ideas and the children of our youth and the disappearance of monumental inscriptions and imagery from the brass and marble of tombs. But I feel ashamed of this attempt to pick flaws in this beautiful passage."

But I must not dwell on these reminiscences. I am tempted to refer any reader interested in his work in the education of the people to an article on that subject in the seventh volume of Mr. Barnard's "Journal of Education."

I once heard him say that the mental faculty which had been of most use to him and had given him most pleasure was his facility in acquiring language. He said this on occasion of a visit to a county prison, where they had taken him to the cell of a person whom no one could understand. I think he had been called a Greek; but he proved to be an Italian. Mr. Everett was then Governor of the Commonwealth, and this was an official visit. It was a pretty illustration of republican institutions, that this poor prisoner in his solitude should first hear his own language from the chief magistrate. Mr. Everett addressed him first in the language of his supposed country,—I think in Greek,—and changed to Italian, when the prisoner spoke to him. He spoke French, German, Italian, and the Romaic with ease. He read the whole Hebrew Testament in his youth, and in Germany made considerable progress in Arabic; but I do not think that he kept up his Oriental languages in later years. He was fond of exercising himself in the other languages named, and almost always had some stated correspondence on his hands in each of them.

Unless he really loved correspondence, as some men do, I believe, I cannot conceive that even so conscientious a man as he should have kept his correspondence in such perfect order, answered letters of every kind so faithfully, so fully, and so agreeably. The last day of his life, a sick man as he was, he seems to have written a dozen letters. Everybody had an answer, and a kind one. He was, I think, the last man living who courteously acknowledged printed documents. Certainly there is no one left to do so among men whose habits I have heard of. But he would not fail in any kindness or courtesy. At times his correspondence rose into a position of real dignity. Thus, after Fort Sumter, while we still carried the Rebels' mails for them, he wrote steadily through all his working-hours of every day to his Southern correspondents, who were sending him all sorts of Billingsgate. And he wrote them the truth. "It is the only way they see a word of truth," he said. "Look at that newspaper, and that, and that." Till the mails stopped, they had not to blame him, if they were benighted. I wish that series of letters might, even now, be published separately.

In such duties, coming next his hand, he spent a busy life. Every life has a dream, a plan, of what we are going to do, when we can do what we will. I think his was the preparation of his work on International Law. As I have said, it became his duty to study this as early as 1825. I remember hearing him speak of his plans regarding it in 1839. He set his work aside, most unwillingly, when, in face of his own[Pg 349] first determination and the advice of his best friends, he became President of Harvard College. As soon as he was released from that position he turned to it again. During this last winter he had hoped to deliver at the Law School a course of lectures on the subject; and a part of these are certainly in form ready for delivery. But from this thread, or this dream, the demands of present duty have constantly called him away. He has done, from day to day, what had to be done, rather than what he wanted to do. A better record this, though men forget him to-morrow, than the fame of any Grotius even, if Grotius had not deserved like praise, better than the fame of any book-man of them all.

The brave man,—and he was a brave man, though in personal intercourse he was really shy,—the brave man, who, with all his might, and all God's strength assisting, will lend body and mind to such daily duty for other men, earns his laurels, when he wins them, in more fields than one or two. It is because Mr. Everett so lived, that in his death his memory receives such varied honors. He had served the Navy; the last interruption to his favorite study had been the devotion of the autumn months to the great charity which builds the Sailors' Home. He had served the Army, not merely by sending a son into it,—by "personal representatives," I know not how many, whose bounties he had paid,—but by the steady effort in all the charities for the wounded, and by the counsel, private as often as public, for which every department of the State turned to him. He had served the Union, all men know how. He had served the Bench, not simply as a student of the branch of law which he had chosen to illustrate, but in the steady training of the people to the sacredness of law. He had insisted on the higher education of the people; and so had fairly won the honors of the Academy, in those early days when men believed that there were Moral Sciences, and did not debase the name of Science by confining it to the mere chaff of things weighed and measured. His studies of History are remembered, for some special cause, in almost every Historical Society in the land. He had served the University in every station known to her constitution. He was in the service of the City in that Public Library of which he was, more than any man, the founder, which completes her system of universal education. He had served the State as her chief magistrate. And in every work of life he served the Nation as her first citizen. These varied lines of duty—in which "he neglected no branch, but did about equally well in all"—were fitly called to men's memories, as they saw the circle of distinguished friends and fellow-laborers who met around his grave.

FOOTNOTES:

[C] "For if one has anything worth writing, it is really worth while to write it so it can be read."—Address at Barre.

[D] In another scrap of his reminiscences, he says: "The oldest political event of which I have any recollection is that of the quasi French War of 1798. This I remember only in connection with the family talk of the price of flour, which it was said would cost twenty dollars a barrel. As we used principally brown bread, this was of less consequence; although the price of Indian corn and meal was probably increased also."

[E] Mr. Hedge, with whom this was a favorite passage.

NOTES OF A PIANIST.

II.

Written without method, dotted down carelessly and currente calamo on the leaves of my pocket-book, the notes I now publish were never intended to be read by any one but myself. A wanderer for many long years, I have contracted the habit of making daily memoranda of the fleeting, evanescent impressions of my travels, and thus giving them a more tangible form. These notes, drawn up hastily and for myself alone, have no literary merit whatever, but they most unequivocally tell the truth. Is this an adequate compensation for the numerous negligences of style which criticism may discover in them? You answer my question affirmatively, my dear M——. Be that as it may, these reminiscences of travel have often solaced the ennui and fatigue of my erratic life. In writing of the present, the bitterness of the past vanished; and again, if the present were tedious or fraught with care, I reverted to the sunny pages of the time that is no more, and revived the sweet emotions of the long-forgotten past.

Under your patronage I now place these poor leaves. They have been the partners of my joys and my griefs, of my toils and my leisure, during the last three years that have whirled me relentlessly in that most monotonous, yet agitated circle, yclept "a life of concerts." Should you find evidence too flagrant, even for your prepossessed eyes, of the inexperience of my pen, bear in mind, I pray you, that I am but a musician, and only a pianist at that.

January, 1862. Once more in New York, after an absence of six years!—Six years madly squandered, scattered to the winds, as if life were infinite, and youth—eternal! Six years, in the space of which I have wandered at random beneath the blue skies of the tropics, yielding myself up indolently to the caprice of Fortune, giving a concert wherever I happened to find a piano, sleeping wherever night overtook me, on the green grass of the savanna, or under the palm-leafed roof of a veguero, who shared with me his corn-tortilla, coffee, and bananas, and thought himself amply renumerated, when, at dawn, I took my departure with a "Dios se lo pague á V." (May God reward you!) to which he responded by a "Vaya V. con Dios!" (God be with you!)—these two formulæ constituting, in such unsophisticated countries, the entire operation, so ingeniously perfected by civilized nations, which generally is known by the name of "settling the hotel-bill." And when at last I became weary of the same horizon, I crossed an arm of the sea, and landed on some neighboring isle, or on the Spanish Main. Thus, in succession, I have visited all the Antilles,—Spanish, French, English, Dutch, Swedish, Danish; the Guianas, and the coasts of Para. At times, having become the idol of some obscure pueblo, whose untutored ears I had charmed with its own simple ballads, I would pitch my tent for five, six, eight months, deferring my departure from day to day, until finally I began seriously to entertain the idea of remaining there forevermore. Abandoning myself to such influences, I lived without care, as the bird sings, as the flower expands, as the brook flows, oblivious of the past, reckless of the future, and sowed both my heart and my purse with the ardor of a husbandman who hopes to reap a hundred ears for every grain he confides to the earth. But, alas! the fields, where is garnered the harvest of expended doubloons, and where vernal loves bloom anew, are yet to be discovered; and the result of my double prodigality was, that one fine morning I found myself a bankrupt in heart, with my purse at ebb-tide.[Pg 351]

Suddenly disgusted with the world and with myself, weary, discouraged, mistrusting men, (ay, and women, too,) I fled to a desert on the extinct volcano of M——, where, for several months, I lived the life of a cenobite, with no companion but a poor lunatic, whom I had met on a small island, and who had attached himself to me. He followed me everywhere, and loved me with that absurd and touching constancy of which dogs and madmen alone are capable. My friend, whose insanity was of a mild and harmless character, fancied himself the greatest genius in the world. He was, moreover, under the impression that he suffered from a gigantic, monstrous tooth. Of the two idiosyncrasies, the latter alone made his lunacy discernible,—too many individuals being affected with the other symptom to render it an anomalous feature of the human mind. My friend was in the habit of protesting that this enormous tooth increased periodically and threatened to encroach upon his entire jaw. Tormented, at the same time, with the desire of regenerating humanity, he divided his leisure between the study of dentistry, to which he applied himself in order to impede the progress of his hypothetical tyrant, and a voluminous correspondence which he kept up with the Pope, his brother, and the Emperor of the French, his cousin. In the latter occupation he pleaded the interests of humanity, styled himself "the prince of thought," and exalted me to the dignity of his illustrious friend and benefactor. In the midst of the wreck of his intellect, one thing still survived,—his love of music. He played the violin, and, strange as it may appear, although insane, he could not understand the so-called music of the future.

My hut, perched on the verge of the crater, at the very summit of the mountain, commanded a view of all the surrounding country. The rock upon which it was built projected over a precipice, whose abysses were concealed by creeping plants, cactus, and bamboos. The species of table-rock thus formed had been encircled with a railing and transformed into a terrace, on a level with the sleeping-room, by my predecessor in this hermitage. His last wish had been to be buried there; and from my bed I could see his white tombstone gleaming in the moonlight, a few steps from my window. Every evening I rolled my piano out upon the terrace, and there, facing the most incomparably beautiful landscape, all bathed in the soft and limpid atmosphere of the tropics, I poured forth on the instrument, and for myself alone, the thoughts with which that scene inspired me. And what a scene! Picture to yourself a gigantic amphitheatre hewn out of the mountains by an army of Titans: right and left, immense virgin forests, full of those subdued and distant harmonies which are, as it were, the voices of Silence; before me, a prospect of twenty leagues, marvellously enhanced by the extreme transparency of the air; above, the azure of the sky; beneath, the creviced sides of the mountain sweeping down to the plain; afar, the waving savannas; beyond them, a grayish speck (the distant city); and encompassing them all, the immensity of the ocean, closing the horizon with its deep blue line. Behind me was a rock on which a torrent of melted snow dashes its white foam, and there, diverted from its course, rushes with a mad leap and plunges headlong into the gulf that yawns beneath my window.

Amid such scenes I composed "Réponds-moi la Marche des Gibaros," "Polonia," "Columbia," "Pastorella e Cavaliere," "Jeunesse," and many other unpublished works. I allowed my fingers to run over the keys, wrapped up in the contemplation of these wonders, while my poor friend, whom I heeded but little, revealed to me, with a childish loquacity, the lofty destiny he held in reserve for humanity. Can you conceive the contrast produced by this shattered intellect, expressing at random its disjointed thoughts, as a disordered clock strikes by chance any hour, and the majestic serenity of the scene around me? I felt it instinctively. My misanthropy gave way; I became indulgent towards[Pg 352] myself and mankind, and the wounds of my heart closed once more. My despair was soothed, and soon the sun of the tropics, which tinges all things with gold, dreams as well as fruits, restored me with new confidence and vigor to my wanderings.

I relapsed into the life and manners of these primitive countries; if not strictly virtuous, they are, at all events, terribly attractive. Existence in a tropical wilderness, in the midst of a voluptuous and half-civilized race, bears no resemblance to that of a London cockney, a Parisian lounger, or an American Quaker. Times there were, indeed, when a voice was heard within me that spoke of nobler aims. It reminded me of what I once was, of what I yet might be, and commanded imperatively a return to a healthier and more active life. But I had allowed myself to be enervated by this baneful languor, this insidious far niente, and my moral torpor was such that the mere thought of reappearing before a polished audience struck me as superlatively absurd. "Where was the object?" I would ask myself. Moreover, it was too late; and I went on dreaming with open eyes, careering on horseback through the savannas, listening at break of day to the prattle of the parrots in the guava-trees, at nightfall to the chirp of the grillos in the cane-fields, or else smoking my cigar, taking my coffee, rocking myself in a hammock,—in short, enjoying all the delights that are the very heart-blood of a guajiro, and out of the sphere of which he can see but death, or, what is worse to him, the feverish agitation of our Northern society. Go and talk of the funds, of the landed interest, of stock-jobbing to this Sybarite, lord of the wilderness, who can live all the year round on luscious bananas and delicious cocoa-nuts, which he is not even at the trouble of planting,—who has the best tobacco in the world to smoke,—who replaces to-day the horse he had yesterday by a better one chosen from the first caballada he meets,—who requires no further protection from the cold, than a pair of linen trousers, in that favored clime where the seasons roll on in one perennial summer,—who, more than all this, finds at eve, under the rustling palm-trees, pensive beauties eager to reward with their smiles the one who murmurs in their ears those three words, ever new, ever beautiful, "Yo te quiero."

Moralists, I am aware, condemn this life of inaction and mere pleasure; and they are right. But poetry is often in antagonism with virtuous purposes; and now that I am shivering under the icy wind and dull sky of the North,—that I must needs listen to discussions on Erie, Prairie du Chien, Harlem, and Cumberland,—that I read in the papers the lists of the killed and wounded,—that havoc and conflagration, violence and murder, are perpetrated all around me,—I find myself excusing the half-civilized inhabitant of the savanna, who prefers his poetical barbarism to our barbarous progress.

Unexpectedly brought back to the stern realities of life by a great affliction, I wished to destroy every link that connected me with the six years I had thrown away. It was at this period that Strakosch wrote to me, offering an engagement for a tour of concerts through the United States. I hesitated an instant; one sad look was cast upon the vanished days, I breathed a regret, and—signed. The dream was over; I was saved; but who could say, if, in the rescue, youth and poetry had not perished? Poetry and youth are of a volatile mood,—they are butterflies. Shut them up in a cage, and they will dash their delicate wings to pieces against its bars. Endeavor to direct them as they soar, and you cramp their flight, you deprive them of their audacity,—two qualities which are often to be met with in inexperience, and the loss of which—am I wrong in saying so?—is not always compensated by maturity of talent.

THE CHIMNEY-CORNER.

III.

LITTLE FOXES.—PART II.

It was that Christmas-day that did it; I'm quite convinced of that; and the way it was is what I am going to tell you.

You see, among the various family customs of us Crowfields, the observance of all sorts of fêtes and festivals has always been a matter of prime regard; and among all the festivals of the round ripe year, none is so joyous and honored among us as Christmas.

Let no one upon this, prick up the ears of Archaeology, and tell us that by the latest calculations of chronologists our ivy-grown and holly-mantled Christmas is all a hum,—that it has been demonstrated, by all sorts of signs and tables, that the august event it celebrates did not take place on the 25th of December. Supposing it be so, what have we to do with that? If so awful, so joyous an event ever took place on our earth, it is surely worth commemoration. It is the event we celebrate, not the time. And if all Christians for eighteen hundred years, while warring and wrangling on a thousand other points, have agreed to give this one 25th of December to peace and good-will, who is he that shall gainsay them, and for an historic scruple turn his back on the friendly greetings of all Christendom? Such a man is capable of rewriting Milton's Christmas Hymn in the style of Sternhold and Hopkins.

In our house, however, Christmas has always been a high day, a day whose expectation has held waking all the little eyes in our bird's nest, when as yet there were only little ones there, each sleeping with one eye open, hoping to be the happy first to wish the merry Christmas and grasp the wonderful stocking.

This year our whole family train of married girls and boys, with the various toddling tribes thereto belonging, held high festival around a wonderful Christmas-tree, the getting-up and adorning of which had kept my wife and Jennie and myself busy for a week beforehand. If the little folks think these trees grow up in a night, without labor, they know as little about them as they do about most of the other blessings which rain down on their dear little thoughtless heads. Such scrambling and clambering and fussing and tying and untying, such alterations and rearrangements, such agilities in getting up and down and everywhere to tie on tapers and gold balls and glittering things innumerable, to hang airy dolls in graceful positions, to make branches bear stiffly up under loads of pretty things which threaten to make the tapers turn bottom upward! Part and parcel of all this was I, Christopher, most reckless of rheumatism, most careless of dignity, the round, bald top of my head to be seen emerging everywhere from the thick boughs of the spruce, now devising an airy settlement for some gossamer-robed doll, now adjusting far back on a stiff branch Tom's new little skates, now balancing bags of sugar-plums and candy, and now combating desperately with some contumacious taper that would turn slantwise or crosswise, or anywise but upward as a Christian taper should,—regardless of Mrs. Crowfield's gentle admonitions and suggestions, sitting up to most dissipated hours, springing out of bed suddenly to change some arrangement in the middle of the night, and up long before the lazy sun at dawn to execute still other arrangements. If that Christmas-tree had been a fort to be taken, or a campaign to be planned, I could not have spent more time and strength on it. My zeal so far outran even that of[Pg 354] sprightly Miss Jennie, that she could account for it only by saucily suggesting that papa must be fast getting into second childhood.

But didn't we have a splendid lighting-up? Didn't I and my youngest grandson, little Tom, head the procession magnificent in paper soldier-caps, blowing tin trumpets and beating drums, as we marched round the twinkling glories of our Christmas-tree, all glittering with red and blue and green tapers, and with a splendid angel on top with great gold wings, the cutting-out and adjusting of which had held my eyes waking for nights before? I had had oceans of trouble with that angel, owing to an unlucky sprain in his left wing, which had required constant surgical attention through the week, and which I feared might fall loose again at the important and blissful moment of exhibition: but no, the Fates were in our favor; the angel behaved beautifully, and kept his wings as crisp as possible, and the tapers all burned splendidly, and the little folks were as crazy with delight as my most ardent hopes could have desired; and then we romped and played and frolicked as long as little eyes could keep open, and long after; and so passed away our Christmas.

I had forgotten to speak of the Christmas-dinner, that solid feast of fat things, on which we also luxuriated. Mrs. Crowfield outdid all household traditions in that feast: the turkey and the chickens, the jellies and the sauces, the pies and the pudding, behold, are they not written in the tablets of Memory which remain to this day?

The holidays passed away hilariously, and at New-Year's I, according to time-honored custom, went forth to make my calls and see my fair friends, while my wife and daughters stayed at home to dispense the hospitalities of the day to their gentlemen friends. All was merry, cheerful, and it was agreed on all hands that a more joyous holiday season had never flown over us.

But, somehow, the week after, I began to be sensible of a running-down in the wheels. I had an article to write for the "Atlantic," but felt mopish and could not write. My dinner had not its usual relish, and I had an indefinite sense everywhere of something going wrong. My coal bill came in, and I felt sure we were being extravagant, and that our John Furnace wasted the coal. My grandsons and granddaughters came to see us, and I discovered that they had high-pitched voices, and burst in without wiping their shoes, and it suddenly occurred powerfully to my mind that they were not being well brought up,—evidently, they were growing up rude and noisy. I discovered several tumblers and plates with the edges chipped, and made bitter reflections on the carelessness of Irish servants; our crockery was going to destruction, along with the rest. Then, on opening one of my paper-drawers, I found that Jennie's one drawer of worsted had overflowed into two or three; Jennie was growing careless; besides, worsted is dear, and girls knit away small fortunes, without knowing it, on little duds that do nobody any good. Moreover, Maggie had three times put my slippers into the hall-closet, instead of leaving them where I wanted, under my study-table. Mrs. Crowfield ought to look after things more; every servant, from end to end of the house, was getting out of the traces; it was strange she did not see it.

All this I vented, from time to time, in short, crusty sayings and doings, as freely as if I hadn't just written an article on "Little Foxes" in the last "Atlantic," till at length my eyes were opened on my own state and condition.

It was evening, and I had just laid up the fire in the most approved style of architecture, and, projecting my feet into my slippers, sat spitefully cutting the leaves of a caustic review.

"My dear," I said, "I do wish you'd let the fire alone,—you always put it out."

As if in contradiction, a bright tongue[Pg 355] of flame darted up between the sticks, and the fire began chattering and snapping defiance at me. Now, if there's anything which would provoke a saint, it is to be jeered and snapped at in that way by a man's own fire. It's an unbearable impertinence. I threw out my leg impatiently, and hit Rover, who yelped a yelp that finished the upset of my nerves. I gave him a hearty kick, that he might have something to yelp for, and in the movement upset Jennie's embroidery-basket.

"Confound your baskets and balls! they are everywhere, so that a man can't move; useless, wasteful things, too."

"Wasteful?" said Jennie, coloring indignantly; for if there's anything Jennie piques herself upon, it's economy.

"Yes, wasteful,—wasting time and money both. Here are hundreds of shivering poor to be clothed, and Christian females sit and do nothing but crochet worsted into useless knicknacks. If they would be working for the poor, there would be some sense in it. But it's all just alike, no real Christianity in the world,—nothing but organized selfishness and self-indulgence."

"My dear," said Mrs. Crowfield, "you are not well to-night. Things are not quite so desperate as they appear. You haven't got over Christmas-week."

"I am well. Never was better. But I can see, I hope, what's before my eyes; and the fact is, Mrs. Crowfield, things must not go on as they are going. There must be more care, more attention to details. There's Maggie,—that girl never does what she is told. You are too slack with her, Ma'am. She will light the fire with the last paper, and she won't put my slippers in the right place; and I can't have my study made the general catch-all and menagerie for Rover and Jennie, and her baskets and balls, and for all the family litter."

Just at this moment I overheard a sort of aside from Jennie, who was swelling with repressed indignation at my attack on her worsted. She sat with her back to me, knitting energetically, and said, in a low, but very decisive tone, as she twitched her yarn,—

"Now if I should talk in that way, people would call me cross,—and that's the whole of it."

I pretended to be looking into the fire in an absent-minded state; but Jennie's words had started a new idea. Was that it? Was that the whole matter? Was it, then, a fact, that the house, the servants, Jennie and her worsteds, Rover and Mrs. Crowfield, were all going on pretty much as usual, and that the only difficulty was that I was cross? How many times had I encouraged Rover to lie just where he was lying when I kicked him! How many times, in better moods, had I complimented Jennie on her neat little fancy-works, and declared that I liked the social companionship of ladies' work-baskets among my papers! Yes, it was clear. After all, things were much as they had been; only I was cross.

Cross. I put it to myself in that simple, old-fashioned word, instead of saying that I was out of spirits, or nervous, or using any of the other smooth phrases with which we good Christians cover up our little sins of temper. "Here you are, Christopher," said I to myself, "a literary man, with a somewhat delicate nervous organization and a sensitive stomach, and you have been eating like a sailor or a ploughman; you have been gallivanting and merry-making and playing the boy for two weeks; up at all sorts of irregular hours, and into all sorts of boyish performances; and the consequence is, that, like a thoughtless young scapegrace, you have used up in ten days the capital of nervous energy that was meant to last you ten weeks. You can't eat your cake and have it too, Christopher. When the nervous-fluid source of cheerfulness, giver of pleasant sensations and pleasant views, is all spent, you can't feel cheerful; things cannot look as they did when you were full of life and vigor. When the tide is out, there is nothing but unsightly, ill-smelling tide-mud, and you can't help it;[Pg 356] but you can keep your senses,—you can know what is the matter with you,—you can keep from visiting your overdose of Christmas mince-pies and candies and jocularities on the heads of Mrs. Crowfield, Rover, and Jennie, whether in the form of virulent morality, pungent criticisms, or a free kick, such as you just gave the poor brute."

"Come here, Rover, poor dog!" said I, extending my hand to Rover, who cowered at the farther corner of the room, eying me wistfully,—"come here, you poor doggie, and make up with your master. There, there! Was his master cross? Well, he knows it. We must forgive and forget, old boy, mustn't we?" And Rover nearly broke his own back and tore me to pieces with his tumultuous tail-waggings.

"As for you, puss," I said to Jennie, "I am much obliged to you for your free suggestion. You must take my cynical moralities for what they are worth, and put your little traps into as many of my drawers as you like."

In short, I made it up handsomely all around,—even apologizing to Mrs. Crowfield, who, by the bye, has summered and wintered me so many years, and knows all my airs and cuts and crinkles so well, that she took my irritable unreasonable spirit as tranquilly as if I had been a baby cutting a new tooth.

"Of course, Chris, I knew what the matter was; don't disturb yourself," she said, as I began my apology; "we understand each other. But there is one thing I have to say; and that is, that your article ought to be ready."

"Ah, well, then," said I, "like other great writers, I shall make capital of my own sins, and treat of the second little family fox; and his name is—"

IRRITABILITY.

Irritability is, more than most unlovely states, a sin of the flesh. It is not, like envy, malice, spite, revenge, a vice which we may suppose to belong equally to an embodied or a disembodied spirit. In fact, it comes nearer to being physical depravity than anything I know of. There are some bodily states, some conditions of the nerves, such that we could not conceive of even an angelic spirit confined in a body thus disordered as being able to do any more than simply endure. It is a state of nervous torture; and the attacks which the wretched victim makes on others are as much a result of disease as the snapping and biting of a patient convulsed with hydrophobia.

Then, again, there are other people who go through life loving and beloved, desired in every circle, held up in the church as examples of the power of religion, who, after all, deserve no credit for these things. Their spirits are lodged in an animal nature so tranquil, so cheerful, all the sensations which come to them are so fresh and vigorous and pleasant, that they cannot help viewing the world charitably and seeing everything through a glorified medium. The ill-temper of others does not provoke them; perplexing business never sets their nerves to vibrating; and all their lives long they walk in the serene sunshine of perfect animal health.

Look at Rover there. He is never nervous, never cross, never snaps or snarls, and is ready, the moment after the grossest affront, to wag the tail of forgiveness,—all because kind Nature has put his dog's body together so that it always works harmoniously. If every person in the world were gifted with a stomach and nerves like his, it would be a far better and happier world, no doubt. The man said a good thing who made the remark that the foundation of all intellectual and moral worth must be laid in a good healthy animal.

Now I think it is undeniable that the peace and happiness of the home-circle are very generally much invaded by the recurrence in its members of these states of bodily irritability. Every person, if he thinks the matter over, will see that his condition in life, the character of his friends, his estimate of their virtues and failings, his hopes and expectations, are all very much modified[Pg 357] by these things. Cannot we all remember going to bed as very ill-used, persecuted individuals, all whose friends were unreasonable, whose life was full of trials and crosses, and waking up on a bright bird-singing morning to find all these illusions gone with the fogs of the night? Our friends are nice people, after all; the little things that annoyed us look ridiculous by bright sunshine; and we are fortunate individuals.

The philosophy of life, then, as far as this matter is concerned, must consist of two things: first, to keep ourselves out of irritable bodily states; and, second, to understand and control these states, when we cannot ward them off.

Of course, the first of these is the most important; and yet, of all things, it seems to be least looked into and understood. We find abundant rules for the government of the tongue and temper; it is a slough into which, John Bunyan hath it, cart-loads of wholesome instructions have been thrown; but how to get and keep that healthy state of brain, stomach, and nerves which takes away the temptation to ill-temper and anger is a subject which moral and religious teachers seem scarcely to touch upon.

Now, without running into technical, physiological language, it is evident, as regards us human beings, that there is a power by which we live and move and have our being,—by which the brain thinks and wills, the stomach digests, the blood circulates, and all the different provinces of the little man-kingdom do their work. This something—call it nervous fluid, nervous power, vital energy, life-force, or anything else that you will—is a perfectly understood, if not a definable thing. It is plain, too, that people possess this force in very different degrees: some generating it as a high-pressure engine does steam, and using it constantly, with an apparently inexhaustible flow; and others who have little, and spend it quickly. We have a common saying, that this or that person is soon used up. Now most nervous, irritable states of temper are the mere physical result of a used-up condition. The person has overspent his nervous energy,—like a man who should eat up on Monday the whole food which was to keep him for a week, and go growling and faint through the other days; or the quantity of nervous force which was wanted to carry on the whole system in all its parts is seized on by some one monopolizing portion, and used up to the loss and detriment of the rest, Thus, with men of letters, an exorbitant brain expends on its own workings what belongs to the other offices of the body: the stomach has nothing to carry on digestion; the secretions are badly made; and the imperfectly assimilated nourishment, that is conveyed to every little nerve and tissue, carries with it an acrid, irritating quality, producing general restlessness and discomfort. So men and women go struggling on through their three-score and ten years, scarcely one in a thousand knowing through life that perfect balance of parts, that appropriate harmony of energies, that make a healthy, kindly animal condition, predisposing to cheerfulness and good-will.

We Americans are, to begin with, a nervous, excitable people. Multitudes of children, probably the great majority in the upper walks of life, are born into the world with weaknesses of the nervous organization, or of the brain or stomach, which make them incapable of any strong excitement or prolonged exertion without some lesion or derangement; so that they are continually being checked, laid up, and invalided in the midst of their drugs. Life here in America is so fervid, so fast, our climate is so stimulating, with its clear, bright skies, its rapid and sudden changes of temperature, that the tendencies to nervous disease are constantly aggravated.

Under these circumstances, unless men and women make a conscience, a religion, of saving and sparing something of themselves expressly for home-life and home-consumption, it must follow[Pg 358] that home will often be merely a sort of refuge for us to creep into when we are used up and irritable.

Papa is up and off, after a hasty breakfast, and drives all day in his business, putting into it all there is in him, letting it drink up brain and nerve and body and soul, and coming home jaded and exhausted, so that he cannot bear the cry of the baby, and the frolics and pattering of the nursery seem horrid and needless confusion. The little ones say, in their plain vernacular, "Papa is cross."

Mamma goes out to a party that keeps her up till one or two in the morning, breathes bad air, eats indigestible food, and the next day is so nervous that every straw and thread in her domestic path is insufferable.

Papas that pursue business thus day after day, and mammas that go into company, as it is called, night after night, what is there left in or of them to make an agreeable fireside with, to brighten their home and inspire their children?

True, the man says he cannot help himself,—business requires it. But what is the need of rolling up money at the rate at which he is seeking to do it? Why not have less, and take some time to enjoy his home, and cheer up his wife, and form the minds of his children? Why spend himself down to the last drop on the world, and give to the dearest friends he has only the bitter dregs?

Much of the preaching which the pulpit and the Church have levelled at fashionable amusements has failed of any effect at all, because wrongly put. A cannonade has been opened upon dancing, for example, and all for reasons that will not, in the least, bear looking into. It is vain to talk of dancing as a sin because practised in a dying world where souls are passing into eternity. If dancing is a sin for this reason, so is playing marbles, or frolicking with one's children, or enjoying a good dinner, or doing fifty other things which nobody ever dreamed of objecting to.

If the preacher were to say that anything is a sin which uses up the strength we need for daily duties, and leaves us fagged out and irritable at just those times and in just those places when and where we need most to be healthy, cheerful, and self-possessed, he would say a thing that none of his hearers would dispute. If he should add, that dancing-parties, beginning at ten o'clock at night and ending at four o'clock in the morning, do use up the strength, weaken the nerves, and leave a person wholly unfit for any home duty, he would also be saying what very few people would deny; and then his case would be made out. If he should say that it is wrong to breathe bad air and fill the stomach with unwholesome dainties, so as to make one restless, ill-natured, and irritable for days after, he would also say what few would deny, and his preaching might have some hope of success.

The true manner of judging of the worth of amusements is to try them by their effects on the nerves and spirits the day after. True amusement ought to be, as the word indicates, recreation,—something that refreshes, turns us out anew, rests the mind and body by change, and gives cheerfulness and alacrity to our return to duty.

The true objection to all stimulants, alcoholic and narcotic, consists simply in this,—that they are a form of overdraft on the nervous energy, which helps us to use up in one hour the strength of whole days.

A man uses up all the fair, legal interest of nervous power by too much business, too much care, or too much amusement. He has now a demand to meet. He has a complicate account to make up, an essay or a sermon to write, and he primes himself by a cup of coffee, a cigar, a glass of spirits. This is exactly the procedure of a man who, having used the interest of his money, begins to dip into the principal. The strength a man gets in this way is just so much taken out of his life-blood; it is borrowing of a merciless creditor, who will exact, in time, the pound of flesh nearest his heart.[Pg 359]

Much of the irritability which spoils home happiness is the letting-down from the over-excitement of stimulus. Some will drink coffee, when they own every day that it makes them nervous; some will drug themselves with tobacco, and some with alcohol, and, for a few hours of extra brightness, give themselves and their friends many hours when amiability or agreeableness is quite out of the question. There are people calling themselves Christians who live in miserable thraldom, forever in debt to Nature, forever overdrawing on their just resources, and using up their patrimony, because they have not the moral courage to break away from a miserable appetite.

The same may be said of numberless indulgences of the palate, which tax the stomach beyond its power, and bring on all the horrors of indigestion. It is almost impossible for a confirmed dyspeptic to act like a good Christian; but a good Christian ought not to become a confirmed dyspeptic. Reasonable self-control, abstaining from all unseasonable indulgence, may prevent or put an end to dyspepsia, and many suffer and make their friends suffer only because they will persist in eating what they know is hurtful to them.

But it is not merely in worldly business, or fashionable amusements, or the gratification of appetite, that people are tempted to overdraw and use up in advance their life-force. It is done in ways more insidious, because connected with our moral and religious faculties. There are religious exaltations beyond the regular pulse and beatings of ordinary nature, that quite as surely gravitate downward into the mire of irritability. The ascent to the third heaven lets even the Apostle down to a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet him.

It is the temptation of natures in which the moral faculties predominate to overdo in the outward expression and activities of religion till they are used up and irritable, and have no strength left to set a good example in domestic life.

The Reverend Mr. X. in the pulpit to-day appears with the face of an angel; he soars away into those regions of exalted devotion where his people can but faintly gaze after him; he tells them of the victory that overcometh the world, of an unmoved faith that fears no evil, of a serenity of love that no outward event can ruffle; and all look after him and wonder, and wish they could so soar.

Alas! the exaltation which inspires these sublime conceptions, these celestial ecstasies, is a double and treble draft on Nature,—and poor Mrs. X. knows, when she hears him preaching, that days of miserable reaction are before her. He has been a fortnight driving before a gale of strong excitement, doing all the time twice or thrice as much as in his ordinary state he could, and sustaining himself by the stimulus of strong coffee. He has preached or exhorted every night, and conversed with religious inquirers every day, seeming to himself to become stronger and stronger, because every day more and more excitable and excited. To his hearers, with his flushed sunken cheek and his glittering eye, he looks like some spiritual being just trembling on his flight for upper worlds; but to poor Mrs. X., whose husband he is, things wear a very different aspect. Her woman and mother instincts tell her that he is drawing on his life-capital with both hands, and that the hours of a terrible settlement must come, and the days of darkness will be many. He who spoke so beautifully of the peace of a soul made perfect will not be able to bear the cry of his baby or the pattering feet of any of the poor little Xs., who must be sent

"Anywhere, anywhere,
Out of his sight";

he who discoursed so devoutly of perfect trust in God will be nervous about the butcher's bill, sure of going to ruin because both ends of the salary don't meet; and he who could so admiringly tell of the silence of Jesus under provocation will but too often speak unadvisedly with his lips. Poor Mr. X. will be morally insane for days or weeks, and absolutely incapable of preaching Christ in the way[Pg 360] that is the most effective, by setting Him forth in his own daily example.

Yes, certainly; but the first work of the Lord, that for which provision is to be made in the first place, is to set a good example as a Christian man. Better labor for years steadily, diligently, doing every day only what the night's rest can repair, avoiding those cheating stimulants that overtax Nature, and illustrating the sayings of the pulpit by the daily life in the family, than to pass life in exaltations and depressions.

The same principles apply to hearers as to preachers. Religious services must be judged of like amusements, by their effect on the life. If an overdose of prayers, hymns, and sermons leaves us tired, nervous, and cross, it is only not quite as bad as an overdose of fashionable folly.

It could be wished that in every neighborhood there might be one or two calm, sweet, daily services which should morning and evening unite for a few solemn moments the hearts of all as in one family, and feed with a constant, unnoticed daily supply the lamp of faith and love. Such are some of the daily prayer-meetings which for eight or ten years past have held their even tenor in some of our New England cities, and such the morning and evening services which we are glad to see obtaining in the Episcopal churches. Everything which brings religion into habitual contact with life, and makes it part of a healthy, cheerful average living, we hail as a sign of a better day. Nothing is so good for health as daily devotion. It is the best soother of the nerves, the best antidote to care; and we trust erelong that all Christian people will be of one mind in this, and that neighborhoods will be families gathering daily around one altar, praying not for themselves merely, but for each other.

The conclusion of the whole matter is this: Set apart some provision to make merry with at home, and guard that reserve as religiously as the priests guarded the shew-bread in the temple. However great you are, however good, however wide the general interests that you may control, you gain nothing by neglecting home-duties. You must leave enough of yourself to be able to bear and forbear, give and forgive, and be a source of life and cheerfulness around the hearthstone. The great sign given by the Prophets of the coming of the Millennium is,—what do you suppose?—"He shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse."

But it still remains that a large number of people will be subject to them unavoidably for these reasons.

First. The use of tobacco, alcohol, and other kindred stimulants, for so many generations, has vitiated the brain and nervous system, so that it is not what it was in former times. Michelet treats of this subject quite at large in some of his late works; and we have to face the fact of a generation born with an impaired nervous organization, who will need constant care and wisdom to avoid unhealthy, morbid irritation.

There is a temperament called the hypochondriac, to which many persons, some of them the brightest, the most interesting, the most gifted, are born heirs,—a want of balance of the nervous powers, which tends constantly to periods of high excitement and of consequent depression,—an unfortunate inheritance for the possessor, though accompanied often with the greatest talents. Sometimes, too, it is the unfortunate lot of those who have not talents, who bear its burdens and its anguish without its rewards.

People of this temperament are subject to fits of gloom and despondency, of nervous irritability and suffering, which darken the aspect of the whole world to them, which present lying reports of their friends, of themselves, of the circumstances of their life, and of all with which they have to do.

Now the highest philosophy for persons thus afflicted is to understand themselves[Pg 361] and their tendencies, to know that these fits of gloom and depression are just as much a form of disease as a fever or a toothache, to know that it is the peculiarity of the disease to fill the mind with wretched illusions, to make them seem miserable and unlovely to themselves, to make their nearest friends seem unjust and unkind, to make all events appear to be going wrong and tending to destruction and ruin.

The evils and burdens of such a temperament are half removed when a man once knows that he has it and recognizes it for a disease, when he does not trust himself to speak and act in those bitter hours as if there were any truth in what he thinks and feels and sees. He who has not attained to this wisdom overwhelms his friends and his family with the waters of bitterness; he stings with unjust accusations, and makes his fireside dreadful with fancies which are real to him, but false as the ravings of fever.

A sensible person, thus diseased, who has found out what ails him, will shut his mouth resolutely, not to give utterance to the dark thoughts that infest his soul.

A lady of great brilliancy and wit, who was subject to these periods, once said to me, "My dear Sir, there are times when I know I am possessed of the Devil, and then I never let myself speak." And so this wise woman carried her burden about with her in a determined, cheerful reticence, leaving always the impression of a cheery, kindly temper, when, if she had spoken out a tithe of what she thought and felt in her morbid hours, she would have driven all her friends from her, and made others as miserable as she was herself. She was a sunbeam, a life-giving presence in every family, by the power of self-knowledge and self-control.

But if the victim of these glooms is once tempted to lift their heavy load by the use of any stimulus whatever, he or she is a lost man or woman. It is from this sad class more than any other that the vast army of drunkards and opium-eaters is recruited. The hypochondriacs belong to the class so well described by that brilliant specimen of them, Dr. Johnson,—those who can practise abstinence, but not temperance. They cannot, they will not be moderate. Whatever stimulant they take for relief will create an uncontrollable appetite, a burning passion. The temperament itself lies in the direction of insanity. It needs the most healthful, careful, even regime and management to keep it within the bounds of soundness; but the introduction of stimulants deepens its gloom almost to madness.

All parents, in the education of their children, should look out for and understand the signs of this temperament. It appears in early childhood; and a child inclined to fits of depression should be marked as a subject of the most thoughtful, painstaking physical and moral training. All over-excitement and stimulus should be carefully avoided, whether in the way of study, amusement, or diet. Judicious education may do much to mitigate the unavoidable pains and penalties of this most undesirable inheritance.

The second class of persons who need wisdom in the control of their moods is that large class whose unfortunate circumstances make it impossible for them to avoid constantly overdoing and overdrawing upon their nervous energies, and who therefore are always exhausted and worn out. Poor souls, who labor daily under a burden too heavy for them, and whose fretfulness and impatience are looked upon with sorrow, not anger, by pitying angels. Poor mothers, with families of little children clinging round them, and a baby that never lets them sleep; hard-working men, whose utmost toil, day and night, scarcely keeps the wolf from the door; and all the hard-laboring, heavy-laden, on whom the burdens of life press far beyond their strength.

There are but two things we know of for these,—two only remedies for the irritation that comes of these exhaustions:[Pg 362] the habit of silence towards men, and of speech towards God. The heart must utter itself or burst; but let it learn to commune constantly and intimately with One always present and always sympathizing. This is the great, the only safeguard against fretfulness and complaint. Thus and thus only can peace spring out of confusion, and the breaking chords of an overtaxed nature be strung anew to a celestial harmony.

THE POPULAR LECTURE.

The popular lecture, in the Northern States of America, has become, in Yankee parlance, "an institution"; and it has attained such prevalence and power that it deserves more attention and more respect from those who assume the control of the motive influences of society than it has hitherto received. It has been the habit of certain literary men, (more particularly of such as do not possess a gift for public speech,) and of certain literary magazines, (managed by persons of delicate habit and weak lungs,) to regard and to treat the popular lecture with a measure of contempt. For the last fifteen years the downfall of what has been popularly denominated "The Lecture System" has been confidently predicted by those who, granting them the wisdom which they assume, should have been so well acquainted with its nature and its adaptation to a permanent popular want as to see that it must live and thrive until something more practicable can be contrived to take its place. If anything more interesting, cheaper, simpler, or more portable can be found than a vigorous man, with a pleasant manner, good voice, and something to say, then the popular lecture will certainly be superseded; but the man who will invent this substitute is at present engaged on a new order of architecture and the problem of perpetual motion, with such prospect of full employment for the present as will give "the lecture system" sufficient time to die gracefully. An institution which can maintain its foothold in the popular regard throughout such a war as has challenged the interest and taxed the energies of this nation during the last three years is one which will not easily die; and the history of the popular lecture proves, that, wherever it has been once established, it retains its place through all changes of social material and all phases of political and religious influence. Circumstances there may be which will bring intermissions in its yearly operations; but no instance can be found of its permanent relinquishment by a community which has once enjoyed its privileges, and acquired a taste for the food and inspiration which it furnishes.

An exposition of the character of the popular lecture, the machinery by which it is supported, and the results which it aims at and accomplishes, cannot be without interest to thoughtful readers.

What is the popular lecture in America? It will not help us in this inquest to refer to a dictionary; for it is not necessary that the performance which Americans call a lecture should be an instructive discourse at all. A lecture before the Young Men's Associations and lecture organizations of the country is any characteristic utterance of any man who speaks in their employment. The word "lecture" covers generally generically all the orations, declamations, dissertations, exhortations, recitations, humorous extravaganzas, narratives of travel, harangues, sermons, semi-sermons, demi-semi-sermons, and lectures proper, which can be crowded into what is called "a course," but which might be more properly called a bundle,[Pg 363] the bundle depending for its size upon the depth of the managerial purse. Ten or twelve lectures are the usual number, although in some of the larger cities, beginning early in "the lecture season," and ending late, the number given may reach twenty.

The machinery for the management and support of these lectures is as simple as possible, the lecturers themselves having nothing to do with it. There are library associations or lyceum associations, composed principally of young men, in all the cities and large villages, which institute and manage courses of lectures every winter, for the double purpose of interesting and instructing the public and replenishing their treasury. The latter object, it must be confessed, occupies the principal place, although, as it depends for its attainment on the success of the former, the public is as well served as if its entertainment were alone consulted. In the smaller towns there are usually temporary associations, organized for the simple purpose of obtaining lecturers and managing the business incident to a course. Not unfrequently, ten, twenty, or thirty men pledge themselves to make up any deficiency there may be in the funds required for the season's entertainments, and place the management in the hands of a committee. Sometimes two or three persons call themselves a lecture-committee, and employ lecturers, themselves risking the possible loss, and dividing among themselves any profits which their course may produce. The opposition or independent courses in the larger cities are often instituted by such organizations,—sometimes, indeed, by a single person, who has a natural turn for this sort of enterprise. The invitations to lecturers are usually sent out months in advance, though very few courses are definitely provided for and arranged before the first of November. The fees of lecturers range from fifty to a hundred dollars. A few uniformly command the latter sum, and lecture-committees find it for their interest to employ them. It is to be presumed that the universal rise of prices will change these figures somewhat.

The popular lecture is the most purely democratic of all our democratic institutions. The people hear a second time only those who interest them. If a lecturer cannot engage the interest of his audience, his fame or greatness or learning will pass for nothing. A lecture-audience will forgive extravagance, but never dulness. They will give a man one chance to interest them, and if he fails, that is the last of him. The lecture-committees understand this, and gauge the public taste or the public humor as delicately as the most accomplished theatrical manager. The man who receives their invitation may generally be certain that the public wish either to see or hear him. Popularity is the test. Only popularity after trial, or notoriety before, can draw houses. Only popularity and notoriety can pay expenses and swell the balance of profit. Notoriety in the various walks of life and the personal influence of friends and admirers can usually secure a single hearing, but no outside influence can keep a lecturer permanently in the field. If the people "love to hear" him, he can lecture from Maine to California six months in the year; if not, he cannot get so much as a second invitation.

One of the noticeable features of the public humor in this matter is the aversion to professional lecturers,—to those who make lecturing a business, with no higher aim than that of getting a living. No calling or profession can possibly be more legitimate than that of the lecturer; there is nothing immodest or otherwise improper in the advertisement of a man's literary wares; yet it is true, beyond dispute, that the public do not regard with favor those who make lecturing their business, particularly if they present themselves uninvited. So well is this understood by this class of lecturers that a part of their machinery consists of invitations numerously signed, which invitations are written and circulated by themselves, their interested friends, or their authorized agents,[Pg 364] and published as their apology for appearing. A man who has no other place in the world than that which he makes for himself on the platform is never a popular favorite, unless he uses the platform for the advocacy of some great philanthropic movement or reform, into which he throws unselfishly the leading efforts of his life. Referring to the history of the last twenty years, it will readily be seen that those who have undertaken to make lecturing a business, without side pursuit or superior aim, are either retired from the field or are very low in the public favor. The public insist, that, in order to be an acceptable lecturer, a man must be something else, that he must begin and remain something else; and it will be found to-day that those only who work worthily in other fields have a permanent hold upon the affections of lecture-going people. It is the public judgment or caprice that the work of the lecturer shall be incidental to some worthy pursuit, from which that work temporarily calls him. There seems to be a kind of coquetry in this. The public do not accept of those who are too openly in the market or who are too easily won. They prefer to entice a man from his chosen love, and account his favors sweeter because the wedded favorite is deprived of them.

A lecturer's first invitation, in consonance with these facts, is almost always suggested by his excellence or notoriety in some department of life that may or may not be allied to the platform. If a man makes a remarkable speech, he is very naturally invited to lecture; but he is no more certain to be invited than he who wins a battle. A showman gets his first invitation for the same reason that an author does,—because he is notorious. Nearly all new men in the lecture-field are introduced through the popular desire to see notorious or famous people. A man whose name is on the popular tongue is a man whom the popular eye desires to see. Such a man will always draw one audience; and a single occasion is all that he is engaged for. After getting a place upon the platform, it is for him to prove his power to hold it. If he does not lecture as well as he writes, or fights, or walks, or lifts, or leaps, or hunts lions, or manages an exhibition, or plays a French horn, or does anything which has made him a desirable man for curious people to see, then he makes way for the next notoriety. Very few courses of lectures are delivered in the cities and larger villages that do not present at least one new man, who is invited simply because people are curious to see him. The popular desire is strong to come in some way into personal contact with those who do remarkable things. They cannot be chased in the street; they can be seen only to a limited extent in the drawing-room; but it is easy to pay twenty-five cents to hear them lecture, with the privilege of looking at them for an hour and criticizing them for a week.

It is a noteworthy fact, in this connection, that, while there are thousands of cultivated men who would esteem it a privilege to lecture for the lecturer's usual fee, there are hardly more than twenty-five in the country whom the public considers it a privilege worth paying for to hear. It is astonishing, that, in a country so fertile as this in the production of gifted and cultivated men, so few find it possible to establish themselves upon the platform as popular favorites. If the accepted ones were in a number of obvious particulars alike, there could be some intelligent generalizing upon the subject; but men possessing fewer points of resemblance, or presenting stronger contrasts, in style of person and performance, than the established favorites of lecture-going people, cannot be found in the world; and if any generalization be attempted, it must relate to matters below the surface and beyond the common apprehension. It is certain that not always the greatest or the most brilliant or the most accomplished men are to be found among the popular lecturers. A man may make a great, even a brilliant speech on an important public question, and be utterly dreary in the lecture-room.[Pg 365] There are multitudes of eloquent clergymen who in their pulpits command the attention of immense congregations, yet who meet with no acknowledgment of power upon the platform.

In a survey of those who are the established favorites, it will be found that there are no slaves among them. The people will not accept those who are creed-bound, or those who bow to any authority but God and themselves. They insist that those who address them shall be absolutely free, and that they shall speak only for themselves. Party and sectarian spokesmen find no permanent place upon the platform. It is only when a lecturer cuts loose from all his conventional belongings, and speaks with thought and tongue unfettered, that he finds his way to the popular heart. This freedom has sometimes been considered dangerous by the more conservative members of society; and they have not unfrequently managed to get the lectures into their own hands, or to organize courses representing more moderate views in matters of society, politics, and religion; but their efforts have uniformly proved failures. The people have always refused to support lectures which brought before them the bondmen of creeds and parties. Year after year men have been invited to address audiences three fourths of whom disagreed utterly with the sentiments and opinions which it was well understood such men would present, simply because they were free men, with minds of their own and tongues that would speak those minds or be dumb. Names could be mentioned of those who for the last fifteen years have been established favorites in communities which listened to them respectfully, nay, applauded them warmly, and then abused them for the remainder of the year.

It is not enough, however, that a lecturer be free. He must have something fresh to say, or a fresh and attractive way of saying that which is not altogether new. Individuality, and a certain personal quality which, for lack of a better name, is called magnetism, are also essential to the popular lecturer. People desire to be moved, to be acted upon by a strong and positive nature. They like to be furnished with fresh ideas, or with old ideas put into a fresh and practical form, so that they can be readily apprehended and appropriated.

And here comes the grand difficulty which every lecturer encounters, and over which so many stumble into failure,—that of interesting and refreshing men and women of education and culture, and, at the same time, of pleasing, moving, and instructing those of feebler acquirements or no acquirements at all. Most men of fine powers fail before a popular audience, because they do not fully apprehend the thing to be done. They almost invariably write above the level of one half of their audience, and below the level of the other half. In either event, they fail, and have the mortification of seeing others of inferior gifts succeed through a nicer adaptation of their literary wares to the wants of the market. Much depends upon the choice of a subject. If that be selected from those which touch universal interests and address common motives, half the work is done. A clear, simple, direct style of composition, apt illustration, (and the power of this is marvellous,) and a distinct and pleasant delivery, will do much to complete the success.

It is about equally painful and amusing to witness the efforts which some men make to write down to the supposed capacity of a popular audience. The puerilities and buffooneries that are sometimes undertaken by these men, for the purpose of conciliating the crowd, certainly amuse the crowd, and so answer their end, though not in a way to bring reputation to the actors. No greater mistake can possibly be made than that of regarding an American lecture-going audience with contempt. There is no literary tribunal in this country that can more readily and justly decide whether a man has anything to say, and can say it well, than a lecture-audience in one of the[Pg 366] smaller cities and larger villages of the Northern States. It is quite common to suppose that a Western audience demands a lower grade of literary effort, and a rougher style of speech, than an Eastern audience. Indeed, there are those who suppose that a lecture which would fully meet the demands of an average Eastern audience would be beyond the comprehension of an average Western audience; but the lecturer who shall accept any such assumption as this will find himself very unpleasantly mistaken. At the West, the lecture is both popular and fashionable, and the best people attend it. A lecturer may always be certain, then, that the best he can do will be thoroughly appreciated. The West is not particularly tolerant of dull men; but if a man be alive, he will find a market there for the best thought he produces.

In the larger cities of the East, the opera, the play, the frequent concert, the exhibition, the club-house, the social assembly, and a variety of public gatherings and public excitements, take from the lecture-audiences the class that furnishes the best material in the smaller cities; so that a lecturer rarely or never sees his best audiences in New York, or Boston, or Philadelphia.

Another requisite to popularity upon the platform is earnestness. Those who imagine that a permanent hold upon the people can be obtained by amusing them are widely mistaken. The popular lecture has fallen into disrepute with many worthy persons in consequence of the admission of buffoons and triflers to the lecturer's platform; and it is an evil which ought to be remedied. It is an evil, indeed, which is slowly working its own remedy. It is a disgraceful fact, that, in order to draw together crowds of people, men have been admitted to the platform whose notoriety was won by the grossest of literary charlatanism,—men whose only hold upon the public was gained by extravagances of thought and expression which would compromise the dignity and destroy the self-respect of any man of character and common sense. It is not enough that these persons quickly disgust their audiences, and have a brief life upon the list. They ought never to be introduced to the public as lecturers; and any momentary augmentation of receipts that may be secured from the rabble by the patronage of such mountebanks is more than lost by the disgrace they bring and the damage they do to what is called "The Lecture System." It is an insult to any lyceum-audience to suppose that it can have a strong and permanent interest in a trifler; and it is a gross injustice to every respectable lecturer in the field to introduce into his guild men who have no better motive and no higher mission than the stage-clown and the negro-minstrel.

But the career of triflers is always short. Only he who feels that he has something to do in making the world wiser and better, and who, in a bold and manly way, tries persistently to do it, is always welcome; and this fact—an incontrovertible one—is a sufficient vindication of the popular lecture from all the aspersions that have been cast upon it by disappointed aspirants for its honors, and shallow observers of its tendencies and results.

The choice of a subject has already been spoken of as a matter of importance, and a word should be said touching its manner of treatment. This introduces a discussion of the kind of lecture which at the present time is mainly in demand. Many wise and good men have questioned the character of the popular lecture. In their view, it does not add sufficiently to the stock of popular knowledge. The results are not solid and tangible. They would prefer scientific, or historical, or philosophical discourses. This conviction is so strong with these men, and the men themselves are so much respected, that the people are inclined to coincide with them in the matter of theory, while at the same time they refuse to give their theory practical entertainment. One reason why scientific and historical lectures are not popular is to be found[Pg 367] in the difficulty of obtaining lecturers who have sufficient ingenuity and enthusiasm to make such lectures interesting. The number of men in the United States who can make such lectures attractive to popular audiences can be counted on the fingers of a single hand. We have had but one universally popular lecturer on astronomy in twenty years, and he is now numbered among the precious sacrifices of the war. There is only one entirely acceptable popular lecturer on the natural sciences in New England; and what is he among so many?

But this class of lectures has not been widely successful, even under the most favorable circumstances, and with the very best lecturers; and it is to be observed, that they grow less successful with the increasing intelligence of the people. In this fact is to be found an entirely rational and competent explanation of their failure. The schools have done so much toward popularizing science, and the circulating-library has rendered so familiar the prominent facts of history, that men and women do not go to the lecture to learn, and, as far as any appreciably practical benefit is concerned, do not need to go. It is only when some eminent enthusiast in these walks of learning consents to address them that they come out, and then it is rather to place themselves under the influence of his personality than to acquire the knowledge which he dispenses. Facts, if they are identified in any special way with the experience and life of the lecturer, are always acceptable; but facts which are recorded in books find a poor market in the popular lecture-room. Thus, while purely historical and scientific lectures are entirely neglected, narratives of personal travel, which, combine much of historical and scientific interest, have been quite popular, and, indeed, have been the specialties of more than one of the most popular of American lecturers, whose names will be suggested at once by this statement.

Twenty years ago the first popular lectures on anatomy and physiology were given, and a corps of lecturers came up and swept over the whole country, with much of interest and instruction to the people and no small profit to themselves. These lectures called the attention of educators to these sciences. Text-books for schools and colleges were prepared, and anatomy and physiology became common studies for the young. In various ways, through school-books and magazines and newspapers, there has accumulated a stock of popular knowledge of these sciences, and an apprehension of the limit of their practical usefulness, which have quite destroyed the demand for lectures upon them. Though a new generation has risen since the lecture on anatomy and physiology was the rage, no leaner field could possibly be found than that which the country now presents to the popular lecturer on these sciences. These facts are interesting in themselves, and they serve to illustrate the truth of that which has been stated touching lectures upon general historical and scientific subjects.

For facts alone the modern American public does not go hungry. American life is crowded with facts, to which the newspaper gives daily record and diffusion. Ideas, motives, thoughts, these are always in demand. Men wish for nothing more than to know how to classify their facts, what to do with them, how to govern them, and how far to be governed by them; and the man who takes the facts with which the popular life has come into contact and association, and draws from them their nutritive and motive power, and points out their relations to individual and universal good, and organizes around them the popular thought, and uses them to give direction to the popular life, and does all this with masterly skill, is the man whose houses are never large enough to contain those who throng to hear him. This is the popular lecturer, par excellence. The people have an earnest desire to know what a strong, independent, free man has to say about those facts which touch the experience, the direction, and the[Pg 368] duty of their daily life; and the lecturer who with a hearty human sympathy addresses himself to this desire, and enters upon the service with genuine enthusiasm, wins the highest reward there is to be won in his field of effort.

The more ill-natured critics of the popular lecturer have reflected with ridicule upon his habit of repetition, A lecturer in full employment will deliver the same discourse perhaps fifty or a hundred times in a single season. There are probably half a dozen favorite lectures which have been delivered from two hundred to five hundred times within the last fifteen years. It does, indeed, at first glance, seem ridiculous for a man to stand, night after night, and deliver the same words, with the original enthusiasm apparently at its full height; and some lecturers, with an extra spice of mirthfulness in their composition, have given public record of their impressions in this respect. There are, however, certain facts to be considered which at least relieve him from the charge of literary sterility. A lecture often becomes famous, and is demanded by each succeeding audience, whatever the lecturer's preferences may be. There are lectures called for every year by audiences and committees which the lecturer would be glad never to see again, and which he never would see again, if he were to consult his own judgment alone. Then the popular lecturer, as has been already intimated, is usually engaged during two thirds of the year in some business or profession whose duties forbid the worthy preparation of more than one discourse for winter use. Then, if he has numerous engagements, he has neither time nor strength to do more than his nightly work; for, among all the pursuits in which literary men engage, none is more exhaustive in its demands upon the nervous energy than that of constant lecturing. The fulfilment of from seventy-five to ninety engagements involves, in round numbers, ten thousand miles of railroad-travel, much of it in the night, and all of it during the most unpleasant season of the year. There is probably nothing short of a military campaign that is attended by so many discomforts and genuine hardships as a season of active lecturing. Unless a man be young and endowed with an extraordinary amount of vital power, he becomes entirely unfitted by his nightly work, and the dissipation consequent upon constant change of scene, for consecutive thought and elaborate composition.

It is fortunate for the lecturer that there is no necessity for variety. The oft-repeated lecture is new to each new audience, and, being thoroughly in hand, and entirely familiar, is delivered with better effect than if the speaker were frequently choosing from a well-furnished repertory. It is popularly supposed that a lecturer loses all interest in a performance which he repeats so many times. This supposition is correct, in certain aspects of the matter, but not in any sense which detracts from his power to make it interesting to others. It is the general experience of lecturers, that, until they have delivered a discourse from ten to twenty times, they are themselves unable to measure its power; so that a performance which is offered at first timidly and with many doubts comes at length to be delivered confidently, and with measurable certainty of acceptance and success. The grand interest of a lecturer is in his new audience, in his experiment on an assembly of fresh minds. The lecture itself is regarded only as an instrument by which a desirable and important result is to be achieved; and familiarity with it, and steady use in its elocutionary handling, are conditions of the best success. Having selected the subject which, at the time, and for the times, he considers freshest and most fruitful, and with thorough care written out all he has to say upon it, there is no call for recurrence to minor themes, either as regards the credit of the lecturer or the best interests of those whom he addresses.

What good has the popular lecture accomplished? Its most enthusiastic[Pg 369] advocates will not assert that it has added greatly to the stock of popular knowledge, in science or art, in history, philosophy, or literature; yet the most modest of them may claim that it has bestowed upon American society a permanent good of incalculable value. The relentless foe of all bigotry in politics and religion, the constant opponent of every form of bondage to party and sect, the practical teacher of the broadest toleration of individual opinion, it has had more to do with the steady melioration of the prejudices growing out of denominational interests in Church and State than any other agency whatever. The platform of the lecture-hall has been common ground for the representatives of all our social, political, and religious organizations. It is there that orthodox and heterodox, progressive and conservative, have won respect for themselves and toleration for their opinions by the demonstration of their own manhood, and the recognition of the common human brotherhood; for one has only to prove himself a true man, and to show a universal sympathy with men, to secure popular toleration for any opinion he may hold. Hardly a decade has passed away since, in nearly every Northern State, men suffered social depreciation in consequence of their political and religious opinions. Party and sectarian names have been freely used as reproachful and even as disgraceful epithets. To call a man by the name which he had chosen as the representative of his political or religious opinions was considered equivalent to calling him a knave or a fool; and if it happened that he was in the minority, his name alone was regarded as the stamp of social degradation. Now, thanks to the influence of the popular lecture mainly, men have made, and are rapidly making, room for each other. A man may be in the minority now without consequently being in personal disgrace. Men of liberal and even latitudinarian views are generously received in orthodox communities, and those of orthodox faith are gladly welcomed by men who subscribe to a shorter creed and bear a broader charter of life and liberty. There certainly has never been a time in the history of America when there was such generous and general toleration of all men and all opinions as now; and as the popular lecture has been universal, with a determined aim and a manifest influence toward this end, it is but fair to claim for it a prominent agency in the result.

Another good which may be counted among the fruits of the popular lecture is the education of the public taste in intellectual amusements. The end which the lecture-goer seeks is not always improvement, in any respect. Multitudes of men and women have attended the lecture to be interested, and to be interested intellectually is to be intellectually amused. Lecturers who have appealed simply to the emotional nature, without attempting to engage the intellect, have ceased to be popular favorites. So far as the popular lecture has taken hold of the affections of a community, and secured its constant support, it has destroyed the desire for all amusements of a lower grade; and it will be found, that, generally, those who attend the lecture rarely or never give their patronage and presence to the buffooneries of the day. They have found something better,—something with more of flavor in the eating, with more of nutriment in the digestion. How great a good this is those only can judge who realize that men will have amusements of some sort, and that, if they cannot obtain such as will elevate them, they will indulge in such as are frivolous and dissipating. The lecture does quite as much for elevated amusement out of the hall as in it. The quickening social influence of an excellent lecture, particularly in a community where life flows sluggishly and all are absorbed in manual labor, is as remarkable as it is beneficent. The lecture and the lecturer are the common topics of discussion for a week, and the conversation which is so apt to cling to health and the weather is raised above the level of commonplace.

Notwithstanding the fact that a moiety, or a majority, of the popular lecturers[Pg 370] are clergymen, the lecture has not always received the favor of the cloth. Indeed, there has often been private and sometimes public complaint on the part of preachers, that the finished productions of the lecturer, the results of long and patient elaboration, rendered doubly attractive by a style of delivery to be won only by frequent repetition of the same discourse, have brought the hastily prepared and plainly presented Sunday sermon into an unjust and damaging comparison. The complaint is a strange one, particularly as no one has ever claimed that the highest style of eloquence or the most remarkable models of rhetoric are to be found in the lecture-hall. There has, at least, been no general conviction that a standard of excellence in English and its utterance has been maintained there too high for the comfort and credit of the pulpit. It is possible, therefore, that the pulpit betrays its weak point, and needs the comparison which it deprecates. A man of brains will gratefully receive suggestions from any quarter. That impulses to a more familiar and direct style of sermonizing, a brighter and better elocution, and a bolder utterance of personal convictions, have come to the pulpit from the platform, there is no question. This feeling on the part of preachers is by no means universal, however; for some of them have long regarded the lecture with contempt, and have sometimes resented it as an impertinence. And it may be (for there shall be no quarrel in the matter) that lecturers are quacks, and that lectures, like homoeopathic remedies, are very contemptible things; but they have pleasantly modified the doses of the old practice, however slow the doctors are to confess it; and so much, at least, may be counted among the beneficent results of the system under discussion.

Last in the brief enumeration of the benefits of the popular lecture, it has been the devoted, consistent, never tiring champion of universal liberty. If the popular lecturer has not been a power in this nation for the overthrow of American Slavery,—for its overthrow in the conscientious convictions and the legal and conventional fastnesses of the nation,—then have the friends of oppression grossly lied; for none have received their malicious and angry objurgations more unsparingly than our plain-speaking gentleman who makes his yearly circuit among the lyceums. No champion of slavery, no advocate of privilege, no apologist for systematized and legalized wrong has ever been able to establish himself as a popular lecturer. The people may listen respectfully to such a man once; but, having heard him, they drop him forever. In truth, a man cannot be a popular lecturer who does not plant himself upon the eternal principles of justice. He must be a democrat, a believer in and an advocate of the equal rights of men. A slavery-loving, slavery-upholding lecturer would be just as much of an anomaly as a slavery-loving and slavery-singing poet. The taint so vitiates the whole æsthetic nature, so poisons the moral sense, so palsies the finer powers, so destroys all true sympathy with universal humanity, that the composition of an acceptable lecture becomes impossible to the man who bears it. The popular lecture, as it has been described in this article, has never existed at the South, and could not be tolerated there. Until within three years it has never found opportunity for utterance in the capital of the nation; but where liberty goes, it makes its way, and helps to break the way for liberty everywhere.

It is a noteworthy fact, that the popular lecturer, though the devoted advocate of freedom to the slave, has rarely been regarded as either a trustworthy or an important man in the party which has represented his principles in this country. He has always been too free to be a partisan, too radical and intractable for a party seeking power or striving to preserve it. No party of any considerable magnitude has ever regarded him as its expositor. A thousand times have party-speakers and party-organs, professing principles identical with his own, washed their hands of all responsibility[Pg 371] for his utterances. Even now, when the sound of falling shackles is in the air, and the smoke of the torment of the oppressor fills the sky, old partisans of freedom cannot quite forget their stupid and hackneyed animosities, but still bemoan the baleful influence of this fiery itinerant. Representative of none but himself, disowned or hated by all parties, acknowledging responsibility to God and his own conscience only, he has done his work, and done it well,—done it amid careful questionings and careless curses,—done it, and been royally paid for it, when speakers who fairly represented the political and religious prejudices of the people could not have called around them a baker's dozen, with tickets at half-price or at no price at all.

When the cloud which now envelops the country shall gather up its sulphurous folds and roll away, tinted in its retiring by the smile of God beaming from a calm sky upon a nation redeemed to freedom and justice, and the historian, in the light of that smile, shall trace home to their fountains the streams of influence and power which will then join to form the river of the national life, he will find one, starting far inland among the mountains, longer than the rest and mightier than most, and will recognize it as the confluent outpouring of living, Christian speech, from ten thousand lecture-platforms, on which free men stood and vindicated the right of man to freedom.

THE HOUR OF VICTORY.

Meridian moments! grandly given
To cheer the warrior's soul from heaven!
God's ancient boon, vouchsafed to those
Who battle long with Freedom's foes,—
Oh, what in life can claim the power
To match with that divinest hour?

I see the avenging angel wave
His banner o'er the embattled brave;
I hear above Hate's trumpet-blare
The shout that rends the smoking air,
And then I know at whose command
The victor sweeps the Rebel land!

Enduring Valor lifts his head
To count the flying and the dead;
Returning Virtue still maintains
The right to break unhallowed chains;
While sacred Justice, born of God,
Walks regnant o'er the bleeding sod.
[Pg 372]

THE CAUSES OF FOREIGN ENMITY TO THE UNITED STATES.

The hostility of foreign governments to the United States is due as much at least to dread of their growing power as dislike of their democracy; and accordingly the theory of the Secessionists as to the character of our Union has been as acceptable to the understandings of our foreign enemies as the acts of the Rebels against its government have been pleasing to their sympathies. They well know that a union of States whose government recognized the right of Secession would be as weak as an ordinary league between independent sovereignties; and as the rapid growth of the States in population, wealth, and power is certain, they naturally desire, that, if united, these States shall be an aggregation of forces, neutralizing each other, rather than a fusion of forces, which, for general purposes, would make them a giant nationality. Accordingly, centralized France reads to us edifying homilies on the advantages of disintegration; and England, rich with the spoils of suppressed insurrections, adjures us most plaintively to respect the sacred rights of rebellion. The simple explanation of this hypocrisy or irony is, that both France and England are anxious that the strength of the United States shall not correspond to their bulk. The looser the tie of union, the greater the number of confederacies into which the nation should split, the safer they would feel. The doctrine of the inherent and undivided sovereignty of the States will therefore find resolute champions abroad as long as it has the most inconsiderable faction to support it at home.

The European nations are kept in order by what is called the Balance of Power, and this policy they would delight to see established on this continent. Should the different States of the American Union be occupied, like the European states, in checking each other, they could not act as a unit, and their terrific rate of growth in wealth and population, as compared with that of the nations across the Atlantic, would not excite in the latter such irritation and alarm. The magic which has changed English abolitionists into partisans of slaveholders, and French imperialists into champions of insurrection, came from the figures of the Census Reports. It is calculated that the United States, if the rate of growth which obtained between 1850 and 1860 is continued, will have, forty years hence, a hundred millions of inhabitants, and four hundred and twenty thousand millions of dollars of taxable wealth,—over three times the present population, and over ten times the present wealth, of the richest of European nations. It is probable that this concrete fact exerts more influence on the long-headed statesmen of Europe than any abstract dislike of democracy. The only union which they could bring against such a power would be a league, a confederacy, a continuous and subsisting treaty, between sovereign powers. Is it surprising that they should wish our union to be of the same character? Is it surprising that the contemplation of a government, whether despotic or democratic, which could act directly on a hundred millions of people, with the supreme right of taxing property to the amount of four hundred and twenty billions of dollars, should fill them with dismay?

The inherent weakness of a league, even when its general object is such as to influence the passions of the nations which compose it, is well known to all European statesmen. The various alliances against France show the insuperable difficulties in the way of giving to confederacies of sovereign states a unity and efficiency corresponding to their aggregate strength, and the necessity which the leaders of such alliances are always under of expending half their skill and energy in preventing the loosely[Pg 373] compacted league from falling to pieces. The alliance under the lead of William III. barely sustained itself against Louis XIV., though William was the ablest statesman in Europe, and had been trained in the tactics of confederacies from his cradle. The alliance under the lead of Marlborough owed its measure of success to his infinite address and miraculous patience as much as to his consummate military genius; and the ignominious "secession" of England, in the treaty of Utrecht, ended in making it one of the most conspicuous examples of the weakness of such combinations. When the exceptional military genius, as in the case of Frederick and Napoleon, has been on the side of the single power assailed, the results have been all the more remarkable. The coalition against Frederick, the ruler of five millions of people, was composed of sovereigns who ruled a hundred millions; and at the end of seven years of war they had not succeeded in wringing permanently from his grasp a square mile of territory. The first coalitions against Napoleon resulted only in making him the master of Europe; and he was crushed at last merely by the dead weight of the nations which the senselessness of his political passions brought down upon his empire. Indeed, the trouble with all leagues is, that they are commanded, more or less, by debating-societies; and a debating-society is weak before a man. The Southern Confederacy is a confederacy only in name; for no despotism in Europe or Asia has more relentless unity of purpose, and in none does debate exercise less control over executive affairs. All the powers of the government are practically absorbed in Jefferson Davis, and a rebellion in the name of State Rights has ended in a military autocracy, in which all rights, personal and State, are suspended.

Now, as it is impossible for European governments to combine efficiently against such a colossal power as the United States promise within a few generations to be, provided the unity of the nation is preserved with its growth, they naturally favor every element of disintegration which will reduce the separate States to the condition of European states. Earl Russell's famous saying, that "the North is fighting for power, the South for independence," is to be interpreted in this sense. What he overlooked was the striking fact which distinguishes the States of the American Republic from the states of Europe. The latter are generally separated by race and nationality, or, where composed of heterogeneous materials, are held together by military power. The people of the United States are homogeneous, and rapidly assimilate into American citizens the foreigners they so cordially welcome. No man has lifted his hand against the government as an Irishman, a Frenchman, a German, an Italian, a Dane, but only as a slaveholder, or as a citizen of a State controlled by slaveholders. The insurrection was started in the interest of an institution, and not of a race. To compare such a rebellion with European rebellions is to confuse things essentially distinct. The American government is so constituted that nobody has an interest in overturning it, unless his interest is opposed to that of the mass of the citizens with whom he is place on an equality; and hence his treason is necessarily a revolt against the principle of equal rights. In Europe, it is needless to say, every rebellion with which an American can sympathise is a rebellion in favor of the principle against which the slaveholders' rebellion is an armed protest. An insurrection in Russia to restore serfdom, an insurrection in Italy to restore the dethroned despots, an insurrection in England to restore the Stuart system of kingly government, an insurrection anywhere to restore what the progress of civilization had made contemptible or accursed, would be the only fit parallel to the insurrection of the Southern Confederates. The North is fighting for power which is its due, because it is just and right; the South is fighting for independence, in order to remove all checks on its purpose to oppress[Pg 374] and enslave. The fact that the power for which the North fights is a very different thing from the power which a European monarchy struggles to preserve and extend, the fact that it is the kind of power which oppressed nationalities seek in their efforts for independence, only makes our foreign critics more apprehensive of its effects. It is a dangerous power to them, because, founded in the consent of the people, there is no limit to its possible extension, except in the madness or guilt of that portion of the people who are restive under the restraints of justice and impatient under the rule of freedom.

It would be doing cruel wrong to Earl Russell's intelligence to suppose that he really believed what he said, when he drew a parallel between the American Revolution and the Rebellion of the Confederate States, and asserted that the right of the Southern States to secede from the American Union was identical with the right of the Colonies to sever their connection with Great Britain. We believe the Colonies were right in their revolt. But if the circumstances had been different,—if since the reign of William III. they had nominated or controlled almost every Prime Minister, had shaped the policy of the British Empire, had enjoyed not only a representation in Parliament, but in the basis of representation had been favored with a special discrimination in their favor against Kent and Yorkshire,—if both in the House of Lords and the House of Commons they had not only been dominant, but had treated the Bentincks, Cavendishes, and Russells, the Montagus, Walpoles, and Pitts, with overbearing insolence,—and if, after wielding power so long and so arrogantly, they had rebelled at the first turn in political affairs which seemed to indicate that they were to be reduced from a position of superiority to one of equality,—if our forefathers had acted after this wild fashion, we should not only think that the Revolution they achieved was altogether unjustifiable, but we should blush at the thought of being descended from such despot-demagogues. This is a very feeble statement of the case which would connect the Revolt of the American Colonies with the Revolt of the American Liberticides; and Earl Russell is too well-informed a statesman not to know that his parallel fails in every essential particular. He threw it out, as he threw out his sounding antithesis about "power" and "independence," to catch ears not specially blessed with brains between them.

But European statesmen, in order to promote the causes of American dissensions, are willing not only to hazard fallacies which do not impose on their own understandings, but to give aid and comfort to iniquities which in Europe have long been antiquated. They thus tolerate chattel slavery, not because they sympathize with it, but because it is an element of disturbance in the growth of American power. Though it has for centuries been outgrown by the nations of Western Europe, and is repugnant to all their ideas and sentiments, they are willing to give it their moral support, provided it will break up the union of the people of the States, or remain as a constantly operating cause of enmity between the sections of a reconstructed Union. They would tolerate Mormonism or Atheism or Diabolism, if they thought it would have a similar effect; but at the same time they would not themselves legalize polygamy, or deny the existence of God, or inaugurate the worship of the Devil. Indeed, while giving slavery a politic sanction, they despise in their hearts the people who are so barbarous as to maintain such an institution; and the Southern rebel or Northern demagogue who thinks his championship of slavery really earns him any European respect is under that kind of delusion which it is always for the interest of the plotter to cultivate in the tool. It was common, a few years ago, to represent the Abolitionist as the dupe or agent of the aristocracies of Europe. It certainly might be supposed that persons who made this foolish charge[Pg 375] were competent at least to see that the present enemy of the unity of the American people is the pro-slavery fanatic, and that it is on his knavery or stupidity that the ill-wishers to American unity now chiefly rely.

For the war has compelled these ill-wishers to modify their most cherished theory of democracy in the United States. They thought that the marvellous energy for military combination, developed by a democracy suddenly emancipated from oppression, such as was presented by the French people in the Revolution of 1789, was not the characteristic of a democracy which had grown up under democratic institutions. The first was anarchy plus the dictator; the second was merely "anarchy plus the constable." They had an obstinate prepossession, that, in a settled democracy like ours, the selfishness of the individual was so stimulated that he became incapable of self-sacrifice for the public good. The ease with which the government of the United States has raised men by the million and money by the billion has overturned this theory, and shown that a republic, of which individual liberty and general equality form the animating principles, can still rapidly avail itself of the property and personal service of all the individuals who compose it, and that self-seeking is not more characteristic of a democracy in time of peace than self-sacrifice is characteristic of the same democracy in time of war. The overwhelming and apparently unlimited power of a government thus of the people and for the people is what the war has demonstrated, and it very naturally excites the fear and jealousy of governments which are based on less firm foundations in the popular mind and heart and will.

It is doubtless true that many candid foreign thinkers favor the disintegration of the American Union because they believe that the consolidation of its power would make it the meddlesome tyrant of the world. They admit that the enterprise, skill, and labor of the people, applied to the unbounded undeveloped resources of the country, will enable them to create wealth very much faster than other nations, and that the population, fed by continual streams of immigration, will also increase with a corresponding rapidity. They admit, that, if kept united, a few generations will be sufficient to make them the richest, largest, and most powerful nation in the world. But they also fear that this nation will be an armed and aggressive democracy, deficient in public reason and public conscience, disposed to push unjust claims with insolent pertinacity, and impelled by a spirit of propagandism which will continually disturb the peace of Europe. It is curious that this impression is derived from the actions of the government while it was controlled by the traitors now in rebellion against it, and from the professions of those Northern demagogues who are most in sympathy with European opinion concerning the justice and policy of the war. Mr. Fernando Wood, the most resolute of all the Northern advocates of peace, recommended from his seat in Congress but a month ago, that a compromise be patched up with the Rebels on the principle of sacrificing the negro, and then that both sections unite to seize Canada, Cuba, and Mexico. The kind of "democracy" which Mr. Jefferson Davis and Mr. Fernando Wood represent is the kind of democracy which has always been the great disturber of our foreign relations, and it is a democracy which will be rendered powerless by the triumph of the national arms. The United States of 1900, with their population of a hundred millions, and their wealth of four hundred and twenty billions, will, we believe, be a power for good, and not for evil. They will be strong enough to make their rights respected everywhere; but they will not force their ideas on other nations at the point of the bayonet; they will not waste their energies in playing the part of the armed propagandist of democratic opinions in Europe; and the contagion of their principles will only be the natural result[Pg 376] of the example of peace, prosperity, freedom, and justice, which they will present to the world. In Europe, where power commonly exists only to be abused, this statement would be received with an incredulous smile; but we have no reason to doubt, that, among the earnest patriots who are urging on the present war for Liberty and Union to a victorious conclusion, it would be considered the most commonplace of truths.

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

Among the books most prized, in our modest private book-room, are some which bear the delicate and graceful autograph of Leigh Hunt, having floated from his deserted library to these American shores. There is the Apollonius from which came the text of his poem of "The Panther";—this is his mark against the legend, on page sixty-nine; and here is the old engraving of Apollonius, which he no doubt inserted as a frontispiece to the book. Here again is his copy of Rousseau's "Confessions," Holyoake's translation, annotated through and through with Hunt's humane and penetrating criticisms on nature with which his own had much in common, though purer and sweeter. This volume of Milton's "Minor Poems" was his also, with the rich and varied notes of Warton, the edition of whose literary charms he somewhere speaks with such delight. Here also is Forster's "Perennial Calendar," a book of rural gossip, such as Leigh Hunt thoroughly enjoyed; and this copy of Aubrey de Vere's Poems was a present from the author. Above all, perhaps, one dwells with interest on a volume of Hennell's "Christianity and Infidelity," riddled through and through by pen-and-ink underscorings, extending sometimes to every line upon a page. The book ends with a generous paragraph in assertion of the comfort and sufficiency of Natural Religion; and after it comes, written originally in pencil, then in ink again, always with the same firm and elegant handwriting, the indorsement, "Amen. So be it. L. H. July 14th, 1857." This was written in his seventy-third year, two years before his death, and this must have been about the time of Hawthorne's visit to him. Read the "Amen" in the light of that beautiful description of patient and frugal old age, and it is a touching and noble memorial.

Americans often fancied that they noticed something American in Leigh Hunt's physique and manners, without knowing how near he came to owning a Cisatlantic birth. His mother was a Philadelphian; and his father, a West-Indian, resided in this country until within a few years of his death. It is fitting, therefore, that our publishers should keep his writings in the market, and this is well done in this handsome edition of "The Seer." These charming essays will bear preservation; none are more saturated with cultivated taste and literary allusion, and in none are more graceful pictures painted on a slighter canvas. If there is an occasional impression of fragility and superficiality, it is yet wholly in character, and seems not to interfere with the peculiar charm. Hunt, for instance, writes a delightful paper on the theme of "Cricket," without ten allusions to the game, or one indication of ever having stopped to watch it. He discourses deliciously upon Anacreon's "Tettix,"—the modern Cicada,—and then calls it a beetle. There is apt, indeed, to be a pervading trace of that kind of conscious effort which is technically called "book-making," and one certainly finds the entertainment a little frothy, at times, compared with the elder essayists. Nevertheless, Leigh Hunt's roses always bloom, his breezes are always "redolent of joy and youth," and his sunny spirit pervades even a rainy day. Chaucer and Keats never yet have found a more delicate or discriminating critic; and his paper on Wordsworth, beside the fine touches, has solider qualities that command one's admiration. The personal memorials of the author's literary friends have a peculiar charm to us in this land and generation, for whom Hazlitt and[Pg 377] Keats are names almost as shadowy and romantic as Amadis or Lancelot; but best of all is his noble tribute to Shelley. After speaking (Vol. II. p. 38) of the deep philanthropy which lay beneath the apparent cynicism of Hazlitt, he thus continues:—"But only imagine a man who should feel this interest too, and be deeply amiable, and have great sufferings, bodily and mental, and know his own errors, and waive the claim of his own virtues, and manifest an unceasing considerateness of the comforts of those about him, in the very least as well as greatest things,—surviving, in the pure life of his heart, all mistake, all misconception, all exasperation, and ever having a soft word in his extremity, not only for those who consoled, but for those who distressed him; and imagine how we must have loved him. It was Mr. Shelley."

Such an epitaph writes the character not only of him who receives the tribute, but of him who pays it. And if there ever lived a literary man who might fitly claim for his funeral stone the inscription, "Lord, keep my memory green," it was the sweet-tempered, flower-loving Leigh Hunt.

Christ and his Salvation. In sermons variously related thereto. By Horace Bushnell. New York: Charles Scribner.

These sermons are distinguished from the ordinary discourses of the pulpit by being the product not merely of religious faith and feeling, but of religious genius. They embody the thought and experience of a life, and the ideas they inculcate are not so much the dogmas of a sect as the divinations of an individual. "This is Christianity as it has been verified in my consciousness," might be taken as the motto of the volume. The result is, that the collection is an addition to religious literature, and will be read with satisfaction for its stimulating effect on the religious sense by hundreds who may disagree with its direct teachings.

The two most striking and characteristic sermons in the volume are the first and the last, respectively entitled, "Christ waiting to find Room," a masterly analysis of the worldliness of the so-called Christian world, and "Heaven Opened," a plea equally masterly for the existence in man of a supernatural sense to discern supernatural things. Between these come the sermons entitled, "The Gentleness of God," "The Insight of Love," "Salvation for the Lost Condition," "The Bad Mind makes a Bad Element," and "The Wrath of the Lamb," which illustrate so well the union in Dr. Bushnell's mind of practical sagacity and force of thought with keenness and reach of spiritual vision, that we select them from the rest as particularly worthy of the reader's attention. Indeed, to have written these discourses is to have done the work of a ministry.

The peculiarity of the whole volume, and a singular peculiarity in a collection of sermons, is the absence of commonplace. The writer's method is to bring his mind into close contact with things instead of phrases,—to think round his subject, and think into his subject, and, if possible, think through his subject to the law on which it depends; and thus, when his thinking results in no novelty of view, it is still the indorsement of an accepted truth by a fresh perception of it. Truths in such a process never put on the character of truisms, but are as vital to the last observer as to the first. There is hardly a page in the volume which is not original, in the sense of recording original impressions of objects, individually seen, grasped, and examined. There are numerous originalities of a different kind, which may not be so pleasing to some classes of Christians,—as when he aims to show that an accredited spiritual form does not express a corresponding spiritual fact, or as when he splits some shell of creed which imprisons rather than embodies the kernel of faith, and lets the oppressed truth go free.

This power of penetrating thought, so determined as at times to wear a look of doggedness,—this analysis which shrinks from no problems, which is provoked by obstacles into intenser effort, and which is almost fanatical in its desire to get at the idea and reason of everything it probes,—is relieved by a richly sympathetic and imaginative nature,—indeed, is so welded with it, that insight and analysis serve each other, and cool reason gives solidity to ecstatic experience. Perhaps as a seer Dr. Bushnell may be more certain of recognition than as a reasoner. Whatever may be thought of the orthodoxy of the doctrines he has rationalized, there can be no doubt as to the reality of the spiritual states he has described. His intellectual method may be wrong or incomplete, but it in some way enables him to reach the substance of Christian life and light and love and joy.[Pg 378] There are passages in the volume which are all aglow with the sacred fire of that rapture which rewards only those souls that soar into the regions where the objects that kindle it abide; and this elevation which touches ecstasy, this effluence from the spiritual mood of the writer, is not limited to special bursts of eloquence, but gleams along the lines of many a clinching argument, and flashes out from many an uncadenced period.

The style of the book is what might be expected from the character of the author and the processes of his thinking. The mental state dictates the form of the sentence and the selection of the words. Thought and expression, so to speak, breed in and in. There is a certain roughness in the strength of the man, which is ever asserting itself through his cultured vigor; and in the diction, rustic plainness of speech alternates with the nomenclature of metaphysics, rugged sense with lifting raptures, and curt, blunt, homely expression with vivid, whatever may be his form of words, he always loads them with meaning, and with his own meaning. He is not a fluent writer, but his resources of expression ever correspond to his richness of thought. And if his style cannot be said to bend gracefully to the variations of his subject, it still bends and does not break. In felicity and originality of epithet, the usual sign of a writer's genuineness of perception, he is excelled by no theologian of the time. He also has that power of pithy and pointed language which so condenses a statement of a fact or principle that it gives forth the diamond sparkle of epigram. The effect of wit is produced while the purpose is the gravest possible: as when he tells some brother religionists, who base their creeds on the hyperboles of Scripture, that they mistake interjections for propositions,—or as when he reproves those pretenders to grace who count it apparently "a kind of merit that they live loosely enough to make salvation by merit impossible."

The animating spirit of the volume is a desire to bring men's minds into contact with what is vital in religion, and this leads to many a sharp comment both on the dogmatism of sects and the rationalism of critics. Dr. Bushnell always seeks that in religion which not merely illumines the mind, but invigorates the will. It is not the form of a doctrine, but the force in the believer, which engages his attention. In pursuing this method he displays alternately the qualities of an interpreter and of an iconoclast; but his object is the same, whether he evolves unexpected meanings from an accredited dogma, or assails the sense in which it is generally received. And so tenacious is his hold on the life of Christianity, and so vivid his mode of presenting it, that both dogmatist and rationalist must feel, in reading his volume, that he has given its proper prominence to much in Christianity which their methods tempt them to overlook.

Full of improbabilities, and becoming lurid with domestic tragedies at the end, this story has yet a sincerity and earnestness of style that may entitle it to be called respectable, among the mass of American stories. Novels are being sold by the five thousand which have far less ability in characterization or in grouping. The persons remain in one's memory as real individuals, which is saying a good deal; the dialogue, though excessive in quantity, is neither tame nor flippant; and there is an attractive compactness in the plot, which is all comprised within one house in an unknown city. But this plot soon gets beyond the author's grasp, nevertheless; she creates individualities, and can do nothing with them but kill them. The defects, however, are those of inexperience, the merits are the author's own. The value of her next book will probably be in inverse ratio to the success of this: should this fail, she may come to something; should this succeed, there is small hope for her.

These narratives are probably called "Studies for Stories," as the catalogue of the Boston Public Library is called an "Index to a Catalogue": this being a profession of humility, implying that a proper story, like a regular catalogue, should be a much more elaborate affair. Nevertheless, a story, even if christened a study, must be criticized by the laws of stories and no other.

Tried by this standard, we must admit[Pg 379] that Miss Ingelow's prose, though possessing many merits, has not quite the charm of her verses. With a good deal of skill in depicting character, and with a style that is not unpleasing, though rather formal and old-fashioned, she has no serious drawback except a very prominent and unpleasant moral tendency, which is, indeed, made so conspicuous that one rather resents it, and feels a slight reaction in favor of vice. One is disposed to apply to so oppressively didactic an author the cautious criticism of Talleyrand on his female friend,—"She is insufferable, but that is her only fault." For this demonstrativeness of ethics renders it necessary for her to paint her typical sinners in colors of total blackness, and one seldom finds, even among mature offenders, such unmitigated scoundrels as she exhibits in their teens. They do not move or talk like human beings, but like lay figures into which certain specified sins have been poured. This is an artistic as well as ethical error. As Porson finely said to Rogers, "In drawing a villain, we should always furnish him with something that may seem to justify him to himself"; and Schiller, in his æsthetic writings, lays down the same rule. Yet this censurable habit does not seem to proceed from anything cynical in the author's own nature, but rather from inexperience, and from a personal directness which moves only in straight lines. It seems as if she were so single-minded in her good intents as to assume all bad people equally single-minded in evil; but they are not.

Thus, in "The Cumberers," the fault to be assailed is selfishness, and, in honest zeal to show it in its most formidable light, she builds up her typical "Cumberer" into such a complicated monster, so stupendous in her self-absorption, as to be infinitely less beneficial to the reader than a merely ordinary inconsistent human being would have been. The most selfish younger sister reading this story would become a Pharisee, and thank God, that, whatever her peccadilloes, she was not so bad as this Amelia. "My Great-Aunt's Picture" does the same for the vice of envy; "Dr. Deane's Governess" for discontent, and so on; only that this last story is so oddly mixed up with English class-distinctions and conventionalisms that one hardly knows when the young lady is supposed to be doing right and when doing wrong. The same puzzle occurs in the closing story, "Emily's Ambition," where the censurable point of the aspiration consists in being dissatisfied with the humbler vocation of school-teaching, and in pining after the loftier career of milliner, which in this community would seem like turning social gradations upside-down.

By far the ablest of the five "studies," at least in its opening, is the school-story of "The Stolen Treasure," which, with a high-flown name, and a most melodramatic and commonplace ending, shows yet great power in the delineation and grouping of characters. The young school-girls are as real as those of Charlotte Bronté; and although the typical maidenly desperado is present,—lying and cheating with such hopeless obviousness that it seems as if they must all have had to look very hard the other way to avoid finding her out,—yet there is certainly much promise and power in the narrative. Let us hope that the modesty of the title of this volume really indicates a lofty purpose in its author, and that she will learn to avoid exaggeration of character as she avoids exaggeration of style.

The present high price of imported books, which is stimulating our publishers to rival their English compeers in typographical triumphs, is also creating an important class of German reprints, to which attention should certainly be called. Until lately the chief business in this line has been done by Philadelphia houses, but we now have editions from Boston publishers which surpass all predecessors in accuracy and beauty. Indeed, the average issues of the German press abroad do not equal these in execution; and though the books issued are thus far small, yet the taste shown in the selection gives them a peculiar value.

First comes Hans Andersen's ever-charming "Picture-Book without Pictures,"—tales told by the Moon, as she looks in at the window of a poor student. There is also a separate edition of this little work, issued by the same house, with English notes for students, by Professor Simonson of Trinity College.

Next comes "Prinzessin Ilse," a graceful little story by Von Ploennies, almost as charming as "Undine,"—with its scene laid in the Hartz Forest, by the legend-haunted Ilsenstein. Then follows a similar wreath of fancies, called "Was sich der Wald erzählt," by Gustav zu Putlitz, in which fir-trees and foxgloves tell their[Pg 380] tales, and there are sermons in stones and all the rest of it. Why is it that no language but the German can possibly construct a Mährchen, so that Englishmen and Americans grow dull, and Frenchmen insufferable, whenever they attempt that delicious mingling of the ideal and the real?

Then we have two of the most popular novelettes of Paul Heyse, "Die Einsamen" and "Anfang und Ende,"—two first-class æsthetic essays by Hermann Grimm, on the Venus of Milo and on Raphael and Michel Angelo,—and two comedies by Gustav zu Putlitz. There is also Von Eichendorff's best novel, which in Berlin went through four editions in a year, "Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts," or "Memoirs of a Good-for-Nothing,"—and, finally, Tieck's well-known story of "The Elves," and his "Tragedy of Little Red Riding-Hood."

Among these various attractions every reader of German books will certainly find something to enjoy; and these editions should be extensively used by teachers, as the separate volumes can be easily obtained by mail, and the average cost of each is but about half a dollar. We hope yet to see editions equally good of the complete works of the standard German authors, printed in this country and for American readers. Under present circumstances, they can be more cheaply produced than imported.

The mocking legends of the Wolf and the Fox were wielded without mercy by many mediæval satirists, against the human animals of those species, then prevailing in courts and cloisters. But the jokes took their most permanent form in the fable of "Reyneke de Vos," first published in the year 1498. Written in Low-German by Nicholas Bauman, under the pseudonym of Hinrek van Alkmer, the satire did a similar work to that done by Rabelais, and Boccaccio, and Piers Plowman. It has since been translated into many languages, and as Goethe at last thought it worth putting into German hexameters, one may still find it worth reading in English Hudibrastic rhymes. The present attractive edition is a reprint of the paraphrase of Von Soltau, published at Hamburg in 1826,—though, for some reason, this fact is not stated in the present issue. New or old, the version is executed with much spirit, and is, to say the least, easier reading than Goethe's hexameters.

The translator of this sharp and pungent sketch of the later French revolutionists is understood to be General John W. Phelps of Vermont,—a man whose personal services, despite some eccentric traits, will give him an honorable place in the history of these times. It is possible that readers may not agree with him in his estimate of the dangers to be incurred by American institutions from secret societies. They are a thing essentially alien to our temperament. The Southern plotters of treason were certainly open enough; it was we who were blind. The "Know-Nothing" movement was a sort of political carnival, half jest, half earnest, and good for that trip only. If anything could have created secret societies, it would have been the Fugitive-Slave-Law excitement: that, indeed, produced them by dozens, but they almost always died still-born, and whatever was really done in the revolutionary line was effected by very informal coöperation.

Indeed, even the French nation is, by its temperament, less inclined to deep plotting than any nation of Southern Europe, and as De la Hodde himself admits, "not one of our revolutions during the last sixty years has been the work of conspirators." "There is but one maker of revolutions in France, and that is Paris,—idle, sophistical, disappointed, restless, evil-minded Paris. We all know her." "Of one thing we may rest assured: the greater part of our revolutions signify nothing." And this has been notoriously true since the days of the Fronde.

Yet the moral of the book is not without value, and its historic interest is considerable, taken in connection with the other memoirs of the same epoch. The style is rather piquant, and the translation good, though a little stiff. The writer is an Orleanist, and thinks the Revolution of 1848 a mere whim of the populace, favored by a "vertigo" on the part of Louis Philippe. It was "an incomprehensible contingency,—sovereign power giving way to a revolt, without the test of a combat."

The book was first published under the[Pg 381] Republic, to which the author professes due loyalty. He suggests, however, that, as no one is required by duty to fall in love with a very ugly woman who may have been imposed on him in marriage, so he is not yet very much smitten with the Republic. But he is ready to respect the dame, if she proves to deserve it, as a legitimate connection.

Cape Cod is photographed at last, for Thoreau has been there. Day by day, with his stout pedestrian shoes, he plodded along that level beach,—the eternal ocean on one side, and human existence reduced to its simplest elements on the other,—and he pitilessly weighing each. His mental processes never impress one with opulence and luxuriance, but rather with a certain sublime tenacity, which extracts nutriment from the most barren soil. He is therefore admirably matched against Cape Cod; and though his books on softer aspects of Nature may have a mellower charm, there is none in which the very absence of mellowness can so well pass for an added merit.

No doubt there are passages which err upon the side of bareness. Cape Cod itself certainly errs that way, and so often does our author; and when they are combined, the result of desiccation is sometimes astounding. But so much the truer the picture. If Vedder's "Lair of the Sea-Serpent" had the rank verdure of the "Heart of the Andes," the kraken would still be as unimpressive on canvas as in the newspapers. No one ever dared to exhibit Cape Cod "long, and lank, and brown" enough before, and hence the value of the book. For those who insist on chlorophylle, is there not "Azarian"? If the dear public will tolerate neither the presence of color in a picture, nor its absence, it is hard to suit.

Yet it is worth remembering, that Thoreau's one perfect poem,—and one of the most perfect in American literature,—"My life is like a stroll upon the beach," must have been suggested by Cape Cod or some kindred locality. And it is not the savage grandeur of the sea alone, but its delicate loveliness and its ever-budding life, which will be found recorded forever in some of these wondrous pages, intermixed with the statistics of fish-flakes and the annals of old men's diseases.

But in his stern realism, the author employs what he himself calls "Panurgic" plainness of speech, and deals with the horrors of the sea-shore as composedly as with its pearls. His descriptions of the memorials of shipwrecks, for instance, would be simply repulsive, but that his very dryness has a sort of disinfectant quality, like the air of California, where things the most loathsome may lie around us without making the air impure.

He shows his wonted formidable accuracy all through these pages, and the critic feels a sense of bewildered exultation in detecting him even in a slip of the pen,—as when in the note on page 228 he gives to the town of Rockport, on Cape Ann, the erroneous name of Rockland. After this discovery, one may dare to wonder at his finding a novelty in the "Upland Plover," and naming it among the birds not heard in the interior of the State, when he might be supposed to have observed it, in summer, near Mount Wachusett, where its wail adds so much, by day or night, to the wildness of the scenery. Yet by the triviality of these our criticisms one may measure the astonishing excellence of his books.

This wondrous eye and hand have passed away, and left no equal and no second. Everything which Thoreau wrote has this peculiar value, that no other observing powers were like his; no one else so laboriously verified and exhausted the facts; and no other mind rose from them, at will, into so subtile an air of meditation,—meditation too daring to be called devout, by church or world, yet too pure and lofty to merit any lower name. Lycidas has died once more, and has not left his peer.

Cape Cod does not change in its traits, but only in its boundaries, and this book will stand for it, a century hence, as it now does. It is the Cape Odyssey. Near the end, moreover, there is a remarkable chapter on previous explorers, which shows, by its patient thoroughness, and by the fearless way in which the author establishes facts which had eluded Hildreth and Bancroft, that, had he chosen history for his vocation, he could have extracted its marrow as faithfully as that of his more customary themes. Yet the grand ocean-pictures which this book contains remind us that it was the domain of external Nature which was his peculiar province; and this sublime monotone of the surges seems his fitting dirge, now that—to use the fine symbol of one who was his comrade on this very excursion—his bark has "sunk to another sea."[Pg 382]

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THE

ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics.

VOL. XV.—MARCH, 1865.—NO. LXXXIX.

Contents

THE STORY OF A YEAR.

I.

II.

III.

IV.

THE FROZEN HARBOR.

AT ANDERSONVILLE.

DOCTOR JOHNS.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

ANCIENT MINING ON THE SHORES OF LAKE SUPERIOR.

FOOTNOTES:

TO A POET ON HIS BIRTHDAY,

FEBRUARY 27.

NEEDLE AND GARDEN.

THE STORY OF A SEAMSTRESS WHO LAID DOWN HER NEEDLE AND BECAME A STRAWBERRY-GIRL.

WRITTEN BY HERSELF.

CHAPTER III.

MEMORIES OF AUTHORS.

A SERIES OF PORTRAITS FROM PERSONAL ACQUAINTANCE.

MISS LANDON.

FOOTNOTES:

OUR OLDEST FRIEND.

Read to "The Boys of '29," Jan. 5, 1865.

EDWARD EVERETT.

FOOTNOTES:

NOTES OF A PIANIST.

II.

THE CHIMNEY-CORNER.

III.

LITTLE FOXES.—PART II.

IRRITABILITY.

THE POPULAR LECTURE.

THE HOUR OF VICTORY.

THE CAUSES OF FOREIGN ENMITY TO THE UNITED STATES.

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

RECENT AMERICAN PUBLICATIONS.