CAMPERDOWN;
OR,
NEWS FROM
OUR NEIGHBOURHOOD:
BEING
SKETCHES,

Entered according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1836, by Carey, Lea & Blanchard, in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

A lady distinguished as a writer and an artist; and esteemed by her friends for her domestic virtues. With her accomplishments, and excellence of character, she would be appreciated any where; but it has been her peculiar good fortune to belong to Boston; a place, above all others, wherein a woman receives that high respect and consideration to which she is so justly entitled.

A few years ago a book was published, called “Our Neighbourhood;” and those who read it, will recollect that the author intended, in the second series, to give a short sketch of some of the most conspicuous characters therein mentioned. The second series is now presented to the public, and is called “Camperdown,” the name of our neighbourhood. The work will be continued, under different titles, until the author has accomplished the object stated in the preface to the first series; and which the tenor of the two volumes will more fully explain.

CHAPTER I.

It is seldom that men begin to muse and sit alone in the twilight until they arrive at the age of fifty, for until that period the cares of the world and the education of their young children engross all their thoughts. Edgar Hastings, our hero, at thirty years of age was still unmarried, but he had gone through a vast deal of excitement, and the age of musing had been anticipated by twenty years. He was left an orphan at fourteen, with a large income, and the gentleman who had the management of his estates proved faithful, so that when a person of talents and character was wanted to travel with the young man, a liberal recompense was at hand to secure his services. From the age of fourteen to twenty-one he was therefore travelling over Europe; but his education, instead of receiving a check, went on much more advantageously than if he had remained at home, and he became master of all the modern languages in the very countries where they were spoken. The last twelve months of his seven years’ tour was spent in England, being stationary in London only during the sitting of Parliament.

10His talents thus cultivated, and his mind enlarged by liberal travel, he returned to America well worthy the friendship and attention of those who admire and appreciate a character of his stamp. He had not therefore been back more than a year, before his society was courted by some of the best men in the country; but previous to his settling himself into a home, he thought it but proper to travel through his own country also. His old friend, still at his elbow, accompanied him; but at the close of the excursion, which lasted nearly two years, he was taken ill of a fever caught from an exposure near the Lakes, and died after a few days’ illness.

Edgar Hastings was now entirely alone in the world, and he would have fallen into a deep melancholy, had he not engaged in politics. This occupied him incessantly; and, as his purse was ample and his heart liberally disposed, he found the demands on his time gradually increasing. He had occupations heaped upon him—for rich, disengaged, and willing, every body demanded his aid; and such were the enthusiasm and generosity of his nature, that no one applied in vain.

His first intention, on returning from his tour through his own country, was to improve an estate he had purchased in Pennsylvania, promising himself an amiable and beautiful wife to share his happiness; but politics interfered, and left him no time even for the luxury of musing in the evening. But a man can get weary of politics as well as of any other hard up-hill work; so, at the end of seven years, seeing that the young trees which he had planted were giving shade, and that the house that they were to overshadow was not yet begun, he fell to musing. He wanted something, likewise, to love and protect—so he fell to musing about that. He wished to convert a brisk stream, that fell down the side of a hill opposite to the south end of his 11grounds, into a waterfall—so he fell to musing about that. He wanted to make an opening through a noble piece of woods that bounded the north side, that he might catch a view of the village steeple—so he fell to musing about that. A beautiful winding river lay in front of his estate, the bank of which sloped down to the water’s edge; this tranquillizing scene likewise operated on his feelings, so that politics faded away, and his mind became calm and serene. Thus it was, that at thirty years of age he had these fits of abstraction, and he became a muser.

Men of his age—sensible men—are not so easily pleased as those who are younger. He admired graceful, easy manners, and a polished mind, far before beauty or wealth; and thus fastidious, he doubted whether he should marry at all. Every now and then, too, an old bachelor feeling came over him, and he feared that when his beloved twilight found him sitting under the noble porticos which he intended to build, his wife would drag him away to some far distant route in the city; or that she would, untimely, fill the house with visiters. So, with all the dispositions in the world, he lived alone, though every fit of musing ended by finding a wife at his side, gazing on the dim and fading landscape with him.

While his house was building, he occupied a small stone farm house, at the extremity of the estate. Here he brought his valuable books and prints, well secured from damp and insects by aromatic oils; here did he draw his plans during the day, and here, under a small piazza, did he meditate in the evening, transferring his musings to the little parlour as soon as the damp evenings of autumn compelled him to sit within doors.

Adjoining his estate lived a quaker, by the name of Harley, a steady, upright man, loving his ease, 12as all quakers do, but having no objection to see his neighbours finer or wiser than himself. He took a fancy to our hero, and the beloved evening hour often found him sitting on the settee with Hastings, when, after enjoying together an animated conversation, he also would fall into the deep feeling which fading scenery, and the energy of such a character as his young friend’s, would naturally excite in a mind so tranquil as his own.

At length, the quiet quaker spoke of his daughter, but it was not with a view to draw Edgar’s attention; he mentioned her incidentally, and the young man was delighted. In a moment, his imagination depicted her as a beautiful, graceful, accomplished creature; and there could be no doubt that she was amiable and gentle; so he strolled over to his friend’s house, and was regularly introduced to her. She was beautiful, and amiable, and gentle—all this he saw at a glance; but, alas! she had no accomplishment farther than that she wrote an exquisitely clear, neat hand, and was an excellent botanist and florist. But “propinquity” softened down all objections. Every time he strayed away to Pine Grove the eligibilities of the match became more apparent, and his love of grace and polish of mind seemed to be of comparatively little importance, when he listened to the breathings of the innocent quaker, who thought all of beauty was in a flower, and who infinitely preferred the perfume of a rose or a lilac, to the smell of a dozen lamps in a crowded room. Her name was Ophelia, too.

Mr. Harley, or friend Harley as he was called, was nowise rigid in his creed; for the recent lawsuits between the Orthodox and Hicksite quakers had very much weakened his attachments to the forms of quakerism. He found that the irritable portion of his society had great difficulty in keeping hands off, and in preserving the decorum of their 13order. Peaceful feelings, equable temperaments, being the foundation—the cement, which, for so many years, had bound the fraternity together, were now displaced for the anger and turbulence so often displayed by other sects of Christians.

Litigations amongst themselves—the law—had done that which neither fine nor imprisonment, the derision nor impositions of other sects, could accomplish. The strong cement had cracked along the edge of the bulwarks, where strength was the most necessary, and the waters of discord and disunion were insinuating themselves into every opening. The superstructure was fast crumbling away, and friend Harley looked to the no very distant period when his posterity should cast off the quaker dress, and naturally follow the customs and obey the general laws which govern the whole body of Americans.

This was sensible Valentine Harley’s opinion and feeling; in rules of faith he had never been inducted—are there any quakers, apart from a few of their leaders, who can define what their religious faith is? So, although he loved the forms in which he had been educated—although he wore the quaker dress, and made his son and daughter do the same—yet when Edgar Hastings left off musing in the twilight, and was seen at that hour walking slowly down the glen, with Ophelia hanging on his arm, he only heaved a sigh, and wished that the young man said thee and thou. But this sigh was far from being a painful one; he felt that when the obscure grave, which shuts out all trace of the quaker’s place of rest, should close over him, his memory would live fresh and green in the heart of his daughter. Far more should he be reverenced, if he gave her gentle spirit to the strong arm, the highly gifted mind of such a man as Edgar Hastings, than if he compelled her to marry a man of 14their own order—to the one who was now preferring his suit, friend Hezekiah Connerthwaite, a rich, respectable, yet narrow minded and uneducated man.

That he consented to his daughter’s marriage willingly, and without an inward struggle, was a thing not to be expected; but he was too manly, too virtuous, to use a mean subterfuge with his sect that he might escape the odium which falls on the parent who allows his daughter to marry out of the pale. He would not suffer his child to wed clandestinely, when in reality his heart and reason approved of her choice; when her lover’s merits and claims, and her own happiness, strongly overbalanced his scruples. She might have married privately, and her father, thus rid of the blame of consenting to her apostacy, could, as usual, take his seat in their place of worship, without the fear of excommunication. But Valentine Harley scorned such duplicity and foolishness; Ophelia was therefore married under her father’s roof, and received her father’s blessing; and here, in this well regulated house, Edgar Hastings spent the first year of his wedded life. Here, too, his son was born; and now no longer a being without kindred or a home, he found how much happier were the feelings of a husband and father than those of a selfish, isolated being.

As he was building a spacious, elegant, and durable mansion, one that should last for many years, he went slowly to work. It was begun a year before his marriage, and it was not until his young son was three months old that he could remove his family, of which Mr. Harley now made a part, to their permanent home. The younger Harley, who had married and settled at a distance, being induced to come among them, again to take the property at Pine Grove, thus adding another link to the bond 15of friendship which this happy marriage had created. In the month of May the younger Harley was expected to take possession of his father’s house.

It was now February. The new house was completely furnished, and every thing ready for their removal as soon as Mr. Hastings returned from New York, where he had some business of importance to transact. As it called for immediate attention, he deferred unpacking his books, or indeed taking them from the farm house, until his return. It was with great reluctance that he left his wife, who grieved as if the separation was to last for years instead of a fortnight; but he was compelled to go, so after a thousand charges to take care of her health, and imploring her father to watch over her and his little boy, he once more embraced them and tore himself away. His wife followed him with her eyes until she saw him pass their new habitation, cross over the stile and turn the angle; here he stopped to take one more look at the spot where all he loved dwelt, and seeing the group still looking towards him, he waved his handkerchief, and a few steps farther hid him from their sight.

The farm house was at the extremity of the estate, and as it lay on the road leading to the ferry, he thought he would look at the fire which had been burning in the grate all the morning. Mr. Harley said he would extinguish it in the afternoon, and lock up the house, but still he felt a curiosity to see whether all was safe. His servant, with the baggage, had preceded him, and was now waiting for him at the boat; so he hurried in, and passed from the hall to the middle room, where the books were. Here he found an old man sitting, apparently warming himself by the still glowing coals, who made an apology for the intrusion, by saying 16that he was very cold, and seeing a fire burning, for he had looked in at the window, he made bold to enter.

Mr. Hastings bade him sit still, but the man said he was about to cross the ferry and must hurry on, observing that he thought there would be a great thaw before morning, “and in that case,” said he, pointing up to the hill, at the foot of which the house stood, “that great bank of snow will come down and crush the roof of this house.” Hastings looked up and saw the dangerous position of the snow bank, and likewise apprehending a thaw, he begged the man to hurry on and tell his servant to go over with his baggage, and get all things in readiness for him on the other side, and that he would wait for the next boat, which crossed in fifteen minutes after the other. He gave the poor man a small piece of money, and after he left the house Hastings wrote a note about the snow bank to Mr. Harley, which he knew that gentleman would see, as he was to be there in the afternoon. Knowing that he should hear the steam boat bell, and feeling cold, he drew an old fashioned chair, something in the form of an easy chair, and fell into one of his old fits of musing. He thought it would not be prudent to return to his family merely to say farewell again, even if there were time, but a melancholy would creep over him, as if a final separation were about to take place. In vain he tried to rouse himself and shake it off; he closed his eyes, as if by doing so he could shut out thought, and it did, for in less than five minutes he was fast asleep.

Hearing a noise, he suddenly started up. It was dusk, and having lain long in one position, he felt so stiff as to move with difficulty; on turning his head, he saw two strangers looking at him with wonder and pity. “Is the steamboat ready?” exclaimed he, still confused with his long sleep. “Has the bell rung, gentlemen? Bless me, I have overslept myself—what o’clock is it? Why, it is almost dark—I am ashamed of myself.”

Finding, after one or two attempts, that he could not get up easily, the two strangers hastened forward and assisted him to rise. They led him to the door, but here the confusion of his mind seemed rather to increase than diminish, for he found himself in a strange place. To be sure, there lay the river, and the hills on the opposite shore still rose in grandeur; but that which was a wide river, now appeared to be a narrow stream; and where his beautiful estate lay, stretching far to the south, was covered by a populous city, the steeples and towers of which were still illuminated by the last rays of the sun.

“Gentlemen,” said the bewildered man, “I am in a strange perplexity. I fell asleep at noon in this house, which belongs to me, and after remaining in this deep repose for six hours I awoke, and find myself utterly at a loss to comprehend where I am. Surely I am in a dream, or my senses are leaving me.”

“You are not dreaming, neither is your mind wandering; a strange fate is yours,” said the elder of the two young men. “When you are a little more composed we will tell you how all this has happened; meantime, you must come with me; I shall 18take you where you will find a home and a welcome.”

“What is your name,” said the astonished Hastings, “and how have I been transported hither.”

“My name is Edgar Hastings,” said the young man; “and I feel assured that yours is the same. If I thought you had sufficient fortitude to hear the strange events which have occurred, I would tell you at once; but you had better come with me, and during the evening you shall know all.”

Hastings suffered himself to be led by the two strangers, as he felt cramped and chilly; but every step he took revived some singular train of thought. As he proceeded, he saw what appeared to be his own house, for the shape, dimensions and situation were like the one he built, and the distance and direction from his farm house was the same. What astonished him most was the trees; when he saw them last they were silver pines, chestnuts, catalpas, locusts and sycamores—now the few that remained were only oak and willow; they were of enormous size, and appeared aged.

“I must wait, I see,” said poor Hastings, “for an explanation of all this; my hope is, that I am dreaming. Here lie trees newly felled, immense trees they are, and they grew on a spot where I formerly had a range of offices. I shall awake to-morrow, no doubt,” said he, faintly smiling, “and find myself recompensed for this miserable dream. Pray what is your name?”—turning to the younger of the two men.

“My name is Valentine Harley, and I am related to this gentleman; our family have, at intervals, intermarried, for upwards of three hundred years.”

“Valentine Harley!” exclaimed Hastings, “that is the name of my wife’s father. There never was any of the name of Valentine, to my knowledge, but his; and I did not know that there was another 19Edgar Hastings in existence, excepting myself and my young son.”

They were now in front of the house—the massive north portico had been replaced by another of different shape; the windows were altered; the vestibule, the main hall, the staircase, no longer the same—yet the general plan was familiar, and when they opened the door of a small room in the north wing, he found it exactly to correspond with what he had intended for his laboratory.

After persuading him to take some refreshments, they conducted him to his chamber, and the two young men related to the astonished Hastings what follows. We shall not stop to speak of his surprise, his sufferings, his mortal agony—nor of the interruptions which naturally took place; but the group sat up till midnight. It is needless to say that not one of the three closed his eyes the remainder of the night.

“Early this morning,” began the younger Edgar Hastings—“and be not dismayed when I tell you, that instead of the 15th of February, 1835, it is now the 15th of April, 2135—several of us stood looking at some labourers who were at work cutting a street through the adjoining hill. Our engines had succeeded in removing the trees, rocks and stones, which lay embedded in the large mounds of earth, and about ten o’clock the street, with the exception of the great mass which covered your farm house, was entirely cut through to the river. This portion of it would have been also removed, but both from papers in my possession and tradition, a stone building, containing many valuable articles, was supposed to be buried there, by the fall of the hill near which it stood.

“To extend the city, which is called Hamilton, my property, or rather, I should say, your property, was from time to time sold, till at length nothing 20remains in our possession but this house and a few acres of ground; the last we sold was that strip on which your farm house stands. It was with great reluctance that I parted with this portion, as I could not but consider it as your sepulchre, which in fact it has proved to be.

“When they commenced cutting through the hill the top was covered with large oaks, some of which, when sawed through, showed that they were upwards of a century old; and one in particular, which stood on the boundary line, had been designated as a landmark in all the old title deeds of two hundred years’ standing.

“About three hours before you were liberated the workmen came to a solid stratum of ice, a phenomenon so extraordinary, that all the people in the vicinity gathered to the spot to talk and ponder over it. An aged man, upwards of ninety, but with his faculties unimpaired, was among the number present. He said, that in his youth his great grandfather had often spoken of a tradition respecting this hill. It was reported to have been much higher, and that a ravine, or rather a precipitous slope, a little below the road, was quite filled up by the overthrow of the hill. That the fall had been occasioned by an earthquake, and the peak of the hill, after dislodging a huge rock, had entirely covered up a stone building which contained a large treasure. He very well remembered hearing his aged relative say, that the hill was covered with immense pines and chestnuts.

“The truth of part of this story was corroborated by ancient documents in my possession, and I hastened to my library to search for some old family papers, which had been transmitted to me with great care. I soon found what I wanted, and with a map of the estate, in which, from father to son, all the alterations of time had been carefully 21marked down, I was able to point out the exact spot on which the old stone farm house stood. In a letter from a gentleman named Valentine Harley, which, with several from the same hand, accompanied the different maps, an account was given of the avalanche which buried the house and filled up the ravine and gap below. As the originals were likely to be destroyed by time, they had been copied in a large book, containing all the records of the family, which, from period to period, receive the attestation of the proper recording officer, so that you may look upon these documents as a faithful transcript of every thing of moment that has occurred within the last three hundred years. It was only last November that I entered an account of the sale of this very strip of land in which the stone house lay.

“Here is the first thing on record—a letter, as I observed, from the father-in-law of Edgar Hastings, my great ancestor—but I forget that it is of you he speaks. Believe me, dear sir, that most deeply do we sympathize with you; but your case is so singular, and the period in which all this suffering occurred is so very remote, that your strong sense will teach you to bear your extraordinary fate like a man. Allow me to read the letter; it is directed to James Harley, son to the above mentioned Valentine Harley.

“‘Second month, 17th, 1834. My dear son—Stay where thou art, for thy presence will but aggravate our grief. I will give thee all the particulars of the dreadful calamity which has befallen us. I have not yet recovered from the shock, and thy sister is in the deepest wo; but it is proper that thou shouldst know the truth, and there is no one to tell thee but myself. On Monday the 15th, my dear son Edgar Hastings took a tender farewell 22of thy sister and his babe, shaking hands with me in so earnest and solemn a manner, that one prone to superstition would have said it was prophetic of evil. We saw him walk briskly along the road until the angle, which thou knowest is made by the great hill, shut him from our sight; but just before he turned the angle he cast a look towards the house wherein all his treasure lay, and seeing that we were watching his steps, he waved his handkerchief and disappeared. His intention, thou knowest, was to proceed to New York; Samuel, his faithful servant, was to accompany him, and had gone forward in the carriage with the baggage, as Edgar preferred to walk to the boat. Thy poor sister and myself stood on the old piazza waiting until the little steamboat—it was the Black Hawk—should turn the great bend and appear in sight, for it was natural, thou knowest, to linger and look at the vessel which held one so dear to us both. It was the first time that thy sister had been separated from Edgar, and she stood weeping silently, leaning on my arm, as the little steamboat shot briskly round the bend and appeared full in sight. Thou must recollect that the channel brings the boat nearly opposite the stone farm house, and even at that distance, although we could not distinguish features or person, yet we fancied we saw the waving of a handkerchief. At that instant the Black Hawk blew up, every thing went asunder, and to my affrighted soul the boat appeared to rise many feet out of the water. I cannot paint to thee our agony, or speak of the profound grief, the unextinguishable grief, of thy dear sister; she lies still in silent wo, and who is there, save her Maker, who dares to comfort her.

“‘I told thee in a previous letter, written I believe on the 12th, that I apprehended a sudden thaw. I mentioned my fears to our dear Edgar, and with 23his usual prudence he gave orders to strengthen some of the embankments below the ravine. Among other things I thought of his valuable books and instruments, which still remained in the stone farm house, and that very afternoon I intended to have them removed to Elmwood. At the instant the dreadful explosion took place, the great snow bank, which thou recollectest lay above the house in the hollow of the hill, slid down and entirely covered the building; and, in another second, the high peak of the hill, heavily covered with large pines, fell down and buried itself in the ravine and gap below. The building and all its valuable contents lie buried deep below the immense mass of earth, but we stop not in our grief to care for it, as he who delighted in them is gone from us for ever.

“‘Thy sister, thy poor sister, when the first horrible shock was over, would cling to the hope that Edgar might be spared, and it was with the greatest difficulty that I could prevent her from flying to the spot where the crowd had collected. Alas! no one lived to tell how death had overtaken them. Of the five persons engaged on board, three of their bodies have since been found; this was in dragging the water. It seems there were but few passengers, perhaps only our beloved Edgar, his poor servant Samuel, and one or two others. An old man was seen to enter the boat just as she was moving off; his body was found on the bank, and on searching his pockets a small piece of silver, a quarter of a dollar, was taken out, which I knew in a moment; it was mine only an hour before, and had three little crosses deeply indented on the rim, with a hole in the centre of the coin; I made these marks on it the day before, for a particular purpose; I could therefore identify the money at once. About an hour before Edgar left us, thinking he might want small silver, I gave him a handful, and this piece 24was among the number. He must have given it to the man as soon as he got on board, perhaps for charity, as the man was poor, and probably had begged of him. This at once convinced me that our dear Edgar was in the fatal boat. We have made every exertion to recover the body, but are still unsuccessful; nor can we find that of our poor faithful Samuel. The body of the horse was seen floating down the river yesterday; and the large trunk, valueless thing now, was found but this morning near the stone fence on the opposite shore.

“‘There were some valuable parchments, title deeds, in a small leather valise, which our dear Edgar carried himself—but what do we care for such things now, or for the gold pieces which he also had in the same case. Alas! we think of nothing but of the loss of him, thy much valued brother. Edgar Hastings has been taken from us, and although thy poor sister is the greatest sufferer, yet all mourn.

“‘Offer up thy prayers, my son, that God will please to spare thy sister’s reason; if that can be preserved, time will soften this bitter grief, and some little comfort will remain, for she has Edgar’s boy to nourish and protect. As to me, tranquil as I am compelled to be before her, I find that my chief pleasure, my happiness, is for ever gone. Edgar was superior to most men, ay, to any man living, and so excellent was he in heart, and so virtuous and upright in all his ways, that I trust his pure spirit has ascended to the Great Being who gave it.

“‘Do not come to us just now, unless it be necessary to thy peace of mind; but if thou shouldst come, ask not to see thy sister, for the sight of any one, save me and her child, is most painful to her.

“‘Kiss thy babe, and bid him not forget his afflicted grandfather. God bless thee and thy kind wife.—Adieu, my son.

25It need not be said that Edgar Hastings was plunged in profound grief at hearing this epistle read; his excellent father, his beloved wife, his darling child, were brought before him, fresh as when he last saw them; and now the withering thought came over him that he was to see them no more! After a few moments spent in bitter anguish, he raised his head, and motioned the young man to proceed.

“Meantime the workmen proceeded in their labours, and so great was the anxiety of all, that upwards of fifty more hands were employed to assist in removing the thick layer of ice which apparently covered the whole building. When the ice was removed, we came immediately to the crushed roof of the house, into which several of the labourers would have worked their way had we not withheld them. After placing the engines in front they soon cleared a road to the entrance, and by sundown Valentine Harley and myself stood before the doorway of the low stone farm house.

“It was not without great emotion that we came thus suddenly in view of a building which had lain under such a mass of earth for three centuries. We are both, I trust, men of strong and tender feelings, and we could not but sigh over the disastrous fate of our great ancestor, distant as was the period of his existence. We had often thought of it, for it was the story of our childhood, and every document had been religiously preserved. We stood for a few moments looking at the entrance in silence, for among other letters there were two or three, written late in life by your faithful and excellent wife—was not her name Ophelia?”

“It was, it was,” said the afflicted man; “go on, and ask me no questions, for my reason is unsteady.”

“In one of these letters she suggested the possibility 26that her beloved husband might have been buried under the ruins; that the thought had sometimes struck her; but her father believed otherwise. That within a few years an old sailor had returned to his native place, and as it was near Elmwood, he called on her to state that it was his firm belief that Mr. Hastings did not perish in the Black Hawk. His reason for this belief was, that on the way to the ship he encountered an old friend, just at that moment leaving the low stone building. ‘I wanted him,’ said the old sailor, ‘to jump in the wagon and go with me to the wharf, but he refused, as he had business on the other side of the river. Besides, said my friend, the gentleman within, pointing to the door, has given me a quarter of a dollar to go forward and tell the captain of the Black Hawk that he cannot cross this trip. This gentleman, he said, was Mr. Hastings.’

“Another letter stated—I think it was written by the wife of James Harley, your brother-in-law—that, in addition to the above, the old sailor stated, that the ship in which he sailed had not raised anchor yet, when they heard the explosion of the Black Hawk, of which fact they became acquainted by means of a little fishing boat that came along side, and which saw her blow up. He observed to some one near, that if that was the case, an old shipmate of his had lost his life. The sailor added likewise, that he had been beating about the world for many years, but at length growing tired, and finding old age creeping on him, he determined to end his days in his native village. Among the recitals of early days was the bursting of the Black Hawk and the death of Mr. Hastings, which latter fact he contradicted, stating his reasons for believing that you were not in the boat. The idea of your being buried under the ruins, and the dread that you might have perished with hunger, so 27afflicted the poor Lady Ophelia that she fell into a nervous fever, of which she died.”

“Say no more—tell me nothing farther,” said the poor sufferer; “I can listen no longer—good night—good night—leave me alone.”

The young men renewed the fire, and were about to depart, when he called them back.

“Excuse this emotion—but my son—tell me of him; did he perish?”

“No—he lived to see his great grandchildren all married: I think he was upwards of ninety when he died.”

“And what relation are you to him?”

“I am the great grandson of your great grandson,” said Edgar Hastings the younger; “and this young man is the eighth in descent from your brother, James Harley. We both feel respect and tenderness for you, and it shall be the business of our lives to make you forget your griefs. Be comforted, therefore, for we are your children. In the morning you shall see my wife and children. Meantime, as we have not much more to say, let us finish our account of meeting you, and then we trust you will be able to get a few hours’ rest.”

“Rest!” said the man who had slept three hundred years, “I think I have had enough of sleep; but proceed.”

“When the thought struck us that your bones might lie under the ruins, we did not wish any common eye to see them; we therefore dismissed the workmen, and entered the door by ourselves. We came immediately into a square hall, at the end of which was the opening to what is called in all the papers the middle room; the door had crumbled away. The only light in the room proceeded from a hole which had been recently made by the removal of the ice on the roof, but it was sufficient to show the contents of the room. We saw the boxes, 28so often mentioned in all the letters, nine in number, and four large cases, which we supposed to be instruments. The table and four chairs were in good preservation, and on the table lay the very note which you must have written but a few minutes before the ice covered you. On walking to the other side of the room, the light fell on the large chair in which you were reclining.

“‘This is the body of our great ancestor,’ said Valentine Harley, ‘and now that the air has been admitted it will crumble to dust. Let us have the entrance nailed up, and make arrangements for giving the bones an honourable grave.’

“‘Unfortunate man,’ said I; ‘he must have perished with hunger—and yet his flesh does not appear to have wasted. It is no doubt the first owner of our estate, and he was buried in the fall of the ice and hill. The old sailor was right. His cap of sealskin lies at the back of his head, his gloves are on his lap, and there is the cameo on his little finger, the very one described in the paper which offered that large reward for the recovery of his body. The little valise lies at his feet—how natural—how like a living being he looks; one could almost fancy he breathes.’

“‘My fancy is playing the fool with me,’ said Valentine; ‘he not only appears to breathe, but he moves his hand. If we stay much longer our senses will become affected, and we shall imagine that he can rise and walk.’

“We stepped back, therefore, a few paces; but you may imagine our surprise, when you opened your eyes and made an attempt to get up. At length you spoke, and we hastened to you; our humanity and pity, for one so singularly circumstanced, being stronger than our fears. You know the rest. I picked up the valise, and there it lies.”

We shall draw a veil over the next two months of our hero’s existence. His mind was in distress 29and confusion, and he refused to be comforted; but the young men devoted themselves to him, and they had their reward in seeing him at length assume a tranquil manner—yet the sad expression of his countenance never left him. His greatest pleasure—a melancholy one it was, which often made him shed tears—was to caress the youngest child; it was about the age of his own, and he fancied he saw a resemblance. In fact, he saw a strong likeness to his wife in the lady who now occupied Elmwood, and her name being Ophelia rendered the likeness more pleasing. She had been told of the strange relationship which existed between her guest and themselves; but, at our hero’s request, no other human being was to know who he was, save Edgar Hastings the younger and his wife, and Valentine Harley. It was thought most prudent to keep it a secret from the wife of the latter, as her health was exceedingly delicate, and her husband feared that the strangeness of the affair might disturb her mind.

Behold our hero, then, in full health and vigour, at the ripe age of thirty-two, returning to the earth after an absence of three hundred years! Had it not been for the loss of his wife and son, and his excellent father, he surely was quite as happily circumstanced, as when, at twenty-one, he returned from Europe, unknowing and unknown. He soon made friends then, and but for the canker at his heart he could make friends again. He thought of nothing less than to appear before the public, or of engaging in any pursuit. His fortune, and that part of his father-in-law’s which naturally would have fallen to him, was now in the possession of this remote descendant. He was willing to let it so remain, retaining only sufficient for his wants; and his amiable relation took care that his means were ample.

To divert his mind, and keep him from brooding 30over his sorrows, his young relative proposed that they should travel through the different states. “Surely,” said he, “you must feel a desire to see what changes three hundred years have made. Are not the people altered? Do those around you talk, and dress, and live as you were accustomed to do?”

“I see a difference certainly,” said Hastings, “but less than I should have imagined. But my mind has been in such confusion, and my grief has pressed so heavily on my heart, that I can observe nothing. I will travel with you, perhaps it may be of service; let us set out on the first of May. Shall we go northward first, or where?”

“I think we had better go to New York,” said Edgar, “and then to Boston; we can spend the months of May, June and July very pleasantly in travelling from one watering place to another. We now go in locomotive cars, without either gas or steam.”

“Is that the way you travel now?” exclaimed Hastings.

“Yes, certainly; how should we travel? Oh, I recollect, you had balloons and air cars in your time.”

“We had balloons, but they were not used as carriages; now and then some adventurous man went up in one, but it was merely to amuse the people. Have you discovered the mode of navigating balloons?”

“Oh yes; we guide them as easily through the air, as you used to do horses on land.”

“Do you never use horses to travel with now?”

“No, never. It is upwards of a hundred years since horses were used either for the saddle or carriage; and full two hundred years since they were used for ploughing, or other farming or domestic purposes.”

“You astonish me; but in field sports, or horse racing, there you must have horses.”

31The young man smiled. “My dear sir,” said he, “there is no such thing as field sports or horse racing now. Those brutal pastimes, thank heaven, have been entirely abandoned. In fact, you will be surprised to learn, that the races of horses, asses and mules are almost extinct. I can assure you, that they are so great a curiosity now to the rising generation, that they are carried about with wild beasts as part of the show.”

“Then there is no travelling on horseback? I think that is a great loss, as the exercise was very healthy and pleasant.”

“Oh, we have a much more agreeable mode of getting exercise now. Will you take a ride on the land or a sail on the water?”

“I think I should feel a reluctance in getting into one of your new fashioned cars. Do the steamboats cross at what was called the Little Ferry, where the Black Hawk went from when her boiler exploded?”

“Steamboats indeed! they have been out of use since the year 1950. But suspend your curiosity until we commence our journey; you will find many things altered for the better.”

“One thing surprises me,” said Hastings. “You wear the quaker dress; indeed, it is of that fashion which the gravest of the sect of my time wore; but you do not use the mode of speech—is that abolished among you?”

The young man, whom we shall in future call Edgar, laughed out. “Quaker!” said he; “why, my dear sir, the quakers have been extinct for upwards of two centuries. My dress is the fashion of the present moment; all the young men of my age and standing dress in this style now. Does it appear odd to you?”

“No,” said Hastings, “because this precise dress was worn by the people called Friends or Quakers, 32in my day—strange that I should have to use this curious mode of speech—my day! yes, like the wandering Jew, I seem to exist to the end of time. I see one alteration or difference, however; you wear heavy gold buckles in your shoes, the quakers wore strings; you have long ruffles on your hands, they had none; you wear a cocked hat, and they wore one with a large round rim.”

“But the women—did they dress as my wife does?”

“No.—Your wife wears what the old ladies before my time called a frisk and petticoat; it is the fashion of the year 1780. Her hair is cropped and curled closely to her head, with small clusters of curls in the hollow of each temple. In 1835 the hair was dressed in the Grecian style—but you can see the fashion. You have preserved the picture of my dear Ophelia; she sat to two of the best painters of the day, Sully and Ingham; the one you have was painted by Ingham, and is in the gay dress of the time. The other, which her brother had in his possession, was in a quaker dress, and was painted by Sully.”

“We have it still, and it is invaluable for the sweetness of expression and the grace of attitude. The one in your room is admirable likewise; it abounds in beauties. No one since has ever been able to paint in that style; it bears examination closely. Was he admired as an artist in your day?”

“Yes; he was a distinguished painter, but he deserved his reputation, for he bestowed immense labour on his portraits, and sent nothing unfinished from his hands.”

“But portrait painting is quite out of date now; it began to decline about the year 1870. It was a strange taste, that of covering the walls with paintings, which your grandchildren had to burn up as 33useless lumber. Where character, beauty and grace were combined, and a good artist to embody them, it was well enough; a number of these beautiful fancy pieces are still preserved. Landscape and historical painting is on the decline also. There are no good artists now, but you had a delightful painter in your day—Leslie. His pictures are still considered as very great treasures, and they bring the very highest prices.”

“How is it with sculpture? That art was beginning to improve in my day.”

“Yes; and has continued to improve. We now rival the proudest days of Greece. But you must see all these things. The Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia will delight you; it is now the largest in the world. In reading an old work I find that in your time it was contemptible enough, for in the month of April of 1833, the Academy of Fine Arts in that city was so much in debt, as to be unable to sustain itself. It was with the greatest difficulty that the trustees could beg a sum sufficient to pay the debts. The strong appeal that was made to the public enabled them to continue it a little longer in its impoverished condition, but it seems that it crumbled to pieces, and was not resuscitated until the year 1850, at which time a taste for the art of sculpture began to appear in this country.”

On the first of May the two gentlemen commenced their tour—not in locomotive engines, nor in steamboats, but in curious vehicles that moved by some internal machinery. They were regulated every hour at the different stopping places, and could be made to move faster or slower, to suit the pleasure of those within. The roads were beautifully smooth and perfectly level; and Hastings observed that there were no dangerous passes, for a strong railing stretched along the whole extent of every elevation. How different from the roads 34of 1834! Then men were reckless or prodigal of life; stages were overturned, or pitched down some steep hill—rail cars bounded off the rails, or set the vehicles on fire—steamboats exploded and destroyed many lives—horses ran away and broke their riders’ necks—carts, heavily laden, passed over children and animals—boats upset in squalls of wind—in short, if human ingenuity had been exerted to its fullest extent, there could not be contrivances better suited to shorten life, or render travelling more unsafe and disagreeable.

Instead of going directly to New York, as they at first contemplated, they visited every part of Pennsylvania. Railroads intersected one another in every direction; every thing was a source of amazement and amusement to Hastings. The fields were no longer cultivated by the horse or the ox, nor by small steam engines, as was projected in the nineteenth century, but by a self-moving plough, having the same machinery to propel it as that of the travelling cars. Instead of rough, unequal grounds, gullied, and with old tree stumps in some of the most valuable parts of the field, the whole was one beautiful level; and, where inclinations were unavoidable, there were suitable drains. The same power mowed the grass, raked it up, spread it out, gathered it, and brought it to the barn—the same power scattered seeds, ploughed, hoed, harrowed, cut, gathered, threshed, stored and ground the grain—and the same power distributed it to the merchants and small consumers.

“Wonderful, most wonderful,” said the astonished Hastings. “I well remember this very farm; those fields, the soil of which was washed away by the precipitous fall of rain from high parts, are now all levelled smooth. The hand of time has done nothing better for the husbandman than in perfecting such operations as these. Now, every 35inch of ground is valuable; and this very farm, once only capable of supporting a man, his wife and five children in the mere necessaries of life, must now give to four times that number every luxury.”

“Yes, you are right; and instead of requiring the assistance of four labourers, two horses and two oxen, it is all managed by four men alone! The machines have done every thing—they fill up gullies, dig out the roots of trees, plough down hills, turn water courses—in short, they have entirely superseded the use of cattle of any kind.”

“But I see no fences,” said Hastings; “how is this? In my day, every man’s estate was enclosed by a fence or wall of some kind; now, for boundary lines I see nothing but a low hedge, and a moveable wire fence for pasturage for cows.”

“Why should there be the uncouth and expensive fences, which I find by the old books were in use in 1834, when we have no horses; there is no fear of injury now from their trespassing. All our carriages move on rails, and cannot turn aside to injure a neighbouring grain field. Cows, under no pretence whatever, are allowed to roam at large; and it would be most disgraceful to the corporate bodies of city or county to allow hogs or sheep to run loose in the streets or on the road. The rich, therefore, need no enclosure but for ornament, which, as it embellishes the prospect, is always made of some pleasant looking evergreen or flowering shrub. In fact, it is now a state affair, and when a poor man is unable to enclose the land himself, it is done by money lawfully appropriated to the purpose.”

“And dogs—I see no dogs,” said Hastings. “In my day every farmer had one or more dogs; in little villages there were often three and four in each house; the cities were full of them, notwithstanding the dog laws—but I see none now.”

36“No—it is many years since dogs were domesticated; it is a rarity to see one now. Once in awhile some odd, eccentric old fellow will bring a dog with him from some foreign port, but he dare not let him run loose. I presume that in your time hydrophobia was common; at least, on looking over a file of newspapers of the year 1930, called the Recorder of Self-Inflicted Miseries, I saw several accounts of that dreadful disease. Men, women, children, animals, were frequently bitten by mad dogs in those early days. It is strange, that so useless an animal was caressed, and allowed to come near your persons, when the malady to which they were so frequently liable, and from which there was no guarding, no cure, could be imparted to human beings.”

“Well, what caused the final expulsion of dogs?”

“You will find the whole account in that old paper called the Recorder of Self-Inflicted Miseries; there, from time to time, all the accidents that happened to what were called steamboats, locomotive engines, stages, &c. were registered. You will see that in the year 1860, during the months of August and September, more than ten thousand dogs were seized with that horrible disease, and that upward of one hundred thousand people fell victims to it. It raged with the greatest fury in New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore; and but for the timely destruction of every dog in the South, ten times the number of human beings would have perished. The death from hydrophobia is as disgraceful to a corporate body, as if the inhabitants had died of thirst, when good water was near them.”

“This was horrible; the consternation of the people must have been very great—equal to what was felt during the cholera. Did you ever read of that terrible disease?”

“No, I do not recollect it——Oh, yes, now I remember 37to have read something of it—but that came in a shape that was not easy to foresee. But dogs were always known to be subject to this awful disease, and therefore encouraging their increase was shameful. Posterity had cause enough to curse the memory of their ancestors, for having entailed such a dreadful scourge upon them. The panic, it seems, was so great, that to this day children are more afraid of looking at a dog, for they are kept among wild beasts as a curiosity, than at a Bengal tiger.”

“I confess I never could discover in what their usefulness consisted. They were capable of feeling a strong attachment to their master, and had a show of reason and intelligence, but it amounted to very little in its effects. It was very singular, but I used frequently to observe, that men were oftentimes more gentle and kind to their dogs than to their wives and children; and much better citizens would these children have made, if their fathers had bestowed half the pains in breaking them in, and in training them, that they did on their dogs. It was a very rare circumstance if a theft was prevented by the presence of a dog; when such a thing did occur, every paper spoke of it, and the anecdote was never forgotten. But had they been ever so useful, so necessary to man’s comfort, nothing could compensate or overbalance the evil to which he was liable from this disease. Were the dogs all destroyed at once?”

“Yes; the papers say, that by the first of October there was but one dog to be seen, and the owner of that had to pay a fine of three thousand dollars, and be imprisoned for one year at hard labour. When you consider the horrible sufferings of so many people, and all to gratify a pernicious as well as foolish fondness for an animal, we cannot wonder at the severity of the punishment.”

“I very well remember how frequently I was 38annoyed by dogs when riding along the road. A yelping cur has followed at my horse’s heels for five or six minutes, cunningly keeping beyond the reach of my whip—some dogs do this all their lives. Have the shepherd’s dogs perished likewise—all, did you say?”

“Yes; every dog—pointers, setters, hounds—all were exterminated; and I sincerely hope that the breed will never be encouraged again. In fact, the laws are so severe that there is no fear of it, for no man can bring them in the country without incurring a heavy fine, and in particular cases imprisonment at hard labour. We should as soon expect to see a wolf or a tiger running loose in the streets as a dog.”

Every step they took excited fresh remarks from Hastings, and his mind naturally turned to the friends he had lost. How perfect would have been his happiness if it had been permitted that his wife and his father could be with him to see the improved state of the country. When he looked forward to what his life might be—unknown, alone—he regretted that he had been awakened: but his kind relative, who never left him for a moment, as soon as these melancholy reveries came over him hurried him to some new scene.

They were now in Philadelphia, the Athens of America, as it was called three centuries back. Great changes had taken place here. Very few of the public edifices had escaped the all-devouring hand of time. In fact, Hastings recognised but five—that beautiful building called originally the United States Bank, the Mint, the Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb, and the Girard College. The latter continued to flourish, notwithstanding its downfall was early predicted, in consequence of the prohibition of clergymen in the direction of its affairs. The dispute, too, about the true signification 39of the term “orphan” had been settled; it was at length, after a term of years, twenty, I think, decided, that the true meaning and intent of Stephen Girard, the wise founder of the institution, was to make it a charity for those children who had lost both parents.

“I should not think,” said Hastings, on hearing this from Edgar, “that any one could fancy, for a moment, that Girard meant any thing else.”

“Why no, neither you nor I, nor ninety-nine out of a hundred, would decide otherwise; but it seems a question was raised, and all the books of reference were appealed to, as well as the poets. In almost every case, an orphan was said to be a child deprived of one or both parents; and, what is very singular, the term orphan occurs but once throughout the Old and New Testaments. In Lamentations it says, ‘We are orphans, and fatherless, and our mothers are as widows.’ Now, in the opinion of many, the orphan and fatherless, and those whose mothers are as widows, here mentioned, are three distinct sets of children—that is, as the lament says, some of us are orphans, meaning children without father and mother, some of us are fatherless; and the third set says, ‘our mothers are as widows.’ This means, that in consequence of their fathers’ absence, their mothers were as desolate and helpless as if in reality they were widows by the death of their husbands. This text, therefore, settles nothing. Girard, like all the unlettered men of the age, by the term orphan, understood it to mean a child without parents.”

“I very well remember,” said Hastings, “that on another occasion when the term came in question, I asked every man and woman that worked on and lived near the great canal, what they meant by orphan, and they invariably, without a single exception, said it meant a child without parents.”

40“Well, the good sense of the trustees, at the end of the time I mentioned, decided after the manner of the multitude—for it was from this mass that their objects of charity were taken. And there is no instance on the records, of a widow begging admittance for her fatherless boys. They knew very well what being an orphan meant, but to their praise be it said, if fatherless children had been included in the term, there were very few who would not have struggled as long as it was in their power, before their boys should be taken to a charitable institution.”

“I recollect, too,” said Hastings, “that great umbrage was taken by many persons because the clergy were debarred from any interference in the management of the college. No evil, you say, has arisen from this prohibition?”

“None at all,” replied Edgar. “The clergy were not offended by it; they found they had enough to do with church affairs. It has been ever since in the hands of a succession of wise, humane, and honest men. The funds have gone on increasing, and as they became more than sufficient for the purposes of the college, the surplus has been lawfully spent in improving the city.”

“In the year 1835—alas, it seems to me that but a few days ago I existed at that period—was there not an Orphan Asylum here?”

“Yes, my dear sir, the old books speak of a small establishment of that kind, founded by several sensible and benevolent women; but it was attended with very great personal sacrifices—for there was in that century a very singular, and, we must say, disgusting practice among all classes, to obtain money for the establishment of any charitable, benevolent, or literary institution. Both men and women—women for the most part, because men used then to shove off from themselves all that was irksome 41or disagreeable—women, I say, used to go from door to door, and in the most humble manner beg a few dollars from each individual. Sometimes, the Recorder of Self-Inflicted Miseries says, that men and women of coarse minds and mean education were in the habit of insulting the committee who thus turned beggars. They did not make their refusal in decent terms even, but added insult to it. In the course of time the Recorder goes on to say, men felt ashamed of all this, and their first step was to relieve women from the drudgery and disgrace of begging. After that, but it was by degrees, the different corporate bodies of each state took the matter up, and finally every state had its own humane and charitable institutions, so that there are now no longer any private ones, excepting such as men volunteer to maintain with their own money.”

“Did the old Orphan Asylum of Philadelphia, begun by private individuals, merge into the one now established?”

“No,” replied Edgar; “the original asylum only existed a certain number of years, for people got tired of keeping up a charity by funds gathered in this loose way. At length, another man of immense wealth died, and bequeathed all his property to the erection and support of a college for orphan girls—and this time the world was not in doubt as to the testator’s meaning. From this moment a new era took place with regard to women, and we owe the improved condition of our people entirely to the improvement in the education of the female poor; blessed be the name of that man.”

“Well, from time to time you must tell me the rise and progress of all these things; at present I must try and find my way in this now truly beautiful city. This is Market street, but so altered that I should scarcely know it.”

“Yes, I presume that three hundred years would 42improve the markets likewise. But wherein is it altered?”

“In my day the market was of one story, or rather had a roof supported by brick pillars, with a neat stone pavement running the whole length of the building. Market women not only sat under each arch and outside of the pillars, but likewise in the open spaces where the streets intersected the market. Butchers and fish sellers had their appropriate stalls; and clerks of the market, as they were called, took care that no imposition was practised. Besides this, the women used to bawl through the streets, and carry their fish and vegetables on their heads.”

“All that sounds very well; but our old friend, the Recorder of Self-Inflicted Miseries, mentions this very market as a detestable nuisance, and the manner of selling things through the streets shameful. Come with me, and let us see wherein this is superior to the one you describe.”

The two friends entered the range above at the Schuylkill, for to that point had the famous Philadelphia market reached. The building was of two stories, built of hewn stone, and entirely fire-proof, as there was not a particle of woodwork or other ignitable matter in it. The upper story was appropriated to wooden, tin, basket, crockery, and other domestic wares, such as stockings, gloves, seeds, and garden utensils, all neatly arranged and kept perpetually clean. On the ground floor, in cool niches, under which ran a stream of cold, clear water, were all the variety of vegetables; and there, at this early season, were strawberries and green peas, all of which were raised in the neighbourhood. The finest of the strawberries were those that three centuries before went by the name, as it now did, of the dark hautbois, rich in flavour and delicate in perfume. Women, dressed in close caps and snow 43white aprons, stood or sat modestly by their baskets—not, as formerly, bawling out to the passers-by and entreating them to purchase of them, but waiting for their turn with patience and good humour. Their hair was all hidden, save a few plain braids or plaits in front, and their neck was entirely covered. Their dress was appropriate to their condition, and their bearing had both dignity and grace.

“Well, this surpasses belief,” said Hastings. “Are these the descendants of that coarse, vulgar, noisy, ill dressed tribe, one half of whom appeared before their dirty baskets and crazy fixtures with tawdry finery, and the other half in sluttish, uncouth clothes, with their hair hanging about their face, or stuck up behind with a greasy horn comb? What has done all this?”

“Why, the improvement which took place in the education of women. While women were degraded as they were in your time”——

“In my time, my dear Edgar,” said Hastings, quickly—“in my time! I can tell you that women were not in a degraded state then. Go back to the days of Elizabeth, if you please; but I assure you that in 1835 women enjoyed perfect equality of rights.”

“Did they! then our old friend, the Recorder of Self-Inflicted Miseries, has been imposing on us—but we will discuss this theme more at our leisure. Let us ask that neat pretty young woman for some strawberries and cream.”

They were ripe and delicious, and Hastings found, that however much all other things had changed, the fine perfume, the grateful flavour, the rich consistency of the fruit and cream were the same—nature never changes.

There were no unpleasant sights—no rotten vegetables or leaves, no mud, no spitting, no——in 44short, the whole looked like a painting, and the women all seemed as if they were dressed for the purpose of sitting for their portraits, to let other times have a peep at what was going on in a former world.

“If I am in my senses,” said Hastings, “which I very much doubt, this is the most pleasing change which time has wrought; I cannot but believe that I shall wake up in the morning and find this all a dream. This is no market—it is a picture.”

“We shall see,” said Edgar. “Come, let us proceed to the butchers’ market.”

So they walked on, and still the rippling stream followed them; and here no sights of blood, or stained hands, or greasy knives, or slaughter-house smells, were present. The meats were not hung up to view in the open air, as in times of old; but you had only to ask for a particular joint, and lo! a small door, two feet square, opened in the wall, and there hung the identical part.

“This gentleman is a stranger,” said Edgar, to a neatly dressed man, having on a snow white apron; “show him a hind quarter of veal; we do not want to buy any, but merely to look at what you have to sell.”

The little door opened, and there hung one of the fattest and finest quarters Hastings had ever seen.

“And the price,” asked he.

“It is four cents a pound,” replied the man.

A purchaser soon came; the meat was weighed within; the man received the money, and gave a ticket with the weight written on it; the servant departed, and the two friends moved on.

“Our regulations are excellent,” said Edgar; “formerly, as the old Recorder of Self-Inflicted Miseries says, the butchers weighed their meats in the most careless manner, and many a man went home with a suspicion that he was cheated of half 45or three quarters of a pound. Now, nothing of this kind can take place, for the clerks of the market stand at every corner. See! those men use the graduated balance; the meat is laid, basket and all, on that little table; the pressure acts on a wheel—a clicking is heard—it strikes the number of pounds and quarters, and thus the weight is ascertained. The basket you saw, all those you now see in the meat market, are of equal weight, and they are marked 1, 2, 3, 4 or more pounds, as the size may be. Do you not see how much of labour and confusion this saves. I suppose, in your day, you would have scorned to legislate on such trifling objects; but I assure you we find our account in it.”

“I must confess that this simplifies things wonderfully; but the cleanliness, order and cheerfulness that are seen throughout this market—these are things worthy of legislation. I suppose all this took place gradually?”

“Yes, I presume so; but it had arrived to this point before my time; the water which flows under and through the market was conveyed there upward of a century ago. But here is beef, mutton, all kinds of meat—and this is the poultry market—all sold by weight, as it should be; and here is the fish market—see what large marble basins; each fishmonger has one of his own, so that all kinds are separate; and see how dexterously they scoop up the very fish that a customer wants.”

“What is this?” said Hastings, looking through one of the arches of the fish market; “can this be the Delaware?”

“Yes,” replied Edgar; “the market on which we are now, is over the Delaware. Look over this railing, we are on a wide bridge—but let us proceed to the extremity; this bridge extends to the 46Jersey shore, and thus connects the two large cities Philadelphia and Camden.”

“In my day, it was in contemplation to build a bridge over the Delaware; but there was great opposition to it, as in that case there would be a very great delay, if not hinderance, to the free passage of ships.”

New wonders sprung up at every step—vessels, light as gossamer, of curious construction, were passing and repassing under the arches of the bridge, some of three and four hundred tons burden, others for the convenience of market people, and many for the pleasure of the idle. While yet they looked, a beautiful vessel hove in sight, and in a moment she moved gracefully and swiftly under the arches, and by the time that Hastings had crossed to the other side of the bridge she was fastened to the pier.

“Is this a steamboat from Baltimore?” said Hastings. “Yet it cannot be, for I see neither steam nor smoke.”

“Steamboat!” answered his companion—“don’t speak so loud, the people will think you crazy. Why, steamboats have been out of date for more than two hundred years. I forget the name of the one who introduced them into our waters, but they did not continue in use more than fifty years, perhaps not so long: but so many accidents occurred through the extreme carelessness, ignorance and avarice of many who were engaged in them, that a very great prejudice existed against their use. No laws were found sufficiently strong to prevent frequent occurrences of the bursting of the boilers, notwithstanding that sometimes as many as nine or ten lives were destroyed by the explosion. That those accidents were not the consequence of using steam power—I mean a necessary consequence—all sensible men knew; for on this river, the Delaware, the bursting of the boiler of a steam engine 47was never known, nor did such dreadful accidents ever occur in Europe. But, as I was saying, after one of the most awful catastrophes that ever took place, the bursting of a boiler which scalded to death forty-one members of Congress, (on their way home,) besides upwards of thirty women and children, and nine of the crew, the people of this country began to arouse themselves, and very severe laws were enacted. Before, however, any farther loss of lives occurred, a stop was put to the use of steamboats altogether. The dreadful accident of which I spoke occurred in the year 1850, and in that eventful year a new power was brought into use, by which steamboats were laid aside for ever.”

“What is the new principle, and who first brought it to light?”

“Why, a lady. The world owes this blessed invention to a female! I will take you into one of our small boats presently, where you can handle the machinery yourself. No steam, nor heat, nor animal power—but one of sufficient energy to move the largest ship.”

“Condensed air, is it?—that was tried in my time.”

“No, nor condensed air; that was almost as dangerous a power as steam; for the bursting of an air vessel was always destructive of life. The Recorder of Self-Inflicted Miseries mentions several instances of loss of life by the bursting of one of the air machines used by the manufacturers of mineral waters. If that lady had lived in this century, her memory would be honoured and cherished; but if no memorial was erected by the English to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, a reproach could not rest upon us for not having paid suitable honours to the American lady.”

“Why, what did lady Mary Wortley Montagu do?” said Hastings: “I recollect nothing but that 48she wrote several volumes of very agreeable letters—Oh, yes, how could I forget—the small-pox! Yes, indeed, she did deserve to have a monument; but surely the English erected one to her memory?”

“Did they?—yes—that old defamer of women, Horace Walpole, took good care to keep the public feeling from flowing in the right channel. He made people laugh at her dirty hands and painted cheeks, but he never urged them to heap honours on her head for introducing into England the practice of innoculation for the small-pox. If this American lady deserved the thanks and gratitude of her country for thus, for ever, preventing the loss of lives from steam, and I may say, too, from shipwreck—still farther was Lady Mary Wortley Montagu entitled to distinction, for the very great benefit she bestowed on England. She saved thousands of lives, and prevented, what sometimes amounted to hideous deformity, deeply scarred faces, from being universal.—Yes, the benefit was incalculable and beyond price—quite equal, I think, to that which the world owes to Dr. Jenner, who introduced a new form of small-pox, or rather the small-pox pure and unadulterated by any affinitive virus. This modified the disease to such a degree, that the small-pox, in its mixed and complicated state, almost disappeared. The Recorder of Self-Inflicted Miseries states, that after a time a new variety of the small-pox made its appearance, which was called varioloid; but it was quite under the control of medical skill.”

“Well, you live in an age so much in advance of mine, and so many facts and curious phenomena came to light during the nineteenth century, that you can tell me what the settled opinion is now respecting small-pox, kine-pox, and varioloid.”

“The settled opinion now is, that they are one and the same disease. Thus—the original disease, 49transferable from an ulcer of the cow’s udder to the broken skin of a human being, produced what is called the kine or cow-pox. This virus of the kine-pox, in its original state, was only capable of being communicated by contact, and only when the skin was broken or cut; but, when combined with the other poison, infected the system by means of breathing in the same atmosphere. The poison from the ulcer called cow-pox was never communicated to or by the lungs, neither was the poison which had so strong an affinity for it communicated in that way: but when the two poisons united, and met in the same system, a third poison was generated, and the small-pox was result. But here we are discussing a deep subject in this busy place—what gave rise to it?—oh, steamboats, the new power now used, Lady Mary Wortley, and Dr. Jenner.”

“I presume,” said the attentive Hastings, “that Dr. Jenner fared no better than your American lady and Lady Mary Wortley.”

“You are much mistaken,” said Edgar. “Dr. Jenner was a man, which in your day was a very different circumstance. I verily believe if it had been a woman who brought that happy event about, although the whole world would have availed itself of the discovery, her name would scarcely be known at this day.”

Hastings laughed at his friend’s angry defence of women’s rights, but he could not help acknowledging the truth of what was said—there was always a great unwillingness in men to admit the claims of women. But it was not a time, nor was this the place, to discuss so important a subject; he intended, however, to resume it the first leisure moment. He turned his eye to the river, and saw vessels innumerable coming and going; and on the arrival of one a little larger than that which he first saw, 50the crowd pressed forward to get on board as soon as she should land.

“Where is that vessel from?” said Hastings; “she looks more weather-beaten than the rest—she has been at sea.”

“Yes; that is one of our Indiamen. Let us go to her, I see a friend of mine on board—he went out as supercargo.”

They went on board of the Indiaman, and although it had encountered several storms, and had met with several accidents, yet the crew was all well and the cargo safe. The vessel was propelled by the same machinery—there was neither masts nor sails!

“How many months have they been on their return?” said Hastings.

“Hush!” said his friend Edgar; “do not let any one hear you. Why, this passage has been a very tedious one, and yet it has only occupied four weeks. In general twenty days are sufficient.”

“Well,” said Hastings, “after this I shall not be surprised at any thing. Why, in my time we considered it as a very agreeable thing if we made a voyage to England in that time. Have you many India ships?”

“Yes; the trade has been opened to the very walls of China: the number of our vessels has greatly increased. But you will be astonished to hear that the emperor of China gets his porcelain from France.”

“No, I am not, now that I hear foreigners have access to that mysterious city, for I never considered the Indian china as at all equal to the French, either in texture or workmanship. But I presume I have wonders to learn about the Chinese?”

“Yes, much more than you imagine. It is not more than a century since the change in their system has been effected; before that, no foreigner was allowed to enter their gates. But quarrels and 51dissensions among themselves effected what neither external violence nor manœuvring could do. The consequence of this intercourse with foreign nations is, that the feet of their women are allowed to grow, and they dress now in the European style. They import their fashions from France; and I see by the papers that the emperor’s second son intends to pay this country a visit. They have English and French, as well as German and Spanish schools; and a great improvement in the condition of the lower classes of the Chinese has taken place; but it was first by humanizing the women that these great changes were effected. Their form of government is fast approaching that of ours, but they held out long and obstinately.”

“Their climate is very much against them,” observed Hastings; “mental culture must proceed slowly, where the heat is so constant and excessive.”

“Yes; but, my dear sir, you must recollect that they have ice in abundance now. We carry on a great trade in that article. In fact, some of our richest men owe their wealth to the exportation of this luxury alone. Boston set the example—she first sent cargoes of ice to China; but it was not until our fast sailing vessels were invented that the thing could be accomplished.”

“I should think it almost impossible to transport ice to such a distance, even were the time lessened to a month or six weeks, as it now is.”

“You must recollect, that half of this difficulty of transporting ice was lessened by the knowledge that was obtained, even in your day, of saving ice. According to the Recorder, who sneered at the times for remaining so long ignorant of the fact, ice houses could be built above ground, with the certainty that they would preserve ice. It was the expense of building those deep ice houses which 52prevented the poor from enjoying this luxury—nay, necessary article. Now, every landlord builds a stack of ice in the yard, and thatches it well with oat straw; and the corporation have an immense number of these stacks of ice distributed about the several wards.”

“I have awakened in delightful times, my friend. Oh, that my family could have been with me when I was buried under the mountain.”

Young Hastings, seeing the melancholy which was creeping over the unfortunate man, hurried him away from the wharf, and hastened to Chestnut street. Our hero looked anxiously to the right and to the left, but all was altered—all was strange. Arcades now took precedence of the ancient, inconvenient shops, there being one between every square, extending from Chestnut to Market on one side, and to Walnut on the other, intersecting the smaller streets and alleys in their way. Here alone were goods sold—no where else was there a shop seen; and what made it delightful was, that a fine stream of water ran through pipes under the centre of the pavement, bursting up every twenty feet in little jets, cooling the air, and contributing to health and cleanliness. The arcades for the grocers were as well arranged as those for different merchandize, and the fountains of water, which flowed perpetually in and under their shops, dispersed all impure smells and all decayed substances.

“All this is beautiful,” said Hastings; “but where is the old Arcade—the original one?”

“Oh, I know what you mean,” said Edgar; “our old Recorder states that it fell into disuse, and was then removed, solely from the circumstance that the first floor was raised from the level of the street; even in our time people dislike to mount steps when they have to go from shop to shop to purchase goods.”

53“And what building is that?—the antiquated one, I mean, that stands in the little court. The masons are repairing it I perceive.”

“That small, brick building—oh, that is the house in which William Penn lived,” said Edgar. “It was very much neglected, and was suffered to go to ruin almost, till the year 1840, when a lady of great wealth purchased a number of the old houses adjoining and opened an area around it, putting the whole house in thorough repair. She collected all the relics that remained of this great man, and placed them as fixtures there, and she left ample funds for repairs, so that there is a hope that this venerable and venerated building will endure for many centuries to come.”

“And what is this heap of ruins?” said Hastings, “it appears to have tumbled down through age; it was a large pile, if one may judge from the rubbish.”

“Yes, it was an immense building, and was called at first the National Bank. It was built in the year 1842, during the presidency of Daniel Webster.”

“What,” said Hastings, “was he really president of the United States? This is truly an interesting piece of news.”

“News, my dear sir,” said Edgar, smiling—“yes, it was news three hundred years ago, but Daniel Webster now sleeps with his fathers. He was really the chief magistrate for eight years, and excepting for the project of a national bank, which did not, however, exist long, he made an able president, and, what was very extraordinary, as the old Recorder of Self-Inflicted Miseries states, he gained the good will even of those who were violently opposed to him. He was the first president after Washington who had independence of mind enough to retain in office all those who had been favoured 54by his predecessor. There was not a single removal.”

“But his friends—did not they complain?” said Hastings.

“It is not stated that they did; perhaps he did not promise an office to any one: at any rate the old ‘Recorder’ treats him respectfully. It was during his term that copyrights were placed on a more liberal footing here. An Englishman now can get his works secured to him as well as if he were a citizen of the country.”

“How long is the copyright secured! it used to be, in my time,” sighed poor Hastings, “only fourteen years.”

“Fourteen years!” exclaimed Edgar—“you joke. Why, was not a man entitled to his own property for ever? I assure you that an author now has as much control over his own labours after a lapse of fifty years as he had at the moment he wrote it. Nay, it belongs to his family as long as they choose to keep it, just the same as if it were a house or a tract of land. I wonder what right the legislature had to meddle with property in that way. We should think a man deranged who proposed such a thing.”

“But how is it when a man invents a piece of machinery? surely the term is limited then.”

“Oh, yes, that is a different affair. If a man invent a new mode of printing, or of propelling boats, then a patent is secured to him for that particular invention, but it does not prevent another man from making use of the same power and improving on the machinery. But there is this benefit accruing to the original patentee, the one who makes the improvement after him is compelled to purchase a right of him. Our laws now, allow of no monopolies; that is, no monopolies of soil, or 55air, or water. On these three elements, one person has as good a right as another; he that makes the greatest improvements is entitled to the greatest share of public favour, and, in consequence, the arts have been brought to their present state of perfection.”

“But rail-roads—surely these it was necessary to guarantee to a company on exclusive privilege for a term of years, even if a better one could be made.”

“And I say, surely not. Why should all the people of a great nation be compelled to pass over an unsafe road, in miserably constructed cars, which made such a noise that for six hours a man had to be mute, and where there was perpetual fear of explosion from the steam engine—why should this be, when another company could give them a better road, more commodious cars, and a safer propelling power? On consulting the Recorder of Self-Inflicted Miseries, you will find that in the year 1846, the monopolies of roads, that is public roads, were broken up, and these roads came under the cognizance of the state governments, and in the year 1900 all merged under one head. There was then, and has continued ever since, a national road—the grand route from one extreme of the country to the other. Cross roads, leading from town to town and village to village, are under the control of the state governments. Here, let us get in this car which is going to Princeton; it is only an hour’s ride. Well, here we are seated in nice rocking chairs, and we can talk at our ease; for the fine springs and neat workmanship make the cars run without noise, as there is but little friction, the rails of the road and the tires of the wheels being of wood. In your time this could not be the case, for as steam and manual labour were expensive, you were forced to club all together—there were, therefore, large cars that held from eight to 56fourteen persons; consequently, there had to be heavy iron work to keep these large machines together. Now, you perceive, the cars are made of different sizes, to accommodate either two or four persons, and they run of themselves. We have only to turn this little crank, and the machine stops. This is Bristol. It was a very small town in your day, but by connecting it to Burlington, which lies slantingly opposite, the town soon rose to its present eminence. Burlington, too, is a large city—look at the green bank yonder; it is a paradise: and look at that large tree—it is a buttonwood or sycamore; we cannot see it very distinctly; take this pocket glass. Well, you see it now at the foot of the beautiful green slope in front of the largest marble building on this bank. That tree is upwards of four hundred years old, but the house was built within the last century.”

“What a change,” said Hastings, as they returned to their car,—“all is altered. New Jersey, the meanest and the poorest state in the union, is now in appearance equal to the other inland states. It was in my time a mere thoroughfare. What has thus changed the whole face of nature.”

“Why canals and rail roads in the first place, and rail roads now; for in a few years canals were entirely abandoned. That is, as soon as the new propelling power came into use, it was found far more economical to travel on rail roads. The track of canals through four of the principal states is no longer to be seen.”

At Princeton, the first thing to be seen was the college; not the same that existed in Hastings’s day, but a long, deep range of stone buildings, six in number, with work shops attached to them, after the mode so happily begun by Fellenberg. In these work shops the young men worked during leisure hours, every one learning some trade or 57some handicraft, by which he could earn a living if necessity required it. Large gardens lay in the rear, cultivated entirely by the labour of the students, particularly by those who were intended for clergymen, as many of this class were destined to live in the country. The college was well endowed, and the salaries of the professors were ample. It was able to maintain and educate three hundred boys—the children of the rich and the poor.

“How do they select professors?” said Hastings; “in my day a very scandalous practice prevailed. I hope there is a change in this particular.”

“Oh, I know to what you refer,” said Edgar; “I read an account of it in the Recorder. It seems that when a college wanted a professor, or a president, they either wrote a letter, or sent a committee of gentlemen to the professor of another college, and told him that if he would quit the people who had with so much difficulty made up a salary for him, they would give him a hundred dollars a year more. They made it appear very plausible and profitable, and the idea of being thought of so much consequence quite unsettled his notions of right and wrong, so that, without scruple, he gave notice to his patrons that they must get another man in his place. I believe this is the true state of the case. Is it not?”

“Yes, that is the English of it, as we say. The funds for the support of a professor were gathered together with great difficulty, for there were very few who gave liberally and for the pure love of the advancement of learning. When by the mere force of entreaty, by appealing to the feelings, to reason, to—in short, each man’s pulse was felt, and the ruling passion was consulted and made subservient to the plan of beguiling him of his money. Well, the money thus wrung from the majority,—for you must suppose that a few gave from right 58motives,—was appropriated to the salary of a professor, and then the question arose as to the man to be selected. They run their eye over the whole country, and, finally, the fame of some one individual induced them to consider him as a suitable candidate. This man was doing great service where he was; the college, almost gone to decay, was resuscitated by his exertions; students came from all parts on the faith of his remaining there; in fact, he had given an impulse to the whole district. What a pity to remove such a man from a place where the benefits of his labour and his energies were so great, and where his removal would produce such regrets and such a deteriorating change! But our new professor, being established in the new college, instead of going to work with the same alacrity, and with the same views, which views were to spend his life in promoting the interests of the college which he had helped to raise, now began to look ‘a-head,’ as the term is, and he waited impatiently for the rise of another establishment, in the city perhaps, where every thing was more congenial to his newly awakened tastes. Thus it went on—change, change, for ever; and in the end he found himself much worse off than if he had remained in the place which first patronised him. It is certainly a man’s duty to do the best he can for the advancement of his own interest, and if he can get five hundred dollars a year more in one place than in another, he has a right to do it; but the advantage of change is always problematical. The complaint is not so much against him, however, as against those who so indelicately inveigle him away.”

“Yes. I can easily imagine how hurtful in its effects such a policy would be, for instance, to a merchant, although it is pernicious in every case. But here is a merchant—he has regularly inducted 59a clerk in all the perplexities and mysteries of his business; the young man becomes acquainted with his private affairs, and by his acuteness and industry he relieves his employer of one half of his anxieties and cares. The time is coming when he might think it proper to raise the salary of the young man, but his neighbours envy the merchant’s prosperity, and they want to take advantage of the talent which has grown up under his vigilance and superintending care. ‘If he does so well for a man who gives him but five hundred dollars a year, he will do as well, or better, for ten.’ So they go underhandedly to work, and the young man gives the merchant notice that his neighbour has offered him a larger salary. The old Recorder is quite indignant at this mean and base mode of bettering the condition of one man or one institution at the expense of another. But was it the case also with house servants?—did the women of your day send a committee or write a letter to the servant of one of their friends, offering higher wages—for the cases are exactly similar; it is only talent of another form, but equally useful.”

“Oh, no, indeed,” said Hastings—“then the sex showed their superior delicacy and refinement. It was thought most disgraceful and unladylike conduct to enveigle away the servant of a neighbour, or, in fact, of a stranger; I have heard it frequently canvassed. A servant, a clerk, a professor, or a clergyman, nine times out of ten, would be contented in his situation if offers of this kind were not forced upon him. A servant cannot feel an attachment to a mistress when she contemplates leaving her at the first offer; no tender feeling can subsist between them, and in the case of a clergyman, the consequence is very bad both to himself and his parish. In the good old times”—

“And in the good new times, if you please,” said 60Edgar; “for I know what you are going to say. In our times there is no such thing as changing a clergyman. Why, we should as soon think of changing our father! A clergyman is selected with great care for his piety and learning—but principally for his piety; and, in consequence of there being no old clergymen out of place, he is a young man, who comes amongst us in early life, and sees our children grow up around him, he becomes acquainted with their character, and he has a paternal eye over their eternal welfare. They love and reverence him, and it is their delight to do him honour. His salary is a mere trifle perhaps, for in some country towns a clergyman does not get more than five or six hundred dollars a year, but his wants are all supplied with the most affectionate care. He receives their delightful gifts as a father receives the gifts of his children; he is sure of being amply provided for, and he takes no thought of what he is to eat or what he is to wear. He pays neither house rent, for there is always a parsonage; nor taxes; he pays neither physician nor teacher; his library is as good as the means of his congregation can afford; and there he is with a mind free from worldly solicitude, doing good to the souls of those who so abundantly supply him with worldly comforts. In your day, as the Recorder states”—

“Yes,” said Hastings, “in my day, things were bad enough, for a clergyman was more imposed upon than any other professional man. He was expected to subscribe to every charity that was set on foot—to every mission that was sent out—to every church that was to be built—to every paper that related to church offices; he had to give up all his time to his people—literally all his time, for they expected him to visit at their houses, not when ill, or when wanting spiritual consolation, 61for that he would delight to do, but in the ordinary chit-chat, gossiping way, that he might hear them talk of their neighbours’ backslidings, of this one who gave expensive supper parties, and of another who gave balls and went to theatres. Never was there a man from whom so much was exacted, and to whom so little was given. There were clergymen, in New York and Philadelphia, belonging to wealthy congregations, who never so much as received a plum cake for the new year’s table, or a minced pie at Christmas, or a basket of fruit in summer; yet he was expected to entertain company at all times. His congregation never seemed to recollect that, with his limited means, he could not lay up a cent for his children. Other salaried men could increase their means by speculation, or by a variety of methods, but a clergyman had to live on with the melancholy feelings that when he died his children must be dependent on charity. Women did do their best to aid their pastors, but they could not do much, and even in the way that some of them assisted their clergymen there was a want of judgment; for they took the bread out of the mouths of poor women, who would otherwise have got the money for the very articles which the rich of their congregation made and sold for the benefit of this very man. Feeling the shame and disgrace of his being obliged to subscribe to a charity, they earned among themselves, by sewing, a sum sufficient to constitute him a ‘life member!’ What a hoax upon charity! What a poor, pitiful compliment,—and at whose expense! The twenty-five dollars thus necessary to be raised, which was to constitute their beloved pastor a life member of a charitable society, would be applied to a better purpose, if they had bought him some rare and valuable book, such as his small means could not allow him to buy.”

62“I am glad to hear that one so much respected by us had those sentiments,” said Edgar, “for the old Recorder, even in the year 1850, speaks of the little reverence that the people felt for their clergy. Now, we vie with each other in making him comfortable; he is not looked upon as a man from whom we are to get our pennyworth, as we do from those of other professions—he is our pastor, a dear and endearing word, and we should never think of dismissing him because he had not the gift of eloquence, or because he was wanting in grace of action, or because he did not come amongst us every day to listen to our fiddle-faddle. When we want spiritual consolement, or require his services in marriage, baptism, or burial, then he is at his post, and no severity of weather withholds him from coming amongst us. In turn we call on him at some stated period, when he can be seen at his ease and enjoy the sight of our loving faces, and happy is the child who has been patted on the head by him. When he grows old we indulge him in preaching his old sermons, or in reading others that have stood the test of time, and when the infirmities of age disable him from attending to his duties, we draw him gently away and give him a competence for the remainder of his life. What we should do for our father, we do for our spiritual father.”

“I am truly rejoiced at this,” said Hastings, “for in my day a clergyman never felt secure of the affections of his people. If he was deficient in that external polish, which certainly is a charm in an orator, or was wanting in vehemence of action, or in enthusiasm, the way to displace him was simple and easy: dissatisfaction showed itself in every action of theirs—to sum up all, they ‘held him uneasy,’ and many a respectable, godly man was forced to relinquish his hold on his cure to give place to a younger and a more popular one.”

63“Do you send a committee to a popular clergyman, and cajole him away from his congregation, by offering him a larger salary or greater perquisites?”

“Oh no—never, never; the very question shocks me. Our professors and our clergymen are taken from the colleges and seminaries where they are educated. They are young, generally, and are the better able to adapt themselves to the feelings and capacities of their students and their congregation. Parents give up the idle desire which they had in your time, of hearing fine preaching at the expense of honour and delicacy. When a congregation became very much attached to their pastor, and he was doing good amongst them, it was cruel to break in upon their peace and happiness merely because it was in a person’s power to do this. We are certainly much better pleased to have a clergyman with fine talents and a graceful exterior, but we value him more for goodness of heart and honest principles. But, however gifted he may be, we never break the tenth commandment, we never desire to take him away from our neighbour, nor even in your time do I think a clergyman would ever seek to leave his charge, unless strongly importuned.”

“Pray can you tell me,” said Hastings, “what has become of that vast amount of property which belonged to the —— in New York?”

“Oh, it did a vast deal of good; after a time it was discovered that the trustees had the power of being more liberal with it; other churches, or rather all the Episcopal churches in the state, were assisted, and, finally, each church received a yearly sum, sufficient to maintain a clergyman. Every village, therefore, had a church and a clergyman; and in due time, from this very circumstance, the Episcopalians came to be more numerous in New 64York than any other sect. It is not now as it was in your time, in the year 1835; then a poor clergyman, that he might have the means to live, was compelled to travel through two, three, and sometimes four parishes: all these clubbing together to make up the sum of six hundred dollars in a year. Now this was scandalous, when that large trust had such ample means in its power to give liberally to every church in the state.”

“Why, yes,” said Hastings, “the true intent of accumulating wealth in churches, is to advance religion; for what other purposes are the funds created? I used to smile when I saw the amazing liberality of the trustees of this immense fund; they would, in the most freezing and pompous manner, dole out a thousand dollars to this church, and a thousand to that, making them all understand that nothing more could be done, as they were fearful, even in doing this, that they had gone beyond their charter.”

“Just as if they did not know,” said Edgar, “that any set of men, in any legislature, would give them full powers to expend the whole income in the cause of their own peculiar religion. Why I cannot tell how many years were suffered to elapse before they raised what was called a Bishop’s Fund, and you know better than I do, how it was raised, or rather, how it commenced. And the old Recorder of Self-Inflicted Miseries, states, that the fund for the support of decayed clergymen and their families, was raised by the poor clergymen themselves. Never were people so hardly used as these ministers of the Gospel. You were an irreverent, exacting race in your day; you expected more from a preacher than from any other person to whom they gave salaries—they were screwed down to the last thread of the screw; people would have their pennyworth out of them. It is no 65wonder that you had such poor preachers in your day; why few men of liberal education, aware of all the exactions and disabilities under which the sacred cloth laboured, would ever encounter them. But, now, every village has its own pastor; and some of them are highly gifted men, commanding the attention of the most intelligent people. The little churches are filled, throughout the summer, with such of the gentry of the cities who can afford to spend a few months in the country during the warm weather. No one, however, has the indecency or the unfeelingness to covet this preacher for their own church in the city. They do not attempt to bribe him away, but leave him there, satisfied that the poor people who take such delight in administering to his wants and his comforts, should have the benefit of his piety, his learning and his example. Why, the clergymen, now, are our best horticulturists too. It is to them that we owe the great advancement in this useful art. They even taught, themselves, while at college, and now they encourage their parishioners to cultivate gardens and orchards. Every village, as well as town and city, has a large garden attached to it, in which the children of the poor are taught to work, so that to till the earth and to ‘make two blades of grass grow where only one grew before,’ is now the chief aim of every individual; and we owe this, principally, to our pastors. I can tell you that it is something now to be a country clergyman.”

“But how were funds raised for the purchase of these garden and orchard spots?”

“Why, through the means of the general tax, that which, in your day, would have been called direct tax.”

“Direct tax! Why my dear Edgar, such a thing could never have been tolerated in my time; people would have burnt the man in effigy for only 66proposing such a thing. It was once or twice attempted, indirectly, and in a very cautious way, but it would not do.”

“Yes—direct tax—I knew you would be startled, for the old Recorder of Self-Inflicted Miseries states that at the close of Daniel Webster’s administration something of the kind was suggested, but even then, so late as the year 1850, it was violently opposed. But a new state of things gradually paved the way for it, and now we cannot but pity the times when all the poor inhabitants of this free country were taxed so unequally. There is now, but one tax, and each man is made to pay according to the value of his property, or his business, or his labour. A land-holder, a stock-holder and the one who has houses and bonds and mortgages, pays so much per cent, on the advance of his property, and for his annual receipts—the merchant, with a fluctuating capital, pays so much on his book account of sales—the mechanic and labourer, so much on their yearly receipts, for we have no sales on credit now—that demoralizing practice has been abolished for upwards of a century.”

“The merchants, then,” said Hastings, “pay more than any other class of men, for there are the customhouse bonds.”

“Yes,” said Edgar, “I recollect reading in the Recorder of Self-Inflicted Miseries,—you must run your eye over that celebrated newspaper—that all goods imported from foreign ports had to pay duties, as it was called. But every thing now is free to come and go, and as the custom prevails all over the world, there is no hardship to any one. What a demoralizing effect that duty or tariff system produced; why honesty was but a loose term then, and did not apply to every act as it now does. The Recorder was full of the exposures that were yearly occurring, of defrauding the revenue, as it was called. 67Some of these frauds were to a large amount; and then it was considered as a crime; but when a man smuggled in hats, shoes, coats and other articles of the like nature, he was suffered to go free; such small offences were winked at as if defrauding the revenue of a dollar were not a crime per se as well as defrauding it of a thousand dollars—just as if murdering an infant were not as much murder as if the life had been taken from a man—just as if killing a man in private, because his enemy had paid you to do it, was not as much murder in the first degree as if the government had paid you for killing a dozen men in battle in open day—just as if”—

“Just as if what?” said the astonished Hastings, “has the time come when killing men by wholesale, in war, is accounted a crime?”

“Yes, thank Heaven,” said Edgar, “that blessed time has at length arrived; it is upwards of one hundred and twenty years since men were ordered to kill one another in that barbarous manner. Why the recital of such cruel and barbarous deeds fills our young children with horror. The ancient policy of referring the disputes of nations to single combat, was far more humanizing than the referring such disputes to ten thousand men on each side; for, after all, it was ‘might that made right.’ Because a strong party beats a weaker one, that is not a proof that the right was in the strong one; yet, still, if men had no other way of settling their disputes but by spilling blood, then that plan was the most humane which only sacrificed two or one man. As to national honour! why not let the few settle it? why drag the poor sailors and soldiers to be butchered like cattle to gratify the fine feelings of a few morbidly constructed minds?”

“Oh, that my good father, Valentine Harley, could have seen this day,” said Hastings. “But 68this bloodthirsty, savage propensity—this murdering our fellow creatures in cold blood, as it were, was cured by degrees I presume. What gave the first impulse to such a blessed change?”

“The old Recorder states that it was brought about by the influence of women; it was they who gave the first impulse. As soon as they themselves were considered as of equal importance with their husbands—as soon as they were on an equality in money matters, for after all, people are respected in proportion to their wealth, that moment all the barbarisms of the age disappeared. Why, in your day, a strange perverted system had taken deep root; then, it was the man that was struck by another who was disgraced in public opinion, and not the one who struck him. It was that system which fermented and promoted bloodthirstiness, and it was encouraged and fostered by men and by women both.

“But as soon as women had more power in their hands, their energies were directed another way; they became more enlightened as they rose higher in the scale, and instead of encroaching on our privileges, of which we stood in such fear, women shrunk farther and farther from all approach to men’s pursuits and occupations. Instead of congregating, as they did in your time, to beg for alms to establish and sustain a charity, that they might have some independent power of their own—for this craving after distinction was almost always blended with their desire to do good—they united for the purpose of exterminating that war seed above mentioned—that system which fastened the disgrace of a blow on the one who received it. This was their first effort; they then taught their children likewise, that to kill a man in battle, or men in battle, when mere national honour was the war cry, or when we had been robbed of our money 69on the high seas, was a crime of the blackest die, and contrary to the divine precepts of our Saviour. They taught them to abstain from shedding human blood, excepting in self defence—excepting in case of invasion.

“They next taught them to reverence religion; for until bloodthirstiness was cured, how could a child reverence our Saviour’s precepts? How could we recommend a wholesome, simple diet to a man who had been accustomed to riot in rich sauces and condiments? They had first to wean them from the savage propensities that they had received through the maddening influence of unreflecting men, before a reverence for holy things could be excited. Then it was that clergymen became the exalted beings in our eyes that they now are—then it was that children began to love and respect them. As soon as their fathers did their mothers the poor justice of trusting them with all their property, the children began to respect her as they ought, and then her words were the words of wisdom. It was then, and not till then, that war and duelling ceased. We are amazed at what we read. What! take away a man’s life because he has robbed us of money! Hang a man because he has forged our name for a few dollars! No: go to our prisons, there you will see the murderer’s fate—solitary confinement, at hard labour, for life! that is his punishment; but murders are very rare now in this country. A man stands in greater dread of solitary confinement at hard labour than he does of hanging. In fact, according to our way of thinking, now, we have no right, by the Divine law, to take that away from a human being for which we can give no equivalent. It is right to prevent a murderer from committing still farther crime; and this we do by confining him for life at hard labour, and alone.”

70“Women, you say, produced a reform in that miserable code called the law of honour.”

“Yes, thanks be to them for it. Why, as the old Recorder states, if a man did not challenge the fellow who struck him, he was obliged to quit the army or the navy, and be for ever banished as a coward, and it was considered as disgraceful in a private citizen to receive a blow without challenging the ruffian that struck him. But the moment that women took the office in hand, that moment the thing was reversed. They entered into a compact not to receive a man into their society who had struck another, unless he made such ample apology to the injured person as to be forgiven by him; and not only that, but his restoration to favour was to be sued for by the injured party himself. A man soon became cautious how he incurred the risk.”

“It often occurred to me,” said Hastings, “that women had much of the means of moral reform in their power; but they always appeared to be pursuing objects tending rather to weaken than to strengthen morals. They acted with good intentions, but really wanted judgment to select the proper method of pursuing their benevolent schemes. Only look at their toiling as they did to collect funds towards educating poor young men for the ministry.”

“Oh, those young men,” replied Edgar, “were, no doubt, their sons or brothers, and even then they must have been working at some trade to assist their parents or some poor relation, and thus had to neglect themselves.”

“No, indeed,” said Hastings, “I assure you these young men were entire strangers, persons that they never saw in their lives, nor ever expected to see.”

“Then, all I can say is, that the women were to be pitied for their mistaken zeal, and the men 71ought to have scorned such aid—but the times are altered: no man, no poor man stands in need of women’s help now, as they have trades or employments that enable them to educate themselves. Only propose such a thing now and see how it would be received; why a young man would think you intended to insult him. We pursue the plan so admirably begun in your day by the celebrated Fellenberg. When we return this way again, I will show you the work-shops attached to the college—the one we saw in Princeton.”

“While we are thus far on the road, suppose that we go to New York,” said Hastings, “I was bound thither when that calamity befell me. I wonder if I shall see a single house remaining that I saw three hundred years ago.”

Edgar laughed—“You will see but very few, I can tell you,” said he, “houses, in your day, were built too slightly to stand the test of one century. At one time, the corporation of the city had to inspect the mortar, lest it should not be strong enough to cement the bricks! And it frequently happened that houses tumbled down, not having been built strong enough to bear their own weight. A few of the public buildings remain, but they have undergone such changes that you will hardly recognize them. The City Hall, indeed, stands in the same place, but if you approach it, in the rear, you will find that it is of marble, and not freestone as the old Recorder says it was in your time. But since the two great fires at the close of the years 1835 and 1842 the city underwent great alterations.”

“Great fires; in what quarter of the city were they? They must have been disasters, indeed, to be remembered for three hundred years.”

“Yes, the first destroyed nearly seven hundred houses, and about fifteen millions of property; and the second, upwards of a thousand houses, and 72about three millions of property; but excepting that it reduced a number of very respectable females to absolute want, the merchants, and the city itself, were greatly benefited by it. There were salutary laws enacted in consequence of it, that is, after the second fire; for instance, the streets in the burnt districts were made wider; the houses were better and stronger built; the fire engines were drawn by horses, and afterwards by a new power: firemen were not only exempt from jury and militia duty, but they had a regular salary while they served out their seven years’ labour; and if any fireman lost his life, or was disabled, his family received the salary for a term of years. The old Recorder says that there was not a merchant of any enterprise who did not recover from his losses in three years.”

“But what became of the poor women who lost all their property? did they lose insurance stock? for I presume the insurance companies became insolvent.”

“The poor women?—oh, they remained poor—nothing in your day ever happened to better their condition when a calamity like that overtook them. Men had enough to do to pity and help themselves. Yes, their loss was in the insolvency of the insurance companies; but stock is safe enough now, for the last tremendous fire (they did not let the first make the impression it ought to have done,) roused the energies and sense of the people, and insurance is managed very different. Every house, now, whether of the rich or the poor man, is insured. It has to pay so much additional tax, and the corporation are the insurers. But the tax is so trifling that no one feels it a burden; our houses are almost all fire-proof since the discovery of a substance which renders wood almost proof against fire. But I have a file of the Recorder of Self-Inflicted 73Miseries, and you will see the regular gradation from the barbarisms of your day to the enlightened times it has been permitted you to see.”

“But the water, in my day,”—poor Hastings never repeated this without a sigh—“in my day the city was supplied by water from a brackish stream, but there was a plan in contemplation to bring good water to the city from the distance of forty miles.”

“Where, when was that? I do not remember to have read any thing about it.—Oh, yes, there was such a scheme, and it appears to me they did attempt it, but whatever was the cause of failure I now forget; at present they have a plentiful supply by means of boring. Some of these bored wells are upwards of a thousand feet deep.”

“Why the Manhattan Company made an attempt of this kind in my time, but they gave it up as hopeless after going down to the depth of six or seven hundred feet.”

“Yes, I recollect; but only look at the difficulties they had to encounter. In the first place, the chisel that they bored with was not more than three or four inches wide; of course, as the hole made by this instrument could be no larger, there was no possibility of getting the chisel up if it were broken off below, neither could they break or cut it into fragments. If such an accident were to occur at the depth of six hundred feet, this bored hole would have to be abandoned. We go differently to work now; with our great engines we cut down through the earth and rock, as if it were cheese, and the wells are of four feet diameter. As they are lined throughout with an impervious cement, the overflowing water does not escape. Every house is now supplied from this never-failing source—the rich, and the poor likewise, use this water, and it is excellent. All the expense comes within the one yearly general tax: when a man builds he 74knows that pipes are to be conveyed through his house, and he knows also that his one tax comprehends the use of water. He pays so much per centum for water, for all the municipal arrangement, for defence of harbour, for the support of government, &c., and as there is such a wide door open, such a competition, his food and clothing do not cost half as much as they did in your day.”

“You spoke of wells a thousand feet deep and four feet wide; what became of all the earth taken from them—stones I should say.”

“Oh, they were used for the extension of the Battery. Do you remember, in your day, an ill constructed thing called Fort William, or Castle Garden? Well, the Battery was filled up on each side from that point, so that at present there are at least five acres of ground more attached to it than when you saw it, and as we are now levelling a part of Brooklyn heights, we intend to fill it out much farther. The Battery is a noble promenade now.”

They reached New York by the slow line at two o’clock, having travelled at the rate of thirty miles an hour; and after walking up Broadway to amuse themselves with looking at the improvements that had taken place since Hastings last saw it—three hundred years previous—they stopped at the Astor Hotel. This venerable building, the City Hall, the Public Mart, the St. Paul’s Church, and a stone house at the lower end of the street, built by governor Jay, were all that had stood the test of ages. The St. Paul was a fine old church, but the steeple had been taken down and a dome substituted, as was the fashion of all the churches in the city—the burial yards of all were gone—houses were built on them:—vaults, tombs, graves, monuments—what had become of them?

The Astor Hotel, a noble building, of simple and 75chaste architecture, stood just as firm, and looked just as well, as it did when Hastings saw it. Why should it not? stone is stone, and three hundred years more would pass over it without impairing it. This shows the advantage of stone over brick. Mr. Astor built for posterity, and he has thus perpetuated his name. He was very near living as long as this building; the planning and completing of it seemed to renovate him, for his life was extended to his ninety-ninth year. This building proves him to have been a man of fine taste and excellent judgment, for it still continues to be admired.

“But how is this?” said Hastings, “I see no houses but this one built by Mr. Astor that are higher than three stories; it is the case throughout the city, stores and all.”

“Since the two great fires of 1835 and 1842, the corporation forbid the building of any house or store above a certain height. Those tremendous fires, as I observed, brought people to their senses, and they now see the folly of it.

“The ceilings are not so high as formerly; more regard is shown to comfort. Why the old Recorder of Self-Inflicted Miseries states, that men were so indifferent about the conveniences and comforts of life, that they would sometimes raise the ceilings to the great height of fourteen and fifteen feet! Nay, that they did so in despite of their wives’ health, never considering how hard it bore on the lungs of those who were affected with asthma or other visceral complaints. Heavens and earth! how little the ease and pleasure of women were consulted in your day.”

“Yes, that appears all very true,” said Hastings, “but you must likewise recollect that these very women were quite as eager as their husbands to live in houses having such high flights of stairs.”

76“Poor things,” exclaimed Edgar, “to think of their being trained to like and desire a thing that bore so hard on them. Only consider what a loss of time and breath it must be to go up and down forty or fifty times a day, for your nurseries were, it seems, generally in the third story. We love our wives too well now to pitch our houses so high up in the air. The Philadelphians had far more humanity, more consideration; they always built a range of rooms in the rear of the main building, and this was a great saving of time and health.”

“Where, at length, did they build the custom house?” said Hastings; “I think there was a difficulty in choosing a suitable spot for it.”

“Oh, I recollect,” said Edgar. “Why they did at length decide, and one was built in Pine street; but that has crumbled away long since. You know that we have no necessity for a custom house now, as all foreign goods come free of duty. This direct tax includes all the expenses of the general and state governments, and it operates so beautifully that the rich man now bears his full proportion towards the support of the whole as the poor man does. This was not the case in your day. Only think how unequally it bore on the labourer who had to buy foreign articles, such as tea, and sugar, and coffee, for a wife and six or eight children, and to do all this with his wealth, which was the labour of his hands. The rich man did not contribute the thousandth part of his proportion towards paying for foreign goods, nor was he taxed according to his revenue for the support of government. The direct tax includes the poor man’s wealth, which is his labour, and the rich man’s wealth, which is his property.”

“But have the merchants no mart—no exchange? According to the map you showed me of the two great fires, the first exchange was burnt.”

77“Yes, the merchants have a noble exchange. Did you not see that immense building on State street, surrounded by an area? After the first great fire they purchased—that is, a company purchased—the whole block that included State street in front, Pearl street in the rear, and Whitehall street at the lower end. All mercantile business is transacted there, the principal post office and the exchange are there now; the whole go under the general name of Mart—the City Mart.”

“Is it not inconvenient to have the post office so far from the centre of business?—it was a vexed question in my day,” said Hastings.

“You must recollect that even then, central as the post office was, there were many sub-post offices. If men in your day were regardless of the many unnecessary steps that their wives were obliged to take, they were very careful of sparing themselves. We adopt the plan now of having two sets of post men or letter carriers; one set pass through the streets at a certain hour to receive letters, their coming being announced by the chiming of a few bells at their cars, and the other set delivering letters. They both ride in cars, for now that no letter, far or near, pays more than two cents postage—which money is to pay the letter carriers themselves—the number of letters is so great that cars are really necessary. All the expense of the post office department is defrayed from the income or revenue of the direct tax—and hence the man of business pays his just proportion too. It was a wise thing, therefore, to establish all the mercantile offices near the Battery; they knew that the time was coming when New York and Brooklyn would be as one city.”

“One city!” exclaimed Hastings; “how can that be? If connected by bridges, how can the ships pass up the East river?”

78“You forget that our vessels have no masts; they pass under the bridges here as they do in the Delaware.”

“Oh, true, I had forgotten; but my head is so confused with all the wonders that I see and hear, that you must excuse my mistakes. The old theatre stood there, but it has disappeared, I suppose. It was called the Park Theatre. How are the play houses conducted now? is there only one or two good actors now among a whole company?”

“Well, that question really does amuse me. I dare say that the people of your day were as much astonished at reading the accounts handed down to them of the fight of gladiators before an audience, as we are at your setting out evening after evening to hear the great poets travestied. If we could be transported back to your time, how disgusted we should be to spend four hours in listening to rant and ignorance. All our actors now, are men and women of education, such as the Placides, the Wallacks, the Kembles, the Keans, of your day. I assure you, we would not put up with inferior talent in our cities. It is a rich treat now to listen to one of Shakspeare’s plays, for every man and woman is perfect in the part. The whole theatrical corps is held in as much esteem, and make a part of our society, as those of any other profession do. The worthless and the dissolute are more scrupulously rejected by that body than they are from the body of lawyers or doctors; in fact it is no more extraordinary now, than it was in your day to see a worthless lawyer, or merchant, or physician, and to see him tolerated in society too, if he happen to be rich. But there is no set of people more worthy of our friendship and esteem than the players. A great change, to be sure, took place in their character, as soon as they had reaped the benefit of a college education. I presume you 79know that there is a college now for the education of public actors?”

“Is it possible?” said Hastings; “then I can easily imagine the improvements you speak of; for with the exception of the few—the stars, as they were called—there was but little education among them.”

“Here it is that elocution is taught, and here all public speakers take lessons,” said Edgar; “you may readily imagine what an effect such an institution would have on those who intended to become actors. In your day, out of the whole theatrical corps of one city, not more than six or seven, perhaps, could tell the meaning of the words they used in speaking, to say nothing of the sense of the author. There is no more prejudice now against play-acting than there is against farming. The old Recorder states, that, before our revolution, the farmers were of a more inferior race, and went as little into polite society as the mechanics did. Even so far back as your time a farmer was something of a gentleman, and why an actor should not be a gentleman is to us incomprehensible. One of the principal causes of this change of personal feeling towards actors has arisen from our having expunged all the low and indelicate passages from the early plays. Shakspeare wrote as the times then were, but his works did not depend on a few coarse and vulgar passages for their popularity and immortality; they could bear to be taken out, as you will perceive, for the space they occupied is not now known; the adjoining sentence closed over them, as it were, and they are forgotten. There were but few erasures to be made in the writings of Sir Walter Scott; the times were beginning to loathe coarse and indelicate allusions in your day, and, indeed, we may thank the other sex for this great improvement. They never disgraced 80their pages with sentences and expressions which would excite a blush. Look at the purity of such writers as Miss Burney, Mrs. Radcliffe, Miss Edgeworth, Miss Austin, Madame Cotton, and others of their day in Europe,—it is to woman’s influence that we owe so much. See what is done by them now; why they have fairly routed and scouted out that vile, disgraceful, barbarous practice which was even prevalent in your time—that of beating and bruising the tender flesh of their children.”

“I am truly rejoiced at that,” said Hastings, “but I hope they extended their influence to the schools likewise—I mean the common schools; for, in my day in the grammar school of a college, a man who should bruise a child’s flesh by beating or whipping him would have been kicked out of society.”

“Why, I thought that boys were whipped in the grammar schools also. In the year 1836, it appears to me, that I remember to have read of the dismissal of some professor for injuring one of the boys by flogging him severely.”

“I do not recollect it; but you say 1836—alas! I was unconscious then. It was the remains of barbarism; how a teacher could get roused to such height of passion as to make him desire to bruise a child’s flesh, I cannot conceive—when the only crime of the poor little sufferer was either an unwillingness or an inability to recite his lessons. I can imagine that a man, when drunk, might bruise a child’s flesh in such a shocking manner as that the blood would settle under the skin, because liquor always brutalizes. Is drunkenness as prevalent now as formerly?”

“Oh no, none but the lowest of the people drink to excess now, and they have to get drunk on cider and wine, for spirituous liquors have been prohibited 81by law for upwards of two hundred years. A law was passed in the year 1901, granting a divorce to any woman whose husband was proved to be a drunkard. This had a good effect, for a drunkard knew that if he was abandoned by his wife he must perish; so it actually reclaimed many drunkards at the time, and had a salutary effect afterwards. Besides this punishment, if a single man, or a bachelor, as he is called, was found drunk three times, he was put in the workhouse and obliged to have his head shaved, and to work at some trade. It is a very rare thing to see a drunkard now. But what are you looking for?”

“I thought I might see a cigar box about—not that I ever smoke”—

“A what?—a cigar? Oh yes, I know—little things made of tobacco leaves; but you have to learn that there is not a tobacco plantation in the world now. That is one of the most extraordinary parts of your history: that well educated men could keep a pungent and bitter mass of leaves in their mouth for the pleasure of seeing a stream of yellow water running out of it, is the most incomprehensible mystery to me; and then, to push the dust of these leaves up their nostrils, which I find by the old Recorder that they did, for the mere pleasure of hearing the noise that was made by their noses! The old Recorder called their pocket handkerchiefs flags of abomination.”

Hastings thought it was not worth while to convince the young man that the disgusting practice was not adopted for such purposes as he mentioned. In fact his melancholy had greatly increased since their arrival in this city, and he determined to beg his young friend to return the next day to their home, and to remain quiet for another year, to see if time could reconcile him to his strange fate. He 82took pleasure in rambling through the city hall, and the park, which remained still of the same shape, and he was pleased likewise to see that many of the streets at right angles with Broadway were more than twice the width that they were in 1835. For instance, all the streets from Wall street up to the Park were as wide as Broadway, and they were opened on the other side quite down to the Hudson.

“Yes,” said Edgar, “it was the great fire of 1842 which made this salutary change; but here is a neat building—you had nothing of this kind in your time. This is a house where the daughters of the poor are taught to sew and cut out wearing apparel. I suppose you know that there are no men tailors now.”

“What, do women take measure?”

“Oh no, men are the measurers, but women cut out and sew. It is of great advantage to poor women that they can cut out and make their husbands’ and children’s clothes. The old Recorder states that women—poor women—in the year 1836, were scarcely able to cut out their own clothes. But just about that date, a lady of this city suggested the plan of establishing an institution of this kind, and it was adopted. Some benevolent men built the house and left ample funds for the maintenance of a certain number of poor girls, with a good salary for those who superintend it. And here is another house: this is for the education of those girls whose parents have seen better days. Here they are taught accounts and book-keeping—which, however, in our day is not so complicated as it was, for there is no credit given for any thing. In short these girls are instructed in all that relates to the disposal of money; our women now comprehend what is meant by stocks, and dividends, and loans, and tracts, and bonds, and mortgages.”

83“Do women still get the third of their husband’s estate after their husband’s death?”

“Their thirds? I don’t know what you mean—Oh, I recollect; yes, in your day it was the practice to curtail a woman’s income after her husband’s death. A man never then considered a woman as equal to himself; but, while he lived, he let her enjoy the whole of his income equally with himself, because he could not do otherwise and enjoy his money; but when he died, or rather, when about making his will, he found out that she was but a poor creature after all, and that a very little of what he had to leave would suffice for her. Nay, the old Recorder says that there have been rich men who ordered the very house in which they lived, and which had been built for their wives’ comfort, during their life time, to be sold, and who thus compelled their wives to live in mean, pitiful houses, or go to lodgings.”

“Yes,” said Hastings,—quite ashamed of his own times,—“but then you know the husband was fearful that his wife would marry again, and all their property would go to strangers.”

“Well, why should not women have the same privileges as men? Do you not think that a woman had the same fears? A man married again and gave his money to strangers—did he not? The fact is, we consider that a woman has the same feelings as we have ourselves—a thing you never once thought of—and now the property that is made during marriage is as much the woman’s as the man’s; they are partners in health and in sickness, in joy and in sorrow—they enjoy every thing in common while they live together, and why a woman, merely on account of her being more helpless, should be cut off from affluence because she survives her husband, is more 84than we of this century can tell. Why should not children wait for the property till after her death, as they would for their father’s death? It was a relic of barbarism, but it has passed away with wars and bloodshed. We educate our women now, and they are as capable of taking care of property as we are ourselves. They are our trustees, far better than the trustees you had amongst you in your day—they seldom could find it in their hearts to allow a widow even her poor income. I suppose they thought that a creature so pitifully used by her husband was not worth bestowing their honesty upon.”

“But the women in my day,” said Hastings, “seemed to approve of this treatment: in fact, I have known many very sensible women who thought it right that a man should not leave his wife the whole of his income after his death. But they were beginning to have their eyes opened, for I recollect that the subject was being discussed in 1835.”

“Yes, you can train a mind to acquiesce in any absurd doctrine, and the truth is, that as women were then educated, they were, for the most part, unfit to have the command of a large estate. But I cannot find that the children were eventually benefited by it; for young men and women, coming into possession of their father’s estate at the early age of twenty-one, possessed no more business talent than their mother; nor had they even as much prudence and judgment in the management of money matters, as she had. Men seldom thought of this, but generally directed their executors to divide the property among the children as soon as they became of age—utterly regardless of the injustice they were doing their wives, and of the oath which they took when they married—that is, if they married 85according to the forms of the Episcopal church. In that service, a man binds himself by a solemn oath ‘to endow his wife with all his worldly goods.’ If he swears to endow her with all, how can he in safety to his soul, will these worldly goods away from her. We consider the practice of depriving a woman of the right to the whole of her husband’s property after his death, as a monstrous act of injustice, and the laws are now peremptory on this subject.”

“I am certain you are right,” said Hastings, “and you have improved more rapidly in this particular, during a period of three hundred years, than was done by my ancestors in two thousand years before, I can understand now, how it happens, that children have the same respect for their mother, that they only felt for their father in my time. The custom, or laws, being altogether in favour of equality of rights between the parents, the children do not repine when they find that they stand in the same relation of dependence to their mother, that they did to their father; and why this should not be, is incomprehensible to me now, but I never reflected on it before.”

“Yes, there are fewer estates squandered away in consequence of this, and society is all the better for it. Then to this is added the great improvement in the business education of women. All the retail and detail of mercantile operations are conducted by them. You had some notion of this in your time; for, in Philadelphia, although women were generally only employed to make sales behind the counter, yet some were now and then seen at the head of the establishment. Before our separation from Great Britain, the business of farming was also at a low ebb, and a farmer was but a mean person in public estimation. He ranks now amongst the highest of our business men; and in fact, he is equal to any 86man whether in business or not, and this is the case with female merchants. Even in 1836, a woman who undertook the business of a retail shop, managing the whole concern herself, although greatly respected, she never took her rank amongst the first classes of society. This arose, first, from want of education, and, secondly, from her having lived amongst an inferior set of people. But when women were trained to the comprehension of mercantile operations, and were taught how to dispose of money, their whole character underwent a change, and with this accession of business talent, came the respect from men for those who had a capacity for the conducting of business affairs. Only think what an advantage this is to our children; why our mothers and wives are the first teachers, they give us sound views from the very commencement, and our clerkship begins from the time we can comprehend the distinction of right and wrong.”

“Did not our infant schools give a great impulse to this improvement in the condition of women, and to the improvement in morals, and were not women mainly instrumental in fostering these schools?”

“Yes, that they were; it was chiefly through the influence of their pen and active benevolence, that the scheme arrived at perfection. In these infant schools a child was early taught the mystery of its relation to society; all its good dispositions and propensities were encouraged and developed, and its vicious ones were repressed. The world owes much to the blessed influence of infant schools, and the lower orders were the first to be humanized by them. But I need not dwell on this particular. I shall only point to the improvement in the morals of our people at this day, to convince you that it is owing altogether to the benign influence of women. 87As soon as they took their rank as an equal to man, equal as to property I mean, for they had no other right to desire; there was no longer any struggle, it became their ambition to show how long the world had been benighted by thus keeping them in a degraded state. I say degraded state, for surely it argued in them imbecility or incapacity of some kind, and to great extent, too, when a man appointed executors and trustees to his estate whilst his wife was living. It showed one of three things—that he never considered her as having equal rights with himself; or, that he thought her incompetent to take charge of his property—or, that the customs and laws of the land had so warped his judgment, that he only did as he saw others do, without considering whether these laws and customs were right or wrong. But if you only look back you will perceive, that in every benevolent scheme, in every plan for meliorating the condition of the poor, and improving their morals, it was women’s influence that promoted and fostered it. It is to that healthy influence, that we owe our present prosperity and happiness—and it is an influence which I hope may forever continue.”

It was not to such a man as Hastings that Edgar need have spoken so earnestly; he only wanted to have a subject fairly before him to comprehend it in all its bearings. He rejoiced that women were now equal to men in all that they ever considered as their rights; and he rejoiced likewise that the proper distinction was rigidly observed between the sexes—that as men no longer encroached on their rights, they, in return, kept within the limits assigned them by the Creator. As a man and a Christian, he was glad that this change had taken place; and it was a melancholy satisfaction to feel that with these views, if it had been permitted him to continue 88with his wife, he should have put her on an equality with himself.

The moment his wife and child appeared to his mental vision, he became indifferent to what was passing around him; Edgar, perceiving that he was buried in his own thoughts, proposed that they should return home immediately, and they accordingly passed down Broadway to the Battery, from which place they intended to take a boat. They reached the wharf—a ship had just arrived from the Cape of Good Hope, with a fine cargo. The captain and crew of which were black.

——“That is true,” said Hastings, “I have seen very few negroes; what has become of them. The question of slavery was a very painful one in my time, and much of evil was apprehended in consequence of a premature attempt to hasten their emancipation. I dread to hear how it eventuated.”

“You have nothing to fear on that score,” said Edgar, “for the whole thing was arranged most satisfactorily to all parties. The government was rich in resources, and rich in land; they sold the land, and with the money thus obtained, and a certain portion of the surplus revenue in the course of ten years, they not only indemnified the slaveholders for their loss of property, but actually transplanted the whole of the negro population to Liberia, and to other healthy colonies. The southern planters soon found that their lands could be as easily cultivated by the labour of white men, as by the negroes.”

“But a great number remained, I presume, for it would not have been humane to force those to go who preferred to stay.”

“All that chose to settle in this country were at liberty to do so, and their rights and privileges were respected; but in the course of twenty or thirty 89years, their descendants gradually went over to their own people, who by this time, had firmly established themselves.”

“Did those that remained, ever intermarry with the white population, and were they ever admitted into society?”

“As soon as they became free, as soon as their bodies were unshackled, their minds became enlightened, and as their education advanced, they learned to appreciate themselves properly. They saw no advantage in intermarrying with the whites; on the contrary, they learned, by close investigation, that the negro race becomes extinct in the fourth remove, when marriages took place between the two colours. It seemed to be their pride to keep themselves a distinct people, and to show the world that their organization allowed of the highest grade of mental culture. They seemed utterly indifferent likewise about mixing in the society of white men, for their object and sole aim was to become independent. Many of their descendants left the United States with handsome fortunes. You could not insult a black man more highly than to talk of their intermarrying with the whites—they scorn it much more than the whites did in your time.”

“How do they treat the white people that trade with them in their own country?”

“How? why as Christians—to their praise be it said, they never retaliated. The few excesses they committed whilst they were degraded by slavery, was entirely owing to a misdirection of their energies; but the moment the white man gave up his right over them, that moment all malignant and hostile feelings disappeared. The name of negro is no longer a term of reproach, he is proud of it; and he smiles when he reads in the history of their servitude, how indignant the blacks were at being called 90by that title. They are a prosperous and happy people, respected by all nations, for their trade extends over the whole world. They would never have arrived at their present happy condition if they had sought to obtain their freedom by force; but by waiting a few years—for the best men of their colour saw that the spirit of the times indicated that their day of freedom was near—they were released from bondage with the aid and good wishes of the whole country. It showed their strong good sense in waiting for the turn of the tide in their favour; it proved that they had forethought, and deserved our sympathies.”

“I am glad of all this,” said Hastings—“and the Indians—what has become of them, are they still a distinct people?”

“I am sorry you ask that question,—for it is one on which I do not like to converse—but

“When our own minds were sufficiently enlightened, when our hearts were sufficiently inspired by the humane principles of the Christian religion, we emancipated the blacks. What demon closed up the springs of tender mercy when Indian rights were in question I know not?—but I must not speak of it!”

They now proceeded homewards, and in three hours—for they travelled slowly, that they might the better converse,—they came in sight of the low, stone farm-house, in which poor Hastings had taken his nap of three hundred years. They alighted from the car, and as he wished to indulge himself in 91taking one more look at the interior—for the building was soon to be removed—his young relative left him to apprize his family of their arrival. After casting a glance at Edgar, he entered the house, and seating himself mechanically in the old arm chair, he leaned his head back in mournful reverie. Thoughts innumerable, and of every variety chased each other through his troubled brain; his early youth, his political career, his wife and child, all that they had ever been to him, his excellent father, Valentine Harley, and all their tender relationship, mingled confusedly with the events that had occurred since his long sleep—copyrights—mad dogs—bursting of steam boilers—the two great fires in New-York—direct tax—no duties—post-offices—the improved condition of clergymen—no more wars—no bruising of children’s flesh—women’s rights—Astor’s hotel—New-York Mart in State-street—Negro emancipation—all passed in rapid review, whilst his perplexities to know what became of the Indians were mixed with the rest, and ran through the whole scene. At the same time that all this was galloping through his feverish brain, he caught a glance of his young relative, and in his troubled imagination, it appeared that it was not the Edgar Hastings who had of late been his kind companion, but his own son. He was conscious that this was only a trick of the fancy, and arose from his looking so earnestly at the young man as he left him at the door of the house; but it was a pleasant fancy, and he indulged in it, till a sudden crash or noise of some kind jarred the windows and aroused him. He was sensible that footsteps approached, and he concluded it was his young friend who had returned to conduct him home.

“Edgar—Edgar Hastings—my son is it thou—didst thou not hear the cannon of the Black Hawk—hast thou been sleeping?”

92“Amazement! Was that the voice of his father—was this the good Valentine Harley that now assisted him to rise—and who were those approaching him—was it his darling wife, and was that smiling boy his own son, his little Edgar!”

“You have been asleep, I find, my dear husband,” said the gentle Ophelia, “and a happy sleep it has been for me, for us all. See, here is a letter which makes it unnecessary for you to leave home.”

“And is this reality?—do I indeed hold thee to my heart once more, my Ophelia—oh, my father, what a dream!”

Nothing injures a man’s prospects in life more than a bad name. My father, an honest, good man, never could rise above it, it depressed him to his dying day. His name was Pan, and no one ever spoke to him without some small joke, a thing which my father’s sensitiveness could not bear. He was a gardener and sent the finest of vegetables to market, striving to excel all others—I presume that my taste for horticulture arose from this circumstance.

Adjoining our garden was one that belonged to a man by the name of Patrick O’Brien; he likewise raised fruits and vegetables for sale, and there was a constant strife between him and my father as to who should get the pre-eminence; but it so happened that, although my father had the greatest abundance of large and fine specimens, yet Patrick O’Brien had the largest for the monthly exhibitions. My father was not of a jealous nature, yet he did envy his friend’s success; and there is no knowing whether a breach might not have been made in their long tried friendship but for my excellent mother. She always begged my father to try and try again; and, above all, to try for the yearly fair.

94My father did persevere, and to his great joy, he got three premiums.

“I cannot tell how it has happened, wife,” said he, “I have certainly acquired the premiums, but O’Brien’s tulips were, to my notion, far more beautiful than mine; and you yourself saw how much larger his salad was; and then the early strawberries—I had the greatest quantity, but his were the largest.”

My mother certainly was glad that my father’s spirit was elated, but she was of a timid, nervous temperament, and she could not bear excitement of any kind. She therefore trembled very much whilst he stood talking to her, nor was she the less agitated when Patrick O’Brien entered the room.

“Right glad am I, neighbour Pan, that you have the three prizes this day,” said honest Patrick, “and you must try your luck again, for there’s to be a great prize given next year. Early peas, my boy. Arrah, but won’t I try for them; and you have a fine warm spot for them too. But, mistress Pan, for what are you not wishing your husband joy this bright day, seeing he has what he so long wished for?”

“Mr. O’Brien,” said my mother, the next day, “it must not be done again; my husband will find it out, and he will die of vexation. Pray discourage him from making the attempt next spring, for he will not bear a disappointment so well then as he has hitherto done. Did no one see you put the large strawberries in his dish?”

“No, never a creature, and I’m wondering you’ll mention a thing to me that I have almost forgotten. I was frightful, though, about the Parrot tulip, for one of the gentlemen would keep talking about it, and I had to keep saying, ‘It’s not a Parrot, your honour, it’s a Bijou.’”

95The fact was, that this kind hearted creature could not bear to see my father so crest-fallen, and he determined, as he had borne off so many premiums, to let his friend share the pleasure with him. He slily put three of his finest tulips in the bunch belonging to my father, and, one by one, he put a dozen of his largest strawberries on the dish. He told all this to my poor mother, for which he was very sorry, seeing that it troubled her tender conscience; but, as her husband was not to know of the trick, she endeavoured to forget it also. “And you, too, poor Patrick,” said she, “you feel badly at not getting the prizes; you have had them so long that it must be hard for you to lose them now—and particularly when, by rights, you should have them.”

“Oh, honey, never you mind me; I care more to name your little baby, when it comes; and if you’ll let it be called Patrick, why I have a little matter of money which shall all be his; and we will make the boy a great scholar. I’ll bring him up like a gentleman.”

I was born on St. Patrick’s day; a double reason, as the poor Irishman said, for getting the name; but my mother cared little about that; all she thought of was leaving me to the mercy of heartless strangers. She was in very delicate health, and just lived long enough to hear me call her mother. Her death was a severe blow to my father and my poor godfather, for she was the peacemaker in their little disputes, and the consoler in all their little troubles and miscarriages, of which a gardener, you know, has many. In less than three months I lost my father also; and thus I became entirely thrown on the care of this good and honest Irishman.

As my father was liberal and spirited, it cannot be supposed that he had, in a few short years, made 96much money; when his effects were sold, and every thing converted into money, there only remained about five hundred dollars. A far greater sum, as Patrick said, than he expected to realize; but nothing at all equal to what was necessary. He was a very sanguine creature, and always had a hope that the next year would do wonders; so putting the money thus obtained from my father’s effects into safe hands, he determined on providing for me himself.

Never was there a father so proud of a child as Patrick was of his little godson; and never did a child fare better, for three years, than I did. He dressed me in the finest clothes; and I was never without a lap full of toys; in fact, he could not resist my entreaties for more when we passed a toy shop. He often neglected his work to take me either a riding or walking with him; and even when toiling in the garden, he was uneasy unless I was running around him. But, alas, this state of things was not to last long; he missed my father’s excellent example and my mother’s gentle hints, so he went on as if his income was never to be diminished, and as if he had thousands at his command.

Like all weak people, the moment his affairs became embarrassed, he gave up all endeavours at retrieving them; he ended by neglecting every thing; and when my nurse presented the quarterly account for my board, poor Patrick had to sell a valuable watch to meet the demand. My little property was in the Savings Bank, and, hitherto, untouched; but much as it was against his inclination—and, oh, how sore a thing it was—he was compelled to take up the year’s interest, which he fondly hoped to leave with the principal, to pay the woman for my next quarter.

Thus it went from bad to worse, until it came to utter ruin; and Patrick had sunk so low in public 97esteem, that he could not obtain even the ordinary wages of a common gardener. He seemed to have lost his skill with his pride, and all was aggravated by the thought of being unable to provide for me as he once intended to do. He used to hug me to him and weep over me, calling on my father, but most frequently on my mother, to scorn him and hate him for breaking his promise, which was to educate me, and give me a gentlemanly trade. He was so true to his trust, however, that he never would touch my little patrimony; he only grieved too much, as I observed, at having to draw upon the interest, little as it was. But five shillings a week was not a sum sufficient to satisfy my nurse. She had taken care of me for three years, and had been well paid by my godfather, who likewise made her several valuable presents; but when it came to the shillings, she at once told Patrick, who was thunderstruck at her hardness of heart, that he must get another place for the little spoilt boy; that she found him so troublesome she could keep him no longer.

I shall not tell of the change that came over me, nor the resistance I made to every new face, for I was turned over to a dozen strangers in the course of a year. Nor shall I tell of poor Patrick’s misery at seeing my altered looks and spirits. He rallied a little and went in a gentleman’s service as under gardener, that he might not only be near me, but comfort my little heart, which was breaking with ill usage and neglect. Small as the sum was, which Patrick gave for my board, there were miserable creatures who offered to take me for less, so that one woman, with whom I lived, actually farmed me out, keeping two shillings a week out of the scanty allowance. No one can have an idea how poor little orphans are abused when there are no kind friends to interest themselves for them.

98I was a very unprepossessing child, neither good looking nor pleasant tempered; not that I was really ill-tempered, but that ill usage had stupified me. I never entered into play with the children of my own age, nor did I seek the amusements that were even within my reach. I loved to be alone, to lie under a tree near a brook, listening to the babbling and murmuring of the waters, and fancying that I heard my mother talking to me. Little as I was, I used to frame long conversations with her, and they had the effect of soothing me. Her gentle spirit was for ever present, and constantly encouraging me to bear all, and suffer in silence, and that when I was a man I should be rewarded. I bless the good Irishman’s memory for having so early and so constantly spoken of my parents; particularly of my mother.

A man finds he cannot make his way in the world without honesty and industry, so that, although his father’s example may do much, he has to depend upon his own exertions; he must work, he must be honest, or he cannot attain to any enviable rank. But the tender soothings of a mother, her sympathy, her devotedness, her forgiving temper—all this sinks deep in a child’s heart; and let him wander ever so wide, let him err or let him lead a life of virtue, the remembrance of all this comes like a holy calm over his heart, and he weeps that he has offended her, or he rejoices that he has listened to her disinterested, gentle admonition.

When I reached the age of eight years I was taught to read, and the eagerness with which I proceeded, mastering every difficulty, and overcoming every impediment from cold, hunger and chilblain, might have shown to an observer how suitable this occupation was to my character. Poor Patrick used to boast of my acquirements to every one who 99would listen; and every fresh book that I read through, gave him visions of my future glory.

No one can tell how the poor fellow pinched himself to give me this scanty education, but hard necessity had taught me to think; I was compelled to make use of my judgment, young as I was; and, knowing that he had the sum of five hundred dollars in his possession, for my use, I tried to prevail on him to draw out a fifth part of it for the purpose of paying a better board, and getting me a better teacher. If any one could have seen this poor man as I saw him at that time, thin, bowed down by poverty and neglect, ragged and with scarcely a home, they would have wondered that his honesty could have held out as it did when he had what might be considered as so large a sum within his power. He not only did not touch a penny himself, but he would not take a cent of it from the principal. He distrusted his own judgment, and he distrusted mine, for I was such a mere child; yet his anxiety to give me an education was still uppermost, and he wavered for a long time about adopting the only means of accomplishing it.

He had been digging post holes, one day, for a gentleman, and when his task was finished, he began to speak of the books which he saw lying about—it was a printing office—and, as was most natural to him, he spoke of me. He told the printer of his anxieties and his desire that I should have a good education, and finally he spoke of my proposal respecting the money. The printer told Patrick, that it was very good advice, and he had better take it; for if his object was to educate me, there was no other way but this of effecting it, unless he sent me to a charity school. The blood mounted in the poor fellow’s cheeks at this suggestion, and he told me that he had great difficulty in 100commanding his temper, but his love for me conquered.

As soon as he could swallow the affront—an affront, he said, to my father, and to my angel of a mother; for he, too, never separated my feelings from their’s—he begged the printer to let him bring me there and see how far I had advanced in my learning; but the man did not seem disposed to grant this favour. Bring the boy to me one year from this, and then I shall be better able to judge, said he; mean time, do you see that he is placed with a good teacher; one that will keep him to his studies.

With a heavy heart, Patrick obeyed him, and I thus obtained a knowledge of reading, writing and arithmetic; but he seemed to be failing fast; every time he came to see me he appeared weaker, and was still more wretchedly clad, and I could devise no plan for his comfort. He never complained of his poverty, but of his laziness; and his constant exhortations were, “Patrick, my boy, be industrious; never allow of an idle moment; give over lying under the trees, and do not saunter about when your lessons are over—look at me; I am in rags and despised by every body because I have been an idler.”

At the end of the year, in as good a suit of clothes as my poor godfather could manage to procure for me, I was taken to the printer. He cast a look at me as he stood at his desk writing, and then told us to take a seat. His cold manner struck a chill through my heart, and I crowded myself on Patrick’s chair that I might feel the warmth of his kindness. There we sat, speechless, for half an hour, until the letters were finished and despatched, and then the man turned his head again and gave another look.

“Will you be for speaking to the boy touching 101his learning, your honour?” said honest Patrick, his feelings hurt by this coldness of manner; “or shall we come some other time?”

“I have no time to question him now,” said the printer, “but if he can read and write—here, my boy, write your name on this leaf—Patrick Pan! hem—Pan, is it?”

“Yes, your honour,” said the indignant Irishman, “and it was an honest man that bore it, and gived it to him, and I trust he’ll never disgrace it.”

“I trust so too,” said the man. “He writes legibly, and if you have nothing better to do with him, he may have his food and clothing for the few errands he can do.”

“And Patrick, dear,” said O’Brien, “will you be liking this employment, sure my son it’s a good berth, though a mean one, to what I meant to give you; but you’ll be industrious and mind what’s told you, and I’ll still be looking after you, and you’ll have plenty of books, dear, for they are not scarce here.”

“The boy will have but little chance of meddling with books,” said the printer, “it will be time enough when he is older. Is he to stay now, or do you wish him to come next week? he must be apprenticed to me, you recollect.”

Smothering and choking was the poor fellow for a minute or two; he knew that the hundred dollars was all gone, and that my last quarter had just ended. He knew it was entirely out of his power to assist me any further, so with a mighty effort he made the sacrifice—he transferred me to another.

It was but the work of half an hour, and I became this man’s property; for twelve years he was to rule my destiny. I looked up in his face whilst he was speaking, and I saw nothing to cheer me; his countenance was only expressive of care and deep thought. I cast another glance at him when 102my indentures were signed, and there was no change. Poor Patrick never thought of his looks; he was only alive to the misery of having consigned me to another; of having no longer any power or control over my comforts and enjoyments.

When all was over, and the printer had left us together, the poor man burst into tears, bewailing his cruel fate that would not let him alone, as he said, that he might perform his promise of giving me a good education. “I wanted to be industrious,” said he, “but something always pulled me back and pointed to a toy or a hobby-horse, or a fine suit of clothes, or a ride, or a pleasant walk, and so all these things being more agreeable to my nature, I left my garden for the pleasure of pleasing you, my poor boy; and now you must work for this nigger, who won’t let you touch one of his books even. But remember your mother, Patrick, whatever becomes of you; be honest, and she will be looking down upon you, my jewel; and that will encourage you; and I shall be looking after you too, dear, for all I am—for all I am—in the poor-house. Don’t cry, poor fellow, I did not mean to tell you; but where’s the use of being proud now, when you can’t even get a book to read, but must just be an errand boy and be pushed about any how, and it all comes of my laziness.”

“Oh no, Patrick, you have done every thing for me,” said I, “and only keep a good heart for twelve years, and then I shall have a trade, and I can make you happy and comfortable; but you must come and see me every day, for I shall miss you so much; and there is such a difference between Mr. Bartlett and you. It will kill me if you don’t come every day.”

“Well, child, it is idle to stand here making you more unhappy than you need be; I will come as often as I can; but I shall just walk up and down 103the alley, there, till you get sight of me, for I’ll not be after knocking at the door and shaming you before your new acquaintances, and I all in these old rags.”

So we parted with many a last look and last speech; I following him, poor, ragged, broken down old creature as he was, as far as my eye could see him, and then sat on the stairs in the hall and cried myself asleep; nor did I awake till the bell rang for dinner. Mr. Bartlett pointed to a little room, as he passed me on coming down stairs, telling me to go there and take my seat at the table as soon as the cook told me that the dinner was ready. The cook cast a surly glance at me, and so did the chambermaid, muttering in audible whispers that “here was more trouble; and wondering what could possess Mr. Bartlett to bring such a mere child in the house, one not big enough to fetch a pail of water.”

In the afternoon I was allowed to lounge about the room, no one taking the least notice of me, till the foreman said, “Here is a little errand boy, one of the elder apprentices must take him out when he goes with books and papers, that he may learn to find his way.” Then they all cast a look at me, and seeing my tiny size, and how awkward and poorly clad I was, they made themselves very merry at my expense. But small and contemptible as I appeared, they did not think me too small nor too mean for their services. I was made to toil from morning till night, scarcely sitting down to my impoverished meals; for I always had to wait till the elder boys had finished, and I was scarcely seated before I was wanted. By degrees I lost all pride about my outward appearance. From my infancy I was particularly careful to keep my face and hands clean; but now that I was driven about from place to place I had no time. All I could do was to dip my hands and face hastily in a basin, or a 104pail, or more commonly, under the pump, and either let the water dry off, or else use a pocket-handkerchief. My master never looked after me, nor inquired about me, that I ever heard, so that I was as much neglected as if I was among wild beasts—is not this the case with the most of apprentices?

It was a week, and more, before I had a room to sleep in; and I was forced to lie about on floors, or on benches, wherever my mattress was to be found. At length, by the removal of a young man, I was put up in a small garret room, and in this hole I slept for twelve years. There was one thing, however, which made it endurable; and this was, that the branches of a large buttonwood tree reached up to the window and sheltered it from the afternoon sun; but for this I should have suffered from the heat. Many and many an evening have I been soothed by the gentle rustling of the leaves, as the mild breeze passed over them. It seemed as if the spirit of my mother was there, and I would listen and fancy that I heard her whispering to me, and then I would shut my eyes and let the cool soft air fall on my cheek, and say to myself, Perhaps it is the breath of my mother. To this day, now that I am a man, I still seem to hear that ever-to-beloved voice in the silence of the night, when the summer wind murmurs through the foliage. I used, at that forlorn period of my existence, to give myself up to these delusions till my heart has fairly throbbed with emotion.

I looked around for something to love, but no one ever dreamed of me, all were engaged in their business, or when the day closed, in their own amusement; all that I could draw to me was a poor singed cat, which I coaxed into my garret-room, and domesticated there. I rescued her from the gripe of the cook’s son, a hard-hearted little 105tyrant, who took great pleasure in tormenting animals.

But my unfortunate name—that, too, added to my miseries. I told you it was Pan. I was called Pat from the first; but when they found out my father’s name, it was an easy thing to call me Patty Pan; and by this name I went for years. Oh, how hard it was to my sensitive spirit to hear my father’s—my mother’s name turned into ridicule by these inconsiderate and callous people.

Every Sunday poor Patrick met me in one of the public squares, and there we would talk together, and he would tell me anecdote after anecdote of my parents and their family, always making them out grandees at home. Both my father and mother were from Scotland, and I learned that my mother had displeased her only brother by her marriage, and that his ill-natured conduct towards her caused them to come to America.

“You are come of a good stock, Patrick, dear,” said he to me, when I was about fourteen years old, “barring that your uncle was such a nigger. I have written twice to him, my jewel, and its never an answer I’ve got, so I’ll trouble him no more, only I’ll just be for telling Mr. Bartlett who you are; and in case your uncle should ever deign to inquire about you, he can answer for you. I’ve kept all safe, honey; here in this old tobacco-box is the certificates of your parents’ marriage, and of your birth, and, oh, wo’s me, of their death too; and here is an account of your money in the savings bank, and not a penny has been touched since you began your trade, so that the five hundred dollars are all whole again, and something over.”

It was in vain that I entreated the poor fellow to take the interest and spend it on himself; he would not do it; and from seeing his self-denial I found it impossible to make use of it myself, although I was 106sadly in want of comforts. Often and often would the old man question me as to my usage at the printing office; but I could not bear to tell him how utterly neglected I was; it would have killed him. Every time I saw him he appeared weaker and weaker, and at length his eye-sight failed, and it was with great difficulty that he could grope his way to our accustomed haunts. He never would allow me to come to the alms-house, not so much as to meet him at the door or near it; but I bribed a poor man to lead him to the place and call for him again; this I was enabled to do from the few shillings that I received from Mr. Bartlett on the new year’s day and the fourth of July.

My master called me to him, one morning, with some little show of sympathy; he said that Patrick O’Brien was very ill, and that it was doubtful whether he would live till night; that he had been to the alms-house and was satisfied that the poor man was properly treated. I begged to go to him, but Mr. Bartlett said that Patrick had desired that I should not, and that I should not follow him to the grave; but, added he, on seeing my grief, if you really desire to go, I will send you there or go with you myself.

I was so astonished at this unexpected kindness, that my tears dried up in an instant, and I blessed and blessed him over and over again—not by speech, for I was unfit for it, but mentally. My master told me to go to my room and remain there till he sent for me, bidding me say nothing to any one either respecting my poor godfather or what had recently occurred. He need not have enjoined this on me; no one had ever thought it worth while to inquire whence I came, or to whom I belonged. The general opinion was, that I was a poor, spiritless, melancholy creature.

The last link was broken; I followed my only 107friend to the grave, my master having the humanity to take me in a carriage to the funeral; and I need not tell you that one of the first acts of my life, when I had the power to do it, was to put a stone at the head of poor O’Brien’s grave.

But heaven opened one source of pleasure to the poor orphan’s heart. If the living denied me their sympathy, the dead did not; I became fond of reading; and all at once, as it were, a flood of light and knowledge entered my whole soul. To indulge myself in this newly found pleasure was scarcely possible, for my labours seemed to increase as I grew older. Indeed there were greater difficulties in the way now than there would have been at first, for then I was a mere cipher, and was only used as a convenience. But there were certain things going on which made it necessary that there should be no spies or tell-tales about; and as I would not join the young men in their irregularities, they thought I meant to ingratiate myself with Mr. Bartlett by exposing them. As the follies they committed were not injurious to our master’s interest, I had no intention of exposing them, for he was a hard man and showed them but few favours. My companions, however, became shy of me, and I found that they even preferred to do without my assistance than to have me near them; but I held fast by my integrity; and I have the satisfaction of knowing that I was true to my employer’s interests, never injuring them myself nor suffering others to do it.

My only chance of reading was after supper; I then went to my room, and there I sat, devouring book after book, night after night, by the light of my little lamp, with my old cat, either on my lap or on my bed, the only living thing that claimed any companionship with me. When I had exhausted the books in the house, I hired others at the libraries; and thus I went on, my appetite increasing as I proceeded; 108and my eighteenth year found me exactly in the same round of duty, but with a mind that seemed almost bursting its bounds with the knowledge that I had thus crammed into it.

Just at this period, my uncle, that cruel man, of whom poor O’Brien had so often to speak, wrote to Mr. Bartlett concerning me. He said that, if I would take the name of Parr he would make over to me a tract of land which he owned in Virginia, and that if money were necessary, towards procuring this change of name, I might draw on a certain firm in New York to the amount of two hundred dollars. I was very indignant at first, but Mr. Bartlett seemed resolute in accomplishing the thing, and I at length reluctantly consented to give up the name. In the course of a year, the whole was arranged. I adopted the name of Parr, and Mr. Bartlett, thinking it better to sell the land at a moderate price than to let it lie unproductive, found a purchaser for it, and the money—twelve hundred dollars—was judiciously placed out at good interest.

My fellow-apprentices only laughed amongst themselves when Mr. Bartlett told them that in future I was to be called by another name; but it soon passed out of their thoughts, and I was again left to my own solitude and insignificance.

But the same objections did not exist with respect to the income I derived from my uncle’s bounty. I felt a sort of pleasure in spending it; and the first things I purchased was a looking-glass and other little comforts for my forlorn garret-room. Oh, the luxury of a large wash basin, a white towel and pleasant soap; and the infinitely greater luxury of giving a few shillings to the poor objects who solicited charity. The pride of my childhood returned, and I once more took care of my dress and my outward appearance. I no longer went slouching 109and careless along, inattentive to what was passing, but stopped to let my eye rest on the shop windows; suffering myself to take pleasure in the beauty and brightness that was spread out around me—such a difference is there between the penny-less and crushed spirit and the one who has wealth at command.

But there was still a craving at the heart, which money could not satisfy—I wanted a home, kind fellowship, a brother, a sister, something near and dear, that I could call my own. In my Sunday walks I used to look at the cheerful and happy young people that passed me, selecting first one and then the other as a companion, and held mental conversation with them, trying in this way to cheat myself into the belief that I was of consequence to some one being. Oh, if any one could have guessed at the deep feeling which lay hidden under my cold manner; if they could but have known whence arose the nervous tremblings which assailed me when I performed any little friendly office for strangers!

As to Mr. Bartlett, he never varied his treatment of the work-people; they were all kept at the same distance; he paid them their wages and exacted obedience in return; and when the rules were neglected, or when his commands were disobeyed, he dismissed the offender at once, without remark or dispute. Of all that came and went, I was the only one that served out my apprenticeship. Out of fourteen men and boys, when I left him, there was not one that had been with him four years. But this gave me no advantages. I was no nearer his confidence than I was when I entered his service. I was advanced in the regular way, from step to step, until I had arrived at the highest point; and I did not consider myself as master of the trade until my time was expired. He could not prevent me 110from feeling gratitude towards him, for I recollected his kindness in going with me to poor O’Brien’s grave, and in his care and attention to my interests respecting the change of name and the investment of the money for the Virginia land; but he did not require sympathy, and he never gave it to others.

My last act of duty was to correct the proofs of a very valuable work, requiring a knowledge of the subject matter, almost equal to that of the author. Several had undertaken it, but made so many blunders that the poor author was in despair. Mr. Bartlett was very much mortified, and determined to put back the work until he could procure a competent person to read the proofs. Having been fond of that particular branch of study—Vegetable Physiology—I knew that I could accomplish the task; so I stepped into the office and told Mr. Bartlett that if he had no objection I would read the proofs, for having always had access to works of the kind, the terms made use of were quite familiar. He looked at me with astonishment, having, like the rest of the house, always considered me as a mere automaton; a faithful drudge, who did every thing mechanically. He put the work into my hands, and I laboured at it with care and diligence, so that the work came out without a single erratum. Mr. Bartlett said, “This is well done, Mr. Parr, excellent, and you deserve all our thanks; the author has sent you his grateful thanks and this little box; it contains a compound microscope. I have the pleasure, likewise, of giving you a copy of the work.”

But praise from him, respect from my fellow labourers, came too late to satisfy me; the time was approaching when I should be free, when I could at intervals relieve both mind and body from this unnatural monotony, and roam about in the 111country unrestrained. I hoped likewise to meet with some congenial mind to whom I could pour out my feelings and thoughts; for to this one point all my wishes turned; my whole soul was so swallowed up with this one sentiment that every other passion—wealth, fame, and all, were but things seen at a vast distance. I was born with tender and strong feelings, and a friend was the bounds of my ambition.

At length the day came, St. Patrick’s day, blessed be his name, it gave me freedom. My agitation had kept me awake the whole night before, for I had a sort of fear that something would occur to hinder me from leaving the office. As to where I was to go, that never troubled me—green fields, the river, running brooks, trees, birds, and the animals of the country, were all before me, and to me they would speak volumes. If man denied me his sympathy, they would not refuse it; and to the haunts of my childhood, to the very spot where I drew my breath, there I meant to direct my steps. I knew I had not neglected a single duty, nor disobeyed a single command. God had blessed me with health, so that I never had to keep my room for one day even. To be sure, there were times when I had severe headaches, and wretched coughs, and great weakness from night sweats; but I never complained, determined that, when my day of service expired, there should be nothing exacted of me for lost time. I did not know that my master would make me remain, to work out the days that were lost by sickness, but it had been put in my head by some of the apprentices, and I never forgot it.

On this happy, memorable morning, dressed in a full suit of mourning, even to the crape on my new hat, with a valise well filled with good linen, handkerchiefs, and stockings, I entered Mr. Bartlett’s private office for the last time. He looked at me 112with an inquiring eye, as I stood covered with confusion and agitation. “What is the meaning of this, Mr. Parr?” said he, “you seem equipped for a journey.”

“I was twenty-one years of age at six o’clock this morning,” said I, my face flushed as I could feel by the tingling in my ears.

“Well, what if you were,” said he, looking as much surprised as if an apprentice never was to leave his master. “I thought your time was nearly out—this is St. Patrick’s day, is it? but you are going to return. You shall have good wages, and I shall take care that you have a good berth.”

“No, sir,” said I, almost breathless with fear that I should be spell bound,—“no, sir, I intend to travel about in the country this summer; I am going to put head stones to the graves of my father and mother: that is my first purpose, now that I have money and am free. I hope and trust that you think I have served a faithful and honest apprenticeship, and that if I want a situation in a printing office I can ask you for a good character.”

“Yes, most assuredly you can; but you need not apply elsewhere. I know your worth, young man, and I have both the power and inclination to serve you. Serve me for five years as well as you have done, and I will make you a partner in the concern.”

I thanked him warmly for this gratifying mark of esteem, but I could not accept of his offer, my very heart turned sick at the thought of staying another day even. He was evidently disconcerted, and made several pauses, as if to consider whether he might not propose something more acceptable, but I fortified myself against all that he might urge, and I am sure that an offer to make me his full partner immediately would not have induced me to remain.

113I asked for my indentures. “Well,” said he, “Mr. Parr, you are not to be moved, I see; but that shall not hinder me from doing you justice; you have served me well, and it is but fair that I should look to your interest. He turned from me and wrote a letter of recommendation to two publishers, one in New York and the other in Boston, and taking his check book from the shelf, he drew a check, which I found was for two hundred dollars. He gave me the three papers, and then proceeded to look for the indenture; he handed it to me, endorsed properly, and after thanking him for his former and present kindness, I asked him if he would allow me to beg one more favour of him, which was that he would still keep for me the certificates of my parents’ marriage and my birth, and allow me to draw on him, as usual, for the interest of the mortgage which he held for me. He had previously to this put me in possession of it, and of the money in the savings bank, he having held it in trust for me. He readily promised me this favour, begging me to use the money prudently as hitherto, and in case of any difficulty to apply to him. We shook hands, and I was in the act of picking up my valise to depart when the crape on my hat caught his eye.

“You are in mourning, I perceive,” said he, “there is crape on your hat and your clothes are black; I did not know that you had a single relation here.”

“Nor have I,” said I. “I put on this mourning dress as a mark of affectionate gratitude to my poor godfather, Patrick O’Brien. I had it not in my power to do it before, but as his goodness lives still fresh and green in my memory, why should I omit doing that which I know would gratify his spirit if it should be permitted him to know it?”

“I wish for your sake that he had lived to see this 114day,” said Mr. Bartlett, “but I will not detain you longer; I wish you well from the bottom of my heart.”

“There is but one thing more, sir,” said I, turning back from the door. “There are several articles belonging to me in my bed room; I have given them to the youngest apprentice, and I wish he may have your sanction to retain them; here is a list of them.” He took the list: I left the room, walked hastily through the hall, and shut the street door as I went out—I shut out the whole twelve years from my memory.

It was a clear, cold, bright day; the frost had been out of the ground for some time, so that the roads were dry and the walking pleasant, but the sense of freedom was exquisite. “What,” said I, “no calls upon my time, no hurry, no driving? can I call this blessed day my own? is that my sun? that glorious sun which goes careering through the sky, and shedding its brightness all around, filling my eyes with the beautiful pictures which it illuminates?” And thus I went on, step by step, rejoicing, my enraptured soul drinking in new cause for exultation at every turn.

In the whole twelve years I had never eaten a meal out of Mr. Bartlett’s house, nor had I ever been within the walls of any other house than his, so strictly did I keep within the limits of my duty. I was exceedingly shy, therefore, of entering a public house, although my hunger was beginning to make itself felt. But I conquered my timidity, and entering a house of entertainment I called for dinner. I was ushered into a neat room, and in the course of half an hour was served with what appeared to me then an excellent dinner. I was covered with confusion because the host would wait on me, and I was equally embarrassed with the services of a good-natured waiter, who bowed 115low when I paid for the dinner, and still lower when I refused to take the half dollar change.

I was now completely in the country, and in the neighbourhood of the place that gave me birth. Having a faint recollection of the house in which my parents lived, I determined, if I ever was rich enough, that I would purchase it; for visions of a beautiful river, and a waterfall, and every variety of romantic scenery, were constantly floating before me; and then there was the inspiration of my mother to heighten the picture. I reached the spot at nightfall, and engaged lodgings at the inn—not the one that you now see at the head of the briery lane, but further on; it was destroyed by fire about four years ago; you must all recollect it. Here I remained three weeks, going over the haunts of my early childhood—infancy, I might say—and reviving the almost faded images, by being amongst the same scenes. The willow and the aspen tree, near my spring house, O’Brien helped me to plant when I was about six years old, and under the large elm I used to lie when I first began to read. You need not be surprised that I purchased this little estate as soon as I had the means of doing so; I contemplated it from the moment I entered Mr. Bartlett’s employment, and it was a project that never ceased to occupy my thoughts. The house was small, but substantially built; it is the one on the edge of the common, in which Martha’s brother lives; and I keep it in neat repair, as I also do the garden in which my father worked; these fine apple trees are of his planting. I made several attempts to purchase the little property which once belonged to my poor godfather, but it belonged to an old man by the name of Banks; he added it to the Oak Valley farm, which I do not regret now, as it has fallen into the hands of our excellent neighbours, Mr. and Mrs. Webb.

116I knew the precise spot where my parents were buried, for poor Patrick had described it accurately, making a drawing of it upon a piece of paper which I shall preserve to the day of my death; I therefore placed a tomb stone to each grave, with an inscription that satisfied my ardent feelings, but which I have since replaced with others more suited to their humble merits and my more mature judgment. Patrick’s grave was about a mile from the city, and, with Mr. Bartlett’s assent, I had caused a neat stone to be put over it, as many as six years before this period.

My hard hearted old nurse was then and is still living; that fine, promising boy that was lost at sea, and in whom you all took such an interest, was her only child; for his sake I allow her a small yearly sum, but she has no idea that I am the one that she so cruelly gave up to the ill usage of the poor creatures around her. Poor Patrick, how he hated her; she even taunted him when she afterwards saw him with me, pretending to wonder why he did not dress me in such fine clothes as formerly. He had, in his days of wealth, bought me a hobby horse, the skeleton of which I found about three years ago in an old barn, and which I knew immediately, for the initials of my name were carved underneath by him; it is in complete order again. How it would gratify the poor, kind old man, were he living, for he would know the motives which influenced me in this trifling act.

What a tumult of mind I was in during these three weeks! The country had not the tranquillizing effect that I expected, for I was striving to recall far-gone images and thoughts; I went to every old tree, to the brook, to the river, to the church, and to the pew in which my parents sat, for of this too I had inquired of Patrick. I thought my all of happiness was centred in this one place, and that, 117though human sympathy was denied me, I might here pass the remainder of my days in peace and quiet, worshipping my Maker, and in doing good to the poor creatures around me. But the money was to be made to purchase these blessings, for I had but eighteen hundred dollars, and it required as many thousands to accomplish this desirable object, and Patrick’s last injunction for ever rung in my ears—“never be idle.”

I tore myself away from this cherished spot, and walked back again to the city just in time to get in one of the cars for New York, where I arrived the same afternoon. After I had looked at the curiosities which were, to me, so thickly scattered about, I thought it quite time to commence work in earnest. I therefore called on a printer by the name of Blagge and offered my services. He happened, luckily, to be in want of a proof reader, and without entering into any definite agreement, I commenced the work, he having meanwhile written to Mr. Bartlett, that he might be sure of the genuineness of the letter of recommendation. Mr. Blagge was quite pleased with my care and industry, as well as with my knowledge of the subject matter of the work; he said that he could now bring out a book which he had long wished to publish, but that his proof readers were, in general, so profoundly ignorant of science, that he was unwilling to undertake it. I begged him to defer it until the ensuing spring, that I intended to improve myself by attending the lectures, and that I should then be better able to take charge of the work. Meantime he gave me four hundred dollars a year, with a promise of presenting me with tickets to such of the lectures as I chose to attend.

My companions in the office were civil, nay, respectful; for I came amongst them under favourable circumstances, and Mr. Blagge’s kind manner 118towards me had a great effect on them. But they were not suited to me; I looked from one to the other in vain for one of congenial mind; they were all industrious, and some ambitious; but their minds were a blank, and their pursuits, when disengaged from their business, were of a low order. Not one could I find that loved to walk out in the country for the sake of breathing pure air, and of enjoying the soft, tender scenes of nature; their pleasures lay in eating cellars where the best suppers could be had for their limited means, and in playing at some low pastime night after night, such as Domino, All-fours, Vingtun, and other games of chance; and on Sundays to take a sail, or something, in fact, which tended to demoralize rather than improve.

Mr. Blagge was, as I observed, respectful and kind, but he was full of cares and anxieties, having a very large family to support, and with but slender means; in fact, he had been very much embarrassed, and was just recovering from it. It was not to be supposed that he could interest himself in the feelings of a young man with whom he had so slight an acquaintance—one, likewise, who did not ask for his sympathy. I therefore moved on in silence, occupying myself at leisure hours in learning the French and Latin languages, which, with the help of good teachers and books I was enabled to do in the course of a few months. This was a delightful occupation to me, and I soon overcame all the difficulties, excepting the pronunciation, which I was unable to accomplish, as I had no one with whom I could converse. I learned the Latin that I might more fully comprehend the meaning of the technical terms made use of in all the works of science, and which I considered it absolutely necessary to do, as I was so soon to take charge of the reputation of the great forthcoming work.

119Here was, therefore, another pleasure, for I now became passionately fond of works of this nature, and my greedy mind devoured all that came within reach. I had nothing to interfere with my plan of study, living entirely alone, and having no associates; I hired a room in which I slept and studied, and I took my breakfast, dinner, and supper, at a cheap ordinary near the office. As I stipulated to labour only between sunrise and sunset, I had as much time as I wanted for exercise and reading, and my practice was to walk from the hour I left the office until it was dark, eat my supper, and then retire to my room. Being an early riser, there was time, therefore, to attend to my dress, for I had again become fastidiously clean. It now appears to me that I hurried from one thing to another, and engaged in every thing so vigorously, to keep off the ever-intruding feeling of loneliness. I wonder if any other human being suffered so acutely on this subject as I did; it seemed as if I would have given all I was worth in the world for one friend.

But heaven at length took pity on my desolate situation, and I was about to be rewarded for all that I had suffered; it came in a way, too, in which a man should be blest—in the form of love.

I was always a regular attendant at divine worship, excepting during the latter part of poor O’Brien’s life, being then compelled to walk out with him and talk to him; but after his death I used to go twice every Sunday to church, going to every one that would admit me. Now that I was my own master, and had the means to do it, I hired a seat in a church about three miles out of town, where I could worship God without the fear of having my attention distracted by the restlessness and frivolity of a fashionable city congregation. I gained another object, too; I had a pleasant walk, and the exercise was necessary to my health.

120Directly in front of the pew that I occupied sat two ladies and a gentleman, regular attendants likewise; the elderly lady was very lame, and required assistance both in getting in and out of the carriage, and the gentleman, I thought, seemed rather indifferent about her comfort, for he was not as tender and delicate in his attentions as he should have been. Almost the whole trouble of assisting her fell on the young lady, who, I presumed, was her daughter. I had a very great desire to offer my services, but my shyness of strangers prevented me, although every succeeding week I saw that the poor invalid was less and less able to help herself. Standing very near them one day, I found that it was utterly impossible for the young lady to get her aged relative in the carriage without help, so I stepped hastily forward just as the old lady was falling from the step, and in time to catch her in my arms. I lifted her gently in the carriage, seated her comfortably in it, sprung out again, and offered my hand to the young lady. It was the impulse of a moment. The door closed, and the carriage was soon out of sight.

But what a tumult and confusion I was in; what strange feelings overpowered me. There had been magic in the touch of the hand. There had been magic in the glance of her eye, as she turned to thank me. A dreamy softness came over me, and diffused itself through my very soul. I could not imagine why it was that so slight an incident should have affected me so deeply; but I thought of nothing, dreamed of nothing, but the touch of that hand and the glance of that beautiful eye. It was in vain that I took up my pen or my book, in the evening; in a few seconds, my hand dropped and my eye rested on vacancy.

With more than usual care I attended to my dress on the following Sunday, and I was there at 121the church door sooner than necessary, waiting for the carriage. It did not arrive, and I was compelled to enter and take my seat, as the clergyman had commenced the service. You may imagine my feelings when I saw the lady sitting quietly in her pew, by the side of the old gentleman: they had walked to church, having left the invalid at home; and they had passed me while I was gazing up the road for the carriage. When leaving the church I inquired whether the lady had been prevented from coming to church from indisposition; and a voice, the sweetest and the gentlest that ever fell on human ear, answered my question. I was so startled, both by my own temerity, in thus venturing to address her, and by the uncommon softness of her voice, that I did not hear the import of the words; but the loveliness of the tones remained imprinted on my memory for ever. No music, since, has ever made the like impression.

Sunday was now a day of exquisite enjoyment; for, added to strong devotional feelings, I was breathing the same atmosphere with a being that I considered as all perfection. She appeared to be that for which I had so long sought—a friend, a sister—and I hoped the time was not far distant when I could approach her and again hear that musical voice. In this blissful state the summer passed, unclouded, save that the lady was once absent from church—it was owing to the death of the elderly person who, I discovered, was not her mother, but a distant connexion, who had resided with them for many years; and that the gentleman I supposed to be her father was her uncle. She was an orphan, and her destiny seemed for ever linked with mine, from this circumstance.

Toward the close of the summer, the young lady sometimes came to church alone; and fearing that, when the cold weather set in, I should lose sight of 122her, perhaps for ever, I determined to make one attempt to interest her in my favour. I had superintended the getting up of a beautiful prayer-book, the type, paper, plates and execution were perfect, and I had one copy exquisitely bound. I even ventured to write the name of this fair being in the first page, and intended to present it to her; but it was a month before I gained courage to make the attempt. At one time I thought to lay it on the ledge of her pew, in silence; but I could not bear that her devotions should be interrupted by what might be considered as an act of levity on my part, so I forbore. I ventured, at last, to address her on coming out of church; and to my surprise, I found myself walking forward with her. She always carried her prayer-book, and I asked permission to look at it; she smiled and gave it to me, and I then took the one intended for her from my pocket, and presented it to her, making my bow suddenly, and hastening with the speed of lightning from her sight—I need not say that the little worn out prayer-book is still a treasure to me.

How she received the book I could not tell, nor had I an opportunity of knowing, on the following Sunday, for it stormed so violently that none but a devoted lover, like myself, would have ventured out. She was not there, nor did I expect to see her; but I had an exquisite pleasure in being in a spot where I had so frequently been near her. On the Saturday following the lectures commenced; I was to attend three, Astronomy, Natural Philosophy and Chemistry, but fearing that my mind was in too unsettled a state to attend to them all, I only entered my name for two—Chemistry and Astronomy.

The lecture room was in a narrow street, badly lighted; and, there being a basement, it became necessary to have a number of steps to the porch. It 123was November, and there had been a little sleet in the afternoon, so that the steps were slippery, and I could not avoid the reflection that it would be exceedingly unsafe for ladies to pass up and down. It being an introductory lecture, the room was crowded, as it always is, and I therefore stood near the door, not caring to disturb any one by making an attempt to look for a seat. A lady and gentleman sat near to the corner where I stood, and on his getting up, she turned her head. You may judge of my amazement and rapture when I saw it was the lady who was ever present to my mind.

She smiled, and in a moment I was at her side—she spoke, for I could not; I again heard that musical, that charming voice, and the lecturer and the crowd were forgotten. I think she said something pleasing of the book, but my heart beat so violently that I could not tell what it was. She saw my agitation, but thought it proceeded from mere bashfulness, and she therefore talked on, of the lecture and of the crowd. I said yes, no, any thing—but I soon recovered, for of one thing I was now certain—my book was not to be returned; she had spoken graciously of it, and I was the happiest of mortals. My tongue seemed loosened from its long iron bondage, and I poured out my thoughts in a strain that now astonishes me. She listened whilst I explained to her the advantages and pleasures of science, particularly that branch of it which now occupied the attention of the audience. I was the lecturer, and the voice of the one now speaking, which was falling on the ears of all in the room, was like a far distant sound—we heard it not.

The young man who came with her was standing up near us and taking notes; he had come regularly provided with a book and pencil, and seemed more intent on getting information than on the comfort of his charge. He now and then cast a 124look towards us, and it appeared to me that I had seen him somewhere, but I was too happy to let the subject take hold of my mind. What did I care for him, or all the world, whilst I was drawing in new life at every breath.

Our conversation was carried on in the lowest whispers, so as not to be overheard; but we were far removed from the centre, and there were others talking in louder tones near to us; for of the number who came to listen there were but few who had a real desire to learn. As it afterwards proved, the class was very small, there not being more than fifty of the audience now present. I was overjoyed to hear that the young lady intended to come every night; that she was to remain at a friend’s in town, on purpose to attend the lectures; and this gentleman was to be her escort. I learned that he was her uncle’s grandson, and that he had a passion for study, particularly chemistry. I exerted all my eloquence to prevail on her to attend the astronomical lectures likewise; but she said, much as she desired it, she feared it was out of her power, but that she would write to her uncle for permission.

The minutes flew, and the audience were making a move to retire before I awakened from this blissful trance. The young man came to us at last, and asked the lady how she was pleased with the lecture. She smiled, and said, very much, and then the crowd pressed on and separated us. I got out as quickly as possible, to have the pleasure of handing her down the slippery steps; and, as if expecting it, her precious hand was ready as soon as I offered mine.

Oh, what visions of happiness floated through my brain that eventful night. Even my dreams were filled with the sweet silvery tones of her voice. It seemed as if angels were hovering round my bed, 125to sooth and tranquilize my troubled spirit; and not one discordant thought or sound mingled with it. Oh, if man would but give up his whole soul to pure love. If he would let it mix up with his worldly occupations. If he would allow it to be for ever present, how exalted would his nature become; how free from all grossness and immoral thoughts and actions. For my part, it had such an effect upon me that my whole nature was changed. I was, to be sure, free from all vicious tendencies; and I was active in benevolence towards the poor; but my heart was frozen up, and I looked on the world, and those immediately around me, with a cold, averted eye. Now, my full heart seemed bursting to communicate its happiness to others; and I became sensible that it was in my power to impart pleasure although I might receive neither thanks nor sympathy in return.

I was attentive, therefore, to what was passing around me; moving my desk a few feet farther, to give more light to one man, and nailing a cleat between the tall legs of a stool, to give ease to the feet of another. I bought a pot of pomatum, and made one of the young apprentices rub it on his poor cracked and chopped hands, buying him a stout pair of gloves, to protect them from the cold. I helped the book-keeper through an intricate account, begging him not to speak of it to others; a thing which he did not intend to do, being only too fearful that I might mention it myself. My thawed heart expanded to all around me; and, as it acquired warmth, it diffused its sympathies to every thing within its reach. Oh, holy love, when in thy true shape, how benign is thy influence!

The lady’s uncle was gracious, and allowed her to attend the astronomical lectures likewise; and I need not say how regular I was in my attendance and devotion; for as the young man was not particularly 126interested in this study, he sometimes brought the young lady in the room and left her, calling for her either before or after the lecture was over. This he did not scruple to do, as the lady with whom she lived, at present, always accompanied her to this lecture. I brought her note-books and pencils, and assisted her in taking notes, contriving that she should have the most comfortable seat in the room; and all these attentions she received in the kindest manner—she received them as a sister would from a brother, and I was satisfied.

Thus the winter wore away, and the month of February had nearly closed, before the lectures were over. There was still one more evening for each, and then this delightful intercourse was to cease; for I could not devise any plan by which I could gain access to the presence of the young lady; more particularly as the young man had been more than usually vigilant and careful of her, and seemed desirous of preventing her from receiving so much of my attention. Her companion, too, scarcely condescended, of late, to notice me; all of which I saw was painful to the only being for whom I cared. I went, as usual, to the astronomical lecture—it was, as I observed, the last; and she was there also with the same lady, who cast a scornful glance at me as I approached their seat.

I could not imagine what had produced such a change in this lady’s manner towards me, unless she had been told of my humble occupation, and that it had mortified her vanity to receive attention from one who might be considered as a journeyman. From the first evening of my meeting the fair creature to whom I had so unresistingly yielded up my heart, I made her acquainted with my actual situation, my prospects and my hopes. It seemed necessarily interwoven in the theme that I was discussing; for I spoke of the difficulties I had 127to encounter, in consequence of which knowledge came to me slowly; contrasting it with the facilities which were now in my power. Neither she nor I dreamed that high birth or fortune were at all necessary to an intercourse so simple, so unexacting as ours. She redoubled the kindness of her usual manner on seeing that I was a little hurt by her friend’s coolness; but she little knew the pain I suffered on hearing that she was not to be at the last chemical lecture—her uncle was in town, and they were to return home on that day.

It came like a death knell to my heart. What, was she to go and not be informed of the tender and enduring love I bore her! Was I never to see her; to hear that voice again! Was this to be the last interview! I could not bear it. I took her note book, tremblingly, from her hand, and wrote as follows—

“You have pierced my heart with grief. You are to leave the city, and I am to see you no more. My whole soul is absorbed in one feeling; and that is, love for you; and now that you are going from me, existence will be a burden. I ask you not to love me in return; that seems impossible. I can never hope to create a passion such as I now feel for you; such as I felt from the moment I first heard your voice. But deign to think of me—no, I cannot give up the thought of calling you mine—at some future day, when fortune has been propitious; or should some evil overtake you, remember me. I must hasten from your presence, for I am unfit to remain here; but if, on reading this, you can feel compassion for my hopeless love, let these few lines remain; but if you have no pity to offer me, tear them out and put them in my hand as you leave the house. I shall be there to receive my doom; but be merciful.”

After having written this, in great agony of mind, 128I turned to her, and our eyes met. She saw that I was uncommonly agitated, and her concern for me prevented her speaking. I bent close to her ear and said, read this immediately—pointing to the page—and remember that my life depends on what you do. I hurried from her, and walked up and down the narrow street until the lecture was over; which, to my fevered apprehensions, seemed never to have an end.

At length the door opened, and I saw one, and another, and then groups, descend the steps; the young lady appearing amongst the last, moving slowly, so as to give me time to see and approach her. When at the bottom of the flight she stopped, for a moment, and as I came near her she said, in a low tone, “Here are the notes, and I have added a few lines to them; good night.” It was well she said this, as the giving me the paper, as I requested, would have plunged me into despair. I need not say that I hastened to my lodgings, that I might read the precious contents; for I could not but augur favourably of them from the manner of her giving the paper to me. Under my own impassioned scrawl were these lines.

“Notwithstanding the fear of giving you pain, I must return the leaf; for I should not like to leave it in the book. My whole manner must be a convincing proof that I have a high esteem for your character, and that I feel a strong interest in your welfare; more than this I dare not say. I am entirely dependent on my uncle; and it has been his wish, for many years, to see me the wife of his grandson—the person who has always accompanied me to the lectures. You need not fear that this event will ever take place, as my disinclination to it has long been known to the young man; and neither he nor my uncle have any power to compel me. In saying thus much I do not wish to encourage 129you, as my uncle is obstinate and unyielding, and would never consent to the addresses of any other man. I hope you may forget me and be as happy as you deserve. I do violence to my feelings in bidding you farewell; but prudence and a regard to your interests dictate it.”

Prudence, indeed! What were the prudential reasons? My inability to support her? Surely if she loved me, there were means enough to be comfortable, and I would move mountains to place her in affluence. She has an esteem for me, and she does violence to her feelings in bidding me farewell. I have hopes, therefore, that, as her heart is disengaged, I may, in time, aspire to her love.

In thoughts like these I passed the night; nor did I recover my equanimity for several days; every thing, every thought, that did not relate to her, was irksome and distasteful, and my labours at the office were conducted mechanically. The commencement of the great work was now contemplated. I was told to get ready for it; and, as there was a translation of a very popular French work wanted, Mr. Blagge pressed me to undertake it. Perhaps it was well for me that I was thus suddenly compelled to exertion, for with this depression of spirits I might have sunk into apathy incurable. I likewise owed much to Mr. Blagge’s kindness; and being of a grateful nature, determined not to disappoint him.

To work, therefore, I went, reading proofs and attending to the types during the day, and translating at night. Proceeding in this way for six weeks, not allowing myself any exercise but a short walk, between churches, on Sunday. Mr. Blagge was delighted, both with the execution and diligence, and he promised to raise my salary the ensuing year, to six hundred dollars. The French translation was likewise commended; and I felt an 130honest pride in sending all the papers which spoke of the merits of my performances to the only one whose applause I desired. For this translation I received two hundred dollars; so that my little fortune had increased to two thousand dollars. I saw it with a pleasure that cannot be expressed, for I had now an object in view; and instead, as heretofore, of spending all my income, I began a rigid system of economy, amounting almost to meanness—but thank heaven, my heart was not so exclusively selfish as to forget the poor.

As soon as these two important works were through the press, I went to my accustomed seat in the church, on Sunday; which, as I before mentioned, was three miles out of town; but my disappointment was very great in not seeing the young lady. On inquiry of the sexton, I learned that the family had removed to a country seat, about thirty miles distant; and that they had given up their pew. He could not tell the name of the place to which they had gone; but he promised to inquire, and let me know on the following Sunday. It is impossible to describe my uneasiness at this intelligence. I fancied that what was so desirable a blessing to me would be equally coveted by others; and that her uncle and cousin had removed her from the world that their plans might be the more readily executed. I was fearful that her tender nature might be subdued by importunities; and that she would yield to their wishes, rather than incur their displeasure. I did not flatter myself that her love for me was strong enough to enable her to brave persecution; and how could she be assured of the strength and continuance of mine?

Four long weeks passed and I could gain no further intelligence, than that Mr. Bewcastle, the young lady’s uncle, had purchased a farm on the island, three miles from the river and about thirty from the 131city; that he was devoted to the cultivation of it, and was making preparations for building a large house. My worst fears were realized: these improvements were no doubt in the expectation of his niece’s marriage, and I once more abandoned myself to despair. This state of mind, added to the severe labour I had gone through, had so perceptible an effect on my health that Mr. Blagge became concerned. He entreated me to relax a little in my attention to business, but I persevered until the first of August, when fearing that I should really be unable to continue in the office I determined on making an excursion in the country.

I need not say in which direction I bent my steps. In fact, my intention was to explore the whole of the neighbourhood until I heard where Mr. Bewcastle lived, and then to take up my residence near him. I was very fortunate indeed, for the man in whose house I rested the first night, knew the family, and he promised to take me to a friend of his who lived about half a mile from them. It was about ten o’clock the next morning when I reached the house, and as I liked the place and the appearance of the people, I was induced to remain with them, paying them a moderate board. I had a bed-room and parlour entirely to myself, and their kindness soon made me feel myself at home. They saw I was the very sort of lodger they wanted, and they exerted themselves to the utmost to make me comfortable. When I tell you that the landlord of the little inn was old uncle Porter, now living in the small stone house, and that his sister was our kind aunt Martha, you will think how fortunate I was in becoming an inmate of their house.

As I did not then know their worth, I was cautious in my inquiries about the young lady, and it has amused both Martha and myself to recollect how guarded, and with what apparent unconcern I 132talked and asked questions about the family. I gathered that Mr. Bewcastle was a harsh and obstinate man, loving his own ways and his own money better than any thing in the world excepting his grandson, Mr. Anglesea, who could prevail on him to do almost any thing. That it was talked of amongst the neighbours that he wanted to marry his cousin, or rather second cousin, but that she could not bear him.

I asked if they knew the young lady personally, and they said that she often walked their way and sometimes stopped to speak to Martha, who had when young lived with her parents. That she had called there on her way to church on Sunday last, and they were sorry to see her look so thin and unhappy.

I had to turn away suddenly from the good people to hide my emotion, nor did I dare to resume the conversation for some time, lest they might suspect my designs. I had, of course, no settled plan of proceeding; my first object was to see the young lady and learn the state of her affections; if they were favourable to my hopes I then intended to offer my hand; my love had been hers from the first hour I saw her. I projected a number of schemes either to see her, or get a letter conveyed to her, but I became nervously timid when I attempted to put any one of them in execution. At that time if I could have been sure of our good Martha, I should have been spared two days of great distress, for she, kind soul, would have assisted me immediately. I knew of no better plan, at last, than to get her to take a note to Mr. Bewcastle’s, and contrive to give it to the dear lady unobserved by the family, but my hatred of deception was so great I was exceedingly reluctant to practise this little artifice.

Towards the close of the second day, which was 133passed in wandering through the fields and along the lanes, I made a desperate effort to speak once more on the subject nearest my heart. Aunt Martha came in the little parlour up stairs, and seated herself near to me looking anxiously in my face, it was a motherly tender look, and I felt the tears starting to my eyes. You are quite indisposed, said she, at length, and I told my brother that I would make so bold as to ask you if you had any trouble that we could relieve, and to say if you are short of money that you can stay here a fortnight or longer, and never mind paying us till you can afford it.

I was truly grateful for this kindness, and of course showed her my pocket book full of notes. “What then ails you,” said she, “for it is something more than ill health. May I guess?” I told her, smiling, that she might guess, and if she came near the truth, and could assist me, I should be eternally grateful.

“Well, then, I am sure it is connected with Mr. Bewcastle’s niece, and if you are the gentleman that I have heard people talk about—are you a printer?”

“Yes,” said I, “and I am determined to trust you—my name is Parr; now tell me what you have heard.”

“Why, I have heard that one cause of the young lady’s aversion to this Mr. Anglesea, is her love for a young printer by the name of Parr.”

My face was like scarlet; to hear this talked of publicly—to hear that from others which I would give kingdoms to know was truth, rendered me almost incapable of listening any further.

“Well, you need not answer,” said the kind-hearted woman, “I was pretty sure last evening, that you were the very one, and now what can I do to serve you. We both love the young lady, and should be very sorry to see her married to a man she dislikes, particularly as she loves another.”

134“Oh, do not say that,” said I, “there is no reason to say that, I have not the slightest hope that she has any other sentiment for me than friendship.”

“No matter, no matter, you are right,” said she, “not to expect too much, but if you give me leave I will just let the young lady know that you are here, and then you can see her yourself; perhaps you had better write a few lines.”

I thought so too, so I went to my room and wrote as follows:—

“You will not be surprised, dearest lady, to hear that I am once more near to you, nor will I disguise the truth, that my intention is to learn from your own lips, whether my honest and faithful love can ever meet with favour. You spoke kindly in your note to me, but I had not the presumption to make any further advances until my circumstances were so much improved that I could offer you competence. The anxiety of my mind has preyed on my health, and I am now determined to know my fate at once, for this suspense paralyzes all the energies of my soul.

“I learn that you are unhappy; confide but in me, give yourself up to my devoted tender cares, and my whole life shall be spent in loving and protecting you. Be generous, and give peace to my heart by saying that you will endeavour to return my affection, at present I ask no more.

“I do not want fortune, indeed I should infinitely prefer that you had not a cent in the world; if you are not ambitious I have enough to render you happy; my income is now nearly eight hundred dollars a year, and I shall soon have it in my power to increase it to a thousand. I know that your tastes are simple, and with your right-mindedness and my unceasing cares, you will find enough for all that is desirable. Dearest lady, listen to my entreaties, 135and do not drive me to despair by doubts, either of my love or my ability to make you happy.”

Martha Porter took this letter from my trembling hand, and promising to be back by noon, she departed, leaving me in a state to which I cannot look back without great pain—the answer was to seal my fate.

One o’clock, two o’clock came; but Martha Porter did not return; I invented a thousand excuses—it might have been difficult to see the young lady alone—she might be ill—married—every thing pressed on my burning brain at once, and when poor Martha made her appearance at last, I rushed up to my room unable to hear the result of her mission.

A gentle knock at the door, and a gentle voice as I opened it brought some comfort—Martha’s face too was in smiles, and a letter was in her hand—she saw that I was stupified, as it were, and unable to ask questions, so she quietly laid the letter on the table, and closing the door, went softly down stairs. Martha, dear Martha Porter, have I not been as a son to thee?

When the tumult of my feelings subsided I ventured to open the precious letter; my eye ran over the lines, but the sense came not, I did not comprehend a word. I sealed myself and prayed for composure, for my reason seemed departing, and as I prayed my strength returned. I am now persuaded that it was a sense of the blissful import of the letter that so completely unmanned me, although I would not allow myself to believe it. The blessed letter was as follows:

“I am convinced of your affection for me, I have known it for a long time, and I am sure that I can trust you. I am indeed very unhappy and with no hope that my uncle will ever cease his persecutions; 136but for your generous letter I should this day have sent for Martha Porter to confide in her, and to get her to go to the city. Will you love me the less when I say, that it was to see you and to make my situation known to you? But do not suppose that mere personal distress induces me to throw myself on your protection. I esteem you highly, and am perfectly willing to share your fortune be it what it may. Perhaps my repugnance to marry Mr. Anglesea would not have been so great—perhaps if I had never known you, I should have found less difficulty in obeying my uncle. You perceive that I trust in you entirely.”

It was not till I had read this dear letter over and over again that I could comprehend the full measure of my felicity; then came a rush of joy, then came an exquisite calm over my troubled heart. My aspiring eye shot a quick glance over days of happiness, of thankfulness, of usefulness, till my beloved and I had finished our duties on earth, and were safely and securely and for ever seated among angels in Heaven.

I was in this tranquil yet exhausted state when the kind Martha again came to the door; she thought by this time that I might be able to hear the particulars of her visit to my angel, and confer with me as to the best mode of proceeding.

“I found her in tears,” said she, “which she hastily dried when I entered the room, and after welcoming me, she asked whether any thing particular had brought me to her. I said, yes, something very particular indeed, but that I did not like to tell her all at once. ‘Have you a letter?’ said she, and oh, Mr. Parr, how the dear young lady coloured. I told her I had, so I gave her your letter and went to the window that she might read it unobserved. She wept a great deal while reading it, and then went 137immediately to the table to answer it; and when it was finished, and sealed, she called me to her. ‘Martha,’ said she, again blushing up to the temples, ‘do you know the person who wrote this letter?’ I told her that I did. ‘And can you get this conveyed to the gentleman soon?’ I looked at her in surprise; I found she did not know how near you were to her. ‘O yes,’ said I, ‘he shall get it in less than ten minutes, for my dear young lady, he is at our house.’ This threw her in a great flutter and she smiled, I suspect for the first time in a year; for the neighbours say, and they had it from the servants, that both the old man and the young one have been almost cruel to her, because she would not consent to the marriage. Well, I left her happy enough I dare say, and now what is best to be done; for old Mr. Bewcastle will be on the look-out now, and who knows what he may do next?”

I was not slow in deciding on what was best to be done; it was now three o’clock, and I despatched Mr. Porter to a clergyman living about six miles from us, requesting his attendance the next morning at eleven o’clock. Martha went to a jeweller’s in the village, and brought home several gold rings, going with them to my dear angel, and carrying also a letter, wherein I detailed all our plans. All that a tender love, all that a devoted, honest heart could dictate, was strongly urged, to reconcile her to this precipitous step, and I had the happiness to learn that she gave herself up wholly to my wishes. I arranged every thing as well as the short time would allow, and aunt Martha was not idle; she spent the evening with the dear young lady, packing up and preparing for her departure, observing the utmost caution lest they might be suspected. I knew that her uncle had no right to detain her, for she was of age, and of course her own mistress; but we both thought it better to prevent 138disagreeable scenes—scenes which might delay our marriage, perhaps prevent it altogether.

The good clergyman came at the appointed time, and I went, as was previously arranged, in a carriage to meet my beloved at the head of the lane leading to the garden. She saw the carriage at a distance from her window, and by the time it stopped she was at the gate. The steps were down; I hastened to the dear creature, who trembled so much that I was compelled to lift her in the carriage; the door closed, and I pressed her to my heart—that heart which was filled with the purest esteem and affection, an affection which was to endure for ever.

I entreated her to be composed, assuring her that there was nothing to fear, that in a few moments it would be out of the power of any one to separate us. I thanked her over and over again for thus making me the happiest of men, pouring out my whole soul in words of love and truth.

In a few moments we stood before the clergyman; our vows were pronounced, which with our prayers, I trust, were registered in heaven.

Behold me now, my friends; look at the proud and happy being; see the swelling of his grateful heart. Was this the poor, despised, forsaken orphan, toiling through a thankless servitude, without a kind look or a cheering word; without pity, without a single comfort of any kind—suffering through twelve long years, and with a heart formed to love and be loved in return—could one short year have produced this blessed change?

My bride!—oh, what a tender name! how sweetly it falls on the ear of the man of tender sensibility. It is a word in common use; it is heard daily; thousands and tens of thousands repeat it; in itself it is nothing; but to the young husband, when it comes to be his bride, then does the magic 139of the name cast its glorious spell over him—it is then that he feels all its beauty and its loveliness.

“My bride! thou art wholly mine, beloved one,” said I; “no evil that I can avert shall ever come near thee. How is it that the few words which we have just uttered have given thee so wholly to my protection? but thou hast trusted to my strong arm and to my still stronger principles and feelings, and may I perish if I ever deceive thee.”

We spent three weeks in a retired spot among the Highlands, each day restoring tranquillity to my dear wife, and showing how infinitely happier I was than my ardent fancy had ever contemplated. We talked over our future prospects, and she drew a scheme and decked it out in such beautiful colours—all, too, within the compass of my abilities—that I no longer feared she would repine at the contrast of the humble home I could offer, and that to which she had been accustomed. We had a letter from our good friend, Martha, giving us an account of the consternation they were in at Mr. Bewcastle’s when they read the letter which I sent to them on the day of our marriage. They sent for her brother and questioned him angrily, threatening to prosecute him for allowing the ceremony to take place in his house; but he was not to be intimidated, as he told Mr. Bewcastle, for he knew that the young lady was of age. Martha proceeded to say, that as it was now exceedingly unpleasant for them to remain in their neighbourhood, they had determined to sell their little effects and go to the west. Her brother was to set out as soon as this was settled, and she was to remain at lodgings until he had selected a suitable place, his object being to purchase a small farm.

Nothing could have happened to suit our views better, for in all my dear wife’s little plans there would arise a little distrust of herself when it came 140to the marketing for our little household, and now, at the very moment, came dear aunt Martha to our aid. We wrote immediately, begging her to remain with us as a friend as long as it suited her convenience—nay, to live with us always, if her good brother could do without her. I told her to join us in New York as soon as their effects were sold, and my dear wife added a postscript longer than my whole letter, telling her of our happiness, and of the little plans of our future establishment. She told her to reserve such articles as might be useful to us, such as a bed and bedding, all of which we would pay for as soon as she came to us.

It was on a beautiful September morning that we arrived in New York. As I had written to the good lady with whom I lodged, she was prepared to receive us, and I had the pleasure of finding that my beloved was satisfied with her apartments. But the moment came when I was to leave her for several hours—it would not do to linger in her dear presence any longer, and she was the first to hint that my duties must be resumed. To a solitary creature, whose existence was wrapped up in this one being, this separation, short as it might be, was most painful; I bade her farewell over and over again without moving, having a most horrible fear that something or some one would spirit her away during my absence. I was compelled at length to leave her, and I had the folly to beg her to lock herself in the chamber until my return. I smile now while I think of it, but O what tenderness steals over me when I look back to that dear one, and recollect how sweetly she soothed my apprehensions, and how careful she was not to ridicule my weakness.

I reported myself to Mr. Blagge, who expressed great pleasure at my return, complimenting me on my improved looks. “I told you,” said he, “that 141you wanted a little country air; where have you been?”

“I have been amongst the Highlands,” said I, “and I have brought back health, happiness, and a wife.”

“Ah! that was the trouble, was it?” said he; “I feared it was a love affair, but you are such a shy fellow that one cannot come at what is passing in your mind.”

“Well, my dear sir, you will not find that the case any longer,” said I, “I shall now carry my heart in my hand.”

“That is,” said Mr. Blagge, “you think you will; but excepting that your face will be beaming with pleasure as it does now, no one will be the better of what is going on within; I know you very well now; you will be more reserved than ever.”

I laughed at this, for I was in fact at that very moment grudging the time I spent in this little friendly talk, for I wanted to be thinking of my wife.

“Oh, by the way,” said Mr. Blagge, “there is a letter for you from your old master, Mr. Bartlett; it came enclosed to me, and he requested that it might be given to you immediately. Now as you did not let me know where you were going, I could not send it to you. I suspect the good gentleman wants your services: but you must not leave me now, Mr. Parr, for I am almost beside myself with business.”

I assured him that I would not; and as to Mr. Bartlett, much as I now desired an increase of income I would not live under his chilling influence, different as I was now in circumstances, for half his wealth. I actually shuddered at the thoughts of taking my wife to the scenes of my melancholy servitude.

142It was curious, but the letter could not be found; high and low, in every corner, on every shelf, did we look, but in vain; so we were compelled to give up the search. I did not regret it in the least, for I had learned from one of the young men belonging to Mr. Bartlett’s office that he intended to make me an offer. Mr. Blagge had answered his letter, stating why I did not write myself, and as this thing did not concern me any further I dismissed the subject from my mind, not even thinking it worth mentioning when I returned to my wife.

Every evening, the moment the sun went down, I returned to that dear, solitary one, and then after taking our supper we would wander about from place to place, caring very little in what direction we strayed. We lived for ourselves, and most deeply and gratefully did we enjoy the felicity of being together unnoticed and unknown. We frequently passed a small, one-storied brick building; it was untenanted, and had been shut up for two years, not happening to suit any one. My wife thought, if it were repaired a little, it might answer for a dwelling house, for that a stack of chimneys could soon be run up. On inquiry I found that it had been built for lawyers’ offices during the last yellow fever that had appeared in the city, and that it had since that been only used occasionally for a school-house.

There were four very small rooms, only ten feet square, with a narrow hall in the centre, and neither cellar nor garret; but the house stood among trees and back from the street, so that this was a charm to counterbalance many inconveniences. I saw the owner of it, and he agreed to put it in repair provided I took it on a lease for four years; this I gladly did; the rent was to be eighty dollars a year, and cheap enough we thought it, as there was a good well of water directly in front of the 143house. Aunt Martha came in the precise moment that she was wanted, and now whilst the house was being repaired there came the pleasant task of going from shop to shop to purchase the tiny furniture that was to suit these tiny rooms. The front one of the left hand rooms was to be used as a bed room for aunt Martha, and the one behind it as a kitchen; of the other two the front was to be the parlour, and the back one our bed room. No one can tell the pleasure I had in hearing and seeing all that was going on—I had read of going to coronations and to brilliant spectacles, but I hastened home every evening with a far more exquisite pleasure to hold one end of a breadth of carpeting whilst my dear wife cut it off, or listen to her little rambles with aunt Martha, or looked at the neat candlesticks and the little set of china, all so cheap and yet so very simple and pretty.

By the first of October the house was finished and the smell of the new paint entirely gone; every thing, therefore, was ready, and I had begged a holiday that I might assist in the grand move. The sun set gloriously as I walked out of the office, and it seemed to my joyous spirit that it smiled graciously as I poured forth my grateful feelings in song. Only think of the poor, broken down, neglected apprentice, caroling along the street “home, sweet home,” and having a sweet home to go to in the bargain. Fast as I walked and quickly as I reached our lodgings, I did not come too soon for my dear wife, for she was expecting me at the door with hat and shawl, all equipped for a walk.

“What!” said I, “dearest, a walk before tea? or is it to be a little shopping expedition? here is my arm; and which way now, my life? not far, for I think you look fatigued.”

“Why, to tell the truth, Patrick, dear, I am a little tired, for I have worked hard to-day that I 144may enjoy your holiday to-morrow. I am only going to the house; aunt Martha is there waiting for us. And you can be at home to-morrow, can you? oh, what a day of pleasure it will be! such a day as to-morrow comes but once in a married life, dear husband.”

To me every day was one of happiness, and with her near me, even the bustle of moving was a pleasant thing to anticipate; but in the abstract, apart from the thought of my wife, nothing could be more irksome than the hurry of change. It was not far to our new habitation, and in looking up there stood dear aunt Martha at the door, bending forward to look for us.

“Walk in, walk in,” said she; “walk in your own house, good folks; come and see if every thing is to your liking, Mr. Parr,” and open went all the doors of the four tiny rooms.

It was, indeed, as my darling said, a sight and a feeling that came but once in the married life—the first moment that the young husband and his bride put their feet on the threshold of their own house. I have changed that humble dwelling for the princely one that I now inhabit, but that same gentle touch came no more. My wife had an instinctive feeling that I should be annoyed by the moving and lifting and hurry of the scene, and she and Martha agreed to spare me; so there I stood, and it appeared to me that some good fairy had been at work, so neatly and beautifully every thing was arranged. In the middle of the little parlour stood the tea table, and after I had gone through the rooms and praised every thing over and over again, we sat down with grateful hearts to our own frugal meal.

Every day my spirit rose higher; and my thoughts grew loftier; I did not envy the greatest man in existence, so many and so varied were my 145blessings. Mr. Blagge placed the most unlimited confidence in me; and, as his profits increased through my exertions, he generously allowed me to close my labours an hour earlier every day. This was a great favour; and as the winter set in he moved the printing-office a great deal higher up, so that I had the additional comfort of dining at home. Our kind friend, aunt Martha, would not allow us to hire a servant, and my wife took a share in the household duties, working for me, keeping my drawers in order, and arranging every thing in the way she knew I liked. I could not but indulge her in it, seeing that it gave her such pleasure.

We made no acquaintances; we wanted none; there seemed scarcely time enough for ourselves; and why should we be troubled with strangers? Martha, seeing the innocent life we led, became sincerely attached to us; promising never to leave us; and thus passed the first winter of my married life. We were all happy. My dear wife was as cheerful as a bird; and, at times, when I was particularly weary—too weary to read, or even to listen to her reading—she would put away her little work-basket, set the candle in the farthest corner, and draw her chair close to mine, charming away my fatigue with her clear soft voice and gentle endearments. She had bright visions of the future; and they always ended as she knew I wished, in our purchasing the little estate on which I was born. How delightful it is to listen to the little nothings of a sensible woman; one that loves us too.

This was the way that heaven rewarded me for all that I had endured; and the reward came to me in such a shape too—a wife! I spoke of the rapturous feelings of a young husband, at the mention of his bride, but they are nothing in comparison to 146those he has when she is called his wife—when the quiet evenings of winter bring him for ever near her; when he listens to her innocent conversation, full of love, and care, and thoughtfulness—all for him. I often wondered whether all men loved their wives as I loved mine. There was no way in which I could judge, for I had never been even in the same room with a husband and wife; but I had read of disagreements, and hatreds, and separations. It had given me great uneasiness before my marriage; but I always took the side of the wife, wondering why the man wanted to have his own way, in the merest trifles too. As to me, every thing my wife or Martha did, seemed the very best thing to be done; I was sure that their taste and judgment were more to be depended upon than mine; particularly as it related to household economy.

And then, was I not to be envied when, with the dear creature’s arm linked in mine, we walked out either for exercise or business? A man never feels his power and responsibility so strongly as when a lovely woman leans on him for support, and relies on his courage and his ability to protect her. What a delightful sensation comes over a man when he knows that there is one being in the world who trusts to him entirely, and looks up to him as the first and the best—none but a husband can have this feeling—he enjoys it as long as life continues; it is a pleasure of which he never wearies.

May came, with all its pleasantness and its flowers, and our love for one another made every thing appear in the gayest and brightest colours. Nothing could be more inconvenient than our house; nothing could be more irksome than my occupation—the dullest of all dull employment, correcting proofs—yet it was for me that my wife overlooked the privations and difficulties she had to encounter from a limited income and a house of such diminutive 147size—and it was for her that I continued to drudge on, monotonously, without a thought of change. My wife was far more prudent and economical than I was; that is, in every thing that related to herself. I could not resist the pleasure of buying her all the delicate fruits and early vegetables of the season; and I had great pleasure in taking all sorts of little pretty table ornaments and delicate perfumes, and prints, and books; in short, I scarcely went home without something in my hand.

“My dear husband,” said she one evening, when I came home with a present as usual, “have you found Aladdin’s lamp, that you are so lavish of your money? You will have to put a rein on your generous nature, for instead of laying up two hundred dollars this year, as we intended, there will be nothing left. Come, dearest, and look over this little statement with me, and then say whether we should not retrench? The worst of it, to me, dearest, is the knowledge that the two hundred dollars have been expended for my gratification: you have hardly allowed yourself any thing; I must put a stop to your dear generous spirit; aunt Martha and I have talked quite seriously about it.”

I promised to be more prudent for the future; and if there ever was any thing trying to my temper it was the inability to purchase such little articles of luxury as I thought my wife ought to have. Mr. Blagge, however, true to his promise, raised my salary to a thousand dollars; and with this welcome news I could not refrain from buying a pretty little set of chess men; for my wife had a great desire to teach me to play the game; and so, after telling her of the addition to our income, I gave her the chess men and board. I thought to make it the more welcome by hinting to her that it was for myself. The dear creature smiled and 148shook her head. “Ah, my husband,” said she, “you think you have found out a new way of indulging me; but I am not to be taken in. Do you think I don’t know that you have no particular fancy for games of any sort; and that the chess men are to give me pleasure? But I shall punish you by sitting down to the game this evening in good earnest; you will soon tire of it, however.”

In this way our evenings passed; part of them in playing at chess, in which I soon became interested, as I had such a pleasant teacher; and in part, in studying the German language. We had a German in the office, who taught me the pronunciation, and what he taught me in the morning I transferred to my wife in the evening; and it was really wonderful to find how quickly she conquered all the difficulties. But if it was wonderful that she acquired this language in so short a time, I could not but feel surprised that nothing was neglected; there seemed to be time for every thing; and she was always ready for a walk; always in time, and always neatly dressed. What a happy fellow I was, to have no care of my wardrobe; I, that never knew what it was to have a button to my collar or wristbands.

I thought that no event could make her dearer to me than she now was; but there did come the time when I found that, ardently as I loved her, my tenderness and my cares were still more strongly excited; but they came coupled with such apprehensions that I watched over her with mingled emotions of joy and fear. It was now that I saw the necessity of prudence and economy; and I could not but hope that some means might be found by which my salary would be increased; for I desired, of all things, to place my dear wife in a more comfortable house. Mr. Blagge had, I knew, done his very best in allowing me two hundred dollars a 149year more, so I could not expect any thing from him; but I thought there might be ways to make money independently of the office. Perhaps I might write for the magazines; or who knows whether I might not write a saleable book. It was in vain that my wife discouraged me. It was in vain that she assured me the want of a cellar was nothing, as the grocer, at the corner, supplied her with every thing from day to day; and that the little cabin rooms were quite large enough; and that larger ones would but increase her labours.

I mentioned that Mr. Bartlett had written to me under cover to Mr. Blagge, but as the letter had been mislaid, I knew nothing of the contents. It struck me that he had made me an offer of partnership; and what I then shuddered at, seemed not so very bad a thing now that I had such an endearing prospect before me. I mentioned it to my wife, and she was surprised that I had not written to Mr. Bartlett; but I told her, that as Mr. Blagge had said to him, that he would give me the letter as soon as I returned from the country, I thought there was no use in saying any thing further, for I did not intend to avail myself of any offer he might make.

“O, but, Patrick, my love,” said she, “the letter might relate to your friends in Scotland; nay, I dare to say it did, for Mr. Bartlett, cold and heartless as he is, has some sense of honour and honesty. He never would have made you an offer, however advantageous, whilst you were employed by Mr. Blagge; all that you tell me of him proves this. Do you not think, dearest, that you had better write to him?”

This shows how much more acute a woman’s intellect is than ours; I never so much as dreamed of my old uncle Parr in Scotland; and now it almost amounted to conviction, that the letter related 150to him. I questioned Mr. Blagge respecting the letter, and he said, that as far as his recollection served, it appeared to be a double one, and he was quite surprised to find that I had not written. There was no doubt on his mind that the letter was still amongst the papers, and he proposed another search, particularly as there were two or three boxes that had not been opened since the office was removed, and he advised me to look there. We opened the boxes and assorted the papers; they were principally old manuscripts and the correspondence relating to them; but my letter did not appear. Just as we had gone through the last box, one of the clerks lifted up an old black morocco portfolio, which lay at the bottom, and as he slapped off the dust a letter flew out and fell near Mr. Blagge. The moment he saw the letter the whole thing flashed across his mind. That one reminded him of mine, and he now recollected that he had put it along with several others in this very letter book. Sure enough, there it was, unsealed, just as it came from the postman; but as it was quite dark, I hurried home, lest my wife should feel uneasy at my protracted stay: in truth, I met her at the door with her hat on, intending to walk down to the office, with Martha, to see what had detained me.

Martha brought the candle, and then a little doubt arose as to who should read the letter first; but Martha decided in my wife’s favour. “She can bear good or bad news better than you, Mr. Parr,” said the good woman, “and if the news is good, why, she will break it to you by degrees, and you will not be set all on a tremble; and if it is bad news, such as the loss of your money in the Savings Bank, or the mortgage”—Heavens, I had never thought of this—“why she will teach you to bear it.” My darling, therefore, opened the now 151dreaded letter; but you may judge of her astonishment when she read as follows—

“Sir—Yesterday I received by the packet ship Monongahela, the following letter, enclosed in one directed to me; mine, I presume, was a copy of yours; by it you perceive that your uncle is dead, and that you are the sole heir to his estate, provided you go to Glasgow and identify yourself before the month of October—next October year. I had intended to write to you on my own account, offering you a third partnership in our concern, but I presume this piece of good fortune will make it unnecessary for you to toil at your profession.”

I sat watching my wife’s countenance, as did our good Martha likewise, and we saw her change colour, first pale and then red; but she did not speak until the letter was folded and in her bosom. “Patrick, love,” said she, “what month is this?” I told her it was July—the first of July. “Oh my,” said she, “then we have no time—it will all be lost—July, August, September; only three months—but come, here is the tea; let us drink it first, otherwise some people may forget to eat—aunt Martha, I know you will not get a wink of sleep to-night; I shall sleep as sound as a top, as I always do—and you, dearest, you will have golden dreams; oh, what a fine house you will build at Camperdown; and how snugly uncle Porter will be ensconced in the little, neat, comfortable stone house; and dear aunt Martha, what a glorious south room you are to have on the first floor, along with us; and oh, what planning and what perplexities we shall be in for the next two years. Why, Mr. Bartlett has made a most princely offer.”

And thus the dear creature went on, leading me to believe that the good news related to him; but aunt Martha knew better. So, when tea was over, and she was seated on my knee, I heard the whole 152truth. I pressed her to my bosom in an ecstasy, at the thought of placing her in affluence; but too soon came the reflection, that the ocean must be crossed before this desirable event could take place. Sleep, dream, did she say? not I; no sleep nor dreams for me; but she, the dear creature, with a mind so justly balanced, and thinking nothing an evil that was to save me from anxiety; she slept like a top, as she said she would. It was aunt Martha that had the dreams all to herself.

Mr. Blagge expressed both joy and sorrow; joy at my good fortune, and sorrow at parting with me. He, too, he said, intended to offer me better terms the next year; perhaps an equal partnership; so that if the event did not equal our expectations I had two means of advancement, and I need not say that my choice would have fallen upon Mr. Blagge. He never, for a moment, thought there could be a doubt on my mind as to the propriety of going to Scotland; and I absolutely hated him for the ease with which he discussed the subject; just as if there were to be no fears, no struggles. When I went home, there was my dear wife, looking calm, and receiving me cheerfully, but with an inquiring eye; and there sat aunt Martha, ready for a thousand questions, and with a thousand observations.

Long and painfully did the subject occupy me; I said nothing, but my dear wife left off her interesting needlework and employed herself in preparing for the voyage. As I had not made up my mind whether I would go at all, the point of her going with me had not been discussed, and I sat with a stupid wonder looking at certain dresses which she and Martha were making, and at certain convenient caps that were to suit both the cabin and deck. They talked and they chatted on, and congratulated themselves that the smallness of the ship’s cabin would not be an inconvenience, seeing 153that they had been so long accustomed to our small rooms.

I still went daily to the office as if nothing had occurred, but my mind was in a terrible state. To go, and leave my wife to the mercy of strangers, and at such an interesting time too, was very painful; to take her with me was to expose her to certain danger, for if there were no storms, no shipwrecks, yet sea-sickness might prove fatal. When I made up my mind to take her I reproached myself as being the most selfish of mortals, and when I finally concluded to leave her behind, her death knell rung in my ears. Most sincerely did I wish that the hated letter had never been found. It became at length the subject of discussion, that is, with me. My opinion was asked on several points, and answers were wrung from me; but there seemed one thing certain in my wife’s mind, that although I might not decide on her going with me, yet I could not but choose to go. She never questioned it.

I fell to reading the biography of voyagers to see how the females of their party bore the perils of the sea, and then I made many inquiries as to their perils on shore, even with the tenderness of a husband to sustain them. Recollect, my friends, that this beloved being was my only tie on earth, and that without her, existence would be a burden. I was not going rashly to decide on her fate and mine; it was therefore but consistent with the love I bore her to weigh well the difficulties on either side. She, too, had thought of every thing, and her mind was made up at once—and that was to go with me. “I have but this to say, dearest husband,” said she at the beginning, and her mind underwent no change, “if we are permitted to go safely, we shall be a comfort to one another throughout the voyage and on shore; but if otherwise—if 154the sea is to be our grave, then we shall perish together; I could not survive your loss, and you, dearest”—

I never could let her proceed further; as to live without her seemed a thing impossible. At such times I seemed to yield assent, and began to make preparations; but having read an account of the illness and death of a lady on her passage across the Atlantic, I determined at once, if the going was insisted upon, that I would let her remain behind. Then again, if I saw in the papers the death of a young mother, I repented of my former decision; and in this miserable state of mind I was during the whole month of July. August still found me irresolute; but I had only two weeks left to waver, for there would then be but little time left to come within the limits of the bequest. There were but six weeks from that time to the first of October; it therefore became necessary to bring my mind to the painful decision of leaving my wife behind. I wrote to Mr. Porter, entreating him to come immediately, and remain in the house during my absence. I saw an eminent physician, and interested him in such a way that I was sure he would never let a day pass without paying her a visit, whether she were indisposed or not; and I took every precaution, in short, that love and prudence could dictate to make her comfortable and happy.

How she bore with all this nervous, morbid irritability, I cannot tell; but never by word or look did she betray any impatience; her sole object was to sooth me and make light of her own sufferings. She promised to take great care of her health, and Martha exhausted words in her desire to set my mind at rest. Mr. Porter declared she should never be out of his thoughts, and Mr. Blagge promised to take his wife and daughter to 155her the day after I should sail. But all this was nothing, absolutely nothing, in my estimation, when I considered how much more than all this I could do for her were I near her myself.

The time came at last; Mr. Blagge had taken my passage, and my trunk had gone to the ship. I had been to get some necessary papers of the British consul, and was hastening home—that home where I had enjoyed such exquisite happiness—like a fool I was leaving it—for what?—for an uncertain good—and when I returned, if Providence permitted me to return, might I not find that dear and cherished spot desolate! Whilst I was thus tormenting myself with these fearful fancies, the funeral of a lady passed me; she had been married at the same time with us, and she had died of inflammation of the lungs. I inquired of a person who was acquainted with her, and I found that she had taken cold from sitting in the draft of two doors, and, he added, the room was very small, so that there was no avoiding the exposure—the very situation in which I had left my dear wife only an hour before!

Of course I hastened home with greater speed and opened the door of the little parlour with the dismal feelings that I came too late. But she had removed to the window, and the sash was down. Oh, how I blessed her for this act of prudence. She saw my nervous apprehension and asked what had thus disturbed me, and finding my fears groundless I was ashamed to tell her the cause. She looked earnestly at me and said, “My dear husband, you are wearing yourself out with fears and anxieties; I am well, and with the blessing of Providence I hope so to remain; nay, I am strong enough to encounter the voyage, much more able to bear it than you are with your excited feelings. There are our trunks, Martha’s and mine, ready 156packed, and we are only hoping and waiting for your assent to go with you; so, dearest, knowing how unhappy you will be to leave me behind, even let me go. I shall not urge you any further, my love, but think of it this evening, and we shall have time in the morning to get ready what little remains to be done. Now throw all care from your mind and let us sit down cheerfully to our supper; depend upon it we shall be sitting here together this day four months laughing and talking over our present anxieties.”

Laugh, indeed, thought I; there never can come a time when I shall laugh at what I am now feeling so keenly. But I cast all selfishness aside, and determined to go alone as the lesser evil of the two, going over and over again the whole argument, and more fully convinced that although it was most painful to leave her, yet it would be cruel and presumptuous to make her encounter the risks of a sea voyage. I had but little sleep this last night; but my dear wife, after vainly endeavouring to prevail on me to court repose, fell asleep like an infant and slept soundly till morning. She suffered as acutely as I did, but her nervous temperament was of a less irritable cast; her sensibilities were more equally balanced. A knowledge of this always gave me comfort.

The dreaded morning came; all was hurry and bustle, and of course but little time for conversation. The trunks still stood in the room; mine had gone the day before, and I cast a look at them, and then on my wife, who, pale as death, was looking at the carriage that was to convey me to the boat. She saw my look and said, “I may go then, dear husband, you consent then that we shall go?” But I shut my eyes, as if to shut out the temptation, and shook my head. “Put the trunks out of the room, Mr. Porter,” said I, “for I shall be tormented 157with the desire to take her with me, and that I ought not to do; I must not waver any more, or I shall be unable to go at all.” The trunks were removed, and my dear wife seated herself and sighed. “But why do not you and Martha accompany me to the wharf?” said I—“perhaps we shall feel the parting less. There will be no time for any thing there but getting on board. Do you think, Martha, that she can bear it?”

“Oh yes, I dare say she can,” said Martha, “and I am sure it will do her good, and we can keep the carriage for an hour or so and take a little ride, for she has sat too much at her needle lately. Brother, do you get another carriage for us, and let them go together; Mr. Parr will feel the better for having her all to himself. We can return with her, you know.”

I was thankful for being a few minutes longer with my beloved, and I hoped that we might remain at the wharf an hour at least, as it was now only nine o’clock. We thought it best to go, however, as the wind was fair, and the captain might be anxious to sail; so we entered the carriage, leaving Martha to come with her brother. We drove slowly to the wharf, and there the first person we saw was Mr. Blagge, who had kindly come to see me off. My dear wife drew back in the carriage and begged that he might not see her, so I went to him and thanked him for this proof of his friendship, and again entreated him to remember how essential it was to my peace of mind that he should do all in his power to lessen my wife’s anxieties—if I could not ask a favour for myself, I would for this dear one.

Mr. Porter came to us and said that they had better return, as the horses were restless and Mrs. Parr might get frightened. Mr. Blagge thought so too, and blamed me for bringing her down to a 158scene of so much confusion; so I hastily snatched one kiss, pressed her dear hand as she held it out to me after the door was closed, and she and Martha disappeared from my sight.

What Mr. Blagge said to me I don’t know, but I now and then heard the sounds of new publications, and letters, and manuscripts, but I could only dwell on the grief that my poor wife was now in; it was too much to expect I could listen to him on such uninteresting subjects; why did he not talk of what he knew was the only feeling of my mind?—and to hold me by the arm too, lest I should get away. The steamboat, however, called all hands aboard, and passengers with all their friends jumped on board to go to the ship, which lay in the stream. I made a move to go also, but the captain, coming up at the instant, told me he would give me ten minutes longer, as he had to see a man on business, and that I could go with him in the ship’s boat which lay there ready for him. The steamboat left the wharf, and Mr. Blagge talked on; I never knew him so loquacious before, and he kept jerking me around as if the nervousness under which I was labouring had imparted itself to his arm.

At length the captain returned, and Mr. Blagge, shaking hands with me, promised to look most carefully—and, he added with strong emphasis—most affectionately, after all the concerns I left behind. The oars cut the water, and as soon as we were on board the captain gave orders for sailing. The steamboat was just departing, and on turning my eye towards it I saw poor Mr. Porter. I called out to him that I was safely on board, most thankful that he had seen me, for what would have been the agony of my dear wife if he had returned and reported that the vessel had sailed without me. He entered the boat, thought I, with the intention of seeing me safely to the ship; his consternation 159must have been great when I was not to be found amongst the passengers. He waved his hat, however, on seeing me as I bent over the side of the vessel, and pressing his hand to his heart he pointed towards the shore—it told me that he intended to fulfil his promise of guarding well the sacred trust I had confided to him.

Through the narrows and out in the broad ocean we soon were; but I stood immovable with my eyes turned to that dear shore where all my hopes were centred. I could not realize it—what! voluntarily to leave the only creature on earth to whom I was attached?—she, too, who had chosen me when poor and unknown. Could I not be content with the independence that my own honest labour procured, but must I show how much more I valued money than the pains to us both of such a bitter separation—a separation that might be for ever! Before the pilot left us I had serious thoughts of returning with him; but the captain was at my elbow, and assuming a kind of authority; I was forced to see him depart without me. The wind blew fresh, and before night there was a heavy gale; yet I cared not, my feelings were too strong even for that to subdue. I could not go down to dinner, nor was I disposed to sit with strangers at the supper table; but the captain showed so much good natured solicitude that I yielded and took my seat beside him.

I do not recollect now how many of the passengers were at supper, but they were not all there, for some were already seasick and in their berths. I only remember that opposite to me sat a young lady who looked at me very frequently, and who could scarcely keep from laughing, although the gentleman next her reprimanded her once or twice for her ill breeding. I could not imagine what had caused her mirth, unless it were the melancholy 160expression of my countenance. There was not much time, however, to speculate on any thing, for the gale increased and every body on board became anxious and watchful. The captain advised me to go to bed, but I chose rather to remain on deck, hoping that if there were any danger I might be of some use. Just as I was leaving the cabin I heard the laughing lady say to her companion, “I am glad he is going on deck, for I can hardly stand it.”

I had been so unaccustomed to the society of women, and my dear wife and the gentle Martha, in all my various moods of gaiety and melancholy, had always shown so much tenderness and sympathy for me, that the mirth of this young lady excited something like uneasiness in my mind, and I could not help referring to it in the midst of the storm that was raging. Perhaps it was of service to me; but I could not help thinking how indignant my wife would be had she been witness to it; for, as she respected me herself, she could not but suppose that I would be entitled to the same respect from others.

Having never been on the ocean before, the violence of the gale was truly appalling, though the captain assured me there was no danger; it continued unabated for two days and nights, and at every meal, there set the laughing lady. I asked who the young lady was, that seemed so amused when I went to the table. The captain laughed heartily and then begged my pardon. “Indeed, Mr. Parr,” said he, “you must cheer up; why man, we want mirth and not melancholy on shipboard. I cannot find out why you look so very unhappy, for Mr. Blagge tells me that you have a lovely wife, and are in expectation of getting a large fortune. Why you did not bring your lady along with you is more than I can tell; this gale is nothing, the ship is a fast sailer and the 161voyage will be a short and a pleasant one, no doubt, so you might have enjoyed her society in comfort, if it is the leaving her behind that makes you look so miserable. I am sure I do not wonder that the young lady is amused; why I could hardly keep my own countenance at the breakfast table this morning, you looked so disturbed, and cast such suspicious glances at the harmless young thing who was looking at you.”

But this did not mend the matter, for I was not to become gay merely because others were amused by the expression of sadness in my countenance. That I had willingly parted from my wife was a reality that could not be forgotten, and I told the captain that to avoid giving the tittering lady any further food for her mirth, I should take my seat on the same side of the table with her. He consented that I should, and the dinner passed off very well, for my opposite neighbour was a decrepit old woman whose head was bent low, and who seemed to suffer too much from sickness to care who looked sad or merry.

The gale abated, and by sundown it had died away to a pleasant breeze; the full moon rose beautifully out of the ocean, and my whole soul was filled with wonder and admiration. If my wife had been at my side, what a happiness to enjoy it with her; I sighed heavily, and the good natured captain broke in upon my meditations. “I am more and more sorry Mr. Parr,” said he, “that you did not bring your wife with you; if I had only known how hard you were going to take it, I should have brought her along by main force. You will destroy yourself if you continue thus to grieve, and yet I cannot blame you much neither, for I had pretty nearly the same kind of feelings when I left my wife for the first time. It was different with me, however, I was only mate then, and had not the 162power to bring her with me, but I warrant you I did so as soon as I became captain.”

“Why, is your wife on board now,” said I, frightened out of my senses lest the laughing lady might be her. “I have not seen her, have I.”

“No, she is quite indisposed,” said he; “in fact she goes this voyage to see whether it may not cure her eyes; she has to wear goggles all the time as the light is so painful; if it were not for that she would be a very pretty woman; one of these evenings I will get her to take them off, and you must come down and see her. Do you play at chess? You do hey; well, I am glad of it, for she plays a good game, and it will keep you both to while away the time, particularly since my wife’s eyes won’t allow her to sew. She has beautiful hair, too, though I say it,” continued the warm-hearted captain, and I liked him all the better for talking so tenderly of his wife. “That old lady that sits opposite to you now, almost bent double, as you see, is a friend of my wife’s, and we are taking her on a visit. Poor old thing she is so near-sighted, that every thing must go close to her eyes, or her eyes be sent close to the object, otherwise she could not see to cut her food even. Excuse me, Mr. Parr, is your wife handsome?”

“I think she is,” said I, “to me she appears beautiful, and I wish she was here to enjoy this delicious evening with me.”

“Why yes, as I said, it would be better to have her here. My wife has a few freckles on her face—is your wife freckled?”

“Freckled!” said I indignantly, “no, why do you ask that question; she has a remarkably clear skin.”

“Oh, I meant no offence; what colour are her eyes? my wife has blue eyes; people say they are handsome, and I think so too.”

163Would any one believe me when I say, that to this moment, I could not tell the colour of her eyes. To me they always beamed with intelligence and love; and as to whether they were blue or grey, I never thought. But the persevering captain thinking that it gave me great pleasure in talking of her, went on in this way to question me about her dear face until I got as miserable as possible. “Well, well,” said he, moving off, “you can’t bear more to-night, so I’ll go below and talk to the ladies a little, and tell my wife the good news that you can play chess.”

Good news, indeed, to sit opposite to his goggle-eyed wife, and play at chess, when she that taught me was sitting solitary at home. I thought I should go mad, if I did not try and invent some excuse; for the idea was intolerable, and yet I pitied the poor woman too.

The next morning the captain’s wife was at table; she had taken her seat before I went down, so that I could not see her distinctly, although she was on the opposite side. She wore green spectacles and plenty of curls, which were certainly of a beautiful colour; but the cap she wore hid the back hair entirely; so I thought, after all, it was only a little brag of the captain, for these curls might be artificial. As to the freckles, there they were, sure enough; ugly little yellow things. She did well, I thought, to let the curls cover her face as much as possible, for these freckles were well worth hiding. And then, such great clumsy hands too; and to make them look still larger by wearing gloves. I was at last quite ashamed of myself, for I really felt spiteful towards this poor lady; more particularly as the tittering one opposite to her was now fairly laughing out; and all the rest, but the captain’s wife and the poor old lady opposite to me, 164laughed along with her. I looked at the captain, and he sat with his handkerchief to his face.

I made a short meal of it; and I determined if this foolery was continued at dinner, that I would eat in the steerage, any where, rather than encounter such incivilities; for I, somehow or other, associated it all with myself; but to my great relief, neither the captain’s wife nor the young lady were at table, so that I ate my dinner without annoyance. But there was no getting rid of the captain’s desire to amuse his poor wife with a game of chess. He set aside every excuse; and at length, fairly told me that he saw through my artifice; but that he knew better than I did, how to make the voyage endurable; and that the sooner I broke through my reserve and shyness the better able I should be to bear up against the separation with my wife.

There were but three gentlemen passengers, so that, in all, there were, besides myself and the captain’s wife, only the laughing lady and the one who sat opposite to me. There were, to be sure, a number in the steerage; but I had not taken any notice of them, nor, in fact, had I exchanged a word with the gentlemen in the cabin. I was, therefore, very much surprised when they all three left the table and went with me on deck, talking with me as familiarly as if I had been the most communicative person in the world. They were in high glee, and said a number of pleasant things, all of which I might have enjoyed at any other moment; but the chess and the captain’s wife crowded out all social feelings; and when the captain came for me, and said the chess board was arranged, and his wife waiting, I went down provoked enough.—Only to think of being placed in such a dilemma—to sit with the captain’s wife, dawdling over the chess men, with a mind so far away. My only hope 165was, that she would beat me so easily that she would not ask me to play with her again.

When I got in the cabin, the first person I saw was the old lady, who was pulling and jerking at her black hood, and laughing heartily. Surely, thought I, that laugh is familiar to me; but she could not untie the string of her hood, so I offered to help her. Thereat she laughed louder and pushed me away. I then turned to the captain’s wife, and she seemed beside herself too. I never heard of such a cracked set of people in my life; they all seemed bursting with fun. She threw, first one, and then the other, ugly glove, across the floor; and then away went the spectacles, away went the cap, and away went the curls, and I stood amazed and wondering what was coming next, when a voice that sprung fresh and warm to my heart, said, “Patrick, my dear Patrick, do you know me now?” I had no words; not a syllable could my overjoyed heart allow me to utter, as my dear wife lay in my fond arms.

And there she was, and Martha too. The captain and his wife, who was the laughing lady, all were in the plot; and I was for a long time in such agitated bliss that I did not want to hear how it had all happened; but it was a surprise—a most joyful surprise.

“And so, Patrick, dearest,” said she, “you never knew I had freckles, just look at them.” “No, no,” said I, kissing the dear cheek that she held towards me, “nor do I see them now; nor could I tell the colour of these eyes; all I was ever sensible to is their tender expression. And here is dear Martha too; how completely were you both disguised. By and by you must tell me all about it; but now I only want to feel the bliss of being near to you, and to know that this is all reality.”

In half an hour some one tapped at the door, and 166in came my late tormentor, and in came the captain; and now they laughed heartily; and I smiled in return, for my heart was too full to break out in loud mirth. It seems it was as much as they could all do to restrain the lively lady, fearing that the plot would be discovered before the time. My wife intended to show herself as soon as the pilot left us; but she was so very seasick that she thought I could better bear the pain of thinking her away from me than witness suffering which I could not relieve. The gale came on, and her sickness continued, and she thought it most prudent to wait till it was over. Her plan was to write me a note, and prepare me for it, but the captain and his wife, as well as the gentlemen, begged her to allow of this little artifice, which, as they had taken such an interest in her affairs, she thought it right to indulge them in. Finding me so averse to her going, and knowing that I should so bitterly regret it, she and Martha went in a carriage, one day, and interested Mr. Blagge in her scheme. The captain and his wife were delighted; and whilst he detained me by a sham business, on shore, Mr. Porter saw her and Martha safely on board. She had left the trunks till the last, hoping that I might relent, and thus prevent any necessity of a plot; but as I would not consent, Mr. Porter, who had another carriage in waiting, took them down to the wharf.

What more is to be said? Our voyage was delightful. I had no difficulty, whatever, in identifying myself; and I returned in possession of a large estate, which I trust I shall spend with grateful feelings. Dr. Bently and his amiable niece, Miss Sidney, now Mrs. North, were our fellow-passengers on returning. They little knew what an interest I had in the village of Camperdown, when they so earnestly pressed me to settle in their neighbourhood. My beloved wife was not at all the worse for the 167three months’ excursion; and two months after our return, we were made still happier, if possible, by the birth of a son. My wife, always mindful of my feelings, has called him Cyrus, after my poor father; and we are, I trust, bringing him up in the love of his Maker, and in the fear of breaking his commandments. Aunt Martha, as you know, lives with us, and Mr. Porter resides altogether in the stone house, where I was born; we could not do without him. Now that you all know my dear wife, you can easily imagine that my love for her can never diminish; and that, to be separated from her, would be the greatest of evils.

You have asked me to write a memoir of my life; but, after all, what is it? It is only a description of my heart and its feelings; of my early sorrows, and of my deep, deep love for one, whom I still continue to think is far too good—too far above me. Of her unworthy uncle I will not speak; she was his sister’s only child, and he could neither appreciate nor love her. All my felicity has arisen from his blindness, and I therefore forgive him. But if there has been nothing remarkable in this memoir, if the events are such as we meet with frequently, surely there is some novelty in the Surprise.

“Jemmy, come here—come quick, will ye,” said a poor, dirty, good-natured looking fellow, to a man as ragged and poor as himself—“step faster, will ye, and help me to raise this wagon.”

They lifted up the overturned light carriage and dragged out of the mud—first, a trunk and carpet bag, then a gun case, and lastly the owner of all this, a middle aged man, apparently, who had been stunned by the fall, although in so soft a spot.

He recovered his senses, however, as soon as the men raised him from the ground, and the next thing was to know what to do with him. One of the men, Jemmy Brady, scratched his head and said, “If I had ever a room but the one in which the wife and childer are, I would take the gentleman there any how, but the noise would be too great for him I’m thinking.”

“Och! but he’ll never mind the childer, God bless them,” said the other. “I dare say his honour has plenty of them—the likes of these jontlemen are always fond of young childer.”

“You are very much mistaken, my friend,” said the stranger, “I do not like children. Is there no 169cabin or hut about here where I could rest for an hour or two, and change my clothes? I see that the wheel is off the carriage, so I cannot proceed to the tavern.”

“Yes, sure,” said Larry, “plenty of them, barring Jemmy Brady’s and mine. Jemmy has seven childer and I have five,—too much noise for your honour, I’m thinking, and the mud is almost as thick on the floor of my shanty as it is here, your honour—but if you’ll step a bit this way, I’ll take you to Sally M’Curdy’s.”

The gentleman asked if this Sally M’Curdy had any children. Larry said that she had not—that she was a lone woman. “She’s left with one grand-daughter,” said he, “Norah—you’ll may be have heard of little Norie, yer honour, for she is very smart at her latters, and can read and write too, and she’s very quiet and very mindful of her grandmother.”

Both Jemmy and Larry had the instinctive feeling, that this widow’s shanty bade fairer for comfort than any other in the range, and they were hastening forward to show the way and to prepare her for the guest, when he discovered that he had sprained his ancle, and could not move.

“What now is to be done,” said he, impatiently, “I cannot lift my foot from the ground, and the pain is becoming intolerable.”

“Och, hub-bub-boo,” said Larry, “what is better to be done than to carry your honour on our hands, crossed this fashion. I’ve carried a bigger man nor you in this way, in play even.” So he called lazy Jemmy to him, who scratched his head and sighed, to think of the heavy weight they were to carry. He crossed hands with Larry, the stranger seated himself, and in this awkward, singular way, with much vexation of spirit, he was taken to Sally M’Curdy’s shanty.

“Here is a good ould gentleman what’s lame,” 170said Larry, as they lifted him up a few steps into the neat little room—“he’s broke his foot any how, Mistress M’Curdy, and shall I run for a doctor, your honour, to set the leg?”

“My leg is not broken, my honest friend. If this good lady gives me leave to rest here all night, all that I shall require is, to have the boot cut off and my ancle bathed—it is only a sprain.”

“And is it I that will cut that good boot, your honour, I that am a shoemaker by trade, if the white boys at home would have let me earn a penny at it. Sure I know where the stitches are, and can’t I cut the thread?” So down Larry knelt, and with speed and skill, giving the stranger as little pain as possible, he cut through the seam, and took the boot from the swelled foot. Meantime Mrs. M’Curdy was not idle, she called her little grand-daughter, and immediately began to prepare supper, as the gentle clatter of cups in the next room indicated.

The stranger, whose name was Price, begged Jemmy to take his horse and dearborn to the next inn, and tell the landlord of his accident, and to say where he was to be found. He knew there was nothing better to be done than to put his foot in a tub of warm, salt water, and to remain as quiet as possible. Larry, whose good nature was a strong recommendation, promised to assist him in undressing, so that in half an hour after changing his clothes and keeping his foot in the tepid water, he felt so much easier that he was glad to hear that tea was ready. He was very willing to have the little tea table drawn close to his chair, and partake of the nice supper which his kind hostess had prepared for him.

“Don’t wait—don’t stand up, my good lady,” said he, “have you no young person to assist you; pray sit down and pour out tea for me.”

Mrs. M’Curdy quietly seated herself and made 171tea, while Larry answered the question about the young person, by pulling in the little shy Norah.

“Oh, Norah, dear,” said Mrs. M’Curdy, “you should not be coming in, child, and the gentleman in such pain—may be children trouble you, sir.”

“I am not over fond of children, that’s certain,” said Mr. Price, “but I should not imagine this nice little girl, who seems so unwilling to intrude, could be noisy or troublesome. Let her go, Larry—I believe that’s your name—let her hand go.”

Off darted the little girl, much to Mr. Price’s gratification; and much to Larry’s joy. After getting the gentleman snugly to bed, he received a dollar for his evening’s services, with a request to call in the morning and assist him to rise.

But the morning found Mr. Price, although able to rise, in so much pain that there was no hope of proceeding on his journey; he, therefore, after securing Larry’s services during those intervals allotted to the labourers at the forge, quietly settled it in his mind that here he must remain until the ankle recovered its strength. Mrs. M’Curdy was gentle, neat and attentive; anticipating his wants, and only wishing that more was to be done. But Mr. Price was neither troublesome nor ungracious, and before the dinner hour approached she wondered how so good-natured a gentleman could dislike children.

“To be sure,” said she, finishing her thoughts aloud, “Larry’s little ones are very noisy, and not over clean, and poor Jemmy’s are still worse than noisy; for they are rude and mischievous. But Norah is not like other children, sir, and she knows a world of stories, your honour, if it is stories out of books would amuse you. Sure will you try and coax the little creature in to sit by you a bit, till I come back from the grocer; and if she tires you, just let her go when Larry comes in.”

172“Well, send her in,” said Mr. Price, “and let me hear her little stories. I will promise to get rid of her when she becomes troublesome.”

“Then your honour will want to keep her for ever at your side, for Norah is never troublesome. She is an orphan, your honour, and that, as your honour knows, is a child without father or mother; although in Philadelphia they have found out, it is said, that an orphan means a child with one parent. But little Norah’s mother died broken-hearted because her husband left her and married another woman. She had too much feeling for her little girl to prosecute him; so she bore it all and died. Since that time her husband is dead; but I keep it all to myself, not letting his hard-hearted family know of little Norah. Indeed, I have kept purposely from knowing where they now are; for out of pride, like, they would take her away from me, and put her to some grand boarding-school; for, from what I could learn from him, they are rich.”

The grandmother brought in the blushing little girl, almost by force, to the gentleman’s arm-chair; but on his stroking her hair, and speaking tenderly, she, by degrees, began to look up and cast side glances at him; and, finally, on his asking her to hand him a glass of water, she shook back her curly locks, and, with the movement, threw off part of her fright.

“Well, you are no longer afraid of me, Norah; you have a little chair there, I see; bring it here, and sit by me till your grandmother comes back. How old are you?”

“I am nine years old; but I can remember my mother quite well, for I was five years old when she died. I have not cried about her for a great while, but I feel as if I could cry now.”

“No, don’t cry, Norah, don’t,” said Mr. Price, as the poor little creature burst into a passionate flood 173of tears—“don’t cry, my dear;” and lifting the child up, he drew her to him, while she sobbed on his bosom. “What makes you cry now?”

“Why, Jemmy Brady came in the room last evening, when grandmother was getting your supper ready, and he said something to me which made me think of my mother, and I have been all the morning thinking of her, and of all that she said and did.”

“Well, what did this Jemmy Brady say to you that has troubled you so much?” But Norah would not tell. She said it was no matter now, she should not cry again; for she was sure he was good-natured.

It was a new thing for Mr. Price to be soothing a crying child—he kept referring to it himself—but Norah advanced in his good graces, and by the time Mrs. M’Curdy returned, he was laughing aloud at some of her childish remarks. Norah too, was very much pleased with Mr. Price; her bright blue eye seemed to watch every motion of his, and at length he really felt a want, a restlessness whenever the child was called out of the room.

A week still found Mr. Price sitting in the widow M’Curdy’s arm chair, and little Norah at his side. A sprained ankle, every one knows, requires time and quiet and an outstretched limb, but above all, a tranquil mind. He had time, for he was rich; and where on earth, thought he, could I be so quiet as in this neat little room. Friction was now necessary, and who could rub his leg so tenderly as the dear little girl; then her prattle was delightful. He had never been much among children; he once had a son, but an indulgent mother ruined him. His child from boy to manhood had been a constant source of disquiet and misery to him, and he had three years before this period, followed him to the grave. He thought that no child could ever again 174interest him, in fact he had steeled his heart against children, and but for this accident, and the good chance of meeting with Mrs. M’Curdy, the warm and pleasant feelings which the innocence and beauty of childhood always create, had been unknown to him for ever.

Nothing could be cleaner and neater than the old lady; all her ways were tidy. She never ran her forefinger in a tumbler or tea cup, nor washed the tea things in a wash basin, nor dried them on the same towel with which the hands were dried, as many of the poor do. All this Mr. Price saw, and what made his room particularly comfortable was, that there were shutters to his window. His room was facing the road, which Mrs. M’Curdy very much regretted, as the children of the other shanties were for ever in view of the house, keeping up an eternal squalling and noise of some kind or other, frequently amounting to screams and yells. When things arrived at this height, the mothers of the different children would rush out, and by dint of pulling, tugging, beating and scolding, succeed in dragging the delinquent away from “the sick gentleman.”

“Can’t ye be after seeing that your noise disturbs the lame gentleman, ye sinners you,” said Mrs. Brady one fine spring morning, as she was separating her two eldest boys from a fighting frolic—“come away, will ye, and get me the chips, or ye’ll no get your breakfast, let alone your father’s and the baby’s.”

One eye was directed to Mr. Price’s window, while this was screamed out by the woman, a poor, dirty, broken down looking creature; who, although not more than five and thirty, looked at least fifty. She had never had the “luck” to see Mr. Price, a thing she ardently longed for, as every one else at some odd time or other, had taken a peep at him. Larry was loud in his praise, and lazy Jemmy, as he was called 175by one and all of the women, and by his own wife too, had also testified to the liberality of the lame gentleman.

“Why are not these children made to work,” said he to Mrs. M’Curdy, as he turned from the window in disgust. “Those two boys could be employed in the factories, I should think; they must be at least eight and ten years of age.”

“Yes, they are old enough to work,” said Mrs. M’Curdy, “but it is only in the paper-mills that such young children are wanted; and those who have even worked in a paper-mill know that nothing tires such young children so much as picking and pulling about old rags. If they could be employed at some other thing half the day, I think both the employer and the children could be greatly benefited by it.”

“Well, why can they not? Why can’t they be made to work in a garden all the morning, and at some quiet work in the afternoon? Here you have a population of several thousand persons, and according to your own account throughout the summer you have no fruit nor vegetables, scarcely a potato. You live then on bread and meat. Are not those men who have an eye to the interests of the community aware, that a diet of this kind creates thirst, and they must know that a thirsty man will not always drink water. How do you get along with such a poor diet as bread and meat?”

“Oh, it is far different with us; when your honor is able to leave the room I will show you my little garden, our little garden I should say; for here is Norah, who is sitting on your lap, so helpless like just now, she assists me greatly in the garden. She fetches and carries, helps sow the seeds, and more than helps weed; indeed last summer I had so much sowing to do that there was but little time to weed. And the dear child picked every bean and pea herself, and from a very little patch she got as much as 176a quart of strawberries every day; and did I not get eighteen pence for every quart, without stirring away from the door to sell them? And how much, dear, did you get from your little row of raspberries?” Norah said it was thirteen shillings. “Well, we made clear money, besides helping ourselves to as much as we wanted for our own eating, just fourteen dollars; it paid our rent and two dollars over; so it was no more than right that Norah, the little dear, should get the two dollars to herself; the very frock and shoes she has on, can show it.”

Mr. Price kissed the little girl, whose sparkling eye showed how deeply she was interested in her grandmother’s story—he asked if all the shanties had gardens attached to them, and whether the children assisted their parents in working them.

“Oh, no, poor things,” said the old lady, “they would work, even lazy Jemmy’s children would work if they were encouraged. But see how it is, your honour. When I came here nine years ago, Norah was just two months’ old—this shanty was knocked up quickly for me; and it had never a floor even till the winter came. There were then no other shanties near, and as I had paid for the building of the house and for the fence around the garden, I by degrees, got very comfortable. Before I built the chimney, sashed the window, and made the floor, it was bad enough; but I had not enough money at the time, and it was only by working early and late, and my poor dear daughter helped too, that I got all these things done, and proud enough I was to show people how much a lone woman could do. There’s many a woman here, your honour, in these shanties, that could do very well if their husbands would let them, but a poor woman has no chance at all. Here is Biddy Brady, my next neighbour, she has seven children, from ten years down to that little wee thing yonder, that has just now been taken out for the 177first time—there it is, Norah dear, and she’s called it Norah after my grandchild, sir, because Norah has been kind like in her ways to poor Biddy, who is to be sure, a little bit of a scold, and always in a hubbub of some kind or other. My landlord leased me this piece of ground for ten years; but well he may, for I have made this house quite comfortable, you see. There are three rooms, small enough to be sure, but if I have to leave it, and oh, how loath I shall be to go from it, he will get thirty-six dollars for it instead of twelve—only think of that. He is a good man, and I dare say when I ask him to renew my lease, for the sake of the good I have done to his property, he will rent the place to me for thirty dollars.”

“Well, well,” said Mr. Price, who had been musing during this long speech, “don’t think about your rent for the next year, or the year after,—don’t cry, Norah, your grandmother shall have no rent to pay for five years, if you will always be as good a girl as you are now. Who taught you to read, Norah?—come kiss me, my child, and don’t sob so; you are on my lap, and your crying jars my lame foot.”

“Oh, grandmother,” said the little girl, “tell the gentleman why we don’t want to go away from this pleasant house,”—and she pointed to a small enclosure on a rising hill a little way from the road.

“It is a burial ground, your honour,” said Mrs. M’Curdy in a low subdued tone, “and under that old hemlock tree poor Norah’s mother lies buried.”

Mr. Price, whose sympathies had been long pent up; in fact, who had been soured towards all the world; for his disappointment both in his marriage and in his only child, had been severely felt; now suffered himself to be deeply interested in the fate of this innocent family, he pressed the child closer 178to his bosom, and resolved that he would immediately place her and her grandmother above want. But this sudden thawing of his feelings produced a kindlier interest towards others; he saw a mass of suffering in this little community which he thought could be alleviated without much trouble or expense, and his quick apprehension soon pointed out the way. He put Norah down from his lap, asked for his portfolio, and in a few moments a letter was written and despatched to a gentleman in the neighbourhood.

“Now my good Mrs. M’Curdy, bring your work in this room, and tell me all about your neighbours—tell me exactly how things are; I do not ask out of idle curiosity, but I have a plan in my mind which I think will be of service to them. I have an eye to you, too; I have become interested in you and your little girl, and I should like to leave you in a better neighbourhood. Only don’t call me your honour, but Mr. Price; I hate your honour.”

“Well, sir, here is my work, and I can’t do better than just to say a little more about myself. You see my pride, for I had a good bringing up, would not let me live along so lazily and so miserably as the poor people around me; besides, times in one respect, were better eight years ago than they are now, at least for poor women I mean. The ladies’ societies had not then found us out, and widow women and young girls got plenty of sewing to do, and for a decent price too. I could then earn from three to four shillings a day, and there never was a time, until a month before—Norah, dear, put chips under the pot, will you love, and then set the milk pans in the sun, and be sure and put on your bonnet—I never like to speak of my poor daughter before the tender hearted little thing; for although she was but little more than five years old when her mother 179died, yet she recollects her perfectly, and all her nice orderly ways, and how she taught her to read and sew and pray. She says the same prayers yet, sir, and indeed no better can be taught her. But as I was saying when I sent Norah out, there never was a time until a month before my daughter died, that she did not, weakly and drooping as she was, earn two shillings a day. Had she lived till now, she would have found an alteration.”

“Why, what has happened to deprive you of work? your town has increased in numbers greatly since that time.”

“I’ll tell you, sir. Then, when ladies of large families had more linen to make up than they or their maids could do, they gave a poor woman a chance; there were then three ladies in this very town, that gave me every year, a set of shirts to make; and my daughter made pincushions, and thread cases, and night caps, and darned silk stockings for gentlemen, and made linen gloves, all so neatly and prettily, that the price she got for them purchased all our little comforts; but as soon as the societies found us out, as I said before, the ladies of the town themselves undertook to make all these things.”

“But if that was a saving to their families, my good friend, it was all perfectly right.”

“Oh, it was not for their families that they met together to sew; sometimes it was for a Dorcas society, sometimes for a Sunday school, sometimes for an Infants’ school, sometimes to get a church out of debt, or to buy an organ; and oftentimes to educate young men for the ministry. For all the purposes I have mentioned, excepting that of educating young men, I found some excuse, but I own I did inwardly fret and find fault, with the kind-hearted women who belong to these societies, when they neglected their own families, and let us poor women who 180were willing to work, starve, while they did the things by which we formerly earned our bread.”

“Why do not the young men work for themselves, or why are there not societies of young men for these purposes; surely men can labour, and at more trades too than women can—mechanics I mean, and rich young men, they can contribute in money.”

“Yes, sir, that is what I said when these ladies came to me and begged me to sew one day for this purpose; for seeing me a little better off than my poor neighbours, they thought I was quite too well off. God forgive me for my uncharitableness, but I looked at smart little Norah, and was thinking how much at that moment she wanted a good warm cloak for winter, so with all the willingness in the world, my love for the child got the better of my wish to oblige the ladies.”

“In some parts of Connecticut, the young men destined for the church, work for themselves.”

“Yes, sir, I hear they do, and why should not they as well as artists and lawyers and doctors. Those who are poor find ways and means to educate themselves; they go in gentlemen’s houses and teach children, or they teach school, or write; in short, a man has ways and means enough if he chooses.”

“This is all very true, Mrs. M’Curdy; I taught school myself, and besides that I laboured in a garden for two years for my food and lodging. With the profits of my school I bought books, and got myself instructed in book-keeping and French; I had besides, two hundred dollars in hand, to pay my board when I went as merchant’s clerk. In five years I was sent out as supercargo, and from that hour I began to make money. But I think you would not complain if these ladies were to raise a 181fund for the education of females, not to preach, but to teach.”

“Yes, indeed, that is what I have often thought would be more creditable to them, and there is not a poor body who would not join in it. I have often thought how happy I should be, if at my death, I could leave Norah at the head of a good school; instead of knowing, as I do, that she must be put out to service, nay, bound out, as a common kitchen girl, if I should die before she grows up.”

“You need not fear that, my good friend, I shall take care of that; but let us leave that subject for the present. I have heard your grievances, and you do not complain without cause. As to the women working for missionaries, unless it be for missionaries who go out to teach reading and writing, and the English or French language, I think they will soon feel a little ashamed of it; and men will be ashamed to be under such an obligation to women. We will try and get up societies among the young men, and then women will direct their charities to their own sex.”

“I wish they would do this, but I am afraid it will be a long time before men will give their time and money to such purposes. Why, I hear they buy things at the ladies’ fairs very reluctantly, and there are very few who give money to their societies willingly. I know that the two young men I wash for, Mr. Green and Mr. Wilber, often make fun of these ladies, and say they only do it to show themselves, and to be talked about. Men are very ill-natured in these matters. For my part, I think that ladies should teach at Sunday schools, if they are so benevolently disposed, and in Infant schools, and in Dorcas societies; which Dorcas societies should be for the relief of poor, sick women, but men should give the funds, and poor women should do the work and be paid for it. This I think is the proper way; as it is, 182these societies create a great deal of distress, by sewing themselves. And as to Sunday schools, the excellent persons who first set them going, did not intend them for the children of rich parents. I am not the one however, to put this matter in its proper light; the evil of the thing will soon be seen, and then there will be a cure. But I am talking quite astray; you wanted to hear about my neighbours, and I have gone off to other matters.”

“I am glad of it, if I have the means of doing your poor neighbours a little good, I should know where the grievance lies; this will enable me to apply a remedy. I shall bear it in mind; at present we will speak of the poor people immediately around you. You are on the edge of the common, who is your next neighbour? It is Jemmy Brady, is it not?”

“Yes, poor Jemmy lives there, and a better tempered fellow never lived; but ill luck pursues him in every thing he does, and I cannot think that any thing can improve his condition. He has lived in that poor shanty these seven years, and has never yet been able to put a floor to it, let alone a chimney. To be sure, they have a stove in winter, and in summer they set their pot over stones, yet it is a poor way of living. The two eldest boys that you saw fighting this morning, did work a little in the paper mill, but the confinement made them sick, at least one of them became sick, and the other had to come home to help his mother nurse him, for her other children were too young to bring her a pail of water even.”

“Do you ever go into their cabin?”

“Do I? yes, sure. I go in every now and then, particularly when she’s confined. If her neighbours did not go in to make her a little gruel, and look after the children, they must perish; and the Catholic women, we are all Catholics here, sir, are 183very good to one another. ‘Tis the poor man alone that hears the poor man,’ you know, sir; but I am thankful that Biddy Brady is the worst off; that is, I am thankful that there are no more so very badly off; if there were, I do not know what we should do.”

“Does not Jemmy like to work? he is a strong, healthy looking man.”

“Why, he likes to work, and he does not like to work; he was bred up to do just nothing at all; but he can write a good hand, and is a good weaver enough, but no one wants a clerk looking so ragged and dirty as Jemmy; and no one weaves now in a small way. If he had a loom by himself he could earn a little; that is, if he could have other employment with it; for Jemmy, unlike Irishmen in general, cannot bear to keep all day at one thing.”

Mr. Price set down this man’s name, and the ages of his children, desiring Mrs. M’Curdy to proceed to the next shanty.

“Next to Jemmy Brady, lives lame David, a poor drunken creature; he has an aged mother, two sisters, a wife and one child. He is a blacksmith, and could get good wages throughout the year if he would only keep sober. His son bids fair to be a decent honest man; but the child, now only fourteen, works beyonds his strength, and his poor mother was telling me the other day that he had dreadful night sweats, and is losing his appetite. I wish you could see this boy, sir, I am sure you would think he is overworked.”

“Don’t his employers take notice of it?”

“Why, yes, they tell him not to work so hard; but men have not time to attend to such things; if they were to notice the ailings of all their work people they could never get on—no, when poor people get sick they must go home and trust to their family for help. Patrick Conolly is an ill-favoured 184looking lad; he is red-haired, freckled and bandy-legged; yet for all that he is a very interesting child, at least to his mother, grandmother and aunts, to say nothing of myself. I wish the lad could be sent to school, he has been so decently brought up, that I am sure he would make a good school master to the poor Catholic children.”

“Well, Mrs. M’Curdy, your wish shall be gratified; Patrick Conolly shall be sent to a good school for one year; nay, don’t stop to thank me, it will cost me nothing. How do the women, his aunts and mother, maintain themselves?”

“They wash for the men at the forge and the quarry; and they pick blackberries in the season, and they go out to day’s work to clean house and so on, and the old woman patches and mends and knits. They are as industrious as possible, but they barely make out to keep life and body together; for money is scarce and women are plenty. If the man only was sober it would do very well, but he is so notorious a drunkard that he can get no work during the few days he is sober.”

“And thus the peace and well doing of a whole family are destroyed by the beastliness of one man. Who lives next to lame David?”

“Ah! then comes Larry M’Gilpin—there’s an honest creature spoiled, sir, by too much willingness to help others. He is always too late at the forge or the quarry, or the mill, for he is never steady at one place, because he has to help one neighbour look for his run-a-way pig, or to put up a fence, or to run for a doctor, or something or other. Every body calls upon Larry M’Gilpin, but no one does a thing for him. I never heard of any one doing him a good turn but yourself, sir, and it was but small service he did for you. I try to be of use to him as far as I can, and Norah teaches his little girl to read, which you know is something; 185but his wages, somehow or other, amounts to very little the year out. How they contrive to live I cannot tell; for they have five children, all living in one room, and on the bare ground too. To be sure, he has a chimney in it, and in winter they can keep themselves warm when they have wood to burn; but they do certainly live on less means than any family I know. I do not wonder she has the name of dirty Rachel; for how can a poor creature keep a husband and five children clean, when she has not money to buy soap even. But they are a quiet, well behaved set, and disturb no one. Larry keeps the children around him, and by his eternal good humour and pleasant ways he has contrived to make us all like him; so one throws him this thing and the other that; and your little bounties have come in a very good time. He only wishes, he says, that such gentlemen as you would sprain their ankle every day.”

“Is his wife lazy?—does she take in work, or go out to work?”

“I can’t say that she is lazy—only spiritless like. You know a woman with five children, the oldest only eight years old, cannot be expected to do much more than take care of them; and yet Rachel would be willing to make a coarse shirt now and then, if the price was not next to nothing. But next to Larry M’Gilpin, lives the woman of women! Here, just let me lift up this sash, sir, for one minute—now listen—do you hear any thing?”

“Yes, I hear some one singing; do I not?”

“You do; that is Bonny Betty, as the ladies call her. She is a very large, bony woman, full six feet high, and well looking too. She works from morning till night, and has contrived to maintain herself and six children without the help of a human being, and not one child to do a turn for her, in the way of earning money, I mean. Her husband died 186a drunkard; she buried him three years ago, and from that hour she seemed to alter her very nature. Before that, she used to go about the country to beg, carrying all the children with her; and, when far away from home, would sleep in outhouses and barns. With the little money she gathered in this way, she bought wood and other necessaries for the winter, mending up the rags she had begged, and preparing for a traipse in the summer, may be with an additional child on her arm. As soon as Christie Kelley died, she bought a broom, the first ever seen in her house, swept the two rooms of her shanty clean,—pulled out an old leather glove from her huge pocket, and counted out fifty dollars in notes and silver. ‘Now, Mrs. M’Curdy,’ said she, ‘you’re a sensible woman; sit down by me and tell me how I had best lay out all this money. I kept it unknown to poor Christie, and a little more too—how else could he have been buried so decently?’ In a little time, sir, with her prudence in laying out this money, her cabin got to look as well as mine, barring that six ailing children will make a litter and some noise.”

“How does she maintain herself, if work is so scarce, and what is the matter with her children?”

“How does she maintain herself? why, in the strangest way you ever heard of. She does every thing and any thing. In the morning she finds out which of the children are likeliest to be the sickest through the day; these she carries with her, for she is a powerful, strong woman; and into a house she goes, seats the children in an obscure corner, and falls to work—nothing comes amiss. If it is washing day, she is up to her elbows in the suds before the lady of the house is up, and nothing but a constable will force her out till she has done two women’s work, has eaten three hearty meals, and fed the ailing children with such little scraps as 187their feeble health requires. She then gathers up the children, and, with a basket added to her load, off she goes to feed those at home with the savoury scraps in her basket. When she forces her way into a house she takes no money, contenting herself with receiving broken meat for her pay, and if there is more than enough for the family, she takes it in to Biddy Brady, or to one poor body or other. But this vagrant disposition is fast leaving her, for she is so useful and so cheerful that there are very few families that can do without her. She scents a dinner or a tea party at a great distance, and she gets there in the nick of time to be of service. She makes yeast, soap, candles, bread,—whitewashes, takes out grease and stains, paints rooms, mends broken windows and china,—cuts better cold slaw, as the Dutch call it, finer and quicker than any one,—makes sourcrout, pickles and preserves,—knows how to put up shad and smoke herrings; in short, in her ramblings she watched the different ways of doing things, and now she sets up for herself. You cannot think what a really useful woman Bonny Betty is; it is a pity that the children are so sickly.”

“Has she a doctor?—does she ever consult a doctor?”

“A doctor! why they are all more or less deformed. Ben, the eldest, has a great wen over his left eye which has nearly destroyed his sight; Kate, the next, has a broken back, and is lame; Jemmy is one sore from head to foot, and has been in that way for four years; Bob is a thin, sickly boy, that has fainty turns, and is beginning to lose his hearing; Susy is deaf and dumb; and little Christie, only four years old, has the dropsy.”

“Good heavens! and this woman is cheerful, and maintains them all with the labour of her own hands?”

188“Yes, and is laying up money. She has nearly a hundred dollars in the Savings Fund; her children are well clothed for poor people’s children, and well fed; she has two pigs in the pen; and she and I are the only persons in the neighbourhood that keep a cow. She has a fresh cow in the fall and I in the spring; so we both do well by them. I wish she had a better shanty.”

“Well, I shall make acquaintance with Bonny Betty; who comes next?”

“Sammy Oram is the sixth; he is a shoemaker, a poor, do-little kind of man, with five boys; he is a widower. Three of his boys work at times in the cotton factory and at times in the paper mill; but Sammy talks of going to Philadelphia, and so get rid of them all at once; for he calls his boys orphans, and he thinks as they were all born there, (for he only came here about five years ago,) he can get them in the Girard College. I wish he may, I am sure. Next to him lives an old man with one leg. He was once a good gardener, they say, but it is many years since he had to quit the trade owing to a white swelling which finally caused him to lose his leg. He lives alone, and maintains himself by making mats and brooms and such things; he is a very honest, sober man, and would make a good overseer, or some such thing, if any body knew his worth; but he is shy and melancholy like for an Irishman, and we often think he suffers in winter for comforts; but he never complains, and if people never complain, you know, why no one will thrust kindness on them.”

“But there is Bonny Betty, with six helpless children—you see that she can get along.”

“Yes, sir,—but Betty is a woman, and somehow they have a higher spirit than a man. Why, a man would have broken down if he had been left with six such children as she has, or if he had not sunk, 189he would have run away and left them to Providence. You have no idea, sir, how long a poor woman will bear up against every evil and misfortune if she has children dependent upon her.”

“You have now told me the little history of the Seven Shanties, but has no one a garden but yourself. I should think that the man you mentioned last—what’s his name?—the man with one leg—he ought to have a garden.”

“Daniel M’Leary,—yes, he might do a little in that way, but for two reasons; one is that he cannot dig, for his back is weak,—and a better reason still is, that there’s never a shanty but mine that has a bit of land to it. Daniel M’Leary has not even enough for a pig pen if he had wherewithal to feed a pig. He has done, however, all that man could do; he has planted a grape vine behind his shanty, and last summer, being the third year of its bearing, he sold from it five dollars’ worth of grapes. He gave me some cuttings; I planted them against the back of my shanty which faces the south, and last summer two of them had a few bunches on them, but the children pulled them off before they were ripe. I don’t think, however, it was the neighbours’ children.”

The next day Mr. Price was able to get out of the little room and enjoy the fresh air of the open commons. He saw, what Mrs. M’Curdy said, that the shanties had no ground attached to them. In front was the road, and behind a precipitous bank, scarcely a foot-path behind that of Bonny Betty. Yet these poor people paid from ten to twelve dollars a year for a piece of ground not more than twenty feet square. Mrs. M’Curdy was on the edge of a common, and her plot took in a strip of land about twenty by a hundred feet; this was the admiration and envy of the neighbours, who all imagined that if they only had “the luck to get such a 190bit garding spot” they would thrive as well as Mrs. M’Curdy.

At noon a gentleman called on Mr. Price; he was the owner of some of the land thereabout, and likewise of the little strip on which all the shanties, excepting Mrs. M’Curdy’s, stood. He came by consequence of the letter which Mr. Price had written to him the day before, and being a sensible and considerate man, he was soon convinced by this gentleman’s arguments that some change in the circumstances of these poor people, his tenants, would be beneficial to him as well as to them. He finally agreed to lease to Mr. Price a piece of land not more than a few rods’ distance from the shanties; it was to be about one hundred and sixty feet square. It was leased for twelve years.

As money can command any thing, in two weeks two hundred loads of manure were spread over this spot and ploughed in, and a good rough board fence enclosed the whole, with a wide gate in the centre of each side. Near the upper gate, under a large hemlock, a comfortable shanty was built, well floored, with two rooms, and a chimney between. On the lower side was another, only larger, having four small rooms; this was shaded by a fine silver pine. This shanty guarded the south gate. The fence and gates, all the posts being made of cedar, cost Mr. Price one hundred and fifty dollars, the manure and ploughing were one hundred more, the two shanties cost three hundred and fifty dollars. Furniture for the two shanties, grape vines, currant bushes, strawberry plants, garden seeds, two carts, six wheelbarrows, and other garden tools, with a shed to keep them in, cost four hundred dollars more. Here was an expenditure of the round sum of ten hundred dollars. The interest of this at six per cent. amounted only to sixty dollars, and he was only charged one hundred and forty dollars 191for the rent of the land, so that the interest of the money was but two hundred dollars a year. What was this to a man worth twelve thousand a year?

Mr. Price, quick in planning and executing, soon arranged every thing to his mind, and what was extraordinary, to the liking of every one. In ten days he installed Daniel M’Leary in the north shanty, giving him the key of the north, east and west gates; in the south shanty, he placed Bonny Betty and her six helpless children; and a day it was to see, for both he and Mrs. M’Curdy, as well as dear little Norah, kept the thing a profound secret. The first intimation Bonny Betty had of the good luck, was in the morning of the day of her removal; Mrs. M’Curdy called in by accident, as it were, and observed that she should not be surprised if Mr. Price were to call in and see about the wen on Benny’s forehead; “so Betty, my friend, suppose you red up the children a little; here is Susan quite able, I am sure, to lend a hand, deaf and dumb though the poor little thing is. See how handy she goes to work.”

“If you thought he’d be coming Sally, why I’d leave my work, and put on their Sunday clothes; but poor little Jemmy is very feverish to-day, and Christie’s legs are more swelled than common; are you sure he’ll be coming this way?”

“No, I am not sure, but at any rate red up the children, for who knows what may happen; you’re an honest industrious woman, and you may well be called Bonny Betty; I think ye’ll eat your dinner in a better house than this ere you die; good folks are not always neglected.”

Well, Bonny Betty left her work, and in an hour the poor little creatures were dressed in their best; and at ten o’clock, Mrs. M’Curdy and Norah, with all the women of the other shanties, as well as those children that were at home, proceeded to her 192house, and asked her to take a walk and look at the gentleman’s improvements. On being urged by Mrs. M’Curdy, whom she very much respected, and seeing the eager looks of the children, she sat out with them. All was wonderment and pleasure when they got to the shanty, for the pots were boiling, and the meat was roasting, loaves of bread, and plates of butter, and gingerbread, and small cakes, were all paraded on a clean new table; in short, a house-warming was prepared for some one.

“Oh! if all this was for me and my poor children,” thought Bonny Betty, “how happy I should be; but then there’s the other poor bodies, I’m thinking, wishing the same thing, and sure, have not they as good a right as me?”

“Now Betty, did not I tell you, that you’d eat your dinner in a better house than your old ricketty forlorn one? You are in your own house now, Bonny Betty! for the good kind man, God bless him, has bid me tell you, that by giving him the same rent that you pay for that old one, you may live in this nice comfortable house.”

There was a general cry of joy; and Bonny Betty fell on her knees, and bade them all kneel down with her, and pray that she might continue to deserve this great good. Every thing was of the plainest materials, wooden presses, wooden bedsteads; in short, though all was new, yet there was nothing better than poor people generally buy; but what went most to Betty’s heart, were the neat comfortable beds for her children, and the nice kitchen furniture, and the shed for the cow.

After they had dined, and assisted in washing up the plates and pots, the neighbours after again wishing her joy departed, and left her “alone in her glory,” and no creature could be happier nor more thankful. It cannot be doubted that she prayed 193most fervently, and that she slept soundly on her clean straw bed that night.

In the morning, Mr. Price sent for Jemmy Brady, Larry M’Gilpin, David Conolly, Sammy Oram, and Daniel M’Leary. Through respect of age, he addressed the latter first; he asked him if he liked his new quarters. The poor Irishman said, he was only too comfortable. “Well then,” said Mr. Price, “I hope you will lend a hand in what I propose doing; you need not speak; the time of these men is precious; I know you will assist me, and I trust as I leave you overseer, or agent, or give it any name you please, over that square of land yonder, you will follow my directions strictly. They are these: In the first place, you are to open and shut three of the gates, keeping the keys yourself; and only opening them for carts and wagons, which are to go in and out, whenever the tenants desire it. You are to set down in a book, how many tools each man takes out every day, and note down such as are not brought to you when the day is ended. All the tools are to be mended at my expense for one year. You are to give every man or boy as much seed as is required; and as you are, I am told, a good gardener, you will be able to decide on the quantity to be given. This is all I can recollect to ask of you just now; excepting furthermore, to set down the names of such men and children as are regular at their work; and to ask each person to let you know how much money he makes from day to day, all of which you must commit to writing. I do not wish to know this to raise the rent on the tenants of that piece of ground, but to know to whom I am to give the premium in the fall. I shall be here in November, to look at your book. You will find paper and pens and ink in abundance in a box, which I shall send you next week. Find out the men’s ages, and let the oldest have the first 194choice of twenty-five feet. Good morning my friends—no thanks—let me see whom I am to thank in November next. Here M’Leary, here are twenty-five dollars; give five to the wife of each man, keep five for yourself, and give a dollar a piece to Sammy Oram’s boys. I hope you’ll give no trouble to Mr. M’Leary, and that people will come far and near to see your garden—Good morning.”

This thing being settled, Mr. Price now turned his attention to his new friend Mrs. M’Curdy; he asked her how she would like to have one of David Conolly’s sisters to live with her? “You have given me so good a character of her,” said he, “Nelly, I think you call her, that I should like her to live an easier and a happier life. She is younger than yourself, and is more able to do the rough work of the house, and I can make it a desirable thing, for I will allow her good wages. My little Norah must not labour any more; I want her to grow tall and fair, and she must go to school likewise.”

Poor Sally did not like this part of the arrangement, which Mr. Price seeing, he observed, that if she disliked to part with the little girl, he would make another arrangement; but at any rate he should consult her feelings in whatever he proposed. He intended to give her pleasure and not pain. Reformers and patrons were too apt, he knew, to order things to suit their own views, without regard to the feelings of those whom they wish to benefit. At any rate one thing he was sure would give her pleasure, and this was the adding a small house to the shanty she lived in.

The house was soon begun—it was to be a neat two-storied brick house—and while it was building he persuaded Mrs. M’Curdy to live with him, leaving Nelly Conolly in the shanty to take care of the furniture, cow, pigs and garden. They all set out 195together in a week from that time, every heart blessing Mr. Price, and lamenting the absence of the old lady and Norah, whose neatness and kindness of disposition had wrought such a change in their prospects.

Sammy Oram was found to be the oldest man of the four candidates; but as Bonny Betty had testified a desire to hire one of the lots, he very gallantly resigned his rights of seniority to her; of course she chose the one parallel with her own shanty; she therefore, had one of the centre strips. Sammy Oram took the lot adjoining; at which Larry M’Gilpin gave a knowing wink to Jemmy Brady. Jemmy took the one next to him, being the corner lot. Between Bonny Betty and the next lot was a cart road of ten feet; Larry had the one adjoining the road, David Conolly the next, and his son Patrick, with Sammy Oram’s two oldest boys took the corner lot—making in all six different tenants.

Mr. Price’s interest in this little community did not stop here; he persuaded Bonny Betty to let her son Ben go to the hospital, and have the wen on his forehead examined, promising that he would himself pay all the necessary expenses; such as suitable clothes, travelling charges and extra nursing. The boy was so eager and the neighbours so clamourous in their entreaties, that poor Betty gave a reluctant assent. Ben went, and in one month he returned perfectly cured—the wen taken out, and his eye-sight very much improved. Kate was sent to town next, and by means of Casey’s dormant balance, and Mrs. M’Curdy’s kind treatment, the injured spine, although not entirely restored to its healthy state, was prevented from further distortion. She remained under medical care, and it was owing to this humane and judicious treatment that she was relieved of her lameness, a lameness caused by general debility. A few bottles of Swaim’s panacea, 196entirely removed the scrofulous complaint of Jenny. Bob was found to be nearly devoured by worms; the doctor of the village, when called in, soon removed his complaint, and his hearing improved as his stomach recovered its tone. But poor little Christie was beyond cure; he died in the fall to the very great grief of poor Betty, who was passionately attached to her children. The little deaf and dumb girl was sent to the asylum in Hartford, and there she received an education, which fitted her as a teacher to others of her own class. The lifting up of one kind hand did all this for poor Bonny Betty; five good little creatures, helpless and forlorn, an incumbrance to their mother, and a tax on all around them, were thus made useful members of society; whereas, in the course of time, they must necessarily have gone to the alms-house.

But to return to our friends in the shanties. Early, full an hour before sunrise, on the fifteenth of April, all the gardeners were at work under old Daniel M’Leary’s superintendence; for his very youth seemed renewed, so much was he raised in his own estimation. Instead of being a cumberer of the earth, as in his fits of despondency he used to call himself, he was now a second Napoleon ruling over the destiny of others—their well doing was entrusted to his care, and many were his mental promises to be just—if he could keep them. At the sound of his shrill whistle the little band left off work, in time to eat their breakfast, and be ready to go to their several employments when the bells rung. At twelve all ate their dinner, and for half an hour were again in their garden plot where they wrought—and pleasant it was to work in the open air under such a glorious sky, with more satisfaction than they ever did in their lives; for the proceeds of their labour was their own.

Their supper was ready when their working 197hours were over, and once more they went up to their garden, and it was difficult for Daniel to persuade them to leave off at the allotted time. Instead of lounging about before a dram shop, which was their custom in the evening, and often becoming noisy if not riotous, they went quietly to bed and slept soundly. Even Pat Conolly, the overworked boy declared, that although he went very tired to his rest, it was a far different sort of fatigue from that which he nightly felt before.

By the first of June, the whole lot was one beautiful green, bright spot. The land, naturally good, had been so well manured, and carefully laboured, that the seeds could not help coming up freely. But if the truth must be told, Bonny Betty and the three boys’ gardens, were more forward than the rest; at least they had a more smiling gay look. And no wonder, for in the first place, women and children will put a few flower seeds in the garden; in the second place, the boys and Betty had the double advantage of working in the afternoons, as Bonny Betty having a little shop, scarcely ever went out to work by the day, and the children only worked half a day in the mills; and lastly Daniel M’Leary lent a hand “to beautify the women and childers’ bit garding.”

Every one in the neighbourhood had an eye on this project, and every one predicted that the woman and boys might persevere, but that Sammy Oram would give out first, Davy Conolly next, Lazy Jemmy next, and, lastly, Larry M’Gilpin. Sammy Oram was very near verifying this prediction in consequence of his taking it into his head to offer himself as a helpmate to Bonny Betty; but the reader shall hear the progress and end of the affair in a letter received by Mr. Price from Daniel M’Leary.

198“Your honour asks how we are getting on—O beautifully, your honour, and all work with good heart, with a pleasant thought of your praise in the fall. I am glad your honour mistakes about Lazy Jemmy—Lazy Jemmy no longer, for he’s here before any one, and brings his little boy with him, and because there’s never a spade small enough for so young a boy, he’s bought him one, your honour. I’m thinking Jemmy will hold out, and his little girrel, I’m tould, is crying to come with the daddy to help too; and why should she not? for here’s Bonny Betty’s little Jenny, now quite cured, God bless your honour for ever and ever, she weeds and helps her mother at every chance. So I bid Jemmy bring the little girrel with him.

“Larry laughs and works, and runs over to one garden to help the boys a bit, though they bid him keep off, and then he digs among the potatoes for Bonny Betty; but he’s broke off that, your honour, for as soon as she found it out she went to his garding and dug just as many rows as he did. I’m thinking it will be hard to tell which of the men’s gardings will get the premium, for they’re jealous like, and they all put in the same things and work in the same way as near as possible, but they scorn the flowers, your honour.

“David Conolly still drinks, but for very shame’s sake he works morning and evening, and he would get behind hand only that that fine boy, his son, just steps over now and then and keeps the garding up to the others. His wife tould me t’other day that for certain David does not drink so much, and she’s certain he will leave off in time, for now on Sundays he takes up a book or lies in bed after chapel hours, and this she thinks is a good sign. Pat, the boy, is another crater, your honour; his master at the factory is well pleased with the change in him, and agrees to his only coming half a day, 199since he’s all the better for it, and his mother says for the last week he has not had any of those bad night sweats, and he does not talk in his sleep—so the change of work has done him good.

Sammy Oram is none the worse for working out of doors, and he’s better tempered too, your honour, for we none of us took much to Sammy, he was so soured like, owing to his sitting all day cobbling shoes and fretting. He thought at one time of making orphans of his boys and getting them all off his hands in the Girard College, for the kind gentlemen there made it out at one time that all childer that had only one parent was orphans, but our priest, father M’Guire, tould him that so many orphans came with their daddies, that the overseers, or whatever their names may be, found that, large as the college was, it would not hold all the orphans that the daddies brought. Father M’Guire said that the truth ought to be tould, that very few mothers took their orphans; they preferred to educate them themselves.

“When Sammy, your honour, found there was no chance to get his little boys off his hands as orphans, he then thought to fall in love with Bonny Betty, for she’s now well off in the world, thanks to your honour. So one day last week he stept over the row of currant bushes, nimbly like, and says, ‘Mistress Kelly,’ says he, ‘you and I have wrought side by side since the 15th of April, and it’s now June. I’m thinking we could work on this way to the end of our lives, and I’ll be a good fader to your children, and keep you from such hard work as this, for it’s a shame to see a fine woman like yourself, Mistress Kelly, working like a man any how.’ Well, what does Bonny Betty do but one thing, and Sammy Oram might be sure she’d tell; indeed we were all in the garding at the time, and saw them speak together, and we saw her lift 200him, easy like, with one hand, by the waistband behind, over the currant bushes, and set him gently down on the other side, and then Betty she laughed out loud, scornful like. Sammy Oram, after that, had no heart to work next to Bonny Betty. ‘And I knew what he comed next to me for at the time,’ said she, ‘but I said I’ll fit him when he’s ready to spake—he a fader to my childer—he’s not a fader to his own. There’s Lizzy Conolly, she’s a good enough body for him, and he’ll find her a better mammy to his childer than I would be.’ Sammy’s a man, your honour, that soon tires of a wife. I remember once he tould me when his first wife had been a long time ailen, that he wished he could get her back to Ireland to her fader, he did not see why he was obliged to take care of another man’s child. But Sammy’s an honest man, your honour, and he’ll may be do well yet. I think the hint of Lizzy Conolly not a bad one, and she’s fond of little childer. We are all wishing to see your honour, not forgetting our respects to Mrs. M’Curdy and sweet little Nory. I remain your honour’s humble and obedient servant,

On the fourth of July the four gates were thrown open, and all the village, rich and poor, went in, for the first time, to see what the idle hours of six persons had accomplished. The praises that the men and boys received, to say nothing of Bonny Betty, who was there in all her pride with her children, quite compensated them for any little extra fatigue they had undergone. The boys and girls were neatly dressed, and the poor women, the wives of the gardeners, began to take rank among the better order of labourers, for their husbands were beginning to attract notice. It was constantly—“Well, Jemmy Brady, how does your 201garden come on? are you almost tired yet?” “Tired! Is it I that am tired, sir, when I and the wife and children had a dish of potatoes of my own raising larger nor any you ever seed in our foolish little market? Sure you have not seen Bonny Betty’s stall, as they call it—only just go over to-morrow, being Monday, ye’ll see a sight—early York cabbage—ye see I’ve learned the names of things since I belonged to your garding—and there’s real marrowfat peas, and big white ingans, as big as a tay saucer, and ye’ll may be hardly see the end of the beets and carrots, they’re so long, and then there’s the early turnip just fit to melt in your mouth; sure we had a mess of them with our pork and potatoes this blessed day, and how could a poor man like me, with seven childer, all babies nearly, get the like of turnips and white ingans, unless I made them grow myself, barring I might send to York for them, but poor people can’t do that.”

Every one of the shanty people took a pride in having vegetables on the table every Sunday, and in a little time Bonny Betty did nothing, literally, but sell vegetables; and most scrupulous was she in keeping the different interests separate. Each man and boy had his basket, and every morning they were filled and carried to Betty’s shed, erected for the purpose. No market woman was ever prouder, and none certainly so happy, if we make allowance for the increased illness of her youngest child. But even this she did not see, for so great a change had taken place in the circumstances and health of all the rest, that she went on, hoping that in God’s good time little Christie would get well too.

The trial day came—the first of November. It was on Saturday, and the six candidates took a holiday, for they could now afford it. Jemmy 202Brady and Larry M’Gilpin, at one time the worst off, and the most dirty and ragged of them all, were now clean and decently dressed; they were each the richer too, in having another child added to their number, but they were very much set up about, as Larry had the felicity of calling his new daughter Sally M’Curdy—and never even when in a hurry did he shorten the name—and Jemmy only wished that his boy had been twins, that they might both have been called Oliver Price.

Mr. Price, Mrs. M’Curdy and Norah arrived the day before; a wagon followed them loaded with presents, and at ten o’clock on the day of trial the three went together to the shanty of Bonny Betty. The gate was thrown open, and after they had all walked over the grounds and had seen the neat order in which each garden was prepared for the winter, they went to Daniel M’Leary’s shanty to look at his accounts.

“I’m thinking,” said good natured Larry, “that the boys will get the premium any how, and if neither Bonny Betty nor myself is to get it, why the master, God bless his honour, could not do better than let the children have it”—so he stood back, and in this happy frame of mind waited the award of his industry.

Mr. Price, assisted by several gentlemen of the village, examined each man’s account as rendered in by himself every day, all fairly written out by Jemmy Brady. The result was wonderful; these poor families had not only a large mess of vegetables of the best kind for their tables every Sunday, and from twelve to fifteen bushels of potatoes for their winter use, but they had cleared—first, the boys in the corner lot—twenty-one dollars each, making sixty-three dollars. This was after paying Bonny Betty a per centage for selling the different vegetables for them, and Betty was not 203extortionate; this yielded the boys about four dollars a month, which with the money they earned at their different employments enabled them to buy themselves two good suits of clothes, pay their parents for their board, and put a few dollars in the savings fund. But I ought to go on with the other gardens.

Next to the three boys came David Conolly—he looked so much better in health that Mr. Price did not recollect him—he produced his account; he had cleared fifty dollars. “Well done, David,” said Mr. Price, “who could have believed this?—what! fifty dollars, and such good looks! I must shake hands with you—and your wife, which is she? let me wish her joy too.”

Poor Mrs. Conolly stepped forward with her handkerchief to her eyes, and shook hands with Mr. Price, but her heart was too full to speak, though Bonny Betty punched her in the side several times and whispered to her to hold up a bit.

David Conolly, so long despised as a drunken vagabond, had undergone something of a change in his feelings too. He knew that, but for the assistance of his good son, his garden would have been overrun with weeds; and that, so often was he drunk, in the early part of the summer, when every thing required so much care and attention, that if Patrick had not turned in and helped, he would not have held up his head this day. All this came full to his mind; and he was not slow in giving his son this praise. Perhaps this was the most gratifying thing to Mr. Price that had occurred. Here, by the little he had done, was a poor creature restored to a moral sensibility, which had become almost extinct in his bosom. Here, through his means, was a husband and a father restored to the respect of his wife and child. “I am satisfied,” said Mr. Price, inwardly, “and I humbly thank 204thee, oh, my God, for being the means of saving this poor creature.”

Next came Larry, hitching and twisting himself into all manner of shapes—he had sixty dollars—for by good luck, as he said, his cauliflowers was bigger nor David’s; and a man had given a great price for them, to take to York; and he had planted squashes in among his potatoes, so that they took up no more room; and his little datters had helped him weed; “and so, your honour,” said he, “you see that David’s not behind me, any how, seeing he has no little datters to weed for him.”

“Plase your honour,” said Bonny Betty, whose turn came next, “just pass me by and let Jemmy Brady bring up; I’ll be better ready, being the last.”

“Why, I thought that Sammy Oram had the next lot to you,” said Mr. Price, “has Jemmy changed?”

“Yes, Sir,” said Jemmy, walking proudly up, with a decent smart dress on; and, in his nervous anxiety to show himself to Mr. Price, he had his hat on his head. His wife, however, twitched it off, and told him not to forget where he was. “But he’s scared, like, your honour,” said Biddy, dressed up as smart as her husband; “and I’ve brought you my little boy; he’s a new comer, your honour, and if your honour would not be affronted, we intend to call him Oliver Price.”

Mr. Price patted the chubby little thing on the cheek, and thanked the mother for the compliment, saying, that when his little namesake was old enough, he should be sent to school. Jemmy, with hat now in hand, brought his account—alas, poor Jemmy, his account showed only forty dollars—but eight children! “No, don’t feel ashamed,” said Mr. Price. “I have heard that you were often obliged to remain at home to nurse your wife—but 205what’s the matter, Bonny Betty, why do you look so amazed?”

“Why, sure, your honour, Jemmy’s fine clothes have crazed him. I kept the money, and sure, Jemmy, there’s more; sure you had sixty dollars.”

“Yes, you gave me sixty,” said honest Jemmy, “but can’t I write and read, and isn’t all these bills made out by myself? and did I not set down all the time I worked? and sure I am that forty dollars is all I earned any how. There’s the twenty dollars, and they’re none of mine; but to be shared wid my two little boys—shame on me for spaking of my own first, and Bonny Betty’s little Ben, to say nothing of Petey and Ody Oram, them two good little fellows. When I could not work, your honour, they all fell to, and my little garding looked none the worse, I can tell you.”

Sammy Oram came next—he could not bear to work next to Betty, so good natured Jemmy changed with him; and Sammy, after that, plucked up heart a little, offered himself to Lizzy Conolly, got married, and really improved wonderfully, for Lizzy was cheerful, and his children became very fond of her. He had forty dollars likewise.

“And now, your honour, here’s my earnings, your honour,” said Bonny Betty, stepping forward with five healthy children at her side—poor little Christie having died about two weeks before. “Here is my money,” and she opened a little box, counting out one hundred and ten dollars, all in silver.

“I’m thankful” said Larry, “that she’ll get the premium, any how.” “No, I’ve not earned all this money by my garden,” said honest Betty, “but by selling for the rest—I had that chance over ye all. If I could rightly tell how much I made by selling for you, you’d find I may be would be a great deal behind you all.”

“I see, my friends,” said Mr. Price, “that it is 206difficult to tell which has made the most. I shall not give the premium to any one in particular. You have all done well. David Conolly is, certainly, most to be praised, because he has broken himself of an accursed vice.”—“I’ll never drink a drop, your honour, from this hour,” said David—“The boys,” continued Mr. Price—“but I dare not trust myself to speak of them—the gentlemen present will take care that they shall always have the best wages and the best places in their gift; they deserve it well; and, as I thought they would behave exactly as they have done, I have brought them each something suited to their present wants. As to you, Bonny Betty—seeing that you are a woman, by rights I ought to distinguish you beyond the others. You shall have your shanty and lot rent free; the rest shall pay into the hands of Daniel M’Leary ten dollars each, for the next year. I shall charge them nothing now. The gardens will be better, as the raspberries and strawberries will be ready for sale; and the year after, the asparagus will be large enough to cut. I shall then build a small market-house, and place Mr. M’Leary at the head of it. Make way there, Larry, and let the packages from the wagon be brought in.”

Mr. Price gave every one a parcel, containing a number of things necessary to the coming winter; such as blankets, coarse cloth for the children, stockings, and stuff for cloaks and coats—besides sewing cotton, pins, tape, needles, scissors; and for the boys plenty of paper, pencils, books and carpenter’s tools—the men could hardly stagger home under their pleasant loads; and the women went trotting along by their side, laughing and talking loud in the joy of their hearts. Mr. Price did not stay for their thanks, which, after the Irish fashion, they were pouring out feelingly and rapidly. All he heard, as he jumped in the dearborn, with the 207gentleman who owned the land, was the end of Jemmy Brady’s outpouring—“God bless him; if his son had lived, he’d, may be, in time have been as good a man as himself.” Mr. Price was very much affected; stopped with the intention of speaking to the man, but feeling unable, he rode away.

“Norah, dear,” said he, in the evening of this busy day,—“Norah, you have done being afraid of me, have you not? You may remember how unwilling you were to come near me when I first saw you.”

“Yes,” said the little girl, “I was afraid of you then, but it was not long. It was only something that Jemmy Brady said to me in the kitchen that made me not like you at first; but I love you dearly now,” said she, as she jumped on his lap and threw her arms around his neck.

“I wanted you then to tell me what Jemmy said to make you fear me, but you would not. You will tell me now, will you not?” and he pressed the little creature fondly to his bosom.

“Why, Jemmy said you were the image of my father; and that if he chose, he could make my dear grandmother very unhappy; but that he would not tell—he liked me too well to let any one separate me from him. So I was afraid, and yet I did not know why you would take me from my dear grandmother; for that was what I thought Jemmy meant.”

Mr. Price sent her to call Jemmy. When questioned, he said he firmly believed that Mr. Price’s son was Norah’s father; that he lived in the neighbourhood, very near to Sally M’Curdy; that the young man, who called himself White, fell in love with Ellinora M’Curdy, who was a beautiful girl, but too virtuous to listen to any one excepting in the way of marriage—that he finally did marry her, but under the name of White. After a few 208months, he came to America, where he married again, and this was the last they ever heard of him. Jemmy Brady went on to observe that he came to this country about a year after Mrs. M’Curdy, and heard from them that Mr. White had married again, and that they had made up their minds never to molest him, fearing that the little girl would be taken from them. He had seen the likeness between Mr. Price and the young man who called himself White, and he said aloud—but not in the hearing of Mrs. M’Curdy—that the likeness was very strong; but he did not think, at the time, the little girl minded it.

On further inquiry, and on recollecting what his son had said in his last moments, owning that he had left a wife, and, he believed, a child, in Ireland, Mr. Price had no doubt that little Norah was his grandchild. A book, with a few lines in the title page, which Mrs. M’Curdy had preserved, recognized as his own, given to his son before he sailed, more fully proved it; but he could hardly be said to love the child more after this disclosure. He immediately acknowledged her; and glad was he that his unhappy son had left no children by this second marriage. Of course, Mrs. M’Curdy returned no more to the shanty. She lived with Mr. Price, and had but one regret—that her poor daughter had not lived to share their happiness. Both she and Norah went yearly to visit the grave under the old hemlock tree.

Here was an unlooked-for reward for his kindness to a hapless family; but as every man who does good is not to expect a grandchild to start up in his walk, he must look to other sources for compensation. Mr. Price had these likewise; for the shanty people never relapsed into idleness and dirt; but continued to improve in their circumstances. At the end of ten years, (and they passed quickly 209away,) every man was able to buy the lot of ground on which he had so long wrought. The owner sold them at a moderate price; but he more than made up for this small advance by the greater prices obtained for the rest of the land which he owned in the neighbourhood.

In consequence of the success of this scheme other landholders adopted the same wise policy, and the benefit to their property was immense. The love of horticulture opened the way to better habits and tastes among the poor of the district; and there was none so humble that had not a garden spot of their own. The ladies’ societies fled from them for ever; and the poor women blessed the day of their departure, for now they could earn an honest living by their needle.

During the ten years of which we speak, other changes had taken place, greatly beneficial to the village. A pier had been built by a company from New York, and steamboats now plied there daily. In compliment to Mr. Price they intended to call the first one that was built for the place, “Oliver Price,” but that gentleman declined the honour for the present; he said, if they had no objection, he would give them a more suitable name—“The Seven Shanties”—and that if they ever built another, of which there was no doubt, he wished it might be called the “Bonny Betty.”

They did build another, and another; and at this moment there are no less than five for the trade and pleasure of that place alone.—The Seven Shanties—The Bonny Betty—The Little Norah—The Henry Barclay, and the ——.

“I wish my dear Hassy,” said Mrs. Webb to her husband, “I do really wish that we had a house of our own; I dislike to live at lodgings, it leaves me so little to do. When my baby is dressed and your bureau is put in order, I have nothing to do but to sew, no exercise at all; and as to you, you read, read until you lose your colour and health. Now, if we had a house to ourselves, you would have exercise enough in going to market—(Heavens, Mr. Webb go to market!!)—and in one little odd notion or other; and as to me, I should be as busy as a bee, and would scarcely have time to sit down from morning till night.”

“My dear Winny,” said her husband, “I detest this mode of life as much as you can do, I am even more anxious to leave these lodgings than you are—and—I have several times lately been going to mention the subject to you. I have weighed it over and over in my own mind for a long time, and if you have no material objection—(Here Mr. Webb refrained from looking at his wife)—I should prefer, when we do move, to live in the country.”

Now, this was precisely what Mrs. Webb disliked; she had for some time been dreading that her husband would make a proposal of this kind, and she had fortified herself well to meet it. She, too, 211as she thought, had weighed the affair well, and all things being considered, her decision was, that there was more real comfort for man, woman and child, in the city than in the country. “When one comes to speak of horses, cows and dogs,” said she one day to a friend, “why then the case is altered. Keeping a horse at livery is an expensive thing, as Mr. Webb finds to his cost, and milk from cows which are fed about a stable yard, is unfit to drink. Dogs to be sure, nine cases in ten, are useless and worthless animals, in any place; but they lead a life of misery in the city, kicked and cuffed and half starved as they always are. If dogs must be kept, the country is the best place for them too.”

Mr. Ahasuerus Webb was a gentleman born and bred; the peculiar cast of his mind led him to study theology, and but for his timidity, for he distrusted his own powers, he would have destined himself to the church. His friends, however, thought there was a much stronger objection to his taking orders than what arose from timidity or the absence of powerful talent. Mr. Webb was one of the most diminutive of men—almost a dwarf.—But was there ever a small man who felt conscious that he was unable to achieve actions which belonged exclusively to those possessing superior stature and strength?

Year after year, however, passed away in irresolution on his part in choosing an occupation which might increase his income. He had no employments but such as were the result of reading; and his friends at length ceased to urge him to exertion, as there seemed every probability that he would always remain single, having then attained his twenty-eighth year.

But Mr. Webb at last fell in love and married; and the lady that he selected, independently of the obligation which his marriage vows laid him under, 212of loving her with the greatest tenderness, was entitled to his utmost sympathy from another cause—she was even of smaller stature than himself. She suited him therefore, in every particular but two, which at the time of courtship seemed no difference at all; but which, now that they had been man and wife for two years, seemed likely to result in a very uncomfortable state of things. Mrs. Webb hated books, and she detested the thoughts of living in the country; on the contrary, Mr. Webb was a great reader, and was passionately fond of the country, and of rural occupations.

“You are not very partial to the country, my dear Winny,” said he, venturing to cast a look at his wife, whose tiny fingers were plying like lightning over her work, while her cheeks were flushed with agitation, “but if you will give up this small point.”

“Small point, Mr. Webb, do you call that a small point which is so very disagreeable to me? Nay,” said she, laughing, “if it be such a small point, why contend about it; do you concede this small point to me, and when it comes to one that you consider of greater magnitude, why—exert your prerogative my dear.”

Mr. Webb looked grave and sighed; the little lady, although very fond of her husband, was not disposed to yield, much as her husband’s sighs and grave looks affected her. She continued to sew very fast, without looking up for some time. At length, finding that his eyes were again dropped on his book, and that he had resumed his tranquil manner, she called his attention to the offer of a compromise. “Suppose my dear Hassy, that we both give up a little? Do you give up this small point of living in the country, and I will live as frugally as I can in ever so small a house in the city, that you may purchase books and keep the horse—and—and—now 213my dear Hassy,” said she, drawing her chair nearer to her husband and looking up to his face—“think of the very great point lam going to give up for your small one—you shall have the naming of our little girl!”

This was indeed a temptation, for Mr. Webb was of a romantic turn of mind, and considered a good name as a thing of vital importance. His own name, Ahasuerus, had been a source of much mortification to him; and that of his wife, Winifred, was equally inharmonious and distasteful. But Mrs. Webb had no romance about her; she called her husband’s horse Mush, because the animal happened one day to run his nose into a dishful of that article; and a fine handsome little terrier she called Scratch, although her husband had named the one Orelio and the other Bevis.

As to her own name, or that of her husband, she saw nothing disagreeable in either of them; and could she have followed her own inclinations she would have called her little girl Rachel. But, although thus indifferent about names, which in general were thought old fashioned—such as Margaret, Magdalen, Sarah and the like, yet she had an active dislike to fanciful ones; Emily, Caroline and Matilda, had nothing notable or thrifty in their character; they were novel names, and she hated novels. Still less did she like those of Myrtilla, Flora, Narcissa; they savoured too much of the country; she dreaded her husband’s tastes either way.

If romances were uppermost at the time, then the first mentioned names would be present to his imagination; and if her child were so unfortunate as to get one of them, it might be the means of fastening a lackadaisical character on her for life; she would never be fit for any rational employment.

If, on the contrary, her husband had the country mania on him, then what could she hope for but a 214Pastorella or a Daphne? What a milk and water creature would this make of her child! For Mrs. Webb, too, in her way, was of opinion that peculiar names gave a peculiar turn to character. In either case, therefore, she was in a dilemma, and the baby, now three months old, had no name.

Mr. Webb laid down his book at this unlooked-for offer of a compromise, and was about to enter into a discussion concerning it, when a servant announced a visiter. An elderly gentleman entered, at whose appearance Mrs. Webb started up in great dismay and confusion. She hastily, and in much trepidation, introduced the stranger as her uncle, Mr. Banks, her mother’s only brother.

Mr. Banks, a rich planter, had just arrived from Jamaica, where his principal estates lay. He had never seen Mr. Webb; and had now come to pay his first visit. As Mrs. Webb was the only child of his only sister, the old gentleman, in his way, had been very fond of her; yet, in spite of this, and of his real goodness of heart, he could never see his niece without laughing at her tiny little figure; and she was always called by him, “the Little Fairy.” His only hope was, that she would either not marry at all, or else choose a husband of ordinary size, that their offspring might have a chance of looking as if they had not come from fairy land. He had hardly got over the mirth of his niece’s marriage, when he learned that her husband was as diminutive as herself; and his impatience to see them together overcame his discretion. After making a few purchases, as presents to the little couple, he posted immediately to their lodgings.

“And so Winny,” said the old gentleman, after he had kissed his niece, and had shaken hands with her husband, (without looking at him though) “so, this is your—husband, and you have a baby too, they say; where is it? cannot I see it? what is its 215name? tell the servant to bring it in.” He could hardly restrain his impatience, so much did he want to see the child of this diminutive couple; and when the maid brought it in, dressed in its very best; its little cap, with pink bows; its little sleeves, looped up with pink ribands; and its pretty little frock, all stiff with delicate needlework, he was in an ecstasy of delight. He snatched the child from the maid, and holding it from him, at arm’s length, he laughed so loud and long that the poor child screamed with fright.

He then drew the innocent, terrified little creature close to him to take a nearer look; but no sooner had he examined its little features, and had poised it in his arms, to ascertain its weight, than his laughter was renewed with redoubled energy; and so little command had he over himself, that if Mr. Webb, angrily enough, had not taken the child from him, it must have fallen to the ground.

There seemed no end to the old gentleman’s mirth, when Mrs. Webb, unable to contain herself any longer, indignantly exclaimed—“Uncle Banks, I wonder at your coming here to insult us in this manner! What can make you act in this strange unnatural way? You have hurt my husband’s feelings; which, I can tell you, is more painful to me than if you had insulted me alone.”

When the old gentleman could stop himself, he held out his arms as if he still held the child—“Here, Winny,” said he, the tears of laughter running down his cheeks—“here, take the baby; why don’t you take the child, I say? I shall certainly let it fall.”

“Uncle Banks, if you would only come to your senses, you would know that”—

“Hold your peace, Winny, and take the doll—the baby I mean.”

“You know well enough, uncle, that Mr. Webb 216took the child from you and left the room. I could see that he was exceedingly hurt at”—

“What?” said the obdurate man—“what, did he actually take away the baby, and I not miss it nor him either? Winny, I thought it was light, but I did not dream it was so feathery that I could not tell whether I held it or not—why I should have missed a down pincushion.”

Mrs. Webb burst into tears. This sobered the old man at once. “My dear Winny,” said he, going suddenly to her, and kissing her cheek, “how foolish it is in you to mind what your old uncle says or does in his fun. Come, deary, do not cry any more, but save your eyes to look at the pretty things I have brought you. Here, girl,” calling to a servant, “tell those men to bring in that trunk.”

A large trunk was brought in, which he hastened to open; and it was not in the nature of one so constituted as Mrs. Webb, to remain insensible to the pleasure of examining such presents as her uncle had placed before her. She forgot her vexation, and her eyes sparkled with delight as the old gentleman, with much ostentatious parade, drew out each valuable article. When he had, in this way, emptied the trunk, he asked her if she had forgiven him for his laughter.

“Indeed, uncle Banks,” said she, “I am so used to your humour, that if I alone were concerned, I should not mind it; but Mr. Webb feels such things keenly, for he has a great deal of sensibility. I am sure, however, that he will be delighted with the books—how elegantly they are bound—and he will be more than pleased with this beautiful tea set of silver. What a great help this is to our housekeeping; and all these spoons too, and silver forks—Mr. Webb has a great fondness for silver plate. I must call him in to thank you.”

“No don’t, Winny, don’t,” said her uncle, “I 217shall relapse, for I can hardly help going at it fresh again when I think of his tiny, slender little figure. Why don’t you send him in the country, to get a little flesh on his little bones?”

Mrs. Webb reddened, but a look at the presents, as they lay on the floor, kept her from replying; and finding him tolerably grave, she thought it better for her husband to get accustomed to the coarse ways of her uncle at once. She, therefore, went to him to prepare the way for a better understanding. Mr. Webb, however, felt no willingness to be under obligations to so vulgar a mind; but seeing his wife’s distress, in consequence of his refusal to go into the room, and having, likewise, a point to gain with her, he at length resolved to bear with the folly of the old man, without showing his sense of the indignity.

It was some time before he made his appearance. Meantime Mrs. Webb had been coaxing her uncle to behave with decency before her husband. “You can but turn your back,” said she, “if you think you cannot refrain from laughing; but if you knew how kind he is to me, and how much every body respects him, you would not mind his size. You have no idea what an excellent scholar he is. It is really cruel, my dear uncle, to make game of what, by your mirth, you consider as a ludicrous affliction—a thing which we neither of us have been instrumental in doing; and which we would alter if we could. Do, dear sir, let him see what you really are—a kind and affectionate man. I will give my husband a chair the moment he comes in; he does not look so small when he sits.”

This last unlucky observation undid all that her previous conversation had effected; and when Mr. Webb entered, the old man was in a roar of laughter; and only one glance at the unfortunate man, 218as he came into the room, increased it to such a degree, that he fairly rolled over the floor.

In fact, a person of even more refinement, would have had his risible faculties excited at the appearance which Mr. Webb made. Conscious of his inferior size, and being now, for the first time, coarsely treated in consequence of it, he had taken some pains to improve his figure. He had on a long skirted coat and high heeled boots, with a hat of an uncommonly high crown. His walk, as he entered, was constrained, and his manner was formal. He was exceedingly provoked at the old gentleman’s mirth; and nothing less than his wife’s distress could have induced him to remain one moment in the room. But he did stay, and he even helped the silly old man to rise, who, through sheer weakness, was unable to move from the floor.

When he had, in some measure, composed his features, he beckoned to his niece, who stood looking very angrily at him; and, as she came near, he mustered up resolution enough to restrain himself so that he could articulate. He whispered in her ear, in a sort of hoarse giggle—“My dear Winny—take off his hat, and get between us, while you coax him to look at the things on the floor—the boots I do not mind—make him sit, Winny, will you?—and then I shall not see his coat.”

Mrs. Webb could not, at length, help laughing herself; so she twitched off the unfortunate hat, got a chair for her husband, and, after putting a pile of books in his lap, she endeavoured to screen him from her uncle’s view. In this way they all sat for a few minutes; the old gentleman in a sort of convulsive titter, which he tried to disguise by keeping a handkerchief close to his mouth. Mrs. Webb was then compelled to leave the room on account of the poor little child, who could not recover from its fright; but, as she was going out, she 219whispered to her husband not to mind her uncle. “Laugh with him, my dear,” said she, “it is the only way to stop him; but, above all, look at the beautiful silver, and do not let his folly vex you. I will be back in a few minutes.”

Mr. Banks behaved much better after his niece left the room; and he even trusted his voice in making an apology. By degrees, poor Mr. Webb was appeased; and, in looking at his dress, he could not but acknowledge that he cut an exceedingly grotesque figure. He was, therefore, soon disposed to bear with the oddity of his relation; and, in fact, to join in his mirth, when the old gentleman put on his high crowned hat, by mistake, for his own.

“Well, sir,” said he, “that hat, I must confess, is rather of the tallest, and I can join you in your laugh. You may laugh at my slight, small figure, and I will laugh at your robust one, and your red face, for one is as fit a subject for mirth as the other.”

“You are very much mistaken,” said the old gentleman, rousing himself suddenly. “You can see nothing at all to laugh at in me; for I am made like most people—and—besides—I allow no man to laugh at me. This reminds me, Mr. Webb, of the golden rule—I beg your pardon for my mirth; but, really, the hat and coat, to say nothing of the boots, were too much for me. But, my little man—hem—Mr. Webb, I mean, why do you not go into the country and gather a little colour and flesh? You would look more like a—hem—you would look as well again. Little Winny and the little—doll—baby—would be the better for country air too.”

Mr. Webb, thoroughly good tempered, had long since smiled off his chagrin, for he had a splendid edition of Shakspeare on his lap; and he could not but think that the hint of the country might be of 220use to him. He thought there was a possibility of drawing Mr. Banks over to his scheme of living there; he, therefore, hastily explained his reasons for being in town; and spoke of his regrets at not being able to live in the country, both on his child’s account and his own. He finished by stating his wife’s strong aversion to the plan, and of the impossibility of her ever consenting to it.

“What income have you, my little—hem—Mr. Webb, I mean.”

“Why, sir, we have about six hundred dollars a year. Now I think that sum, with my wife’s economy—and I have no expensive habits”—

“No, I’ll be sworn that your clothes won’t cost you much—nay,” said he, on seeing the colour fly into Mr. Webb’s face, “let me have my joke, and I’ll make you amends. In the first place, I will manage your wife, so that she shall come into your plans. Winny always liked to have her own way; and, as I helped to spoil her, when young, it is but fair that I should endeavour to set things a little square now. And, to repay you for bearing so well with an old man’s humour—which, considering how little there is of you—nay, my boy—Mr. Webb, I mean, don’t look so angry; I was only going to observe, that I might as well give you, in my lifetime, what I should certainly leave you at my death. I mean a little estate I have, called Oak Valley. It is just the very thing for two such little—I mean two such agreeable young people.”

“I am much obliged to you for your kindness, sir, but it will be a useless present; you forget your niece has a strong aversion to the country.”

“What, Winny? Have I not told you to let me manage her; hush, there she comes. I hope she has left the little doll—baby I mean—behind; two I can stand, now that I am used to it, but a third would set me going again. Well, Winny, your husband 221is not so much vexed at my laughter as you are. I think him a good, pleasant tempered little—fellow. In short, Winny, I begin to like him, he bears a joke so well. Now, a joke to me is a great thing; and I shall be tempted, now that I find you in the city, to remain here a year or two, and pitch my tent near you. If you lived in the country I should not be able to enjoy your society, as I never go there. But here, in the city, I could see you very often; and I know two or three old fellows like myself, who would often come with me to pay you an evening visit. You will soon get used to my jokes, eh, Mr. Webb. You will not mind my laughing, Winny, when it comes to be a daily thing?”

Mrs. Webb was struck dumb. What! to undergo the same torture daily? To see her sensitive husband daily, hourly, exposed to such coarse insults as he had been obliged to submit to during this day?—and before strangers too, to be the butt of vulgar and unfeeling people?—It was too much—nothing on earth could compensate for such an evil. She cast her eye towards her husband, not doubting but that he was feeling precisely as she did; but his back was towards her, and she could not learn how this communication affected him. It would not do—that she knew at once; she saw nothing but misery in having her uncle near them, and she therefore determined to make an effort to prevent the threatened evil.

“My dear uncle,” said she, with much embarrassment, for she knew that her husband was likewise interested in what she was saying,—“you would no doubt be very kind to us, if we lived together in the city, which, on many accounts, I should prefer to the country; but just before you came in Mr. Webb had been expressing a strong desire to go in the country—and—and—you know you, yourself, recommended our going—you advised me to it, you know.”

222“Yes, Winny, I told you that you had better send the little man—I mean your little husband—in short, Winny, where is the use of your reddening up to your temples every time I make a mistake? You must get used to it if I live near you. I must call your husband little, while I am near him, and see that he is small. At my time of life people want indoor amusement, and you three here, would be a great—no, a little help, to wile away an hour or two in a rainy evening.”

This settled the matter with poor Mrs. Webb; not for worlds would she put herself in the way of such an evil; she therefore, with much pretended humility, disclaimed all right to decide on the question of living in the town or country; she said that, like a prudent wife, she meant to give up her own wishes to please her husband—that she was certain of its being better for him and the child to be in pure air, and now all that she should ask for this full compliance with his wishes was, that she should have the privilege of naming their little girl.

“That is but fair, Winny,” said her uncle, “you have certainly the right of naming little tiny as you choose. But stop—let me see—let me give the child a name; I will stand godfather to it, and, what is better, I will act as a godfather should. I will settle a thousand dollars a year on her, and will give you a very pretty little farm—my Oak Valley farm. Winny, you remember that farm.”

“You shall have the naming of our little girl—remember Oak Valley! yes, indeed I do; I can safely trust her name to you—my dear husband, you can have no objection; you will give your consent, I hope.”

“Certainly,” said poor Mr. Webb, his mind misgiving him about the name, as on looking at Mr. Banks, he saw his features announcing a new burst 223of merriment—“I have no objection to a scripture name, and I would even prefer Winnifred,”—casting a timid glance at the old humourist,—“to many that I know.”

“Well, you both consent then, and will not retract—give me your word of honour to let me name the child as I like, in case I settle a thousand dollars a year upon her.” Mrs. Webb eagerly gave her word, and her husband, after again expressing his entire willingness, once more hinted that a plain scripture name was quite as agreeable to him now, as any other.

“Well, then,” said Mr. Banks, “the thing is settled. I will now take my leave and go to my lodgings. The deed for Oak Valley shall be made out immediately, as shall the settlement on our little dolly—but, Winny,” said he, casting a sly look at Mr. Webb—“you had better change your mind and live in the city; your going so far off from me will drive me back to Jamaica—what, you are determined? well, I must submit; but remember, I must name dolly.” Saying this, he walked nimbly out of the house, apparently unwilling to trust himself a minute longer in their sight.

In the course of the next day the deeds were sent to them by which the estate of Oak Valley was secured to them, as was likewise a settlement of one thousand dollars a year, which sum was for the use of the parents until the child came of age. There was a letter accompanying the papers, saying that he would tell them his mind concerning the name of the child, meantime he had sent them each a present, which he hoped would do away all past offences.

“Generous man,” said the enraptured Mrs. Webb, “I have no doubt but that these two parcels, so carefully sealed, contain bank notes; here, my dear, this one is directed to you—let him laugh, I 224only wish I may be able to sleep this night under such a load of kindness. That farm of Oak Valley, my dear, is a very excellent one—such pasturage, such fine springs on it”—and while she was regaling herself with a recollection of its many beauties and comforts, she was at the same time opening her little packet, which was enveloped in fold after fold of paper, each one carefully sealed. Mr. Webb was, however, in such a pleasing reverie, that her words fell on his ear without his having any very distinct notion of what she was saying, further than that they were harmonizing with his feelings. As to his own packet, it remained untouched in his hand.

“And then there is such a pretty river, navigable too for small craft, running at the very foot of the farm; you can take——what a curious conceit this is of Uncle Banks, what trouble he has given himself and me to, in enclosing this money, for such I have no doubt it is, in so many covers; I am afraid to tear them loose at once, lest I may tear the notes—my dear, why do you not begin to open yours? I am sorry my poor uncle does not like the country, for all things considered we might bear with his fooleries—there, thank goodness, I have opened the last pa”——. But what was her chagrin on finding that it contained the old story book, “There was a little woman, as I’ve heard tell.”

Casting her quick eye towards her husband, she saw that his “eye was in fine frenzy rolling,” and that he had been long past attending either to her packet or his own; so, wishing to spare him the mortification which she had just encountered, she gently took the unopened parcel from his unresisting hand, and went quietly out of the room. She opened this second parcel with much less ceremony than she did her own, cutting and tearing through 225the numerous folds, and just as she expected, she saw a book of the same size as the other, called, “There was a little man, and he wooed a little maid.”

Indignation was the first effect, as she threw the books across the room, but surprise and pleasure soon succeeded, for as the books dashed against the wall, sundry bank notes fell out and were scattered on the floor. On examination she found that the eccentric humourist had placed a one hundred dollar bank note between every two leaves of each book.

“I know exactly, my dear Hassy,” said the now delighted wife, as she rushed into the room, “I know what uncle Banks means by these handsome presents—here is a thousand dollars for you and the same sum for me. Your money is to purchase stock for the farm, and mine is to buy furniture; was there ever any one so generous!—laugh? who cares for his laughter and his odd ways, when he atones for them in such a handsome manner as this? Here, my dear, put the money carefully away, while I pick up these foolish bits of paper.”

She raised herself from her stooping posture on hearing her husband sigh. “What, upon earth, my dear Hassy, is the matter with you?” said she, in great alarm, for she feared that this sudden accession of wealth had disturbed his brain, particularly as her own was in a whirl. She recollected, too, at the moment, that Mr. Webb had read some observations of Dr. Burroughs on the subject of insanity, which went to prove that there were more frequently cases of aberration of mind from a rise to sudden prosperity, than from adversity. “What can ail you? surely you are not one of those weak minded persons who cannot bear a sudden turn of good fortune?”

“My dear Winny,” said her husband, in the 226most rueful tone imaginable, “I am not thinking in the least of the money, nor of the farm, but of the probability of our child’s having a preposterous name.”

Mrs. Webb fairly laughed aloud. “Is that all?” said she. “Why, my dear Hassy, I would not care if she were called Nebuchadnezzar—provided she were a boy—fret about a name! Why, cannot we make a pleasant abbreviation of it in case it be an ugly one? But my uncle is an old fashioned man, and I apprehend nothing worse than Jerusha, or Kezia, or Margaret.”

“I hope it may be so, Winny, but I fear that you are too sanguine; I dread to hear the name—nothing can compensate me if the name be a ridiculous one.”

After breakfast the next morning a note was brought from Mr. Banks, bidding them farewell, saying that urgent business called him immediately to Jamaica. He said that he had dwelt with much anxiety on the subject of selecting a suitable name for their baby, and after discarding a number of them he had at length pitched on one that he thought would suit all parties; that it was a little of the longest, to be sure, but then this fault was made up in its dignity. The child, he said, should be called Glumdalclitch.

Any one would have pitied the poor little couple if they could have seen the consternation which this billet produced.

“I never will consent to this,” said Mr. Webb, as soon as his anger and shame would allow him to speak—“never shall my child reproach me with fastening such a ridiculous name upon her. I will write this instant to your uncle and refuse to accept any of his gifts on such disgraceful conditions. No, no, my dear Winny, we are—I, at least, am mark enough for ridicule, but this is a thing which I have 227learned to bear, as it has been our Creator’s will to make me as I am; but to name our child in such fantastic fashion, would be indeed to invite both scorn and laughter.”

But prudent Mrs. Webb had cooled in proportion as her husband was excited. She had felt a good deal mortified at first at the outlandish name; but during the indignant burst of feeling of her husband, she began to think that Glumdalclitch, although harsh and difficult to pronounce, might have a short and pleasant abridgment, at any rate there was no prohibition to a double name.

Clearing up as this passed through her mind, she then turned to give her husband what comfort she could; for little refinement as she had in general, she still could comprehend the morbid sensibilities of those she loved. How few men there are who know how to appreciate the sympathy of a prudent, tender wife! Mr. Webb understood the excellence of the woman who now stood with affectionate earnestness before him, and before she had talked the matter over the third time—in her vague yet decisive way—he had recovered his equanimity. Happy to perceive that he had resumed his quiet manner again, Mrs. Webb continued,

“One thousand dollars a year may easily compensate for an ugly name; and even if we do not choose to give the child a middle name, which is optional with us, she will not have to be called by her Christian name long; for after a girl is in her teens, she gets the title of her surname. She will be called Miss Webb, you know. Perhaps, after all, my dear, this name which is so disagreeable to us, may not be thought ugly by some people.”

“Ugly,” said her husband, “do you know what this name means?—but no—I heard you say the other day that you had never read Gulliver’s Travels, 228my dear Winny,” blushing deeply as he said it—“Glumdalclitch is the name of a giantess!”

“Well, this comes of so much reading; I bless my want of taste that way; it is enough to make one forswear books; never reproach me again for my indifference towards them. I am sure I wish Mr. Gulliver had staid at home, if he could have communicated nothing better than such a hideous name. But where is the use of fretting? since it is so, we must make the best of it, and then you know we need not call the name out in full; you never call me Winnifred, nor do I call you Ahasuerus. Let us shorten the name to Glummy—no? Well, how would Clitchy sound—you don’t like that. Let us shorten it to Dally, that I know will please you, for it is the name of a flower.”

“How often Winny,” said her fretted husband, “have I told you that the flower is called Dahlia;” suspending for a moment his right to feel indignant and irritable, to do justice to the pronunciation of the name of a flower.

“Dahlia is it? well, that is the way an Irishman would call Delia. Let us call her Delia then, it is a pretty pastoral name;” and as she said this, she cast a side glance at her husband.

After this, and other conversations of the kind, they agreed to give the child this uncouth name, for the charm of living in the country was hourly growing more captivating to Mr. Webb, and Mrs. Webb had a great reverence for a thousand dollars a year. Besides, the misery of living where they would daily be subject to the coarse mirth of her uncle, when he made his regular visits to the city, which he had until of late years, been always in the habit of doing, was becoming more and more apparent. She even with more alacrity than one could expect, set about making preparations for her departure to Oak Valley.

229“This is all very hard upon you, my dear wife,” said Mr. Webb to her one day when he saw how cheerfully she was preparing for their removal; “this is worse for you than for me. With the one part, at least, I am more than gratified, whereas your feelings and taste have not been consulted at all. You have neither the satisfaction of living where you like best, nor the pleasure of having a decent name for your child.”

“But I have the pleasure of knowing that my little girl will have a handsome independence—and do you think, my dear Hassy, that it is no gratification to me to see that our going to the country is an event of great importance to your health and happiness?”

“My dearest Winny,” said her tender-hearted, conscience-stricken husband, “I do not deserve this goodness. I cannot enjoy the thought of going into the country, unless I tell you how it has been brought about. You were manœuvred into this scheme, my dear wife; and I here declare, that much as I wish to leave the city, you shall yet remain if you wish it. Your uncle had no intention of living near us, if we remained here; he was eager to get us all into the country, on the score of our health, and he made use of this stratagem to induce you to consent to it. Now that I have told you the truth, pray do as you like best; but with respect to the settlement on our child, much as I dislike the name, I fear she would not thank us if we gave that up for a thing of such little consequence. Giving up the farm,” continued he, sighing deeply, “is another affair.”

“Yes,” said his wife laughing, “I see it is, and it would be a worse affair if you knew what a sweet spot Oak Valley is; but here is this money, this two thousand dollars—would you think it right to return this too,—my part of it I need not return, 230for I am persuaded it was to purchase furniture, which will suit me either for a town or a country house. Your’s was no doubt, for purchasing stock for the farm; if we live in the city we can have no pretence for keeping that part of it.”

But Mr. Webb did not like this view of the business at all, and he was besides getting quite uneasy, notwithstanding his late compunctious feelings, lest his wife should take him at his word, and remain where she was.

Strange perplexities for these little people, but money always brings as much pain as pleasure. Mrs. Webb had, however, accommodated herself wonderfully to circumstances; she generally looked on the sunny side of a question, and she had, by working it over in her mind early and late, viewing it in every possible shape, fairly brought herself to think, that all things considered (this was a favourite expression of hers) farm, income, money and health, and, though last not least, the pleasure of obliging her husband; and if it must be told, the hold she would have on him for this double disappointment of hers—the plan of living in the country would be the very best thing for them all.

The spring opened delightfully, and the farm was to be ready for them in a few days; but Mr. Webb, wishing to make the removal as pleasant as possible, could not bear to let his wife go until every thing was tolerably well arranged in their new house. He proposed, therefore, that she and the child should go to see a relation of his who had never yet seen her, and who had several times given her pressing invitations to pay her a visit. The rooms they occupied at present had been let, and new boarders were to take possession of them immediately.

But Mrs. Webb strongly objected to this plan—“My dear Hassy,” said she, “no fear of my fatiguing myself or of taking cold. I shall remain 231quietly in my room until the carpets are down and the furniture unpacked. You will never catch me paying a visit to a near relation in the spring of the year, unless there be other guests there at the same time; I have seen too much of that.”

“But why,” said Mr. Webb, “why in the spring of the year more than in any other season?”

“Because, then you are treated most scandalously. In the first place, they begin with—a constrained smile on their face all the while—I am very sorry that you have come just at this time, not sorry on our account, but on your own; we are pulling every thing to pieces to commence house cleaning. Our best bed-room, which you ought to have, is all upside down; you will have to take the third story—and such a room, my dear Hassy—you can have no idea of it; I shudder when I think of exposing my baby to it. Perhaps it has been a nursery or neglected school room; spots of ink and grease cover the floor, great black knots show themselves, and the unseasoned boards gape wide. Three odd chairs, a half circular wooden toilet table without a cover, and a slim-posted, ricketty bedstead, with a feather bed scantily filled, and which still more scantily covers the bedstead—happy if it have a sacking instead of a rope bottom—coarse patched sheets, darned pillow cases, an old heirloom blue chequered counterpane, a broken wash basin on a little foot-square tottering table, and a blurred looking glass, complete the furniture of this cold north room. I shall say nothing of ‘the hearth unconscious of a fire,’ nor of the long deep cracks in the coarse whitewashed walls, nor of the rattling of the window sashes.”

“What a picture you have drawn, Winny! you speak very feelingly; have you ever been compelled to sleep in such a room? But what sort of fare do you receive under such circumstances?”

232“Oh, the worst in the world; when it is meal time, then you hear this, or something like it: ‘How unfortunate to come at this unpropitious season? it is so uncomfortable for you; no vegetables, but old potatoes; no salad yet; all our hams gone; nothing but shoulders; and the hens are so backward this spring.’—No, no, my dear Hassy, unless there be visiters of some consequence in the house, never go near a relation in the spring of the year; I mean, if they live in the country. There is no exertion made to gratify your taste or your palate; a more forlorn state of things cannot be imagined. Now in June, or July, you may, on the score of your being a near relation, which is always a justifiable excuse, be ushered up in that comfortless north room; but then coolness and shade is not unpleasant—there are strawberries and blackberries, in their season, along the hedges and meadows, if none are to be had in the garden—then there are fresh milch cows, and the hens cannot help laying if they would—new potatoes come in plenty, and dock and pigweed grow without culture. I would rather have them than spinach at any time; buttermilk too can be had for asking; and you can rove about uncared for and unheeded, which I can tell you is as great a luxury when you are in the country, as to eat fresh eggs and breathe fresh air.”

Mr. Webb was exceedingly amused with this description, and as his wife did not seem to consider it an evil to go to an unaired house, he did not think it prudent to make her think it one. Her pliant, well-regulated mind soon enabled her to overcome her dislike to country occupations; and even to exult in her achievement in the way of making butter and cheese, and she soon excelled in raising poultry—three things which formerly belonged to female management alone. Now, however, in these wonder-working days, so ravenous are men for monopolies 233and for experimentalizing, that they have encroached on privileges, which even the old taskmasters of the female sex unreluctantly yielded to them.

Mrs. Webb, although of slender figure, and small in size, had a mind as active and as comprehensive, a temper as irritable, and was as bold an asserter of her own rights, as the stoutest of her sex. She soon regulated her household in a quiet, economical way, and had none but female servants within doors; detesting, as well she might, the appearance of a stale, heavy-looking, half-dirty man about the room, doing woman’s work, when he should be out of doors with a spade or a hoe.

What a bower did the happy Mr. Webb make of Oak Valley! Such a profusion of sweet-scented shrubs and flowers had never before been seen in the neighbourhood. Fruit trees soon made their appearance; and their crops of grain and grass were abundant and good. But what his wife most admired was, the regular supply of wood which he provided for the house—nicely cut and piled; a thing generally less attended to, and the cause of more vexatious disputes between the farmer and his wife than any other part of their arrangements. All things, therefore, considered, which Mrs. Webb was still in the habit of saying, “it really was preferable to live on such a pleasant, well regulated farm than in a narrow street or at lodgings.”

Then there was so much speculation about the right breed of cows and poultry. Mr. Webb first inclined to long-horns, then to short-horns; but Mrs. Webb cut the matter short by declaring for no horns; and to this day they have from ten to fifteen of these meek, subdued animals, so fat that they could not do much in the way of running from a cross cur if any such should attack them.

She had her own way, too, with the poultry. She 234soon banished the coarse, long-legged Buck’s county fowls, with their uncouth looking bodies. She said their tread was almost as heavy as a young colt’s; and, really, when she pointed to a dozen of them which were picking their way over a strawberry bed, her husband submitted in silence to the order given to the farmer, to prepare them for market. “And, David,” said Mrs. Webb, after the man had chased the fowls from the garden, “see what prospect there is of selling off our stock of Bantoms. It takes twenty of their eggs to make a pudding, and they lay no more eggs a day than other hens—and, David, when you return from Wicklowe, cross over to neighbour Haywood’s, and see what he will take for two or three pair of those old fashioned kind of hens—those full, broad breasted, pale speckled ones; sometimes a dingy yellow and sometimes brown and gray, with large spreading tails. Those are the only kind. But above all, David, see that they have flesh coloured legs; they fatten well; those with yellow or black legs are not worth raising—strange that people are so inattentive to such important matters.”

Sixteen years passed away, and time, as the little lady said, seemed to fly with them; every thing prospered. Mr. Banks, to their great surprise, never came near them. He contented himself with sending them a yearly present; and heard of the birth of each succeeding child with a fresh burst of merriment. Their children, all girls, were six in number; and their income was now about three thousand dollars a year.

Mr. Webb, in the most peaceable, unaccountable manner, had been allowed the pleasure of naming four of his children. Perhaps—for woman’s tenderness will sometimes increase—perhaps she felt for his first disappointment; and, as it rose out of the caprice of a relative of her own, she determined 235on remaining quiet, only resolving to interfere if an outrageously romantic name presented itself to his imagination.

The first child literally had no name until the birth of the second; then, as the “child,” or the “baby” could no longer distinguish it, they took it to the font and had it christened. The clergyman, old Mr. Saxeweld, was then a stranger to them, for through very shame they would not apply to their own pastor. He did not rightly understand what Mr. Webb said, when he demanded the name of the child, for he never, for a moment, dreamed of Gulliver. He asked over and over again, and still the sound of Glumdalclitch came to his ear. “Is it a French name?” said he, looking angrily at Mrs. Webb, who, nothing disconcerted by all this hubbub about the name, was enjoying the triumph which she should have over her husband when she got home, in telling him that there was one other person in the world beside herself who had not read Gulliver’s Travels.

Mr. Webb was ready to sink in the earth; he felt that he could at that moment renounce the world and all its vanities, as well as the child’s income, which had caused all this disgrace.

“I presume,” said Mr. Saxeweld, willing to put an end to the scene, “I presume it is a French name. Colombe—what?” But Mr. Webb was past appeal; he felt a hollow ringing in his ears; and, in time to save him from fainting, the child was christened Colombe.

The clergyman, a testy old man, was so provoked at what he thought stupidity in the father of the child, that he felt disposed to rebuke him; and when poor Mr. Webb turned to him, as he was leaving the church, to offer him the accustomed fee, he not only refused it, but broke out in this way—“Never come to me again; you, with a name 236bigger than your whole body; and which is too long for your mouth to utter. If it had not been for my knowledge of French, I should have christened your child Glumdalclitch, and it would have been serving you right if I had.”

After Colombe came Flora, then Rosa, then Imogen, then Christabelle; and, when the sixth was old enough for baptism, while Mr. Webb was deciding between Diana and Lilius, Mrs. Webb went to church during a week-day service, with a friend, and came home in triumph, with the only Christian name, as she said, in the family—it was Rebecca. Mr. Webb thanked his stars that it was no worse.

Old Mr. Banks made no other remarks, when he heard of the mistake in the child’s name, than that the income should now be divided between the children, as at the time he did not imagine that the little girl would ever have any rivals. When the little Rebecca was about two years old, the old gentleman took it into his head to pay the tiny family a visit, to see how they all looked together.

Early, one fine spring morning, he made his appearance at Oak Valley, accompanied by Stephen Haywood, with whose father he had long been acquainted. While on the way to the farm, he entertained our young friend Stephen with an account of his first interview with the little couple and their tiny little child. “How I shall stand it now,” said he, “I cannot tell; but I am sixteen years older, and a man of eighty has nearly expended all his laughter. It is high time, I think.”

Young Haywood, who, although not introduced to the family at that time, yet knew them well, from report, could not help smiling; but the old gentleman’s attention was soon directed to the neatness and order of the farm; and, when Stephen asked him if he had an idea that the children were 237all as small as their parents, he could scarcely answer.

“Assuredly they are; why, if any one of the six had been but an inch taller than themselves, they would have sent an express to me at Jamaica.”

A servant came to the door, and Mr. Banks asked eagerly, if Mr. and Mrs. Webb and the six little children were at home. The girl stared, but replied that Mr. and Mrs. Webb, and some of the children, were in the garden, and some of the younger ones were in the nursery; but that Miss Webb, the eldest daughter, was in the parlour. “Show me in, show me in,” said he; and into the room he nimbly stepped, winking aside to young Haywood, to express his glee. He seemed quite disappointed at seeing only a middle sized young lady sitting there. She arose on the old gentleman’s precipitate entrance, while he exclaimed, “I thought to find one of Mr. Webb’s tiny little children here.”

“I am Mr. Webb’s eldest daughter,” said the young lady, blushing, “my parents will be in presently—will you sit down?” and she presented each gentleman with a chair.

Never was man more amazed—this young lady his little niece’s daughter?—he certainly saw a likeness; but it was altogether a puzzle. At length he roused himself to say, “Why did not your mother write me word that they had a child as tall as you are? What is your name? Oh,—I remember—Colombe. It is a foolish name enough; but it might have been worse. Never mind, my dear, I will make you amends for your French name; better though than—but no matter; let me introduce you to Mr. Stephen Haywood.”

Just then the door opened, and his niece, with her husband, and the five children, made their appearance. But if Mr. Banks was amazed at seeing 238the respectable height of the eldest daughter, how much more so was he when he saw that there was not one of the diminutive stature of the parents. Even the youngest, a rosy little girl, just beginning to walk, bade fair to be as tall as her sisters.

Mrs. Webb enjoyed her uncle’s amazement; not without suspicion, however, that he was disappointed at bottom, because there were no dwarfs among them. But in a short time, the old gentleman’s good-natured eye glistened at the pictures of health, order and obedience of the children, and at the improved looks of the parents. He did not laugh once during his visit, which was of a week’s duration; and when he left them, he had the satisfaction of seeing that Stephen Haywood was following his advice; which was, to fall in love with his pretty pigeon as fast as possible.

“Mrs. Bangs, look here,” said the cook, “look at this queer thing in the turkey’s craw; it looks for all the world like a brickbat.”

“O never mind the brickbat,” said Mrs. Bangs, “let that alone; ‘tis no concern of ours—only make haste and prepare the turkey for the spit. Your head is always running after things that don’t concern you.”

Thus spoke Mrs. Bangs, the mother of thirteen children, all girls. She was a strong, healthy woman of fifty years of age, and in the three characters of daughter, wife and mother, had been exemplary. She was the only child of a respectable farmer, and at her parent’s death inherited the farm which a few years after her marriage rose greatly in value. It was on the outskirts of a populous city which had increased so rapidly that at the birth of her second child the farm was laid out in streets, in every one of which they had sold several lots for buildings.

Her husband was a chemist, and his laboratory was very near this valuable property, so that he could attend to his business in the manufactory and look after the workmen who were building his houses. What Mr. Bangs learned during his apprenticeship, 240that he knew well, and on that stock of knowledge he operated all his life. He manufactured the best aqua ammonia in the country, free from that empyreumatic, old tobacco-pipe taste and smell, which it has in general when made in America, and his salt of tartar had not an opaque grain in it. Thus it was with all the drugs that he made, for he was more intent upon keeping up his good name than in making money speedily, and his pride was in having it said that Christopher Bangs’s word was as good as his bond. Further than this there was but little to be said, excepting that he was a disappointed man, and had the feeling of being ill used.

This disappointment consisted in not having a son—one, he said, who could take up the business when he laid it down—one to whom he could confide the few secrets of his trade.

When the birth of the first girl was announced, it was very well; not that he did not fret in secret, but he took it as a thing of course, and as he was daily in the habit of hearing Mrs. Bangs congratulate herself that the child was a girl, because she could assist her in her household cares, he was resigned to it, although it was full three months before his club mates were told of his having an increase of family. But he really did murmur when the second girl came. “Why, at this rate,” said he, indignantly, “I cannot have a child named after me at all. Christopher Bangs will end with me, and who is to be the better of all the valuable secrets of the laboratory?”

“Oh, la! my dear,” said his wife, “let that alone, it’s no concern of ours, and as to the child’s name, don’t fret about that, for can’t I name this dear chubby little thing Christina, the short of which is Kitty, and that is as good as Kit any day in the 241year; and only think what a help this dear, chubby little thing will be to her sister.”

Mr. Bangs sulked out of the room and went to his laboratory, and his wife went through her nursing and household duties with double alacrity. The third daughter came, and Mr. Bangs heard it with surprise that bordered on despair. “Never mind it, Kit,” said the contented, good-tempered Mrs. Bangs; “we’ll call this dear, chubby, little thing after your old uncle Joseph; Josephine is a very pretty name.”

“I don’t care what you call it,” said her crusty husband; “I consider myself as an ill used, injured man; only I hope, since you like girls so well, that you may have a round dozen of them.”

“Oh la! husband, what makes you so spiteful against girls?” said she—“but let that alone, it is no concern of ours—a dozen, indeed! how do you think we can manage to live in this small house with so large a family? You must build a bigger house, man; so, my dear Kit, set about it,”—and this was all the concern it gave her.

After that he troubled himself no more with inquiries about the sex of the child, and in due time, one after the other, the round dozen came. The only thing that troubled the contented, busy woman was the naming of the little girls. She certainly, when she could spare her thoughts from her increased cares, would have liked a boy now and then, to please her husband; but as this was not to be, she did the next best thing to it—she gave them all boys’ names. So, after the first, which was called Robina, came Christina, then Josephine, then Phillippa, Augusta, Johanna, Gabriella, Georgiana, and Wilhelmina. At the birth of her tenth child she paused—her father’s name was Jacob, and as she had named Gabriella after her husband’s father, Gabriel, she thought it but fair to 242honour her own likewise—but Jacob! However, she was not a woman to stop at trifles, even if she had the time; so the poor, little, chubby thing—for now she added poor to the chubby—the poor, chubby, little thing was called Jacobina. Then in due time came the eleventh, which was Frederica—the twelfth, Benjamina—“and now,” said the still happy Mrs. Bangs, “what to call my baker’s dozen is more than I can tell. I have one more than Christopher wished me to have, but let that alone; ‘tis no concern of ours; only Robina, dear, step to the parlour and tell your father what a strait I am in about the name. There is his friend, Floss; he has a curly headed, chubby little boy by the name of Francis, and it is a girl’s name too; ask him if he would like to name the poor, dear, chubby, little thing after his friend’s son.”

“Tell your mother—are you Phillippy?” “No, father, I am Robina.” “You are all so much alike,” said he, “that I don’t know you apart; girls all look alike; now if one of you had been a boy, as any reasonable man had a right to expect, I could have told the difference. It is a hard thing that a man cannot tell one child from another, a thing that I could have done if they had been boys.”

“But mother knows us all apart,” said Robina, “and so do Hannah French and our dear grandfather and grandmother Bangs—they never are in doubt.”

“Don’t tell me this,” said surly Mr. Bangs, “for have I not heard your mother call you the one half of four or five names before she could hit on the right one? Does she not call out ‘Phil—Will—Fred—Jo—Ben—Robina, fetch me the poor, dear, chubby, little thing out of the cradle?’ Tell her that Fabius Floss won’t think it any compliment to name a girl after his fine little boy, and tell her that 243I am not going to stand godfather to any more of her children, for I am tired of it.”

“But the name, father—shall mother call it Frances?”

“She may call it Souse if she likes; what is the name of a girl to me? it is all one, so go away, Robina, for I am busy.”

Christopher Bangs was now a rich man, and was cautious and prudent in all his money matters, but he had no more care of his children and household than if he were the great-grandfather. He arose early, went to the workshop, saw that every thing went right there, returned home at eight, with the certainty of finding the breakfast waiting for him. At this meal he only saw some of the eldest of the girls, but being a man of few words, and looking on women and girls as mere workers, and of a different race, he had no thoughts in common with them. The conversation, therefore, was all on the part of Mrs. Bangs, who told of the price of beef and poultry, and what her husband might expect at dinner. He nodded his head drily, but said nothing, being sure that, come what would, he should find an excellent meal. He gave her as much money as she wanted, a privilege which she never abused, and all he had to do was to build a new house whenever she presented him with another poor, chubby, little thing; for she had resolved that every child should have a house.

Exactly at one o’clock his dinner was ready, and at this meal all the children were assembled—for, as his wife observed, if he did not see them all together once a day, he might chance to forget some of them; so, in time, Frances, the baker’s dozen, came to sit on Mrs. Bangs’s lap. Every day he made the same remark on entering the dining room, the children all being seated before he entered, that the bustle of placing them might be 244over before he came—“What! here you all are, all waiting I see; well, keep quiet and help one another; don’t expect me to do more than carve.”

Mrs. Bangs had drilled the children well, for a more orderly, peaceable set were never seen. Her chief aim was to keep them from troubling their father. “Poor man,” she would say, “he must not be plagued with noise, for what with the business of the laboratory and building new houses, his hands are full—but let that alone, ‘tis no concern of ours.”

She never thought of her own full hands; for she was of a nature that delighted in work, and in doing things regularly and methodically, and all the girls were like her. Busy, busy, busy, they all were from morning till night, and most happily busy. It was making, and mending, and razeeing, and cooking, and preserving, and housekeeping, and shopping, and keeping accounts. Was not this quite enough to occupy them?

Mr. Bangs built houses and Mrs. Bangs looked to the tenants and collected the rents. The only thing she knew, out of the routine of her family duties, was the various ways of disposing of money, and before she was the mother of three children she made herself fully acquainted with the meaning of the terms dividends, stock, per centage, mortgages and notes of hand. She put the money in the bank as fast as she received it, and Mr. Bangs drew checks to any amount she chose—well he might.

Mrs. Bangs thought it more suitable and economical to have a governess for her daughters, so she hired a decent young person, who was an excellent needle woman, and who could write and cipher admirably. Reading and spelling, Mrs. Bangs said, seemed to come “by nature” with the poor, dear, chubby, little things; how else could they learn, for poor Hannah French was as deaf 245as a post. So eternally busy were they all from morning till ten at night, that Robina, a pretty, delicate girl, with a good understanding, and very excitable, had never found time to cultivate the acquaintance of any of the young girls of her own age, although in the abstract there was no unwillingness to it. Neither her father nor mother would have hindered her, but sisters and companions came so fast at home, and that home was made so happy by her active, well-principled mother, that there was no craving for out-door society.

Mrs. Bangs was a pious and benevolent woman too, and after going through all her home duties she thought of the poor, and three days she set apart in every month to sew for them. All the children, down to the baker’s dozen, felt this as part of their duty, and they no more thought it possible to break through the rule than not to eat when they were hungry. It was a want which they sought to attain like any other want or comfort.

Mrs. Bangs never staid to inquire whether the poor wretches were worthy of her attentions—“Let that alone,” she would say, “‘tis no concern of ours.” She reverently left it to a higher power to judge of their worthiness. All she had to do was to feed the hungry and clothe the naked, choosing old age and infancy whenever she could, for the objects of her bounty. The children thus brought up, I should like to know,—as they did their own clear-starching, knitted stockings for their father, grandfather, and three aged uncles, made their own linen and worked all the baby caps, as well as sewed for the poor—I should like to know what time they had to gossip or make acquaintances, excepting with the poor?

They had no time—even on Sunday their faces were not familiar to the congregation, for a cottage bonnet and a veil kept them from gazing 246about; so the conversation, when they returned, was not about the dress or spiteful looks of this person or that. If by accident an observation was made, indiscreetly, the mother would stop them immediately by her eternal saying—“Let that alone, ‘tis no concern of ours.”

She kept her accounts in excellent order, initiating her children early in the mysteries of bank stock operations; for when it came to be explained to them in the mother’s simple way, the children understood it as well as A, B, C. It is the hard words, and the mystification, and solemn nonsense kept up about it that keeps women so ignorant and helpless in these matters, and makes them so entirely dependent on men, who nineteen times out of twenty cheat them when they become widows.

As their wealth increased, so were her benevolent feelings excited, and Mr. Bangs was no hinderance, for he had no love of hoarding now that there were no boys to inherit his property. “Never mind that, Christopher,” she would say, when this sore subject was touched upon, “let that alone, ‘tis no concern of ours; but I am of opinion that every man should make a will, and here is one that I drew up, which I wish you to sign.” “I’ll tell you what it is, Molly Bangs,” said he, on reading the will, “I’ll do none of this. I’ve made my will already, and if you outlive me then all belongs to you; but if you die first, then I mean to marry again, because the chance is that I may have sons; for I tell you that such secrets as I have to disclose about my business ought not to die with a man.”

Mrs. Bangs knew her husband’s obstinacy too well to make further words about the matter, so she set herself to work to remedy the evil. Instead of wanting to build a hospital or an asylum for the poor and destitute, she built a row of houses 247in one of the back streets of her valuable lot of ground, for poor widows with young children, and she studied their comfort in every thing. Each division, for the row was uniform and fire-proof, consisted of four rooms, two below, and two above. The sitting room and bed-rooms were warmed by means of heated air from a furnace in the kitchen, which was so constructed that the cooking was done at the same fire. Even the stove pipe which was carried up to let off the gas and smoke, threw all the external heat into the room above, so that all was kept warm by one fire. The cistern of rain water was close to the kitchen, and the water was drawn within by means of Hale’s rotary pump. Drinking-water was likewise introduced by a pipe, and a drain carried off all the slops from the house. She could not bear to think that poor women should have to put up with so many inconveniences, when it cost so little to make them comfortable.

When a very rich man has a few lots in an out of the way place, he builds a row of houses for poor people and gets a good rent for them—enjoining it on his agent not to let a poor widow have any one of them; because, if she should be unable to pay her rent, he would be ashamed to sell her little furniture. His houses are miserably built, generally one brick thick, and with only one coat of plaster on the walls; no crane in the kitchen, no cistern, no well, no comfort of any kind. The poor tenants might think themselves well off with having the shell to cover them.

Mrs. Bangs knew that the life to come was a long one—to last for ever; so she thought it was not worth while to hoard up money for the very short time she had to live here. She had a great love of comfort herself, and so had all her children; and they could not bear to set a poor widow in an empty house, without even a closet to put her clothes in. 248So she had closets made between the two bed rooms, and likewise between the parlour and kitchen. And she gave them a chance of helping themselves still further by having a good deep, dry cellar, where they could keep their half barrel of fish, and their little joints of meat, and small pots of butter from the heats of summer, and their vegetables from the frosts of winter, and why coal and wood should be kept out of doors in winter was more than she could tell. It was easy to build a cellar, she thought, and so the cellars were made. “It seems to me,” she continued to say, “that men have no idea of comfort themselves, or they would not grudge it to their poor tenants; women understand these matters better, and as God has endowed them with greater sensibilities than the other sex, why it is incumbent on them to show their grateful sense of this partiality in their favour; and how can we show it but by attending to those little things which make up, by their great number, all the happiness of life? Men never view the subject in this light, but let that alone, ‘tis no concern of ours.”

The thirty houses, with the plainest furniture that could be bought, cost exactly thirty thousand dollars—the precise sum she intended to appropriate to them. Fuel and repairs and taxes cost her twelve hundred a year; this with the interest on the thirty thousand, came to three thousand dollars a year. With an income of more than thirty thousand, and the prospect of a great rise in the value of her lots of ground, what was the annual loss of three thousand dollars?

As it was solely for poor widows that this charity was built, she did not allow a woman to live in one of the houses a moment after she married again; nor would she take a woman who had been twice a widow. When the children grew up and were no longer a burden to their mother, then this mother 249was allowed a dollar a week, and placed comfortably with one of her children elsewhere, and this sum was continued until the child was able to maintain her. To see that no one imposed upon her became one of her tasks; but she was seldom deceived, for she made many allowances for poor people. She even made more allowances for them, than for the rich; for poverty, she thought, was such an evil in itself that we should not expect all the virtues to centre in the poor alone. If she saw that some little unfair attempt was made to excite her pity, she would wink at it and say, “let that alone, ‘tis no concern of ours; of one thing I am certain, deceive me in other things as they may, the poor things are in great want, and must be helped through with it.” Mr. Bangs did nothing towards all this; but still I wish him to keep some hold of my readers’ good opinion, for was it not a great merit to let his excellent wife manage as she liked?

To be sure the farm, and all the income ever to be derived from it, were made fast, by will to his wife and her heirs; but a man knows that there are one or two lawyers always at hand to pick flaws in a will; and a suit can be carried up to the court of errors, and there brought to issue in his favour, although neither law nor equity is on his side. So Mr. Bangs, knowing this, would not go to law; for, thought he, whether I should win or lose, the whole would go to the lawyers; and as the farm was really intended, by the father, to belong to her and hers, why e’en let them have it; but I must say it is hard that I can’t have a boy.

In the course of time Francis Floss, the foreman of the shop, had a regular invitation to sit in their pew at church, partake of their Sunday dinner, and join in their walk after church. Mr. Bangs begged the lad of his father when he was of a suitable age, for the laboratory, and he being of a curious and 250ingenious turn and very industrious, came not only to find out all the little secrets of the art, so tenaciously withheld from all eyes by simple Mr. Bangs, but to add more to the stock of knowledge. He could not but see that his apprentice had outwitted him, and that he more than rivalled him in his art; but he would not allow himself to get angry about it, for two reasons—one was, that if he quarrelled with him, the young man would leave him and set up for himself—the other reason was, that he intended Francis Floss for the husband of his wife’s baker’s dozen.

A young man in love with a beautiful girl, with the prospect of a handsome independence with her, does not pay particular attention to the extent of her acquirements. Inquisitive as Mr. Floss might be in general, he was in utter ignorance of all things that concerned the education of Mr. Bangs’s family. He fell in love with Fanny, before he thought of her mind or her qualifications. He knew how far the mind of Christopher Bangs stretched; but he had great reliance that all was right at home, for every body allowed that Mrs. Bangs was a sensible, notable, thrifty, shrewd, energetic, capable woman, and he knew that all the virtues and talent generally come from the motherly side of the house. Of the daughters no one knew any thing, excepting the shopkeepers and poor people; the former thought them sensible and modest, and the latter loved them entirely. All this, and he saw that she was docile and affectionate at home, was fortune enough for him, as he was thoroughly in love. He made proposals and was accepted—by all. Mr. Bangs for once in his life, would have asked the reason why, if he had been rejected. I think that all the girls loved Frank Floss nearly as well as Fanny did.

It was on the wedding day, and preparing the 251wedding dinner, that the cook called Mrs. Bangs’s attention to the piece of brickbat in the turkey’s craw. Four of her daughters were assisting likewise, but I guess that they did not stop to inquire or even look at the stone. Their work was to attend to the jellies and pastry—pleasant work for women, rich or poor. If they had found a whole brick in the craw, all their care would be to see that the cook got it out without breaking the skin. But let that alone, as Mrs. Bangs says, ‘tis no concern of ours.

The happy Francis Floss took his beautiful bride home to a handsome, well-furnished house; and never was there a bride that had less to do with sublunary affairs than Mrs. Bangs’s thirteenth daughter. For in the first place, there was she—the mother—both able and willing to relieve her darling of all the cares of marketing. There were Robina, Christina, Josephine and Philippa, by right of seniority and by having taught her to read and spell—for good Hannah French being very deaf could not make much display of erudition in these branches—and by making and mending for her all her brief life, were they not fairly entitled to do the same kind offices for her still, particularly as she had now a husband who would require all her time? There were Augusta, Johanna, Gabriella, and Georgiana, what suited them as well as to go from the garret to the cellar, and thence back again, to see that no dust or cobweb found a place there? Were there not Wilhelmina, Jacobina, Frederica, and Benjamina to fuss about the pantries and kitchen, and to keep the larders and store room filled with the choicest and best?

There was deaf Hannah French, too, to see that the fire was carefully raked up at night; for Hannah, on the evening of the wedding day, without question, or leave, or license—but to no one’s surprise—quietly 252took her night things and her little work basket, and followed the bride home. She took possession of a snug room in the back building, which room she kept till her dying day. And there was Mr. Bangs himself; did he not every night, on his way home from his club, where he had spent all his evenings, excepting Sunday, for thirty years; did he not open the street door with his night-key, walk to the back door, bolt that and then latch the inside parlour window-shutters? He did this at his own house, from the day of his marriage, for his wife left this part of housekeeping duty purposely for him, “to keep him in mind,” she said, “that he had a house and family to protect from thieves.” Fanny Floss thought it part of her duty to let her father do this for her likewise; and her husband was so accustomed to all their ways, that he naturally fell into these agreeable regularities himself.

Well, then, Mr. Floss was a happy man; he went to the laboratory and came home; went and came; went and came, for seven years; and whenever his step was heard in the hall Fanny ran to meet him, to give him a kiss. If it rained, there was a dry coat ready for him; and if the day were warm, then she stood in the hall with a thin coat and a glass of lemonade. Every evening he saw her in the rocking-chair, either sewing or knitting; for now the three days for the poor had grown to three times three. Her good temper and excellent nature never varied; she was the gentlest, the tenderest, the purest and the most devoted wife that man was ever blessed with—what could he desire more? Did he wish her altered? Would any man wish such a wife to change?

Mr. Floss, as I observed, had an inquiring mind, and he went on from one point to another until he became a man of consequence; and, as Mr. Bangs 253predicted, when he saw his name up, he was a candidate for Congress. Mrs. Bangs had some indistinct notion that a Congressman was a grandee; but it passed through her head like a dream; for it was only in her dreams that her fancy was ever excited. Her daughters never so much as pondered on the word; and as to Fanny, that sweetest and gentlest of human beings, it would have been cruel to mention the thing to her. Going to Congress would have sounded to her like going down a deep pit, among miners; or sailing in an open boat to Botany Bay. “Don’t tell Fanny of it, my dear Francis; it will only set her to wondering and crying, for she can’t understand it,” said good Mrs. Bangs; “but let that alone, ‘tis no concern of ours.”

So Mr. Floss said nothing when he went home; and, in the evening, as Fanny sat in the rocking chair, singing an evening hymn, in a low, sweet voice, he looked steadily at her, for five minutes, and watched the innocent play of her beautiful modest face, and gave the matter up. “It will never do,” said he, “for as to leaving her behind, that is out of the question; neither of us could bear the separation; and as to taking her to Washington—Good Heavens!”

Well might he thus exclaim; for, excepting to knit, and sew, and work muslin, and do kind little offices for the poor, and love her father and mother, her twelve sisters—and, oh, best of all, her husband, what else did Fanny Floss know?—not an earthly thing.

It was some time after his marriage before Mr. Floss found it all out; but when the first surprise was over, he soon got used to it; and, after a few vain attempts to enlighten her, he gave it up, and let his mind flow into other channels. He made friends; had dinner parties—Could not he give 254dinner parties, with so many able and willing coadjutors?—and nothing could show off to better advantage than his beautiful, modest wife, and four or five of her neat, happy sisters, scattered about the dinner table.

“What was it,” you ask, “that Fanny did not know?” All that she knew I have told you already, gentle reader. Do you think that she ever so much as dreamed that the earth moved around the sun?—that mahogany was once a tree?—that the carpet came from a sheep’s back?—that her bobbinet lace came from a cotton pod?—As to her silk dress, could it be supposed that her imagination ever ran riot so far as to believe that little worms spun the web? Does any one think for a moment, that she knew that quills were plucked from the wing of a goose?—that paper came from old rags?—that a looking-glass was ever any thing but the smooth, polished thing it now is? She saw loads of hay pass, and knew that horses were fed with it; but she never speculated on the manner in which it became hay. It is a chance if she knew that it was once grass. Not that Fanny had never read all this, when very young, in her little books; but she read without letting any thing make an impression. Nothing was a mystery to her; she never made a doubt of any thing; but took things and left them just as she found them, either in books or in conversation.

Once her husband said, “I wonder whether they pull the feathers from the tail of the ostrich while he is alive?” “Would it hurt him if they did?” said Fanny. “Yes, I presume it would,” replied he. “Then they wait till the poor thing dies,” quoth she—“only look, dear husband, see that merry little group of children, all boys too; how my father would rejoice if they were all his sons.”

You will ask whether Fanny ever took a walk. 255Yes, often; her husband had great delight in letting her hang on his arm, and walk up the long street with him. Sometimes, on Sunday, after church, they strayed as far as the commons; she, pouring out her grateful feelings for being allowed to enjoy the bright sunshiny day, and accustoming her husband to dwell on the Divine source whence all our blessings flow. Mr. Floss, himself, had a hard bringing up; to obey his father and mother; keep himself neat and clean; to bring home medals from school, and to be honest in his dealings, were all that he had to observe. Fanny never dipped into his mind, or she would have seen how cold and barren all lay there; while, outward, all was so fair. She thought that every one’s heart—but no—Fanny never speculated on any thing; she talked to her husband as if his heart was of the same mould as hers. He dipped into her mind though; and the purity and excellence of it more than compensated for her want of worldly knowledge. So all the way from church he listened to the outpourings of her spirit; always fresh and animated, and clothed in a language peculiar to herself; for Fanny knew nothing of the forms and phrases in which bigots disguise the truth.

Her husband, therefore, listened and loved; and, at length, he loved the subject; so that her very simplicity was the means of his becoming a religious man. “To meet you in Heaven, my Fanny,” he said, one day, “I must strive to think on these subjects as you do. I am afraid I shall not be found worthy to join you there.”

“But you do think as I do, love,” said she, looking affrighted—“you do—and you think more than I do; you can argue better. I never think at all; all my feelings come naturally. You will go to heaven, my Francis, for the prayers of the humble and penitent are heard; and is there a night, nay 256an hour in the day, that my spirit is not lifted up to ask for forgiveness for you and for us all?”

“You are so merry and cheerful, my dear Fanny, that one would not suppose you were in prayer so constantly.”

“Well, Francis, and is not that the time to pray?—why must God be addressed only in darkness, and when we are ill and sad? Then we pray through fear and selfishness. It is when I am happy and merry that I am most afraid of committing sin; and it is then, too, that I feel God’s goodness and mercy most. Dear Francis, what a pleasure it is to feel this bright, warm sun shine on our face; and see, that little dog barks in very gladness, too, for I see nothing near it to make it bark. He feels the warmth and it gives him pleasure; but he forgets it, you see, and falls to quarrelling with that little black dog, for the bone. God is ever present to me, my husband, and that keeps me merry and cheerful. I am sure I have no wish to quarrel for any thing.”

“I believe it, Fanny,” said her husband, as he pressed her arm closely to his heart; “and I will let this thought sink deep, that I may in time come to be merry and cheerful in your way.”

And then they would walk on till they reached the commons, where they were sure to meet some of the family; and there talk over the subjects of the sermon—when they could understand it, which was not very often the case. The exposition of a doubtful text never made any thing the clearer to these simple minded people. They had the Scriptures, and they believed in the holy book most sincerely; nothing was a mystery to them; they thought that the words and actions of our blessed Saviour were easy enough to comprehend; and that they were all-sufficient to our salvation. They could not imagine why clergymen darkened up a 257point by hard words and cramped unintelligible terms and phrases, when the meaning was so clear to them. As to the doctrine of the Trinity—even Fanny, the least gifted, as to acuteness of intellect—even she could believe all and adore; for a tree, the sun, moon and stars, a living, moving being, and, above all, that perpetual spring of love which she felt within her towards the Almighty, towards her family, and towards her husband—all this was quite as incomprehensible to her as what her religion enjoined on her to believe. So that Fanny never speculated even on this subject.

Mr. Bangs felt nothing of all this; and his Sunday walk was to the shipyards or arsenal; and his Sunday talk, scanty enough, was of laying that that are ship would outsail the other; and that that are cannon would do for the English. He never would walk with his daughters, because they were not boys; and he always wound up by saying, “Time enough to walk out with you when Fanny gives me a grandson; there will be some sense in my going then.”

But Mr. Bangs was doomed to disappointment; for the little boy did not come; nor was there any sister to put his nose out of joint; yet Mr. Floss did not grieve, for Fanny was pet enough for him. When he was tired out with business, and did not want to take up a book, she would talk over her thoughts and feelings. Heavens! what a gush of tenderness and pathos it was; and how the young man’s soul melted away in him as she talked—and yet, what could it be about?

You will ask, perhaps, if Fanny ever read. Not much. When a child, and learning to read, she had little story-books of good and naughty boys and girls, which she read over and over again—wept over often—but sensible Mrs. Bangs saw no use in all this, and she therefore seldom opened her polished, 258mahogany book-case. Fanny loved poetry, tender, pathetic poetry; but as she selected only such, and as it always set her crying and sobbing, why, poetry was interdicted too. Mrs. Bangs gave her son several hints on this point; a thing which he soon found out of himself, as Fanny was made perfectly unhappy for a whole week after he had read Keats’s Isabella to her. She had the most tender love for a virtuous and beautiful heroine; the mishaps and death, therefore, which overtook her, were taken to heart with such earnest grief that Mr. Floss, after that, wisely, read all such things to himself. In fact, it soon amounted to this, that he never read aloud at all; for works of wit and fancy were lost on his gentle wife—a repartee she thought must cost somebody pain, and that brought no pleasure to her.

While her husband read in the long winter evenings, she sat in her rocking-chair and knitted or sewed; and had many little pleasant chats with one or the other of her sisters or her mother—Fanny was never alone. Let us listen to what she is saying to Robina; raising her voice to its highest pitch, that poor Hannah French, who now and then made one of the evening party, might feel that she was considered as one of the family.

“Oh, Robina, dear, what a delightful walk we had. I just went up to the laboratory with Gabriella, to say how do you do to my dear husband, when, there he stood, ready for a walk, (here Mr. Floss laid down his book to listen too) so up the road we went; and the warm sunshine, and the brisk winds seemed to be playing with each other, and gambolling, as it were, before us. We both felt grateful that we did not meet a single beggar or a discontented face. So we walked around our own division and inquired of the widows how they were getting on; and their glad looks, when they saw 259my husband”—“It was you, Fanny,” said he, interrupting her, “I am certain it was your sweet face, and not my hard, sunburnt one, that made them brighten up so.”

“Hannah French, has my husband a hard, sunburnt face?” said Fanny, raising her voice very loud—for she knew how very handsome poor Hannah thought he was.

“Sunburnt!” exclaimed Hannah,—“no, indeed—sometimes I have seen it smutted with the stuff which he is cooking over the great pots in his furnace; but he is not sunburnt—he is fire-burnt.”

“There,” said Mr. Floss, laughing, “you will not appeal to Hannah French again about my beauty—but go on, dearest; tell Gabriella all about your walk. I should really be glad to know, too, for although I was with you, yet my mind was so occupied with what I had been cooking, as Hannah calls it, in that great pot, that I just followed where you led; and yet I was sensible, all the time, of what you were saying. Her voice, Gabriella, is always so musical that I feel its influence even when the sound only makes an impression.”

“So mother always said,” answered the modest Gabriella. “Fanny never hurt her sweet voice by crying or getting in a passion, as some of us did when we were children.”

Well, Fanny was not elated by all this fond praise; she felt that it was love which had dictated it, and it came over her gentle nature like a sunbeam, where all was mild and gracious before; she laid her hand gently on her husband’s arm and proceeded.

“All this took up half an hour; and, cool as the weather was, I could not help thinking how much of summer still remained; for almost every window had rosebushes and geraniums in it, and our widows’ row looked like one long green-house; for 260every window, there too, had a rosebush, full of roses, in it. And that lemon tree belonging to Mrs. Green—did I tell you, Hannah, that I bought you that fine, large lemon tree? Poor Mrs. Green hated to part with it; but it was too large for her room. It has ten large, ripe lemons on it; and ever so many blossoms.”

For fear of a mistake, Hannah feigned a little more of deafness than belonged to her; but to have her hopes destroyed by misapprehension was painful; for, of all things, she coveted a lemon tree, she so loved the smell of its delicate white blossoms.

Fanny repeated it loud enough to bring conviction to poor Hannah; and in a few moments the ten lemons were appropriated to more uses than one hundred could satisfy. Custard! oh, how much superior was a boiled custard, with the gratings of a fresh lemon; and many a glass of jelly did she fancy herself making with the sprightly well ripened juice; so much sprightlier, and having so much more of a perfume with it, than the stale, unripe lemons of the shop—oh, how Hannah French, at that moment, despised the shop lemons. And then to surprise Mr. Floss with the half of a fine, well rolled, plump, ripe lemon on Sunday, to eat with his fish or cutlet—on Sunday, when none could be bought—and Hannah laughed out in very happiness. The deaf have many pleasant, innocent fancies.

I hope, gentle reader, you do not think that Fanny was an insipid kind of person. Oh, if you could but know how much of beauty and loveliness there is in a nature wherein truth dwells constantly, you would covet to be like my Fanny. Yet, although she never read any thing but the Bible, or some good little pattern book, now and then,—although she only visited the poor and comfortless, 261and knew nothing of a theatre, yet her conversation was full of life; and, I might say, poetry. Her soul was in such harmony with all God’s works; and there was such melody in her accents, and such eloquence in her eye and her smile—such devotion to those she loved, that no one ever dreamed that she was an ignoramus.

Mr. Floss, as I before observed, after the first surprise was over, doubted whether a woman more learned would have made him half so happy. He saw that other men did not care twopence for their wives’ sense or reading, after a month or so. Very few, he observed, talked out of book to their family, or seemed particularly pleased to hear that their wives were reading women.

As to sights—no one ever thought of taking so refined and delicate a creature as Fanny to see them; particularly such as the Siamese twins, or fat children, or the wild beasts in their closely confined, stifled menageries. She certainly knew that there were wild beasts; for well she remembered how often she had cried over the story, in a little gilt covered book, of the boy who went too near the lion, and had his head struck off. But Fanny, as she grew up, was not allowed to suffer her mind to dwell on such things; her judicious mother said there was too much of real life business to occupy her without crying over little boys that had their heads chopped off by wild beasts; and, another thing, she did not believe a word of the story—“But, let that alone,” said she, “Fanny dear, ‘tis no concern of ours.”

But, although Fanny’s thoughts and actions were full of piety, yet there was nothing mawkish, or canting, or tiresome, in her way of talking about it. She made even the poor themselves feel cheerful by her pleasant ways. It was not in her nature to exact any thing of them in return for what she 262did; nor did she pry into the little unhappy affairs which had contributed to bring them to poverty. It is only the callous heart that does this; only those who wish to make themselves conspicuous who ferret out the little miserable secrets of the poor.

At length, on Christmas day, the little boy was born; his mother’s birthday likewise; and it seemed as if Mr. Bangs had never lived till that moment. He was sitting in a very nervous, dogged, defying sort of way, by himself, in the front parlour, before a large fire, having some anxiety about his daughter, but a greater sympathy for himself and his thirteen disappointments, when Mrs. Bangs entered the room. He turned slowly around and stared at her with his mouth wide open, as she announced that Fanny was safely through her trouble; and that Mr. Floss was too happy to do more than cry like a child.

Mr. Bangs was speechless, while his wife expatiated on Fanny’s fortitude, and her anxiety to prevent her mother from knowing what her sufferings were. Still Mrs. Bangs did not hear the sound of thanksgiving from his lips. She little dreamed that the foolish old man’s head was running on the sex of the child.

“And—and—wife,” said he at last, “it is a girl, I presume; nothing but girls in this life,” said he, as he jerked himself around and stared at the fire. “I hope I shall be rewarded in the other world, by having some of my girls turned to boys.”

“Why, Christopher, did I not tell you that the dear chubby little thing was a boy?”

“A boy!” exclaimed he, jumping on his feet, his face flushed with agitation, “a boy—a boy—now, Molly Bangs, are you sure?—take care—remember, a man can’t bear disappointments for ever—I’ve had thirteen, remember.”

263“Am I sure—certainly I am; and a sweet, dear, blessed, chubby little thing it is; one roll of fat and good nature; and the very picture of you; but let that alone, ‘tis no concern of ours, just now; but I hope that you are suited at last.”

Mr. Bangs could not speak; but he untied his cravat, and wiped the perspiration from his face, while his wife stood looking at him with amazement.

“Why, Christopher—Kit, what ails you?” said she, really frightened at this extraordinary display of animation—“is it possible that a boy sat so close to your heart? and have you borne your thirteen disappointments so long, and so well? I really give you credit for not showing a great deal of ugly temper; and now I trust that this dear, little, chubby fellow will make amends.”

“It will, Molly, it will: and I heartily forgive you for giving me thirteen girls. How soon will little Christopher walk? Hang it all; but he shall have a hobby-horse as soon as he can call me grandpapa. And you must dress him in his best when I walk out with him. I’ll take him to our club, some warm evening. I’ll not let a servant touch him, to get his back broke, but will carry him myself.”

“Heaven help him,” thought his wife, as she slowly walked up stairs, “he is growing foolish.”

But Mr. Bangs! He went to the glass and said, “Grandpa, grandpa,” as if a child was calling him—then he whistled and laughed. “Who is that,” said he, as one of his daughters entered the room. “Is that you, Fillippi?” “No, father, it is Georgiana; how glad you must be, father, to hear that dear Fanny is so well.”

“Yes, child, yes. Does the little fellow grow? But don’t call him Kit; it is too feminine. Call him out, boldly, Christopher;” and the enraptured, foolish 264man made an attempt to chassée across the room, to the no small amazement of his daughter. “I must tell mother,” said she, “his joy is making him lose his wits.”

Mr. Bangs, in due time, was asked up to Fanny’s room, into which he walked on tiptoe, giggling. But when he got a glimpse of the baby, his cheek was flushed, and his lip quivered. It seemed as if all the feelings of a father had been pent up till that moment; for when the nurse put the little boy in his arms, he tenderly kissed it, and, “lifting up his face, he wept aloud.”

Mr. Floss was kneeling by his wife, and blessing her every moment between his grateful prayers; this sudden burst therefore of the old man was not surprising, but it was to his wife. As to Hannah French, she laughed so loud at the oddity of it, that Mrs. Bangs fearing that their hubbub would be injurious to her daughter, made them both go out of the room; but Hannah French laughed by snatches for the remainder of the day.

“Adieu to business and to clubs now. The boy has been so long coming,” said he to his wife, “and no thanks to you, that I shall make myself amends for my thirteen disappointments, and having to wait seven years too, in the bargain.”

So he staid nearly all the time in the nursery, and waited for the development of growth and intellect with the most intense and feverish anxiety. Every day he pulled the little fellow’s mouth open to look for a tooth, and when it came at last, which it did at the end of six months, he tore himself from the pleasure of looking at it, to rush out among his old friends to make them as happy as himself.

The first that he saw was one of his club companions, for he consorted with no others. This person was just coming up the street from the river.

265“Good morning, neighbour Bangs,” said he, “have you seen the steamboat Sea Serpent? She has just come in—twenty miles in one hour!”

“My Christopher has a tooth,” roared Mr. Bangs, for his old friend was a little deaf.

“She is expected to go even faster when her boiler is a little larger,” said the club man, Peter Broo, by name.

“You never saw a finer tooth. It is a thundering large one. He bit my little finger—here, just put your thumb in my mouth, and I’ll show you how the little rogue tried to bite.”

“Yes; but you had better take a look at the boat, for it will be off again in an hour.”

“‘Tis a thundering big tooth, and I thought I would just stop and tell you; and the other will be out to-morrow at farthest. Good morning, I must go and tell the good news to the captain, for every body is glad to hear that the first tooth comes through without fits.”

His club mate, not a whit more gifted than himself, stared at Mr. Bangs, as in very boyishness of heart he hopped off first on one foot, and then on the other, as children do. He wondered how a baby’s tooth should prevent any one from going to the wharf to see the famous steamboat Sea Serpent. “If the old goose thought he had a thundering big tooth coming through his own gums I should not wonder at it—but a baby’s tooth! as if they did not get teeth every day—there, he has met the captain; he’ll smoke him with his baby tooth. I will go look at the steamboat Sea Serpent again.”

“Hillo! captain, stop, will you?” said Mr. Bangs; “we have a tooth, and a thundering large white tooth it is.”

“What! your little grand-daughter has a tooth at last—well, it has been long a coming; is it up or down?”

266For thirty-seven years Mr. Bangs had had evening intercourse with captain Muff, and till this morning he had never found out that he was a fool; and what was worse, as he said to himself, an old fool. Indignation kept him silent—forgot that he had a grandson when he had talked of it for six months! At length he burst out.

“I presume it would make no difference to you, captain Muff,” said he, grinning hysterically, “if I had thirteen more daughters?”

“No, why should it?” rejoined the sage captain, “I like girls. If my wife and your wife had not been girls when they were babies, I wonder where our wives would have been? You may be glad your little grandchild is a girl.”

“Why, what a good for nothing old fat fool you are—that I must call you names in your old age,” said the enraged Christopher. “Your memory is very short this morning; have I not told you that my Christopher is a boy?”

“No, I cannot forget what you tell me every day; but what has a boy to do with what you were telling me about a thundering large tooth. Does she grow?”

“You are enough to make a man swear, you damned old goose,” said Mr. Bangs, in a huff—(too mad to pop off this time,) “to call Christopher she: man and boy,” said he to himself, as he turned sulkily away, “have I known captain Muff for sixty years, and I have but just found out what a disadvantage he has been to me; why he is but half witted.”

Mr. Bangs turned homewards, fearing to find out more foolish old men among his club. He was anxious too, to see whether the other tooth had not got the start of him. The quiet, regular Mr. Bangs had become a nuisance. No one had ever suspected him of being soft, and but for this unlucky male 267child he might have “died as he lived, an excellent chemist, an honest man, and one of the best husbands in the world;” but if a weak man will talk, people will find him out.

He passed away very easy, not long after this, just in time to save his credit, so that no one but Peter Broo and captain Muff gave a ha, ha, or a smile when his death was announced. The baby’s tooth stood for ever uppermost in their eyes; and when they told the story, which they did every day for a twelvemonth, they got the thundering big tooth to the size of an elephant’s.

He was missed at home, particularly when the window shutters were to be latched, which office Hannah French now undertook, and the first sound of mirth that was heard in the house was from her. The baby’s teeth all came out finely; and one day as she put on her spectacles to look at them, she gave one of her little deaf laughs. Mrs. Bangs asked her what she laughed at, but Hannah French was too “cute” to tell. It was what follows that passed through her brain and produced the laugh at the end of it.

“I am glad,” thought she, “the old man went off as he did, for the baby’s mouth would have gone from ear to ear, by his grandfather’s constantly pulling it open to see what thundering big tooth was coming out next; and the baby was so used to have his mouth stretched open, that whenever he heard his grandfather’s voice on the stairs, he used, of his own accord, to throw his head back and open his mouth as wide as possible.” Then it was, as this passed through her mind, that Hannah French laughed; but it would not have done to tell Mrs. Bangs of it.

Every one of Mrs. Bangs’s thirteen daughters married, and every one had sons and daughters. I have something pleasant to say of all of them, though not so much as I have said of Fanny. She 268lives still, and is loved by her husband and family as dearly as ever.

Mrs. Bangs would not have one of her grandsons called Christopher, through fear of their hating her as they grew up. “I had such a deal of trouble about naming you all,” said she, to her thirteen daughters, “that I am resolved my grandchildren shall not be named after kit or kin of mine.” Whether she meant this as a pun, or only as an old saw, I do not know; I should rather suspect the latter; but we will let that alone, ‘tis no concern of ours.

Martin Barton, a respectable, well looking lad, entered Mr. Daly’s thread and needle store at the age of fourteen. He was a faultless and enduring creature, always at his post, and serving out his appointed time—seven years—without giving his master the least cause of complaint. The morning of his birthday was his day of freedom, and although Mr. Daly knew that this day must come some time or other, yet he was quite unprepared for it. Great, therefore, would have been his sorrow, if Martin Barton had not, in announcing that his apprenticeship was expired, asked his consent to marry Miss Letty Daly—his only child.

Now Mr. Daly had not the least suspicion that Martin Barton had a fancy for his daughter, for he had always considered him as a young man that had no fancy for any thing outside the counter. Even Mrs. Daly, as sharp-eyed as one of her needles, heard the news pretty much as he had done—sorrow that Martin Barton’s time was up, and surprise that he wanted to marry their daughter.

“Martin Barton in love with our Letty!—it cannot be, Mr. Daly, for to my knowledge he has never spent an evening with her in his life.”

270“I did not say he was in love with her, Mrs. Daly, I only said he wanted our consent to marry her—so, wife, if you have no objection, I may as well let them marry at once; business is a little slack just at present, and he can be spared better now than in the spring.”

“Why, to be sure, husband, Martin Barton is worth his weight in gold in such a shop as ours, and no one could supply his place if he were to leave us; so I’ll just step back and tell Letty—oh, here she comes—Letty, my dear, Martin Barton’s time is up, he is twenty-one this morning, and he told your father, and your father told me, that he wants to have you for a wife.”

“Yes, so Martin Barton told me himself,” said Miss Letty, a fine tempered girl of eighteen, and as brisk as a bee.

“Oh, then he has spoken to you himself, has he? When did you see him? Not this morning after church, I guess, for I saw him turn the corner with Ira Elkado, and I saw him come back with old Hosea Bringle around the very same corner.”

“We talked the matter over after church about a month ago; indeed we have done all our courting in that way while coming home after church, for Martin Barton has no time to court on week days, you know.”

“No more he has not,” said the satisfied mother, “so, husband, all we have to do now is to get them married and pass the shop over to Martin Barton. You and I are tired of all this hard work, so we will go to our little farm in the country and live at our ease.” Live at their ease!!

Martin Barton expected as much, and so did Miss Letty; they were married the following week, and before another week had expired Mr. and Mrs. Daly bade adieu to the thread and needle store, and went into the country to live at their ease!

271Hosea Bringle, with whom Martin Barton had gone round the corner, was the book keeper as long as goods were sold on credit, but as soon as it was determined to sell for cash alone, the old man’s occupation was gone. He was transferred to the lower end of the counter—but, alas! Hosea Bringle was found to be a poor vender of tape and bobbin. It did well enough when it came to a dozen of stockings or socks, but he never could tell which thread of yarn was thick or which thin, and above all he could not tell linen tape from cotton tape. It was plain, therefore, that Hosea Bringle had to go.

Sigismund Sloper had entered the shop at the same time with Martin Barton, but although he was a decent lad enough, and had been a year out of his time, for he was fifteen when he began his service, yet Mr. Daly had no great partiality for him. He continued on, therefore, at good wages, till the present time, when little Jenny Hart spoke up and said that Sigismund Sloper was not wanted any longer, as she had heard of an excellent lad of the right age who would work better and cheaper.

Now Jenny Hart was the oracle of the shop; she likewise had been in Mr. Daly’s employ for a term of years—three, I believe—but it was a far different thing to see her move about and direct every thing that was done, than when the clerks or Martin Barton did it. Clean and neat, too, was little Jenny Hart, quick at meals and quick at work, an early riser and a late sitter up; and such a tongue as she had, such a spirit as she showed, such a goer and comer! In short, little Jenny Hart was the life and soul of the establishment, and money came in so fast that the money drawers had to be emptied every night—no credit—happy thread and needle people were Mr. and Mrs. Martin Barton.

Sigismund Sloper vowed vengeance against little 272Jenny Hart; for she was a free spoken little thing, and made no scruple of speaking out her thoughts. He was too slow and too tardy of speech for such off hand business as theirs, and was too mulish to learn, so she fairly told him that on the first of May—three months ahead—Ira Elkado was to take his place. She cast many an anxious glance at old Hosea Bringle, wishing him out of the concern too, for he was very much in her way, and it was really hard upon her, for thus it went all day, week in and week out: “It is three cents a yard, Hojer Bringle—(she always called him Hojer)—this way, miss, that old gentleman does not know our private mark, and yet he has lived in this shop seven years.” The old man sighed, and little Jenny Hart heard him. “To be sure there is an excuse for him, as he was always at the desk when we gave credit—nine yards and a half?—yes, sir, stocks of all kinds, beautiful and well made—too high a price!—oh, no indeed—will I take eighteen shillings? no, but I’ll split the difference—Hojer Bringle, give this gentleman five shillings—Hojer Bringle examines all the three dollar notes, sir.” And so little Jenny Hart’s tongue run on, while she cast rueful glances at the old man and strove to harden her heart against him.

Ira Elkado came in at one fold of the double door as Sigismund Sloper went out at the other, and Jenny Hart laughed out in one of the customers’ face while selling him a pair of stockings. The man looked at his waistcoat and at his hands, and cast a glance at himself in the glass behind the little shop girl’s head, but as nothing was amiss he attributed it to a joyous spirit, as in reality it was. “You are merry, Jenny Hart, this fine May morning,” said he. “I suspect you are thinking of your lover.”

“Lover! oh, sir,” said Jenny Hart, casting a sly glance at Ira Elkado, as he solemnly stalked behind 273the counter, and, as if he had been there for years, fell to putting up a bundle of misses’ hose. “Such a lover, too,” thought Jenny Hart, as he would make,—pretty much, however, like Mr. Martin Barton,—and she cast her eye to the other end of the counter, where Martin Barton stood folding up a bundle of suspenders in the very same solemn way. Hosea Bringle, instead of taking a little girl’s penny for two needles,—he had given her nines for sixes, the paper being turned upside down when he looked at it,—was staring at the new clerk, Ira Elkado.

“Put the cent in Hojer Bringle’s hand, little girl; he is thinking”—said Jenny Hart—“here, let me stick the needles in the paper or you’ll lose them; they are tiny little needles; are you hemming fine work, my dear?”

“No, Miss Jenny Hart, mother is making a cloak—these are sixes,” said the child, “are they not?” So Jenny Hart had to go to the needle box and get out No. 6, saying—“Look here, Hojer Bringle, the numbers are all at the top; this paper, if turned up so, looks like nines; do you see now?”

Hosea Bringle sighed again, and Jenny whispered in his ear—“there are two fine pair of ducks and a huge mess of corn salad for dinner to-day, and I’ll have them at my side of the table and give you the four legs all to your own share, and all the stuffings out of two of them—precious little will I give to Ira Elkado, beside the neck and rack, or may be the drumsticks. Hosea Bringle wiped his mouth and put the needle box nicely away, pitying Ira Elkado for the poor dinner he was to get, for Hosea Bringle held the rack and drumsticks very cheap; while Ira Elkado was revelling in the thoughts of owning this very thread and needle store that day three years, with Jenny Hart for clerk and wife. No one, to look at Ira Elkado, would ever suppose that he had an excursive imagination, 274he looked so sober and acted so cautiously; but, oh! what a turmoil and what business was going on within. He took all the company in at a glance, and made up his mind that he would rule them all as Jenny Hart did, and her into the bargain. So he began that very moment.

“This counter is very inconvenient, Miss Jenny Hart,” said he, striking his foot against the bottom, “it ought to slope inward; it is very wearisome for you to keep at such a distance from the counter. Now, if it sloped inward—now Sigismund Sloper, he”—

Ah ha! did Ira Elkado think this was news to Jenny Hart? she had felt the inconvenience often and often, but she counted cost, and made up her mind that the house was old, the counter old, and time precious, so that it was not worth while to make a new counter, and, besides, there was no time to do it. She gave one of her peculiar stares, as if trying to comprehend what Ira Elkado was saying.

“Sigums Sloper, did you say, Ira Elkado,—he went out as you came in; I persuaded Mr. Martin Barton to change him for you because he was a fault finder; I warned him, when he came, to mind the customers; the fact is, we are such busy people that we have no time to fiddle-faddle and look out for flaws and specks. This is your money drawer—here are four places to drop money in—this for sixpenny pieces—this for shillings—this for quarters, and this for half dollars. Hojer Bringle, there, changes three dollar notes, I five, Mrs. Martin Barton ten, and Mr. Martin Barton all larger ones. Do you recollect?—to-morrow I shall tell it to you over again.” Oh, how small Ira Elkado felt, and how he hated Jenny Hart!

Little Jenny Hart did not tell him that she twitched the notes from every hand first, before the others had a chance of looking at them. In fact, 275she handed them to the one whose business it was to take them, with a nod or a shake of the head, if good, or bad, for she was as wise as a serpent about bank notes—and in what was she not wise?

Every body that went to the shop took a good look at Jenny Hart, but no one took the least liberty with her; there she stood helping the customers, watching Hosea Bringle, curbing Ira Elkado, keeping Martin Barton from prosing, and relieving Mrs. Martin Barton from the most of her labours. The worthy couple had now been married eight years, and had but two children, twin girls, now in their seventh year, and it was odd enough to see how they were brought up; in fact, if it had not been for Jenny Hart they would not have been brought up at all. The shop was opened at daylight winter and summer; Jenny Hart was the first in it, and the last to leave it; every thing, as they said, went through her mouth and through her hands; neither Martin Barton nor his wife had the least concern in the world, for Jenny Hart ordered the marketing too; and as the girl brought the market basket through the long shop, the little body would whisk from behind the counter, lift up the cover, and satisfy herself that all was as she ordered. Then she hired the cook, and nurse, and maid of all work, and little Betty the waiter was of her choosing.

“Mrs. Martin Barton, what a noise those children make,”—said Mr. Martin Barton; “you must tell Jenny Hart that we shall have to build a room back of the parlour, and let them range about there, for their play is as noisy as their cries.”

Jenny Hart had just returned from quieting them, and a lady who was buying some German worsted asked Mrs. Martin Barton how old the little girls were.

“Let me see—how old are the two twins?”—for she always called them the two twins, just as if they were speaking of two candles, or two pinches 276of snuff—“how old are the two twins, Jenny Hart?”

“Just seven years old, Mrs. Martin Barton,” and Jenny Hart had answered this question of the age of the two twins ever since they were a year old. Mr. Martin Barton never knew, and Mrs. Martin Barton always forgot.

“As to building another room, Mr. Martin Barton, that will never do,” (oh, how Ira Elkado stared to see what a sway she had!) said Jenny Hart,—“for the back parlour is dark enough already, and we shall have less draft through the shop, too, if we clutter up the yard; but the twins are soon going to school; I spoke to Mrs. Playfair yesterday,—she was buying canvass of me,—and she has promised to take good care of the children, and for one year let them off easy—after that,” said she, whispering in Mrs. Martin Barton’s ear—“after that, we’ll get poor old Hojer to teach them at home, and Mrs. Armstrong will be a sort of governess to them; for old Hojer Bringle is a dead weight in the shop.”

“Good,” said Mrs. Martin Barton, and she went the other side of Jenny Hart and whispered it to Martin Barton. “Good,” said he.

“Oh, if I had only the ruling of that girl,” thought Ira Elkado, “how I would quell her.” Just as he said this, mentally, however, Jenny Hart, who had sold a gross of pearl buttons while the Martin Bartons were saying “good, good,” thrust a bad shilling in his hand. “You took that bad shilling from a boy, yesterday,” said she, “and gave it to Amy Russel this morning; it has come back, and it must be charged to you.” Ira Elkado put it in his pocket and gave her a good shilling; but the moment her quick eye was directed to something else, he slipped the bad piece of money in old Hosea Bringle’s drawer and helped himself to another, for he did not see why he should lose it. 277Hosea Bringle stood up, holding by the counter, fast asleep, and did not see it.

“That bad shilling,” said Jenny Hart, “will be known again, I’ll warrant, for I run the file across the edge. You had better put it in Hosea Bringle’s bad money drawer, that last slit in the corner; all the counterfeit money goes there.” “Powers on earth!” thought Ira Elkado, “did the little black-eyed devil see me slip the shilling in?”

No, Jenny Hart did not see him do it, but she suspected he would. She knew that he was a capital hand to buy goods at auction, and it was for this purpose she hired him—we may as well say she hired him, for it was all her doings. Martin Barton had nothing to do but approve; Jenny Hart, therefore, put up with many things from him.

“Mrs. Martin Barton,” said her husband, “what a long holiday those children have; how noisy they are, jumping and screaming like mad things; and old Hosea Bringle with your night cap on—only look there.”

“No, it is my cap,” said Jenny Hart, “let the poor old man play, for once in his life; only think how long he has been nailed to this counter. Just make a codicil to your will, Mr. Martin Barton, and give the poor old soul one hundred dollars a year for life—I am only too glad to get him out of the shop. By twelve to-morrow we shall have two nice young lads—if I can only remember their names—I wish people would give their children plain names. Oh, I forgot, Mrs. Armstrong will be in town to-morrow; I have hired the house next door, as you told me, and here is the lease. I paid one year’s rent, you see, in advance.”

“Good,” said Martin Barton. “Excellent,” said his wife. The back door stood open, and happy Hosea Bringle was playing sleep with the children, while they were tickling his ears with a straw, and then he would snap at the straw, which made the 278little girls shout again. “Hojer Bringle will fall asleep in good earnest,” said Jenny Hart to a lady who was buying hair pins of her, and in a few moments he was snoring.

“How old are your little girls?” said the lady to Mrs. Martin Barton.

“How old are the two twins?—how old are they, Jenny? I forget.”

“Ten years old, Mrs. Martin Barton; I thought I had better leave them another year with old Mrs. Playfair, for they had been cooped up so here, in this close place, that they were sickly like, and the good old lady has quite freshened them up again. They have not learned much, that is book learning, but all that will come in a few years, as Mrs. Armstrong is a rock of learning. Ira Elkado, you are the very prince of buyers.” The young man had just come in loaded from auction. “Oh, what beautiful slippers—just what we wanted. Chessmen!—how many have you? only three sets—well, I’ll take them off your hands, for we don’t sell chessmen, you know, and I have been wanting to make a few presents. Never buy things we are not in the habit of selling; it only confuses us. Here is your money; pray Mr. Martin Barton charge me with fifteen dollars—they are as cheap as dirt, Ira Elkado.” “Devil take the girl,” thought Ira Elkado.

And so she went on, talking and acting, and letting no one get the better of her, while the good couple did their share of labour too, for the shop had a very great run, and customers stood three deep sometimes. “We shall have to push the shop into the back room,” said she to Martin Barton, “and get two more clerks—I mean two more besides those that are coming to-morrow.” “Good,” said Martin Barton.

“I don’t hear the children’s voices any more,” said a lady to Mrs. Martin Barton, “where are they?”

279“Oh, they live next door with Mrs. Armstrong; we could not attend to them ourselves, you know, having so much to do.”

“How old are they now, Mrs. Martin Barton.”

“How old are the two twins?—let me see—how old are they, Jenny Hart?”

“Twelve years old this month, Mrs. Martin Barton, and as fine, healthy children as you would wish to see. Here, Alfred Gray, put up these goods, the porter has laid them before me, and they belong to Mr. Martin Barton’s shelves. These buttons are for the drawer, we shall retail them. Mr. Martin Barton, to-morrow we begin to close the shop at sundown. Alfred Gray and Jasper Merry stipulated, you know, that at the end of two years they were only to tend shop between sunrise and sunset.”

“Very well,” said Martin Barton, “I am glad of it. Then we may as well all quit together, at the same hour, for the other young men have the like privilege.”

“No,” said Jenny Hart, “Ira Elkado made no such bargain, he is to work evenings, and as there are many bundles to pack up, he can help the porter to”—but Jenny Hart cast those black eyes of hers to the end of the long counter, and there stood Ira Elkado figuring away at accounts, his auction accounts, and making all square. Her heart smote her, but she reasoned herself out of her tender feelings, for the man had been presumptuous and disposed to meddle, particularly with a fifth clerk, a clever young man who had his station on the right hand of Martin Barton, and, of course, next to her. Ira Elkado had at first longed for this post of honour, but his having to turn buyer at auctions kept him from having a regular station behind the counter. His place was the old spot once occupied by Hosea Bringle, and here he had to sit perched up at a small desk.

280Oh, how these people worked; never shop had such a run; and Jenny Hart’s fame had spread far and wide. Some people said she was beautiful, very beautiful; far too beautiful to stand behind the counter; but others thought that she was not so very beautiful either; only so remarkably shrewd and good humoured. The gentlemen made business every day to get a peep at her; and yet, after all, what was it? She had a neat, well made figure; a pretty hand, and a small foot, with a delicate ankle. Her eyes were like black cherries dipped in clear spring water; and her teeth were like grains of white corn, standing out a little. She had a large, well shaped mouth and rich red lips, with a breath like new made hay. Her cheek bones were a little too high, and her nose a thought too small; and her skin, the hundredth part of a shade too dark; but take her all in all there was a something which was very piquant about her. I forgot her voice; it was fine, clear, and musical, and such as no one could ever forget.

“I’ll have her yet,” said Ira Elkado, as he sat watching her from the corner of his eye. “That lad, Archy Campbell, next her, thinks he is in a fair way to win her, but he shall eat poison first. I have wrought hard for her, and she and this shop shall be mine. I wonder how old the black eyed gipsy is.”

More than Ira Elkado had wondered; and had asked this question, but no one knew. Jenny Hart was an orphan, and came early into Mr. Daly’s family. We knew her age, however; she was just six and twenty when Ira Elkado sat wondering.

At ten o’clock the postman brought two letters, one for Martin Barton, and one for Mrs. Martin Barton—the first letter, really the first letter either of them had ever received in their lives. Jenny Hart had never read a letter, but she knew how 281one ought to be opened; a thing which neither of the two owners of the shop did.

“Jenny Hart, can you tell how to open this letter?”

“Yes, surely I can; I have seen many a one opened—here, let me cut the seals—there—they are open. This is yours, Mr. Martin Barton;—twelve cents a dozen, Miss—and this is yours, Mrs. Martin Barton; but what is the matter?”

The fact is, that Martin Barton was perplexed. The letter began thus: “Dear sir, I am sorry to inform you of the death of ——,” he had got so far when Jenny Hart, true as steel to her business, no sooner had said, “What is the matter?” than she turned to a customer who wanted black silk stockings. “Mr. Martin Barton, said she, please to show this gentleman the best black silk stockings—here is a pin, stick it in the place where you left off.” (Jenny Hart used to do so when reading a book.)

Martin Barton stuck in the pin, laid down the letter, and sold the stockings, while the gentleman was eyeing the pretty shop-girl. Archy Campbell could have knocked him down; and Ira Elkado was well pleased to see his rival vexed. Jenny Hart was indifferent to all this; turning to Mrs. Martin Barton with, “some ladies’ gloves wanting—here, stick a pin in the letter where you leave off; the gloves are twenty-five cents, you know, Mrs. Martin Barton.”

“Archy Campbell,” said she, one day, “why did you look so angrily at the gentleman who gave me the bunch of flowers yesterday? It was not like you; and it gave me great pain; you will drive customers away if you behave so rudely to them.”

“You know well enough, Jenny Hart, why I looked angrily; and there sits Ira Elkado, who knows it too”—

“Carpet binding by the gross?”

“Yes, sir. Archy Campbell, show the best carpet binding,” said the indefatigable Jenny Hart; 282never waiting to hear why Archy Campbell looked so mad at the customer.

It certainly was a great relief to them all, when the shop closed at sundown. Every one felt it a blessing but Ira Elkado; it cut him off from two or three hours of gazing at Jenny Hart, and in regaling himself with the thoughts of conquering this hard hearted gipsy, as he always called her. He lay awake for hours, very often, in trying to perfect some plan by which he could get admittance to her during the evening; but it never came to any thing. He was one of those kind of persons whose imaginations are fertile enough; but with physical capacities so entirely different, that a life is spent, or dawdled away, without any benefit to themselves or others. Had Ira Elkado been as brisk in his motions as he was in his mind, the shop and Jenny Hart might have been his long ago; but her good genius preserved her from a hard fate. Hard it would have been; for Ira Elkado never ended one of his aspiring soliloquies without grinding his teeth and promising himself great satisfaction in scourging her, after marriage, as she had scourged him before. Poor Jenny Hart did not mean to scourge him; it was her way of managing people. She was shrewd, and treated them according to their merits; but she was never unjust.

As soon as the shop was shut, and she had presided at the tea-table, (for in the old fashioned way, the clerks always lived in the house, and ate at the table, one after the other,) she assisted Martin Barton and Archy Campbell in counting the money of the day; and it was a job. But by the judicious mode of keeping the different money apart; and, oh, how she rated the poor clerk, in whose box a sixpence was found in the shilling department—much time was saved. Martin Barton and his wife, good souls, went tired to bed, as soon as this was over; and then came Jenny Hart’s holiday: 283then was the time to see her. Talk of her beauty and musical voice; her bounding spirit and her grace of motion, behind the counter; what was all that to the seeing her up in Mrs. Armstrong’s room, with the twin sisters! Then her joyous spirit relaxed; tape, bobbin, buttons, money, marketing, bank stock, rents—for Jenny managed all the money concerns; and Martin Barton was now immensely rich—then all was combed out of her head with the first brush that was put to her fine glossy hair.

It was the signal for fun and frolic, when her light step was heard bounding up the narrow stairs; and there stood the two girls ready to snatch the first kiss, and to say the first word. From the time they could hold the brush, they coveted the pleasure of combing and brushing her hair; and the poor thing was generally so tired that she was really glad when they were old enough to do it properly for her. So up she came, and down she sat on the sofa; and a world of things had she to hear from the two innocent girls; and then came the rummaging of her apron pockets and her ample basket; and then came Mrs. Armstrong, with her account of the progress of her pupils.

“Oh, such sweet walks as we have, dear Jenny Hart. Why can you not sometimes go with us? it would do you so much good,” said Rona, a beautiful black eyed girl; “you must go with us to-morrow.”

“Or, if you cannot take a walk, you can surely go with us to the museum in the evening, now that the shop closes at sundown,” said Ida, the blue eye, and quite as beautiful as her sister.

“Why, that is true,” said Jenny Hart, “and we can do a great deal in that way, now that winter is coming and the evenings long.”

“Jenny Hart, dear, I want some fine cotton stockings,” said Rona. “And I want gloves,” said 284Ida. “And I want a fresh supply of needles and thread, and every thing, in short, for these little gipsies have given away my whole stock.”

“Plenty, plenty shall you have; for plenty there is. And do you know that you are to have a grand Christmas present? But if you guess till morning you will not guess right; for ‘tis a present that does not often fall to the lot of the daughters of thread and needle people. Oh, Mrs. Armstrong, let us remember the poor, for we are growing very rich.”

The girls guessed; and Mrs. Armstrong was made to guess; but they fell either above or below the mark; and tell, Jenny Hart would not. Then came the little story, that one or the other read every evening. And, to see Jenny Hart’s admiration at their progress! And then came the writing books; and, lastly, just as the clock struck ten, came a tap at the door, and little Betty, with her face hidden in her handkerchief, presented to the astonished Jenny Hart two letters.

“Oh, you rogues,” said the delighted little maiden—“letters from you—oh, how nicely they are written. And I dare say they are all spelled right; hey, Mrs. Armstrong? And how sweetly they smell of roses. I’ll show them to your father and mother in the morning; and, if there is a chance, to Archy Campbell.”

“And to Jasper Merry,” said black eyed Rona; “and to Alfred Gray,” said the little blue eye. “I will, I will,” said Jenny Hart.

“And why not to Peter Squires and Ira Elkado?” said Mrs. Armstrong. “Because,” said Jenny Hart, “I never think of Peter Squires from one year’s end to the other. I see quite through him when he stands near me; such a mere shadow he is. Not but that he is a faithful, honest creature. I’ll get Mr. Martin Barton to set him up in business, one of these days; and, as to Ira Elkado—I 285tell you what, Mrs. Armstrong, I go as near to hating him as I can hate any one; and yet, poor soul, he does me no harm. I think I’ll set him up with Peter Squires; but we cannot spare him yet. We have not made, what I think, enough money yet. I shall remember the museum; and, perhaps, I may bring Archy Campbell with me.”

“And Jasper Merry,” said Rona. “And Alfred Gray,” said Ida. “Yes, yes, dears; I’ll bring them all; and so, good night—good night; and write me such a pretty letter every day; and who knows what I’ll do when Christmas comes?”

Christmas was indeed a day with the whole family of Martin Barton. First, there was the great long counter, covered with squares of table-cloths, before each clerk’s stand; and then, there was the hall table, for the servants; and, lastly, there was the parlour, next door—literally full of presents for the children, Mrs. Martin Barton’s two twins; and there were the little baskets for the poor customers—I suspect they did not pay much for needle and thread. Jenny Hart had arranged every thing herself; and there she stood in the shop, at sunrise, having given them all an early breakfast. With a little white wand in her hand, she pointed to a table that stood out from the corner, and said—

“Hosea Bringle—our oldest and our best clerk—lift up the table cover; Martin Barton hopes you will be pleased with what is under.”

Old Hosea, who had not been in the shop for a long time, lifted up the cover—“Oh, Jenny Hart, how kind; how excellent all these things are; and I was wishing for this box of tools, and all this fine wire; (just as if Jenny Hart did not know his wants) and here is fine perfumed soap, and every thing an old man wants; and, ah ha, Miss Jenny Hart, you have found out I have a sweet tooth, have you? (Jenny Hart had furnished him with confectionary for twelve years,) and what’s this?—a 286suit of clothes? oh, Miss Jenny Hart—and the old man wrung her hand, with his eyes swimming; while she, the good little maiden, laughed till she cried.

“Ira Elkado—lift up that cover,” said she, touching it with her wand. “What can it be?” thought he; “it lies flat; I think she means to play me a trick. I shall not touch it. Nothing can lie under that flat cover;” so he said, “Never mind me, Jenny Hart; pass on to Mr. Archy Campbell.”

“Well, then,” said Jenny Hart, laughing, “Archy Campbell, lift up your parcel;” and Archy Campbell lifted up the cover; but there was nothing but a bunch of rods and a little note. He slipped the note into his pocket, without looking at it, reddening up to the very temples. He likewise took up the bunch of rods, and gallantly kissed it, which made Jenny Hart blush in return. “Devil take the impudent rascal,” said Ira Elkado.

“You come next, Alfred Gray;” and Alfred Gray lifted up the cover, where lay chess men and drawing materials, and perfumery, and books, and keepsakes in plenty. A little note lay there, too; but he left all and went near the door to read it. “Keep the contents to yourself,” whispered Jenny Hart.

Jasper Merry’s parcel was similar to his friend’s; and the little note caused them both to smile. Peter Squires came last; and there lay a nice new suit of clothes for him, and a variety of very useful and pretty articles likewise; such as a poor young man would like to have, and could not afford to buy.

“Now you are all pleased,” said Jenny Hart, “but Ira Elkado; and why he don’t lift up the cover I cannot tell. I must do it for him.” She lifted up the cover, and only a little note was seen. Archy Campbell felt injured, for he dreaded the contents of the note; but he need not have been jealous. It ran thus:

“Mr. Ira Elkado, you have served me faithfully 287for seven years. I shall want you no longer. At the corner of Joice street, you will find your shop. I hope it will be to your liking. One year’s rent is paid. Your friend, Martin Barton.”

Ira Elkado had nearly fainted; but, rallying, he lifted up his head to thank Jenny Hart; but she was gone. Out he rushed to look at his shop. He might well thank Jenny Hart, for it was all her doings. She had persuaded Martin Barton to give the young man this outfit—a thousand dollars’ worth. Ira Elkado made heaps of money, and died a rich man; but he had visions of Jenny Hart to the last.

At twelve o’clock the little girls’ present was at the door; a handsome new carriage, and a pair of excellent, gentle horses. “There’s for you, dears,” said she, as the happy children flew to the window; “there, jump in. After sitting in church so long you will be the better for a little ride. Come, let us all go; Martin Barton has never been inside of a carriage in his life; and I can scarcely remember how it is.” The whole family—six—took a nice ride to old Mr. Daly’s, and had a fine Christmas dinner.

“Well, young gentlemen, how did you like the contents of the notes?” said she, the next morning. “O delightful! Most happy it made us,” said Alfred Gray and Jasper Merry. “And the honour is deeply felt by me,” said Archy Campbell, blushing and looking tenderly at Jenny Hart, who said, “Pshaw.” The notes were nothing more than an invitation from Mrs. Armstrong to go with them to the museum. From that hour every evening was spent in Mrs. Armstrong’s parlour; and innocent they were, for the lady was indeed, as Jenny Hart said, a rock of learning; and loved to improve young people.

Martin Barton knew no more what was going on next door than if the family was not his; all the day was spent behind the counter, and the evening found them so tired that they were only fit for the 288bed when the money was counted, and put in the iron chest. On Sunday they went regularly to church, in the morning, dined, took a long nap in the afternoon, were called up to tea, yawned while drinking it; and, after a few vain attempts to keep awake, fairly took the candle and went to bed. Poor tired souls; if it had not been for this one day’s rest, they never could have gone through the week. But Jenny Hart did not tire; her little caoutchouc frame never failed her. Her twins and herself, with Mrs. Armstrong and old Hosea, spent almost every Sunday with Mr. and Mrs. Daly, going with them to the village church.

Still they toiled on; the years passed—flew, it seemed; and they grew richer and richer, until even Jenny thought they had enough; and most judiciously had she placed the money. She had chosen her counsellor well; honest Mr. Norton, the broker; he never deceived her for a moment; and, as to herself, even Archy Campbell did not covet her hand more than did Mr. Norton. He would have taken her without a cent; indeed he did not know that she had a penny in the world; but Jenny Hart was as honest as himself; and she settled it in her mind, long ago, that she could never be his wife. He was true to her, however—dear Jenny Hart, who would not be true to her?

“Take this parcel up to Mrs. Armstrong, Betty,” said Jenny Hart, one fine morning in May, “and say, that if it suits she can keep the whole dozen.” “Twelve for a shilling, sir; thank you.” “Knitting needles?” “Yes, the best of steel; Alfred Gray, some of the best steel knitting needles—A newspaper from Mr. Norton, my boy?—thank you; stop, here is a pair of gloves for you; now run home.—You have only measured off seven yards, Mrs. Martin Barton, and the lady asked for eight—Jasper Merry, make that dog go out—Your’s, madam, is it?”—“well, Jasper Merry, just put him 289outside of the door and shut it—Why did Mr. Norton send me the paper?—Oh, I see—The Camperdown property is for sale, Mrs. Martin Barton—Mr. Daly, your father wants you to buy it sadly. We rode out there yesterday afternoon; and, really, it is a place for a prince, let alone poor thread and needle people, like ourselves. It is very much improved since you were there, last fall, Mrs. Martin Barton; all the houses are finished; and now the gardens are all laid out, and the fences and the grounds; and it looks like a little settlement already. Four beautiful houses, all large and very roomy; and the river in front, too. I wonder what it will bring. It is to be sold separate or together; but I fear it is beyond our means. The property is to be sold on Monday next.”

“I wonder how it came to be called Camperdown,” said Martin Barton. “I had a scapegrace of a cousin, called Camperdown Barton; but for him my old uncle Davies would have left me something handsome. Some people did say, that this Camperdown Barton forged a will in his own favour; but I could not believe it.”

“Mr. Barton,” said a man, entering the shop—“Martin Barton, if you please, sir,” said Mr. Martin Barton.

“Mr. Martin Barton,” said the man, smiling, “have you any white galloon?” “Yes.” “Alfred Gray, hand down that box of white galloon,” said Jenny Hart.

“And where is this Camperdown Barton, now,” said Jenny Hart, when the man had bought the galloon, and was out of the shop.

“I can hardly tell; but he was in the West Indies when I last heard of him. He married, and had two children, and”—

“La, Mr. Martin Barton,” said his wife, “what became of my letter; I am sure there was some mention made in it of this Camperdown Barton—I 290stuck a pin in it, Jenny Hart, as you told me, at the very place; and I had no time to finish the letter; in fact I don’t know where I put it. Do you know, Jenny Hart?—it is many years ago.”

“Well, let me see—yes, I think I know; it is in the japan box, on the toilet table. And what became of your letter, Mr. Martin Barton?”

“Mine, Jenny Hart? that is more than I can tell. I laid it just here; and I stuck a pin in at where I left off, as you told me.”

“It must have been pushed aside; or perhaps it was folded up in one of the bundles of stockings. It is gone, certainly. I trust it had nothing of importance in it.” Jenny Hart always placed Martin Barton before the shelves of socks and stockings, as they were the least perplexing articles to sell.

“Here is a letter,” said Jasper Merry, “I picked it up the other day, by Mr. Martin Barton’s feet; I think it must have fallen from that bundle of stockings that you sent up to Mrs. Armstrong.”

“Let me see,” said Jenny Hart. She took it, and cast her eye over the contents, while Mr. Martin Barton and his wife were plunged in tapes, bobbins, buttons and pins. She quietly put it in her little French pocket, and as quietly walked out of the shop. In five minutes Mr. Norton was with her up in Mrs. Armstrong’s parlour.

“Look here,” said Jenny Hart, “just read this letter, Mr. Norton. Only think what luck to find it as we did. Two days later, and all would have been lost to us.” Mr. Norton was indeed surprised, for this letter announced the death of this very cousin, and his two children—this Camperdown Barton; and he had left all the property to his cousin, Martin Barton, on condition that he claimed it before a certain period. If not claimed then, it was to be sold and the money divided among some distant relations. As Martin Barton had not claimed it—how tired I am of always writing his name at 291full length; but I shall soon have done—the property was to be sold on the following Monday, the very day the term expired.

“There is no difficulty, then, Mr. Norton,” said Jenny Hart, “we can claim it yet, can we? Certainly my dear Jenny Hart—he could not have called her Jenny for the world, nor could I—so send Martin Barton to me. Can you tell why he chose to be called Martin Barton?—‘tis so tiresome.”

“Why, this very Camperdown Barton was the cause; he was a bad character even when very young, and our Martin Barton kept the two names together, that he might not be taken for his cousin. I only heard all this this morning, for we have been always too busy to talk of such matters. I think that Mrs. Martin Barton is even more particular on this point than he is. But, oh, Mr. Norton, don’t our dear little girls grow finely?”

“Little girls indeed! why they are young women, taller than yourself, Jenny Hart; but they don’t eclipse you yet; you are as pretty and good as ever, hard-hearted girl that you are; but I claim the promise of giving you away,” said the kind old bachelor, seeing Jenny Hart shy off. “Good morning, then, if you must go; but this shop business will kill you; you work too hard.”

“Never fear,” said she, and down she tripped, pitying Mr. Norton for his hopeless love, although he was now quite resigned to it; and congratulating Martin Barton on this handsome accession of property. Of course, every thing was properly done, and to the entire satisfaction of every one but the poor folks, who were on the point of getting the money. This Camperdown Barton had, in reality, secreted the will of their uncle; but on the death of his children he repented, and restored as much of the property as was left to the true owner.

But oh, what a plot Jenny Hart had in hand—her first plot and her last. She had acquainted Martin 292Barton and his wife, with the affection that was growing up between their daughters and the two excellent young clerks, Jasper Merry and Alfred Gray; and the good couple were very well content. The acme of bliss was to stand day in and day out, in the thread and needle shop, eat their three nice meals, count out their five long boxes of copper and silver and bank notes, rock themselves for a quarter of an hour in their high backed rocking chairs, and go lovingly to bed as innocent and happy as their “two” twins.

For one month did Jenny Hart toil as no woman ever did toil; for she had all sorts of work people to superintend, and all sorts of secrets to keep; and above all she had to repress Archy Campbell’s highly excited feelings, for he was as far as ever from coming to any understanding with her. Well, all was ready—the first of June came; Archy had been told in a quiet kind of way, that he was to be bride’s man to his two young companions; and that he must be ready at a minute’s warning, and to go on as if nothing was to happen, particularly on this their last day in the shop.

The last day came—the first of June, and the shop was unusually full; for quietly as Jenny Hart managed every thing, still something had leaked out, and as she was the most conspicuous person, the secret was attached to her. It was conjectured, that she was either to be married to Mr. Norton or to Archy Campbell, and in either case she would disappear from public eyes.

It will be a great loss to the shop when she goes, said one; a public loss said another; Jenny Hart ought never to marry said a young gentleman; for half the pleasure in life we young fellows have, is to get a look at her and hear her musical voice, so modest and so arch and gay as she is too. I have a great mind to choke old Norton, and shoot this Archy Campbell; and there he stands, looking as if 293no happiness awaited him. I think it must be old Norton after all; for no man could look so grave on the eve of marrying such a peerless creature as this Jenny Hart. Young and old caught a whisper of the news, but no one dared to banter her; in fact, there was no chance, she was so busy.

Tired and fagged they all were that day; and if you had looked down behind the counter, you would have seen Martin Barton, the much enduring creature, standing on one foot to rest the other. His wife had told him to do it years ago; and so, whenever he saw her standing on one foot, which was generally every Saturday, he thought it was high time to do the same. This day poor Jenny Hart did complain of fatigue, the first time Archy Campbell had ever heard her complain of any thing. “Are you tired, Jenny Hart?” said Martin Barton, “how sorry I am.” “Tired, are you?” said Mrs. Martin Barton, “stand on one foot as we do Jenny Hart, that will rest the other.” “Stand on one foot,” said Jenny Hart, laughing, “I have not a foot left to stand upon.”

“Oh, what a beautiful bunch of flowers,” said a lady, “where did they come from, and whom are they for?”

“They came from our new place Camperdown,” said Mrs. Martin Barton, “and they are for our two twins to-morrow.”—Jenny Hart pushed her.

“Ah! true,” said the lady, “I recollect you have twins; how old are they?”

“How old? let me see,” said Mrs. Martin Barton, who really had known the night before; but Jenny’s push had bewildered her—she was afraid that to tell their age, would be to tell the secret. “How old are they Jenny Hart?”

“Just seventeen, Mrs. Martin Barton, and the sun is down, you see. We shut up shop now at sundown,” said Mr. Martin Barton. Seeing that many of the customers lingered—we are going to the—Jenny 294gave him a push. “What ails them both to tell things now,” thought she, “just at this present moment, and never before?”

Well, the shop was closed, the clerks had their tea, the boxes were brought in and the money counted; Archy Campbell put all in the strong box and disappeared. Jenny Hart,—a thing of late years, quite unusual, set herself down in a chair, and seemed as if she were going to spend the evening in the little back room.

“I have something to say to you my good kind friends,” said she at last, “something that I fear will give you pain; and I have also a favour to beg of you, and this I know you will have pleasure in granting.”

“Tell us all in the morning, dear Jenny Hart,” said Mrs. Martin Barton, “for I am so sleepy and tired, that I cannot even listen.”

“Just stop one moment,” said she, as Mrs. Martin Barton was pulling her husband by the sleeve to go, she having the candlestick in her hand.

“You are going with us to Camperdown to-morrow,” said he, “and you can come in our carriage, and tell us all about it. Poor thing, see how tired she is;” and he looked down, and saw Mrs. Martin Barton on one foot.

“Going with you,” said Jenny Hart, her lip quivering, “yes, just for to-morrow; but you’ll see then—you’ll see. But go to bed, for I fear that what I have to say, will rob you of sleep.”

“Oh, no,” said Martin Barton, “nothing can keep two such tired souls awake, so say out and have done with it. You see that even poor tired Letty is broad awake, has let go my sleeve, and has put down the candlestick.”

“Well, to be sure,” said Mrs. Martin Barton, “a change has come over you. I have not heard you call me Letty this many a day. Speak out Jenny Hart.”

295“I won’t detain you long,” said Jenny, rising as she spoke, and going near her friends, “We have taken an account of stock you know—and my wages for the last fourteen years, untouched you know, is about equal to the amount of goods. I want you to let Archy Campbell have the goods and the shop, and your good will—and—poor Jenny Hart in the bargain. Archy Campbell has saved money too; will you give your consent?”

“No,” thundered out Martin Barton, wide awake, “that I won’t. The goods he may have for nothing, the shop he may have for nothing, and our best good will he may have; but as to your leaving us—no, never. Oh, Jenny Hart, Jenny Hart, can you bear to leave us? You may well cry and take on so, Letty; why it is impossible, Jenny Hart—we could not stand it.”

“Oh, Jenny Hart, dear Jenny Hart,” said Mrs. Martin Barton, wide awake now, falling on the afflicted little maiden’s neck, and trembling like a leaf—“don’t leave us, we shall both die if you think of leaving us. Martin Barton, don’t let us go to Camperdown—that is, to live there, I mean. If she will stay, let us remain and keep shop for her as she has done for us.”

“Good heaven,” thought Jenny Hart, almost fainting with emotion, “could I have believed that under this untiring money-making spirit there was so much of deep feeling?—and for me too! But I cannot give up Archy Campbell; he has wrought hard for me. If I go with them I must give him up, and that I find I cannot do.”

“There is no sleep for us to-night, Jenny”—seeing her hesitate—“how much did you say we were now worth?”

“Why, Archy Campbell was just whispering to me as he went out that you were now worth half a million of dollars, besides the large Camperdown 296property. He has been hard at work with Mr. Norton for the last week.”

“Half a million!” said Mrs. Martin Barton; “well, it is really time to leave off selling thread and needles.”

“Yes, a good half million,” said the little shopwoman exultingly. Martin Barton whispered to his wife, and she wiped her tearful eyes, and laughed out aloud. “Excellent,” said she,—“ah, Jenny, you have had your day, now we’ll have ours; it is all settled, Jenny Hart, we have settled it all, and now I am getting sleepy again—so, good night.”

What did Jenny do when the good couple left her? why she sent little Betty for Archy Campbell, and when he came in she pointed to a chair.

“Archy Campbell,” said she, “I have never told you that this was the last day that Mr. and Mrs. Martin Barton were to be in the shop. They have left it entirely, and—and—it is yours—all yours, goods, shop, and all.”

“And you, Jenny Hart,” said the young man, rising and standing before her, trembling with emotion.

“I,” said she, rising also, and stepping to the door of the entry which led to the next house,—“I, why I am going to Camperdown with the family.” (Oh, Jenny Hart, Jenny Hart, how could you torment the young man in this way?)

“Then the devil take the goods, the shop, and all,” said he, putting on his hat. “They may look out for another bridesman to-morrow, and so I will tell the young man. I had hoped that in time”—

“They are going to look out for another bridesman in your place,” said the provoking girl, breaking her heart, too, to see him so unhappy. “They went to see one of their friends an hour ago, and I am to have the two sweet girls for my bridesmaids, and you are to have both Jasper Merry and Alfred Gray for your bridesmen; so get yourself ready and”—

“Jenny, dearest Jenny,” said he, approaching 297her, almost beside himself through hopes and fears, “are you in earnest? am I at last”—and he that had never wept since he left his mother, now covered his face and wept aloud.

“Archy Campbell, I did not think you would be so greatly affected. Oh, how I have underrated every body! what a world we live in, myself the poorest in it. Here is my hand, dear Archy Campbell; it is so long since I gave you my heart that I forget I ever had one.”

One embrace and the lovers parted; she tripped up, frightened to death at what she had done, and he threw his hat to the farthest end of the room in a transport of joy.

So the carriages came to the door, and then first stepped in Mr. and Mrs. Martin Barton, Mrs. Armstrong and Mr. Norton, (they were married that day six months, and I was at the wedding,) and little Betty, who sat down between Martin Barton’s feet. Then, in the second carriage, stepped Rona, Jasper Merry, Ida, and Alfred Gray; then went Archy Campbell—no, I ought rather to say, then went Jenny Hart and Archy Campbell; he felt too deeply to wish for any other person near him at that moment but his own darling, Jenny Hart—let me call her so a little longer;—and, lastly, went the bridesmaids and bridesmen, who rattled away, and were the first to get at the church door to help the party out.

There had been great altercation the morning before as to who should be married first, but Jenny Hart did not conquer this time. They all coaxed and threatened, and at last she had to consent, to save time, she said. “I would not give up now, my dear girls, but I feel as if the poor shop girl”—

“Hold your tongue, Jenny Hart,” said Mrs. Martin Barton, “you are not a poor”—

Martin Barton gave her a push. Then came the dispute as to which of the twins should stand 298up first, for Mrs. Martin Barton had forgotten which was the oldest; there was only half an hour’s difference, however. Jenny Hart settled that by saying, that, as Jasper Merry was older than Alfred Gray, his bride should take the precedence—and all was settled.

So Jenny Hart, and her manly, handsome lover, Archy Campbell, were married first—and there had like to have been no one else married, there was so much kissing and crying; but the ceremonies proceeded, and the clergyman said he had never married three such lovely couples before. He had five little notes in his hand as the carriages drove off; it was a surprise to the poor clergyman, for each paper contained a hundred dollar note—even Mr. Martin Barton and Mr. Norton made the clergyman a present. But—half a million!

Away the carriages flew—five miles to Camperdown—and there, looking quite young and handsome, stood good Mr. and Mrs. Daly, waiting to bless them all, and to tell them that dinner was ready.

The table—two tables, I should say, were set out, and people may believe it or not as they choose, but, though every delicacy was on them, there was neither decanter nor wine glass. Temperance was their motto; it was by temperance in all things that these thread and needle people made themselves rich and happy.

The dinner was all one happy confusion; and, if Hosea Bringle had not solaced himself with a good luncheon, beforehand, he would have risen from the table with but a poor account of delicacies eaten—he was impelled on by the tide of joyful faces, to follow, as they left the house to take possession of their future homes.

Archy Campbell, with Jenny hanging on his arm, (good reader, let me go back again, and call her Jenny Hart.) Archy Campbell, with dear Jenny 299Hart hanging on his arm; walked slowly forward; his heart was too full to be gay; his happiness was too new; his gratitude too deep, to know what was passing; and his bride, letting in a flood of new feelings, was pondering and wondering to see the quiet, yet alert, shopman, who, for fifteen years, had frittered away the minutes in selling pennyworths of tape and needles, transformed into a man of great elevation of soul, and deep, tender feeling. “And this man is my husband,” said she, casting her eyes up to his handsome countenance, which was all radiant with joy as her eye met his.

First they installed Rona in her house. Every thing that heart could wish was there, down to the minutest thing; and beautiful every thing was; for dear Jenny—see, reader, I have dropped the other name—had an exquisite taste. And then, Ida took possession of her home, exactly like her sister’s, in point of beauty and completeness; but different only in fancy. Then Mrs. Armstrong was taken to her house; every thing complete, like the other two, only the furniture a thought more grave. Then the whole flock proceeded to the fourth house—it was the one for the father and mother—good, honest Martin Barton and his wife; this also was a model of comfort and beauty. The whole party stood on the steps and under the portico.

“Step in Jenny Hart—dear Jenny Campbell, now”—said Martin Barton, “step in, Archy Campbell; I have made up my mind to one thing; and that is, that I cannot let you have the thread and needle store; I have made it all over to Peter Squire and Jacob Teller.”—Jacob Teller was the fifth clerk.

Jenny turned pale and Archy red—“Come this way, Hosea Bringle,” said old Mr. Daly, “don’t go to cry, man, you’ll hear all presently—come, son and daughter, make haste, it is getting late.”

“Jenny Hart, my own Jenny,” said Mrs. Martin 300Barton, drying her eyes, “this house, and all in it, is yours; and here comes Mr. Norton, to make over to you one-fifth of the money you helped us to make. What, did you think we could bear to see you toil, and toil again, as you have done; and Archy Campbell, too—so in with you.” And in they went, with hearts too full to thank their friends.

There was, indeed, plenty of room at Mr. Daly’s for Martin Barton and his wife, and little Betty and all; and, as to Hosea Bringle, he was a fixture there. Mrs. Armstrong, as I said, did not live alone long, in her handsome house.

And now, gentle reader, I must leave off. But would you not like to hear more of our dear Jenny—how she managed her house and her gardens, and the poor people in the neighbourhood—and how her husband idolized her; and how all the old customers, rich and poor, came to see her, and partake of her hospitalities. Only let me know, and I will tell you more of her, and how Hosea Bringle read to the four innocent people every evening, either some good book or other; or in the Arabian Nights; and how they blended the genii that wanted to kill the merchant, with the giant in Pilgrim’s Progress. And how the old man sat whittling with a penknife, making weathercocks for the stables; and, finally, little go-carts, and little wheelbarrows, and little rakes, for the young family that was fast rising up around him. They could not come too fast for old Hosea Bringle. And then, how easy it came to Martin Barton to take care of a garden; working as hard at it as he did in his thread and needle store. Only encourage me, and I will write on; or drop a line in the Evening Star, and the American, of New York, and my pen will soon be set going again.

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