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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11103 ***
+
+THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.
+
+A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.
+
+VOL. VI.--NOVEMBER, 1860.--NO. XXXVII.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THOMAS HOOD.
+
+
+Thomas Hood was originally intended for business, and entered a
+mercantile house; but the failure of his health, at fifteen years of
+age, compelled him to leave it, and go to Scotland, where he remained
+two years, with much gain to his body and his mind. On his return to
+London, he applied himself to learn the art of engraving; but his
+constitution would not allow him to pursue it. Yet what he did acquire
+of this art, with his genius for comic observation, must have been of
+excellent service to him in his subsequent career. This, at first, was
+simply literary, in a subordinate connection with "The London Magazine."
+His relation to this periodical gave him opportunities, which he did not
+neglect, of knowing many of its brilliant contributors. Among these was
+Charles Lamb, who took a strong liking to the youthful sub-editor, and,
+doubtless, discovered a talent that in some points had resemblance to
+his own. The influence of his conversation and companionship may have
+brought Hood's natural qualities of mind into early growth, and helped
+them into early ripeness. Striking as the difference was, in some
+respects, between them, in other respects the likeness was quite as
+striking. Both were playful in manner, but melancholy by constitution,
+and in each there lurked an unsuspected sadness; both had tenderness in
+their mirth, and mirth in their tenderness; and both were born punsters,
+with more meaning in their puns than met the ear, and constantly
+bringing into sudden and surprising revelation the wonderful mysteries
+of words.
+
+With a genius of so singular a cast, Hood was not destined to continue
+long a subordinate. Almost with manhood he began to be an independent
+workman of letters; and as such, through ever-varying gravities and
+gayeties, tears and laughter, grimsicalities and whimsicalities, prose
+and verse, he labored incessantly till his too early death. The whole
+was truly and entirely "Hood's Own." In mind he owed no man anything.
+Unfortunately, he did in money. That he might economize, and be free to
+toil in order to pay, he went abroad, residing between four and five
+years out of England, part of the time at Coblentz, in Rhenish Prussia,
+and part at Ostend, in Belgium. The climate of Rhenish Prussia was bad
+for his health, and the people were disagreeable to his feelings. The
+change to Belgium was at first pleasant and an improvement; but complete
+recovery soon seemed as far away as ever; nay, it was absolutely away
+forever. But in the midst of his family--his wife, his little boy and
+girl, most loving and most loved--bravely he toiled, with pen and
+pencil, with head and heart; and while men held both their sides from
+laughter, he who shook them held both his sides from pain; while tears,
+kindly or comical, came at the touch of his genius into thousands of
+eyes, eyes were watching and weeping in secret by his bed-side in the
+lonely night, which, gazing through the cloud of sorrow on his thin
+features and his uneasy sleep, took note that the instrument was fast
+decaying which gave forth the enchantment and the charm of all this
+mirthful and melancholy music. Thus, in bodily pain, in bodily weakness
+even worse than pain, in pecuniary embarrassment worse than either,
+worst of all, often distressed in mind as to means of support for his
+family, he still persevered; his genius did not forsake him, nor did his
+goodness; the milk of human kindness did not grow sour, nor the sweet
+charities of human life turn into bitter irritations. But what a tragedy
+the whole suggests, in its combination of gayety with grief, and in
+the thought of laughter that must be created at the cost of sighs, of
+merriment in which every grin has been purchased by a groan!
+
+An anecdote which we once read, always, when we recall it, deeply
+affects us. A favorite comic actor, on a certain evening, was hissed by
+the audience, who had always before applauded him. He burst into tears.
+He had been watching his dying wife, and had left her dead, as be came
+upon the stage. This was his apology for imperfection in his part. Poor
+Hood had also to unite comedy with tragedy,--not for a night, or a day,
+or a week, but for months and years. He had to give the comedy to the
+public, and keep the tragedy to himself; nor could he, if comedy failed
+him, plead with the public the tragedy of his circumstances. _That_ was
+nothing to the public. He must give pleasure to the public, and not
+explanations and excuses. But genius, goodness, many friends, no enemy,
+the consciousness of imparting enjoyment to multitudes, and to no man
+wretchedness, a heart alive with all that is tender and gentle, and
+strong to manful and noble purpose and achievement,--these are grand
+compensations,--compensations for even more ills than Hood was heir to;
+and with such compensations Hood was largely blessed. Though his funds
+were nothing to the bounty of his spirit, yet he did not refuse to
+himself the blessedness of giving. Want, to his eye of charity, was
+neither native nor foreign, but _human_; and as _human_ he pitied it
+always, and, as far as he could, relieved it. While abroad, he was
+constantly doing acts of beneficence; and the burlesque style with
+which, in his correspondence, he tries to disguise his own goodness,
+while using the incidents as items to write about, is one of the most
+delightful peculiarities in his delightful letters. The inimitable
+combination of humanity and humor in these passages renders them equal
+to the best things that Hood has anywhere written. To crown all, Hood
+had happiness unalloyed in his children and his wife. Mrs. Hood seems
+to have deserved to the utmost the abounding love which her husband
+lavished on her. She was not only, as a devoted wife, a cheerer of
+his heart, but, as a woman of accomplishment and ability, she was a
+companion for his mind. Her judgment was as clear and sure as her
+affection was warm and strong. Her letters have often a grave tenderness
+and an insinuated humor hardly inferior to her husband's. But as she
+must write from fact and not from fancy, what she writes naturally bears
+the impression of her cares. Here is a passage from one of her latest
+letters, which, half sadly, half amusingly, reminds us of Mrs. Primrose
+and her "I'll-warrant" and "Between-ourselves" manner.
+
+"Hood dines to-day," she writes, "with Doctor Bowring, in Queen Square.
+He knew him well years ago in 'The London Magazine'; and he wrote, a few
+days ago, to ask Hood to meet Bright and Cobden on business,--_I_ think,
+to write songs for the League. I augur good from it. This comes of 'The
+Song of the Shirt,' of which we hear something continually."
+
+As an instance of her judgment, we may mention that she prophesied at
+once all the success which followed this same "Song of the Shirt." When
+read to her in manuscript,--"Now mind, Hood," said she, "mark my words,
+this will tell wonderfully! It is one of the best things you ever
+did." Her reference to "The Song" in her letter has a sort of pathetic
+_naïveté_ in it; it shows that the thought with which she was concerned
+was practical, not poetical,--not her husband's fame, but her household
+cares. She was thinking of songs that would turn into substance,--of
+"notes" that could be exchanged for cash,--of evanescent flame that
+might be condensed into solid coal, which would, in turn, make the pot
+boil,--and of music that could be converted into mutton. O ye entranced
+bards, drunk with the god, seeing visions and dreaming dreams in the
+third heaven, that is, the third story! O ye voluminous historians, who
+live in the guilt and glory of the past, and are proud in making the
+biggest and thickest books for the dust, cobwebs, and moths of the
+future! O ye commentators, who delight to render obscurity more obscure,
+and who assume that in a multitude of words, as in a multitude of
+counsellors, there is wisdom! O ye critics, who vote yourselves the
+Areopagites of Intellect, whose decrees confer immortality in the
+Universe of Letters! O all ye that write or scribble,--all ye tribes,
+both great and small, of pen-drivers and paper-scrapers!--know ye,
+that, while ye are listening in your imaginative ambition to the praise
+of the elect or the applause of nations, your wives are often counting
+the coppers that are to buy the coming meal, alarmed at the approaching
+rent-day, or trembling in apprehension of the baker's bill.
+
+Hood, in 1840, returned to reside in England during the small remainder
+of his life. For a few months he edited the "New Monthly," and then, for
+a few months more, a magazine of his own. But the whole of this period
+was filled with bodily and mental trials, of which it is painful to
+read. Yet within this period it was that he wrote some of his finest
+things, both laughable and serious. It is, however, to be remarked, it
+was now he reached down to that well of tears which lay in the depth of
+his nature. Always before, there had been misty exhalations from it,
+that oozed up into the sunshine of his fancy, and that took all the
+shapes of glisten or of gloom which his Protean genius gave them. In the
+rapid eccentricities of cloud and coruscation, the source which supplied
+to the varying forms so much of their substance was hidden or unminded.
+But now the fountain of thought and tragedy had been readied, whence the
+waters of sin and suffering spring forth clear and unalloyed in their
+own deep loneliness, and we hear the gush and the murmur of their stream
+in such monodies as "The Song of the Shirt," "The Lay of the Laborer,"
+and "The Bridge of Sighs."
+
+Hood died in 1845, and was then only forty-six or forty-seven years old.
+Alike esteemed by the poor and the rich, both united to consecrate a
+monument to his memory. Kindly should we ever think of those who make
+our hearts and our tempers bright; who, without pomp of wisdom, help us
+to a cheerfulness which no proud philosophy can give; who, in the motley
+of checkered mirth and wit, sparkle on the resting-spots of life. Such
+men are rare, and as valuable as they are rare. The world wants them
+more than it wants heroes and victors: for mirth is better than
+massacre; and it is surely better to hear laughter sounding aloud the
+jubilee of the heart, than the shout of battle and yell of conquest.
+Precious, then, are those whose genius brings pleasure to the bosom
+and sunshine to the face; who not only call our thoughts into festive
+action, but brighten our affections into generous feeling. Though we may
+not loudly celebrate such men, we greatly miss them; and not on marble
+monuments, but in our warmest memories, their names continue fresh. But
+laugh and make laugh as they may, they, too, have the destiny of grief;
+and unto them, as unto all men, come their passages of tragedy,--the
+days of evil, the nights of waking, and the need of pity.
+
+When Hood was near his death a pension of a hundred pounds a year was
+settled on his wife, at the instance of Sir Robert Peel. The wife, so
+soon to become a widow, did not long survive her husband; then, in 1847,
+the pension was continued to their two orphan children, at the instance
+of Lord John Russell. Politics and parties were forgotten, in gratitude
+to an earnest lover of his kind; and the people, as well as the
+government, in helping to provide for those whom he left behind, showed
+that they had not forgotten one whose desire it was to improve even more
+than to amuse them. And still we cannot but feel sad that there should
+ever have been this need. Nor would there have been, had Hood had the
+strength to carry him into the vast reading public which has arisen
+since his death, and which it was not his fate to know. "The income,"
+says his daughter, "which his works now produce to his children, might
+then have prolonged his life for many years."
+
+We have written more on the personal relations of Hood than we had
+intended; but we have been carried on unwitttingly, while reading the
+"Memorials" of him recently published and edited by his children. The
+loving worth of the man, as therein revealed, made us slow to quit the
+companionship of his character to discuss the qualities of his genius.
+We trust that our time has not been misspent, morally or critically;
+for, besides the moral good which we gain from the contemplation of an
+excellent man, we enjoy also the critical satisfaction of learning that
+whatever is best in literature comes out of that which is best in life.
+We therefore close this section of our article with a bit of prose and a
+bit of poetry, among Hood's "last things,"--personally and pathetically
+characteristic of his nature and his genius.
+
+"Dear Moir,[A]
+
+"God bless you and yours, and goodbye! I drop these few lines, as in a
+bottle from a ship water-logged and on the brink of foundering, being
+in the last stage of dropsical debility; but, though suffering in body,
+serene in mind. So, without reversing my union-jack, I await my last
+lurch. Till which, believe me, dear Moir,
+
+"Yours most truly,
+
+"THOMAS HOOD."
+
+[Footnote A: The _Delta_ of Blackwood]
+
+STANZAS.
+
+  "Farewell, Life! My senses swim,
+  And the world is growing dim;
+  Thronging shadows cloud the light,
+  Like the advent of the night;
+  Colder, colder, colder still,
+  Upward steals a vapor chill;
+  Strong the earthly odor grows,--
+  I smell the Mould above the Rose!"
+
+  "Welcome, Life! The spirit strives!
+  Strength returns, and hope revives!
+  Cloudy fears and shapes forlorn
+  Fly like shadows at the morn;
+  O'er the earth there comes a bloom,
+  Sunny light for sullen gloom,
+  Warm perfume for vapors cold,--
+  I smell the Rose above the Mould!"
+
+Nothing at first appears more easy than to define and to describe the
+genius of Hood. It is strictly singular, and entirely his own. That
+which is his is completely his, and no man can cry halves with him, or
+quarters,--hardly the smallest fraction. The estimate of his genius,
+therefore, puts the critic to no trouble of elaborate discrimination or
+comparison. When we think of Hood as a humorist, there is no need
+that we should at the same time think of Aristophanes, or Lucian, or
+Rabelais, or Swift, or Sterne, or Fielding, or Dickens, or Thackeray.
+When we think of him as a poet,--except in a few of his early
+compositions,--we are not driven to examine what he shares with
+Chaucer, or Spenser, or Shakspeare, or Milton, or Byron, or Coleridge,
+or Wordsworth, or any of the poetic masters of literature. Whether as
+humorist or as poet, he is in English literature what Richter is in
+German literature, "the only one." Then the characteristics of his
+genius are outwardly so evident, that, in merely a glance, we fancy we
+comprehend them. But the more we think, the more we reflect, the more
+the difficulty opens on us of doing full justice to the mind of Hood. We
+soon discover that we are dealing, not with a mere punster or jester,
+not with a mere master of grimace or manufacturer of broad grins, not
+with an eccentric oddity in prose or verse, not with a merry-andrew who
+tickles to senseless laughter, not with a spasmodic melodramatist who
+writhes in fictitious pain, but that we are dealing with a sincere,
+truthful, and most gifted nature,--many-sided, many-colored, harmonious
+as a whole, and having a real unity as the centre of its power. To enter
+into a complete exposition of such a nature is not our purpose: we must
+content ourselves with noting some of its most striking literary and
+moral peculiarities. We do not claim for Hood, that he was a man of
+profound, wide, or philosophic intellect, or that for grandeur of
+imagination he could be numbered among the godlike; we do not claim that
+he opened up the deeps of passion, or brought down transcendent truths
+from the higher spheres of mind; we claim for him no praise for science
+or for scholarship: we merely maintain, that he was a man of rare
+humanity, of close, subtile, and various observation, of good sense and
+common sense, of intuitive insight into character, of catholic
+sympathy with his kind that towards the lowest was the most loving, of
+extraordinary social and miscellaneous knowledge that was always at his
+command, a thinker to the fullest measure of his needs, and, as humorist
+and poet, an originality and a novelty in the world of genius. This is
+our general estimate of Hood. What further we have to say shall be in
+accordance with it; and such has been the impressive influence of Hood's
+writings upon us, that our thoughts, whether we will or not, are more
+intent on their serious than on their comic import.
+
+In all the writings of Hood that are not absolutely serious the
+_grotesque_ is a present and pervading element. Often it shows itself,
+as if from an irresistible instinct of fantastic extravagance, in the
+wild and reckless sport of oddity. Combinations, mental, verbal, and
+pictorial, to ordinary mortals the strangest and the most remote, were
+to Hood innate and spontaneous. They came not from the outward,--they
+were born of the inward. They were purely subjective, the sportive
+pranks of Hood's own ME, when that ME was in its queerest moods. How
+naturally the impossible or the absurd took the semblance of consistency
+in the mental associations of Hood, we observe even in his private
+correspondence. "Jane," (Mrs. Hood,) he writes, "is now drinking
+porter,--at which I look half savage.....I must even _sip_, when I long
+to _swig_. I shall turn a fish soon, and have the pleasure of angling
+for myself." This, if without intention, would be a blunder or a bull.
+If it were written unwittingly, the result would be simply ludicrous,
+and consign it to the category of humor; but knowingly written, as we
+are aware it was, we must ascribe it to the category of wit.
+
+This presence or absence of _intention_ often decides whether a saying
+or an image is within the sphere of humor or of wit. But wit and humor
+constantly run into each other; and though the absence of intention
+at once shows that a ludicrous surprise belongs to the humorous, the
+presence of it will not so clearly define it as belonging to the witty.
+Nor will laughter quite settle this question; for there is wit which
+makes us laugh, and there is humor which does not. On the whole, it is
+as to what is purely wit that we are ever the most at fault. Certain
+phases of humor we cannot mistake,--especially those which are broadly
+comic or farcical. But sometimes we meet with incidents or scenes which
+have more in them of the pathetic than the comic, that we must still
+rank with the humorous. Here is a case in point. A time was when it
+was a penal offence in Ireland for a priest to say Mass, and under
+particular circumstances a capital felony. A priest was malignantly
+prosecuted; but the judge, being humane, and better than the law,
+determined to confound the informer.
+
+"Pray, Sir," said the judge, "how do you know he said Mass?"
+
+"Because I heard him say it, my Lord."
+
+"Did he say it in Latin?" asked the judge.
+
+"Yes, my Lord."
+
+"Then you understand Latin?"
+
+"A little."
+
+"What words did you hear him say?"
+
+"_Ave Maria_."
+
+"That is the Lord's Prayer, is it not?" asked the judge.
+
+"Yes, my Lord."
+
+"Here is a pretty witness to convict the prisoner!" cried the judge; "he
+swears _Ave Maria_ is Latin for the Lord's Prayer!"
+
+Now, surely, this scene is hardly laughable, and yet it is thoroughly
+humorous. But take an instance which is entirely comic:--"All ye
+blackguards as isn't lawyers," exclaimed a crier, "quit the Coort." Or
+this:--"Och, Counsellor, darling," said a peasant once to O'Connell,
+"I've no way _here_ to show your Honor my gratitude! but _I wish I
+saw you knocked down in my own parish_, and may be I wouldn't bring a
+faction to the rescue." A similar instance occurred in this country. An
+enthusiastic Irishwoman, listening once to a lecturer praising Ireland,
+exclaimed,--"I wish to God I saw that man in poverty, that I might do
+something to relieve him."
+
+We shall now cite an example of pure wit.
+
+"How can you defend this item, Mr. Curran," said Lord Chancellor
+Clare,--"'To writing innumerable letters, £100'?"
+
+"Why, my Lord," said Curran, "nothing can be more reasonable. _It is not
+a penny a letter_."
+
+But we might fill the whole space of our article, ay, or of twenty
+articles, with such illustrations; we will content ourselves with two
+others. The idea is the same in both; but in the first it seems to have
+a mixture of the witty and the humorous; in the second, it belongs
+entirely to the humorous.
+
+A lady at a dinner-party passing near where Talleyrand was standing,
+he looked up and significantly exclaimed, "Ah!" In the course of the
+dinner, the lady having asked him across the table, why on her entrance
+he said "Oh!" Talleyrand, with a grave, self-vindicatory look,
+answered,--"_Madame, je n'ai pas dit_ 'Oh!' _J'ai dit_ 'Ah!'"
+
+Here is the second.--The Reverend Alonzo Fizzle had preached his
+farewell-sermon to his disconsolate people in Drowsytown. The next
+morning, Monday, he was strolling musingly along a silent road among the
+melancholy woods. The pastor of a neighboring flock, the Reverend Darius
+Dizzle, was driving by in his modest one-horse chaise.
+
+"Take a seat, Fizzle?" said he. "Don't care if I do," said Fizzle,--and
+took it.
+
+"Why, the mischief, Fizzle," said Dizzle, "did you say in your
+farewell-sermon, that it was just as well to preach to the dead buried
+six feet under the earth as to the people of Drowsytown?"
+
+_"I?--I?--I?"_ gasped the astonished Fizzle. "A more alive and wakeful
+people are not upon the earth than the citizens of Drowsytown. What
+calumniator has thus outraged them and _me_? Who told you this? _Who_
+dared to say it?"
+
+"Brother Ichabod Muzzle," calmly answered Dizzle.
+
+Fizzle leaped out, hurried to his home, and was soon seen whipping his
+unfortunate horse in a certain direction. He was on his way to the
+residence of the Reverend Ichabod Muzzle, who lived five or six miles
+off. He reached the home of the Reverend Ichabod. The friends greeted
+each other. Fizzle, though pregnant with indignation, assumed the
+benignant air of the Beloved Disciple. Muzzle looked Platonically the
+incarnate idea of the Christian Parson.
+
+"Fine day," said Fizzle.
+
+"Lovely," said Muzzle.
+
+"Glorious view from this window," observed Fizzle.
+
+"Superb," replied Muzzle.
+
+"The beauties of Nature are calming and consolatory," murmured Fizzle.
+
+"And so are the doctrines of grace," whispered Muzzle.
+
+Fizzle could hold out no longer. Still he tried to look the placid, and
+to speak with meekness.
+
+"Pray, how did it come, Brother Muzzle," said Fizzle, "that you reported
+I declared in my farewell-sermon it was as easy to preach to the dead
+buried six feet under the earth as to the people of Drowsytown?"
+
+"You have been grossly misinformed, my brother," replied Muzzle. "I
+didn't say _six feet_. I said _four feet_."
+
+In Hood we have all varieties of wit and humor, both separate and
+intermingled.
+
+As we have already observed, the grotesque is that which is most
+obviously distinctive in Hood's writings. But in different degrees it
+is combined with other elements, and in each combination altered and
+modified. The combination which more immediately arrests attention is
+that with the ludicrous. In this the genius of Hood seemed to hold a
+very festival of antics, oddity, and mirth; all his faculties seemed
+to rant and riot in the Saturnalia of comic incongruity. And it is
+difficult to say whether, in provoking laughter, his pen or his pencil
+is the more effective instrument. The mere illustrations of the
+subject-matter are in themselves irresistible. They reach at once and
+directly the instinctive sense of the ludicrous, and over them youth and
+age cachinnate together. We have seen a little girl, eight years old,
+laugh as if her heart would break, in merely looking at the pictures in
+a volume of Hood. The printed page she did not read or care to read;
+what the prints illustrated she knew nothing about; but her eyes danced
+with joy and overran with tears of childish merriment. But in all this
+luxury of fun, whether by pen or pencil, no word, idea, image, or
+delineation obscures the transparency of innocence, or leaves the shadow
+of a stain upon the purest mind. To be at the same time so comic and so
+chaste is not only a moral beauty, but a literary wonder. It is hard to
+deal with the oddities of humor, however carefully, without casual slips
+that may offend or shame the reverential or the sensitive. Noble, on the
+whole, as Shakspeare was, we would not in a mixed company, until after
+cautious rehearsal, venture to read his comic passages aloud. We may
+apply the statement, also, to the comic portions of Burns,--and,
+indeed, to comic literature in general. But who has fear to read most
+openly anything that Hood ever wrote? or who has a memory of wounded
+modesty for anything that he ever read secretly of Hood's? Dr. Johnson
+says that dirty images were as natural to Swift as sublime ones were to
+Milton;--we may say that images at once lambent and laughable were those
+which were natural to Hood. Even when his mirth is broadest, it is
+decent; and while the merest recollection of his drollery will often
+convulse the face in defiance of the best-bred muscles, no thought
+arises which the dying need regret. Who can ever forget "The Lost
+Heir," or remember it but to laugh at its rich breadth of natural, yet
+farcical, absurdity? The very opening begins the giggle:--
+
+  "One day, as I was going by
+  That part of Holborn christened High," etc.
+
+Then there is that broadest of broad, but morally inoffensive stories,
+in which the laundress, in trying to cure a smoking chimney, blows
+herself to death, having merely power to speak a few words to
+Betty,--who gaspingly explains to her mistress "The Report from Below":--
+
+  "Well, Ma'am, you won't believe it,
+  But it's gospel fact and true,
+  But these words is all she whispered,--
+  _'Why, where is the powder blew?_'"
+
+For other examples refer to "The Ode to Malthus" and "The Blow-up,"
+which pain the sides while they cheer the heart.
+
+Again, we find the grotesque through Hood's writings in union with
+the fantastic and the fanciful. His fertility in the most unexpected
+analogies becomes to the reader of his works a matter of continual
+wonder. Strange and curious contrasts and likenesses, both mental and.
+verbal, which might never once occur even to a mind of more than common
+eccentricity and invention, seem to have been in his mind with the
+ordinary flow of thinking. Plenteous and sustained, therefore, as his
+wit is, it never fails to startle. We have no doubt of his endless
+resources, and yet each new instance becomes a new marvel. His wit, too,
+is usually pregnant and vital with force and meaning. This constitutes
+the singular and peculiar worth of his verbal wit in general, and of his
+puns in particular. In verbal wit he has had but few equals, and in puns
+he has had none. He made the pun an instrument of power; and had his wit
+been malignant, he could have pointed the pun to a sharpness that would
+have left wounds as deep as thought, and could have added a poison to it
+that would have kept them rankling as long as memory lasted. The secret
+of his power in the pun is, that he does not rest in the analogy of
+sound alone, but seeks also for analogy of significance. Generally there
+is a subtile coincidence between his meaning and what the sound of the
+pun signifies, and thus the pun becomes an amusing or illustrative
+image, or a most emphatic and striking condensation of his thought.
+"Take care of your cough," he writes to his engraver, "lest you go to
+coughy-pot, as I said before; but I did _not_ say before, that nobody is
+so likely as a wood-engraver to cut his stick." Speaking of his wife, he
+says,--"To be sure, she still sticks to her old fault of going to sleep
+while I am dictating, till I vow to change my _Woman_uensis for a
+_Man_uensis." How keenly and well the pun serves him in burlesque, in
+his comic imitations of the great moralist! He hits off with inimitable
+ridicule the great moralist's dislike to Scotland. Boswell inquired the
+Doctor's opinion on illicit distillation, and how the great moralist
+would act in an affray between the smugglers and the excise. "If I went
+by the _letter_ of the law, I should assist the customs; but according
+to the _spirit_, I should stand by the contrabandists." The Doctor was
+always very satirical on the want of timber in the North. "Sir," said he
+to the young Lord of Icombally, who was going to join his regiment, "may
+Providence preserve you in battle, and especially your nether limbs! You
+may grow a walking-stick here, but you must import a wooden leg." At
+Dunsinnane the old prejudice broke out. "Sir," said he to Boswell,
+"Macbeth was an idiot; he ought to have known that every wood in
+Scotland might be carried in a man's hand. The Scotch, Sir, are like the
+frogs in the fable: if they had a log, they would make a king of it." We
+will quote here a stanza which contains quite a serious application of
+the pun; and for Hood's purpose no other word could so happily or so
+pungently express his meaning. The poem is an "Address to Mrs. Fry"; and
+the doctrine of it is, that it is better and wiser to teach the young
+and uncorrupted that are yet outside the prison than the vicious and the
+hardened who have got inside it. Thus he goes on:--
+
+  "I like your chocolate, good Mistress Fry!
+  I like your cookery in every way;
+  I like your Shrove-tide service and supply;
+  I like to hear your sweet Pandeans play;
+  I like the pity in your full-brimmed eye;
+  I like your carriage and your silken gray,
+  Your dove-like habits, and your silent preaching;
+  But I don't like your _Newgatory_ teaching."
+
+Hood had not only an unexampled facility in the discovery of analogies
+in a multitude of separate resemblances and relations, but he had an
+equal facility of tracing with untiring persistency a single idea
+through all its possible variations. Take, for example, the idea
+of _gold_, in the poem of "Miss Kilmansegg," and there is hardly a
+conceivable reference to _gold_ which imagination or human life can
+suggest, that is not presented to us.
+
+But this play of words and thought would, after all, be in itself little
+more than serious trifling, a mere exhibition of mental and verbal
+ingenuity. It would be a kind of intellectual and linguistical
+dexterity, which would give the author a singularity and supremacy
+above the world. It would make him the greatest of mental acrobats or
+jugglers, and he might almost deserve as eminent a reputation as a
+similar class of artists in bodily achievements; possibly he might claim
+to be ranked with the man who cooked his dinner and ate it on a tight
+rope over the Niagara Rapids, or with the man who placed a pea-nut under
+a dish-cover and turned it into the American eagle. Such, however, is
+not Hood's case. In all feats of mental and verbal oddity, he does,
+indeed, rank the highest,--but _that_ is the very lowest of his
+attainments. His pranks do verily cause us to laugh and wonder; but
+there is also that ever in his pranks which causes us to think, and
+even sometimes to weep. In much of his that seems burlesque, the most
+audacious, there are hidden springs of thought and tears. Often, when
+most he seems as the grimed and grinning clown in a circus girded by
+gaping spectators, he stops to pour out satire as passionate as that of
+Juvenal, or morality as eloquent and as pure as that of Pascal. And this
+he does without lengthening his face or taking off his paint. Sometimes,
+when he most absurdly scampers in his thoughts, when he kicks up the
+heels of his fancy in the most outrageous fashion, he is playing as it
+most doth please him on our human sympathy, and the human heart becomes
+an instrument to his using, out of which he discourseth eloquent music
+according to his moods. The interest one finds in reading Hood is often
+the sudden pleasure which comes upon him. When in the midst of what
+appears a wilful torrent of absurdity, there bursts out a rush of
+earnest and instinctive nature. We could quote enough in confirmation
+of this assertion to make a moderate volume. And then the large and
+charitable wisdom, which in Hood's genius makes the teacher humble
+in order to win the learner, we value all the more that it conceals
+authority in the guise of mirth, and under the coat of motley or the
+mantle of extravagance insinuates effective and salutary lessons.
+
+No writer has ever so successfully as Hood combined the grotesque
+with the terrible. He has the art, as no man but himself ever had, of
+sustaining the illusion of an awful or solemn narrative through a long
+poem, to be closed in a catastrophe that is at once unexpected and
+ludicrous. The mystification is complete; the secret of the issue is
+never betrayed; suspense is maintained with Spartan reticence; curiosity
+is excited progressively to its utmost tension; and the surprise at the
+end is oftentimes electric. "A Storm at Hastings" and "The Demon
+Ship" are of this class. But sometimes the terrible so prevails as to
+overpower the ludicrous, or rather, it becomes more terrible by the very
+presence of the ludicrous. We have evidence of this in the poem called
+"The Last Man." Sometimes we find the idea of the supernatural added to
+the ludicrous with great moral and imaginative effect. Observe with
+what pathetic tenderness this is done in the "Ode to the Printer's
+Devil,"--with what solemn moral power in "The Tale of a Trumpet,"--and
+with what historical satire and social insight in "The Knight and the
+Dragon." Sometimes the ludicrous element entirely disappears, and we
+have the purely terrible,--the terrible in itself, as in "The Tower of
+Lahneck,"--the terrible in pathos, as in "The Work-House Clock,"--the
+terrible in penitence and remorse, as in "The Lady's Dream,"--the
+terrible in temptation and despair, as in "The Dream of Eugene Aram."
+
+Hood, as we have seen, is a perfect master equally of the grotesque and
+the terrible. Some writers, it may be, were as powerful as he in the
+grotesque. Rabelais had a certain hugeness in it, which Hood did not
+have and did not need. Other writers transcended Hood in the region of
+the terrible. It is almost useless to name such sublime masters of it as
+Dante, Shakspeare, and Milton. But in the intermingling of the grotesque
+and terrible, and in the infinite diversification of them as thus
+united, not only has Hood no equal, but no rival. In some few marked
+and outward directions of his genius he may have imitators; but in this
+magical alchemy of sentiment, thought, passion, fancy, and imagination,
+the secret of his laboratory was _his_ alone; no other man has
+discovered it, and no other man, as he did, could use it. But he worked
+in the purely ideal also;--if he did not work supremely, he worked well,
+as we have proof in many of his serious poems, and particularly in
+his "Plea for the Midsummer Fairies." And when aroused,--but that
+was rarely,--he could wield a burningly satiric pen, and with manly
+indignation and impassioned scorn wield it to chastise the hypocritical
+and the arrogant, as his letter to a certain pious lady and his "Ode to
+Rae Wilson" bear sufficient witness.
+
+Along with the grotesque and terrible in Hood's writings we also often
+observe a wizard-like command over the elements of the desolate, the
+weird, the sad, the forlorn, and the dreary. We may trace it in many of
+the poems to which we have already alluded. But it appears with all its
+lonely gloom of power in "The Haunted House." This poem is surely the
+work of a fancy that must have often gone into the desert of the soul
+to meditate, and that must have made itself acquainted with all that is
+dismal in imagery and feeling. Pictures, in succession or combination,
+it would be impossible to conceive, which more dolefully impress the
+mind with a sense of doom, dread, and mystery; yet every picture is in
+itself natural, and, while each adds to the intensity of the impression,
+each is in itself complete.
+
+Now, having gone over some of the most noticeable qualities in the
+writings of Hood, we come to the crowning quality of his genius,
+the _simply pathetic_. We could, if space remained, adduce many
+psychological and other reasons why we apply this phrase to the pathos
+of Hood. One reason is, that Hood's pathos involves none of the
+complications of higher passion, nor any of the pomp which belongs, in
+mood, situation, or utterance, to the loftier phases of human suffering.
+The sorrow of those who most attracted his sympathy was not theatrical
+or imposing. It has been well said of him, that his "bias was towards
+all that was poor and unregarded." And thus, while those who painfully
+moved the charity and compassion of his genius were considered by him
+the victims of artificial civilization, his own feeling for them was
+natural and instinctive; yet never did natural and instinctive feeling
+receive expression more artistic, but with that admirable art in which
+elaboration attains the utmost perfection of simplicity. It excites
+our wonder to observe how in pathos Hood's genius divests itself of
+attributes which had seemed essential to its existence. All that is
+grotesque, whimsical, or odd disappears, and we have only the soul of
+pity in the sound of song,--in song "most musical, most melancholy." In
+pathos, Hood's is not what we should call a transformed genius so much
+as a genius becoming divested of its coarser life, and then breathing
+purely the inner spirit of goodness and beauty. The result is what one
+might almost term the "absolute" in pathos. Nothing is excluded that is
+necessary to impression; nothing is admitted that could vulgarize or
+weaken it. We have thus pathos at once practical and poetic,--pathos at
+once the most affecting and the most ideal,--coming from a heart rich
+with all human charities, and gaining worthy and immortal form by means
+of a subtile, deep, cultivated imagination. The pathetic, therefore, no
+less than the comic, in Hood's writings has all the author's peculiar
+originality, but has it in a higher order. Pathos was the product of
+the author's mind when it was most matured by experience, and
+when suffering, without impairing its strength, had refined its
+characteristic benevolence to the utmost tenderness.
+
+Hood's pathos culminates in "The Song of the Shirt," "The Lay of the
+Laborer," and "The Bridge of Sighs."
+
+These are marvellous lyrics. In spirit and in form they are singular
+and remarkable. We cannot think of any poems which more show the mystic
+enchantment of genius. How else was a ragged sempstress in a squalid
+garret made immortal, nay, made universal, made to stand for an entire
+sisterhood of wretchedness? Here is the direst poverty, blear-eyed
+sorrow, dim and dismal suffering,--nothing of the romantic. A stern
+picture it is, which even the softer touches render sterner; still there
+is nought in it that revolts or shocks; it is deeply poetic, calls into
+passionate action the feelings of reverence and pity, and has all the
+dignity of tragedy. Even more wonderful is the transformation that a
+rustic hind undergoes in "The Lay of the Laborer," in which a peasant
+out of work personifies, with eloquent impressiveness, the claims and
+calamities of toiling manhood. But an element of the sublime is added in
+"The Bridge of Sighs." In that we have the truly tragic; for we have in
+it the union of guilt, grief, despair, and death. An angel from heaven,
+we think, could not sing a more gentle dirge, or one more pure; yet
+the ordinary associations suggested by the corpse of the poor, ruined,
+self-murdered girl are such as to the prudish and fastidious would not
+allow her to be mentioned, much less bring her into song. But in the
+pity almost divine with which Hood sings her fate there is not only a
+spotless delicacy, there is also a morality as elevated as the heavenly
+mercy which the lyrist breathes. The pure can afford to be pitiful; and
+the life of Hood was so exemplary, that he had no fear to hinder him
+from being charitable. The cowardice of conscience is one of the saddest
+penalties of sin; and to avert suspicion from one's self by severity to
+others is, indeed, the most miserable expediency of self-condemnation.
+The temper of charity and compassion seems natural to men of letters and
+of art. They are emotional and sensitive, and by the necessity of their
+vocation have to hold much communion with the inmost consciousness of
+our nature; they thus learn the weakness of man, and the allowances that
+he needs; they are conversant with a broad and diversified humanity, and
+thence they are seldom narrow, intolerant, or self-righteous; feeling,
+too, their full share of moral and mortal imperfection, they refuse
+to be inquisitors of the unfortunate, but rather choose to be their
+advocates and helpers. No man ever had more of this temper than Hood;
+and out of it came these immortal lyrics upon which we have been
+commenting. For such a temper the writing of these lyrics was exceeding
+great reward; not only because they made the author an everlasting
+benefactor to the poor, but also because they became an interpretation
+of his own deeper genius, and revealed a nobler meaning in his works
+than had ever before been discerned. Hence-forth, he was more thought of
+as a profound poet than as the greatest of mimes, jesters, and punsters.
+The lyrics of the poor saved him from imminent injustice.--All that we
+have further to say of these lyrics is to express our admiration as to
+the classical finish of their diction, and as to the wild, sweet, and
+strange music in their sadly sounding measures.
+
+Hood is a writer to whom, in his degree, we may apply the epithet
+_Shakspearian_. We do not, indeed, compare him with Shakspeare in bulk
+or force of genius, but only in quality and kind. He had, as the great
+dramatist, the same disregard of the temporary and discernment of the
+essential; the same wonderful wealth of vocabulary, and the same bold
+dexterity in the use of it; the same caprices of jestings and conceits;
+the same comminglings of mirth and melancholy; the same many-sided
+conception of existence; the same embracing catholicity of tastes and
+tendencies; the same indifference to sects and factions; the same
+freedom from jealousies, asperities, and spites; and in the lower scale
+of his genius, he resembled the mighty dramatist in subtile perception
+of life and Nature, in his mental and moral independence, and in his
+intuitive divinations of abstract truth and individual character.
+
+As a poet of the poor, Crabbe is the only poet with whom he can be
+critically compared. The comparison would be a contrast; and in order to
+handle it to any purpose, a long essay would be required. Hood wrote
+but a few short lyrics on the poor; Crabbe wrote volumes. Crabbe was
+_literal_: Hood _ideal_. Crabbe was concrete; Hood was abstract. Crabbe
+lived among the rural poor; Hood among the city poor. Crabbe saw the
+poor constantly, and went minutely and practically into the interior of
+their life; if Hood ever directly saw them at all, it was merely with
+casual glimpses, and he must have learned of them only by occasional
+report. Crabbe was a man of vigorous constitution, he lived a hardy
+life, and he lived it long; Hood was a man of feeble health, he lived a
+life of pain, and he closed it early. Crabbe had a hard youth, but
+after that a certain and settled competence; Hood's was also a youth of
+struggle, but struggle was his destiny to the end. These radical and
+circumstantial differences between the men will account for their
+different modes in thinking and writing of the poor. But both were men
+of genius, of genial humanity, and of singular originality. No one who
+reads Crabbe's writings will deny him genius; no one who reads them with
+adequate sympathy and attention will deny that his genius is vital with
+passion and imagination. Only the latent heat of passion and imagination
+could save these seemingly bald and monotonous narratives from being as
+dull as a dictionary. But they are not so; they have an interest which
+holds the reader with a fixedness of grasp which he cannot loosen.
+Crabbe's poetry of the poor is slow and epic; Hood's is rapid
+and lyrical. Crabbe's characters are only actual and intensified
+individuals; Hood's characters are idealized and representative persons.
+Hood gives you only the pathetic or tragical essentials; but, along
+with these, Crabbe gives you the complexity and detail of life which
+surrounded them. Hood presents you with the picture of a lonely woman at
+midnight toiling and starving in the slavery of sewing; but Crabbe would
+trace her from her quiet country-home, through the follies which led her
+to a London garret. Hood, in his "Lay of the Laborer," makes you listen
+to the wail of a strong man imploring leave to toil; Crabbe would find
+him drunk in the beer-house or the gin-shop, and then carry you on to
+the catastrophe in his ruined home or in his penal death. Hood, in his
+"Bridge of Sighs," brings you into the presence of death, and you gaze,
+weeping, over the lifeless form of beauty that had once been innocent
+and blooming girlhood, but from which the spirit, early soiled and
+saddened, took violent flight in its despair; Crabbe would give us the
+record of her sins, and connect her end retributively with her
+conduct. Much is in Crabbe that is repulsive and austere; but he is,
+notwithstanding, an earnest moral teacher and a deep tragic poet. Let
+us be content with both Crabbe and Hood: we need to look at the aspect
+which each of them gives us of life,--the stern poetry of fact in
+Crabbe, and the lyrical poetry of feeling in Hood. Crabbe has dealt with
+groups and masses; Hood has immortalized single figures, which, by their
+isolation and intensity, take full and forcible possession of the mind,
+and can never be driven out from memory.
+
+This is a rather serious conclusion of an article on a comic genius. As
+the humorist is for the most part on the play-side of literature, he
+should, we are apt to suppose, be entirely on the play-side of life.
+He ought to laugh and grow fat,--and he ought to have an easy-chair to
+laugh in. Why should he who makes so many joyous not have the largest
+mess of gladness to his share? He ought to be a favored Benjamin at the
+banquet of existence,--and have, above the most favored of his
+brethren, a double portion. He ought, like the wind, to be "a chartered
+libertine,"--to blow where he listeth, and have no one to question
+whence he cometh or whither he goeth. He ought to be the citizen of a
+comfortable world, and he ought to have an ungrudged freedom in it. What
+debt is he should not be allowed to learn or to know,--and the idea of
+a dun it should not be possible for him even to conceive. Give him good
+cheer; enrich the juices of his blood, nourish generously the functions
+of his brain; give him delicate viands and rosy wine; give him smiles
+and laughter, music and flowers; let him inherit every region of
+creation, and be at home in air and water as well as on the earth; at
+last, in an Anacreontic bloom of age, let him in a song breathe away his
+life. Such is the lot, we believe, that many imagine as the condition
+of a humorist; but which the humorist, less than most men, has ever
+enjoyed. All great humorists have been men grave at heart, and often
+men of more than ordinary trials. None but the superficial can fail to
+recognize the severity of Rabelais's genius. The best portion of poor
+Molière's manhood was steeped in sorrow. The life of Swift was a hidden
+tragedy. The immortal wit of "Hudibras" did not save Butler from the
+straits and struggles of narrow means. Cervantes spent much of his time
+in a prison, and much of his grandest humor had there its birthplace.
+Farquhar died young, and in terrible distress of mind at the desolate
+prospect that he saw before his orphan children. How Sheridan died is
+familiar to us all. The very conditions of temperament which gave Sterne
+genius gave him also torment. Fielding and Smollett battled all their
+lives with adversity; and Goldsmith died in his prime, embittered in
+his last hours by distress and debt. Banim, the great Irish novelist,
+withered early out of life upon a government pittance of a pension;
+Griffin gave up literature, became a monk, and found in youth a grave;
+Carleton, one of the most gifted humorists that ever painted the
+many-colored pictures of Irish character, is now struggling against the
+pressure of a small income in his advancing years. Not to carry this
+melancholy list farther,--which might be indefinitely prolonged,--we
+close it with the name of Thomas Hood.
+
+But not by contest with realities of life alone have humorists been
+saved from temptations to any dangerous levity; great humorists, as we
+have said, have generally been earnest men, very grave at heart, and
+much that they have written has been tragedy in the guise of irony. All
+readers cannot find this out. They cannot see the grief of life beneath
+its grin; they cannot detect the scorn or the pity that is hidden in
+joke or banter; neither can they always find out the joke or banter that
+is covered by a solemn face; and many a sincere believer has been deemed
+an atheist because he burlesqued hypocrites with their own gravity.
+Numbers judge only by the outside, and never reach the spirit of
+writing or of man. They laugh at the contortions of grimace, but of the
+mysteries of mind or the pains of heart which underlie the contortions
+they know nothing. They snatch their rapid pleasure, and leave unvalued
+the worth of him who gives it; they care not for the cost of genius
+or labor at which it has been procured; and when they have had their
+transient indulgence, they have had all they sought and all that they
+could enjoy.
+
+The relation of many to the humorist is illustrated by that of the
+doctor, on a certain occasion, to Liston, the celebrated comedian.
+Liston was subject to constitutional melancholy, and in a severe attack
+of it he consulted a famous physician.
+
+"Go and see Liston," said the doctor.
+
+"I am Liston," said the actor.
+
+And thus the inner soul of a great humorist is often as unrecognized
+by those who read him as was the natural personality of Liston by the
+doctor.
+
+
+
+
+FAYAL AND THE PORTUGUESE.
+
+
+Every man when he first crosses the ocean is a Columbus to himself, no
+matter how many voyages by other navigators he may have heard described
+or read recorded. Geographies convince only the brain, not the senses,
+that the globe is round; and when personal experience exhibits the fact,
+it is as wonderful as if never before suggested. You have dwelt for
+weeks within one unbroken loneliness of sea and sky, with nothing that
+seemed solid in the universe but the bit of painted wood on which you
+have floated. Suddenly one morning something looms high and cloudlike
+far away, and you are told that it is land. Then you feel, with all
+ignorant races, as if the ship were a god, thus to find its way over
+that trackless waste, or as if this must be some great and unprecedented
+success, and in no way the expected or usual result of such enterprises.
+A sea-captain of twenty-five years' experience told me that this
+sensation never wore off, and that he still felt as fresh a sense of
+something extraordinary, on making land, as upon his first voyage. To
+discover for one's self that there is really another side to the ocean,
+--that is the astonishing thing. And when it happens, as in our case,
+that the haven thus gained is not merely a part of a great continent
+which the stupidest ship could not miss, if it only sailed far enough,
+but is actually a small volcanic island, a mere dot among those wild
+waves, a thing which one might easily have passed in the night,
+unsuspecting, and which yet was not so passed,--it really seems like the
+maddest piece of good-luck, as if one should go to sea in a bowl, hoping
+somewhere or other to land on the edge of a tea-cup.
+
+As next day we stumbled on deck in the foggy dawn, the dim island five
+miles off seemed only dawning too, a shapeless thing, half-formed out of
+chaos, as if the leagues of gray ocean had grown weary of their eternal
+loneliness, and bungled into something like land at last. The phrase
+"_making_ land" at once became the simple and necessary expression; we
+had come upon the very process itself. Nearer still, the cliffs five
+hundred feet in height, and the bare conical hills of the interior,
+divided everywhere by cane-hedges into a regular checker-work of
+cultivation, prolonged the mystery; and the glimpses of white villages
+scarcely seemed to break the spell. Point after point we passed,--great
+shoulders of volcanic mountain thrust out to meet the sea, with steep
+green ravines furrowed in between them; and when at last we rounded the
+Espalamarca, and the white walls and the Moorish towers of Horta stood
+revealed before us, and a stray sunbeam pierced the clouds on the great
+mountain Pico across the bay, and the Spanish steamship in the harbor
+flung out her gorgeous ensign of gold and blood--then, indeed, we felt
+that all the glowing cup of the tropics was proffered to our lips, and
+the dream of our voyage stood fulfilled.
+
+Not one of our immediate party, most happily, had ever been beyond
+Boston Harbor before, and so we all plunged without fear or apology into
+the delicious sense of foreignness; we moved as those in dreams. No one
+could ever precisely remember what we said or what we did, only that we
+were somehow boated ashore till we landed with difficulty amid high surf
+on a wave-worn quay, amid an enthusiastic throng of women in dark-blue
+hooded cloaks which we all took for priestly vestments, and of beggars
+in a combination of patches which no sane person could reasonably take
+for vestments of any sort, until one saw how scrupulously they were
+washed and how carefully put together.
+
+The one overwhelming fact of the first day abroad is the simple
+sensation that one _is_ abroad: a truth that can never be made anything
+but commonplace in the telling, or anything but wonderful in the
+fulfilling. What Emerson says of the landscape is true here: no
+particular foreign country is so remarkable as the necessity of being
+remarkable under which every foreign country lies. Horace Walpole found
+nothing in Europe so astonishing as Calais; and we felt that at every
+moment the first edge of novelty was being taken off for life, and that,
+if we were to continue our journey round the world, we never could have
+that first day's sensations again. Yet because no one can spare time to
+describe it at the moment, this first day has never yet been described;
+all books of travels begin on the second day; the daguerreotype-machine
+is not ready till the expression has begun to fade out. Months had been
+spent in questioning our travelled friends, sheets of old correspondence
+had been disinterred, sketches studied, Bullar's unsatisfactory book
+read, and now we were on the spot, and it seemed as if every line and
+letter must have been intended to describe some other place on the
+earth, and not this strange, picturesque, Portuguese, Semi-Moorish
+Fayal.
+
+One general truth came over us instantly, and it was strange to think
+that no one had happened to speak of it before. The essence of the
+surprise was this. We had always been left to suppose that in a foreign
+country one would immediately begin to look about and observe the
+foreign things,--these novel details having of course that groundwork of
+ordinary human life, the same all the world over. To our amazement,
+we found that it was the groundwork itself that was foreign; we were
+shifted off our feet; not the details, but the basis itself was wholly
+new and bewildering; and, instead of noting down, like intelligent
+travellers, the objects which were new, we found ourselves stupidly
+staring about to find something which was old,--a square inch of surface
+anywhere which looked like anything ever seen before,--that we might
+take our departure from that, and then begin to improve our minds.
+Perhaps this is difficult for the first hours in any foreign country;
+certainly the untravelled American finds it utterly impossible in Fayal.
+Consider the incongruities. The beach beneath your feet, instead of
+being white or yellow, is black; the cliffs beside you are white or
+red, instead of black or gray. The houses are of white plaster on the
+outside, with wood-work, often painted in gay stripes, within. There are
+no chimneys to the buildings, but sometimes there is a building to the
+chimney; the latter being a picturesque tower with smoke coming from
+the top and a house appended to the base. One half the women go about
+bareheaded, save a handkerchief, and with a good deal of bareness at the
+other extremity,--while the other half wear hoops on their heads in the
+form of vast conical hoods attached to voluminous cloth cloaks which
+sweep the ground. The men cover their heads with all sorts of burdens,
+and their feet with nothing, or else with raw-hide slippers, hair
+outside. There is no roar or rumble in the streets, for there are
+no vehicles and no horses, but an endless stream of little donkeys,
+clicking the rough pavement beneath their sharp hoofs, and thumped
+solidly by screaming drivers. Who wears the new shoes on the island does
+not appear; but the hens limp about the houses, tethered to the old
+ones.
+
+Further inspection reveals new marvels. The houses are roofed with red
+and black tiles, semi-cylindrical in shape and rusty in surface, and
+making the whole town look as if incrusted with barnacles. There is
+never a pane of glass on the lower story, even for the shops, but only
+barred windows and solid doors. Every house has a paved court-yard for
+the ground-floor, into which donkeys may be driven and where beggars or
+peasants may wait, and where one naturally expects to find Gil Blas in
+one corner and Sancho Panza in another. An English lady, on arriving,
+declared that our hotel was only a donkey-stable, and refused to enter
+it. In the intervals between the houses the streets are lined with solid
+stone walls from ten to twenty feet high, protecting the gardens behind;
+and there is another stone wall inclosing the town on the water side,
+as if to keep the people from being spilled out. One must go some miles
+into the country before getting beyond these walls, or seeing an inch,
+on either side. This would be intolerable, of course, were the country
+a level; but, as every rod of ground slopes up or down, it simply seems
+like walking through a series of roofless ropewalks or bowling-alleys,
+each being tilted up at an angle, so that one sees the landscape through
+the top, but never over the sides. Thus, walking or riding, one seldom
+sees the immediate foreground, but a changing background of soft
+valleys, an endless patchwork of varied green rising to the mountains in
+the interior of the island, or sinking to the blue sea, beyond which the
+mountain Pico rears its graceful outline across the bay.
+
+From the street below comes up a constant hum of loud voices, often
+rising so high that one runs to see the fight commence, and by the time
+one has crossed the room it has all subsided and everybody is walking
+off in good-humor. Meanwhile the grave little donkeys are constantly
+pattering by, sometimes in pairs or in fours with a cask slung between;
+and mingled with these, in the middle of the street, there is an endless
+stream of picturesque figures, everybody bearing something on the
+head,--girls, with high water-jars, each with a green bough thrust in,
+to keep the water sweet,--boys, with baskets of fruit and vegetables,
+--men, with boxes, bales, bags, or trunks for the custom-house, or an
+enormous fagot of small sticks for firewood, or a long pole hung with
+wooden jars of milk, or with live chickens, head downward, or perhaps
+a basket of red and blue and golden fishes, fresh from the ocean and
+glistening in the sun. The strength of their necks seems wonderful, as
+does also their power of balancing. On a rainy day I have seen a tall
+man walk gravely along the middle of the street through the whole length
+of the town, bearing a large empty cask balanced upon his head, over
+which he held an umbrella.
+
+Perhaps it is a procession-day, and all the saints of some church are
+taken out for an airing. They are figures composed of wood and wax,
+life-size, and in full costume, each having a complete separate
+wardrobe, but more tawdry and shabby, let us hope, than the originals
+ever indulged in. Here are Saint Francis and Saint Isabella, Saint Peter
+with a monk kneeling before him, and Saint Margaret with her dog, and
+the sceptred and ermined Saint Louis, and then Joseph and Mary sitting
+amicably upon the same platform, with an additional force of bearers
+to sustain them. For this is the procession of the _Bem-casados_ or
+Well-married, in honor of the parents of Jesus. Then there are lofty
+crucifixes and waving flags; and when the great banner, bearing simply
+the letters S.P.Q.R., comes flapping round the windy corner, one starts
+in wonder at the permanent might of that vast superstition which has
+grasped the very central symbol of ancient empire, and brought it down,
+like a boulder on a glacier, into modern days. It makes all Christianity
+seem but a vast palimpsest, since the letters which once meant "_Senatus
+Populusque Romanus_" stand now only for the feebler modern formula,
+"_Salve populum quem redemisti_."
+
+All these shabby splendors are interspersed among the rank and file of
+two hundred, or thereabouts, lay brethren of different orders, ranging
+in years from six to sixty. The Carmelites wear a sort of white
+bathing-dress, and the Brotherhood of Saint Francis are clothed in long
+brown robes, girded with coarse rope. The very old and the very young
+look rather picturesque in these disguises,--the latter especially,
+urchins with almost baby-faces, toddling along with lighted candle in
+hand; and one often feels astonished to recognize some familiar porter
+or shopkeeper in this ecclesiastical dress, as when discovering a
+pacific next-door neighbor beneath the bear-skin of an American military
+officer. A fit suggestion; for next follows a detachment of Portuguese
+troops-of-the-line,--twenty shambling men in short jackets, with hair
+shaved close, looking most like children's wooden monkeys, by no means
+live enough for the real ones. They straggle along, scarcely less
+irregular in aspect than the main body of the procession; they march
+to the tap of the drum. I never saw a Fourth-of-July procession in the
+remotest of our rural districts which was not beautiful, compared to
+this forlorn display; but the popular homage is duly given, the bells
+jangle incessantly, and, as the procession passes, all men uncover their
+heads or have their hats knocked off by official authority.
+
+Still watching from our hotel-window, turn now from the sham
+picturesqueness of the Church to the real and unconscious
+picturesqueness of every day. It is the orange-season, and beneath us
+streams an endless procession of men, women, and children, each bearing
+on the head a great graceful basket of yellow treasures. Opposite our
+window there is a wall by which they rest themselves, after their
+three-mile walk from the gardens. There they lounge and there they
+chatter. Little boys come slyly to pilfer oranges, and are pelted away
+with other oranges; for a single orange has here no more appreciable
+value than a single apple in our farmers' orchards; and, indeed,
+windfall oranges are left to decay, like windfall apples. During
+this season one sees oranges everywhere, even displayed as a sort of
+thank-offering on the humble altars of country-churches; the children's
+lips and cheeks assume a chronic yellowness; and the narrow side-walks
+are strewn with bits of peel, punched through and through by the boys'
+pop-guns, as our boys punch slices of potato.
+
+All this procession files down, the whole day long, to the orange-yards
+by the quay. There one finds another merry group, or a series of groups,
+receiving and sorting the fragrant loads, papering, packing, boxing. In
+the gardens there seems no end to the varieties of the golden fruit,
+although only one or two are here being packed. There are shaddocks,
+_zamboas,_ limes, sour lemons, sweet lemons, oranges proper, and
+_Tangerinas_; these last being delicate, perfumed, thin-skinned,
+miniature-fruit from the land of the Moors. One may begin to eat oranges
+at Fayal in November; but no discriminating person eats a whole orange
+before March,--a few slices from the sunny side, and the rest is thrown
+upon the ground. One learns to reverse the ordinary principles of
+selection also, and choose the smaller and darker before the large and
+yellow: the very finest in appearance being thrown aside by the packers
+as worthless. Of these packers the Messrs. Dabney employ two hundred,
+and five hundred beside in the transportation. One knows at a glance
+whether the cargo is destined for America or England: the English boxes
+having the thin wooden top bent into a sort of dome, almost doubling the
+solid contents of the box. This is to evade the duty, the custom-house
+measurement being taken only at the corners. It also enables the London
+dealers to remove some two hundred oranges from every box, and still
+send it into the country as full.--When one thinks what a knowing race
+we came from, it is really wonderful where we Yankees picked up our
+honesty.
+
+Let us take one more glance from the window; for there is a mighty
+jingling and rattling, the children are all running to see something,
+and the carriage is approaching. "The carriage": it is said advisedly;
+for there is but one street on the island passable to such an equipage,
+and but one such equipage to enjoy its privileges,--only one, that is,
+drawn by horses, and presentable in Broadway. There are three other
+vehicles, each the object of envy and admiration, but each drawn by oxen
+only. There is the Baroness, the only lady of title, who sports a sort
+of butcher's cart, with a white top; within lies a mattress, and on the
+mattress recline her ladyship and her daughter, as the cart rumbles and
+stumbles over the stones;--nor they alone, for, on emerging from an
+evening party, I have seen the oxen of the Baroness, unharnessed,
+quietly munching their hay at the foot of the stairs, while a pair of
+bare feet emerging from one end of the vehicle, and a hearty snore from
+the other, showed the mattress to be found a convenience by some one
+beside the nobility. Secondly, there is a stout gentleman near the
+Hotel, reputed to possess eleven daughters, and known to possess a
+pea-green omnibus mounted on an ox-cart; the windows are all closed with
+blinds, and the number of young ladies may be an approximation only.
+And, lastly, there sometimes rolls slowly by an expensive English
+curricle, lately imported; the springs are somehow deranged, so that it
+hangs entirely on one side; three ladies ride within, and the proprietor
+sits on the box, surveying in calm delight his two red oxen with their
+sky-blue yoke, and the tall peasant who drives them with a goad.
+
+After a few days of gazing at objects like these, one is ready to recur
+to the maps, and become statistical. It would be needless to say (but
+that we all know far less of geography than we are supposed to know)
+that the Azores are about two-thirds of the way across the Atlantic, and
+about the latitude of Philadelphia; sharing, however, in the greater
+warmth of the European coast, and slightly affected, also, by the Gulf
+Stream. The islands are supposed to have been known to the Phoenicians,
+and Humboldt holds out a flattering possibility of Phoenician traces yet
+discoverable. This lent additional interest to a mysterious inscription
+which we hunted up in a church built in the time of Philip II., at the
+north end of the island; we had the satisfaction of sending a copy of it
+to Humboldt, though it turned out to be only a Latin inscription clothed
+in uncouth Greek characters, such as have long passed for Runic in the
+Belgian churches and elsewhere. The Phoenician traces yet remain to be
+discovered; so does a statue fabled to exist on the shore of one of the
+smaller islands, where Columbus landed in some of his earlier voyages,
+and, pacing the beach, looked eagerly towards the western sea: the
+statue is supposed still to portray him. In the fifteenth century, at
+any rate, the islands were re-discovered. They have always since then
+been under Portuguese control, including in that phrase the period when
+Philip II. united that crown with his own; and they are ruled now
+by Portuguese military and civil governors, with the aid of local
+legislatures.
+
+Fayal stands, with Pico and San Jorge, rather isolated from the rest of
+the group, and out of their sight. It is the largest and most populous
+of the islands, except St. Michael and Terceira; it has the best harbor
+and by far the most of American commerce, St. Michael taking most of the
+English. Whalers put into Fayal for fresh vegetables and supplies, and
+to transship their oil; while distressed vessels often seek the harbor
+to repair damages. The island is twenty-five miles long, and shaped like
+a turtle; the cliffs along the sea range from five hundred to a thousand
+feet in height, and the mountainous interior rises to three thousand.
+The sea is far more restless than upon our coast, the surf habitually
+higher; and there is such a depth of water in many places around the
+shore, that, on one occasion, a whale-ship, drawn too near by the
+current, broke her mainyard against the cliff, without grazing her keel.
+
+The population numbers about twenty-five thousand, one-half of these
+being found in the city of Horta, and the rest scattered in some forty
+little hamlets lying at irregular distances along the shores. There are
+very few English or French residents, and no Americans but the different
+branches of the Consul's family,--a race whose reputation for all
+generous virtues has spread too widely to leave any impropriety in
+mentioning them here. Their energy and character have made themselves
+felt in every part of the island; and in the villages farthest from
+their charming home, one has simply to speak of _a familia_, "the
+family," and the introduction is sufficient. Almost every good
+institution or enterprise on the island is the creation of Mr. Dabney.
+He transacts without charge the trade in vegetables between the peasants
+and the whale-ships, guarantying the price to the producers, giving them
+the profits, if any, and taking the risk himself; and the only provision
+for pauperism is found in his charities. Every Saturday, rain or shine,
+there flocks together from all parts of the island a singular collection
+of aged people, lame, halt, and blind, who receive, to the number of two
+hundred, a weekly donation of ten cents each, making a thousand dollars
+annually, which constitutes but a small part of the benefactions of this
+remarkable man, the true father of the island, with twenty-five thousand
+grown children to take care of.
+
+Ten cents a week may not seem worth a whole day's journey on foot, but
+by the Fayal standard it is amply worth it. The usual rate of wages for
+an able-bodied man is sixteen cents a day; and an acquaintance of ours,
+who had just got a job on the roads at thirty cents a day, declined a
+good opportunity to emigrate to America, on the ground that it was best
+to "let well alone." Yet the price of provisions is by no means very
+low, and the difference is chiefly in abstinence. But fuel and clothing
+cost little, since little is needed,--except that no woman thinks
+herself really respectable until she has her great blue cloak, which
+requires an outlay of from fifteen to thirty dollars, though the whole
+remaining wardrobe may not be worth half that. The poorer classes pay
+about a dollar a month in rent; they eat fish several times a week
+and meat twice or thrice a year, living chiefly upon the coarsest
+corn-bread, with yams and beans. Still they contrive to have their
+luxuries. A soldier's wife, an elderly woman, said to me pathetically,
+"We have six _vintems_ (twelve cents) a day,--my husband smokes and I
+take snuff,--and how _are_ we to buy shoes and stockings?" But the most
+extreme case of economy which I discovered was that of a poor old woman,
+unable to tell her own age, who boarded with a poor family for four
+_patacos_ (twenty cents) a month, or five cents a week. She had, she
+said, a little place in the chimney to sleep in, and when they had too
+large a fire, she went out of doors. Such being the standard of ordinary
+living, one can compute the terrors of the famine which has since
+occurred in Fayal, and which has only been relieved through the
+contributions levied in this country, and the energy of Mr. Dabney.
+
+Steeped in this utter poverty,--dwelling in low, dark, smoky huts, with
+earthen floors,--it is yet wonderful to see how these people preserve
+not merely the decencies, but even the amenities of life. Their clothes
+are a chaos of patches, but one sees no rags; all their well-worn white
+garments are white in the superlative degree; and when their scanty
+supply of water is at the scantiest, every bare foot on the island is
+sure to be washed in warm water at night. Certainly there are fleas
+and there are filthinesses in some directions; and yet it is amazing,
+especially for one accustomed to the Irish, to see an extreme of poverty
+so much greater, with such an utter absence of squalidness. But when all
+this is said and done, the position of the people of Fayal is an abject
+one, that is, it is a _European_ position; it teaches more of history
+in a day to an untravelled American than all his studies had told
+him besides,--and he returns home ready to acquiesce in a thousand
+dissatisfactions, in view of that most wondrous of all recorded social
+changes, the transformation of the European peasant into the American
+citizen.
+
+Fayal is not an expensive place. One pays six dollars a week at an
+excellent hotel, and there is nothing else to spend money on, except
+beggars and donkeys. For a shilling an hour one can go to ride, or, as
+the Portuguese phrase perhaps circuitously expresses it, go to walk
+on horseback on a donkey,--_dar um passeio a cavallo n'um burro_. The
+beggars, indeed, are numerous; but one's expenditures are always happily
+limited by the great scarcity of small change. A half-cent, however,
+will buy you blessings enough for a lifetime, and you can find an
+investment in almost any direction. You visit some church or cemetery;
+you ask a question or two of a lounger in a black cloak, with an air
+like an exiled Stuart, and, as you part, he detains you, saying, "Sir,
+will you give me some little thing, (_alguma cousinha_,)--I am so poor?"
+Overwhelmed with a sense of personal humility, you pull out three
+half-cents and present them with a touch of your hat, he receives them
+with the same, and you go home with a feeling that a distinguished honor
+has been done you. The Spaniards say that the Portuguese are "mean even
+in their begging": they certainly make their benefactors mean; and I can
+remember returning home, after a donation of a whole _pataco_, (five
+cents,) with a debilitating sense of too profuse philanthropy.
+
+It is inevitable that even the genteel life of Fayal should share this
+parsimony. As a general rule, the higher classes on the island, socially
+speaking, live on astonishingly narrow means. How they do it is a
+mystery; but families of eight contrive to spend only three or four
+hundred dollars a year, and yet keep several servants, and always appear
+rather stylishly dressed. The low rate of wages (two dollars a month at
+the very highest) makes servants a cheap form of elegance. I was told of
+a family employing two domestics upon an income of a hundred and twenty
+dollars. Persons come to beg, sometimes, and bring a servant to carry
+home what is given. I never saw a mechanic carry his tools; if it be
+only a hammer, the hired boy must come to fetch it.
+
+Fortunately, there is not much to transport, the mechanic arts being in
+a very rudimentary condition. For instance, there are no saw-horses nor
+hand-saws, the smallest saw used being a miniature wood-saw, with the
+steel set at an angle, in a peculiar manner. It takes three men to saw a
+plank: one to hold the plank, another to saw, and a third to carry away
+the pieces.
+
+Farming-tools have the same simplicity. It is one odd result of the
+universal bare feet that they never will use spades; everything is done
+with a hoe, most skilfully wielded. There are no wheelbarrows, but
+baskets are the universal substitutes. The plough is made entirely of
+wood, only pointed with iron, and is borne to and from the field on
+the shoulder. The carts are picturesque, but clumsy; they are made of
+wicker-work, and the iron-shod wheels are solidly attached to the axle,
+so that all revolves together, amid fearful creaking. The people could
+not be induced to use a cart with movable wheels which was imported from
+America, nor will they even grease their axles, because the noise is
+held to drive away witches. Some other arts are a little more advanced,
+as any visitor to Mr. Harper's pleasant Fayal shop in Boston may
+discover. They make homespun cloth upon a simple loom, and out of their
+smoky huts come beautiful embroideries and stockings whose fineness is
+almost unequalled. Their baskets are strong and graceful, and I have
+seen men sitting in village doorways, weaving the beautiful broom-plant,
+yellow flowers and all, until basket and bouquet seemed one.
+
+The greater part of the surface of the island is cultivated like a
+kitchen-garden, even up to the top of volcanic cones eight hundred feet
+high, and accessible only by steps cut in the earth. All the land
+is divided into little rectangular patches of various verdure,
+--yellow-blossomed broom, blue-flowering flax, and the contrasting
+green of lupines, beans, Indian corn, and potatoes. There is
+not a spire of genuine grass on the island, except on the Consul's lawn,
+but wilds covered with red heather, low _faya_-bushes, (whence the name
+of the island,) and a great variety of mosses. The cattle are fed on
+beans and lupines. Firewood is obtained from the opposite island of
+Pico, five miles off, and from the _Caldeira_ or Crater, a pit five
+miles round and fifteen hundred feet deep, at the summit of Fayal,
+whence great fagots are brought upon the heads of men and girls. It is
+an oversight in the "New American Cyclopaedia" to say of Fayal that "the
+chief object of agriculture is the vine," because there are not a half
+dozen vineyards on the island, the soil being unsuitable; but there
+are extensive vineyards on Pico, and these are owned almost wholly by
+proprietors resident in Fayal.
+
+There is a succession of crops of vegetables throughout the year; peas
+are green in January, which is, indeed, said to be the most verdant
+month of the twelve, the fields in summer becoming parched and yellow.
+The mercury usually ranges from 50° to 80°, winter and summer; but we
+were there during an unusually cool season, and it went down to 45°.
+This was regarded as very severe by the thinly clad Fayalese, and I
+sometimes went into cottages and found the children lying in bed to keep
+warm. Yet roses, geraniums, and callas bloomed out of doors all the
+time, and great trees of red camellia, which they cut as we cut roses.
+Superb scarlet banana-flowers decked our Christmas-Tree. Deciduous trees
+lose their leaves in winter there, however, and exotic plants retain the
+habits they brought with them, with one singular exception. The _Morus
+multicaulis_ was imported, and the silk-manufacture with it; suddenly
+the trees seemed to grow bewildered, they put forth earlier and earlier
+in the spring, until they got back to January; the leaves at last fell
+so early that the worms died before spinning cocoons, and the whole
+enterprise was in a few years abandoned because of this vegetable
+insanity.
+
+In spite of the absence of snow and presence of verdure, this falling of
+the leaves gives some hint of winter; yet blackbirds and canaries sing
+without ceasing. The latter are a variety possessing rather inferior
+charms, compared with the domestic species; but they have a pretty habit
+of flying away to Pico every night: it was pleasant to sit at sunset
+on the high cliffs at the end of the island and watch the little brown
+creatures, like fragments of the rock itself, whirled away over the
+foaming ocean. The orange-orchards were rather a disappointment; they
+suggested quince-trees with more shining leaves; and, indeed, there was
+a hard, glossy, coriaceous look to the vegetation generally, which made
+us sometimes long for the soft, tender green of more temperate zones.
+The novel beauty of the Dabney gardens can scarcely be exaggerated;
+each step was a new incursion into the tropics,--a palm, a magnolia, a
+camphor-tree, a dragon-tree, suggesting Humboldt and Orotava, a clump
+of bamboos or cork-trees, or the startling strangeness of the great
+grass-like banana, itself a jungle. There are hedges of pittosporum,
+arbors veiled by passion-flowers, and two of that most beautiful of all
+living trees, the _araucaria_, or Norfolk Island pine,--one specimen
+being some eighty feet high, and said to be the tallest north of the
+equator. And when over all this luxuriant exotic beauty the soft clouds
+furled away and the sun showed us Pico, we had no more to ask, and the
+soft, beautiful blue cone became an altar for our gratitude, and the
+thin mist of hot volcanic air that flickered above it seemed the rising
+incense of the world.
+
+In the midst of all these charming surprises, we found it hard to begin
+at once upon the study of the language, although the prospect of a
+six-months' stay made it desirable. We were pleased to experience
+the odd, stupid sensation of having people talk loud to us as being
+foreigners, and of seeing even the little children so much more at their
+ease than we were. And every step beyond this was a new enjoyment. We
+found the requisites for learning a language on its own soil to be
+a firm will, a quick ear, flexible lips, and a great deal of cool
+audacity. Plunge boldly in, expecting to make countless blunders; find
+out the shops where they speak English, and don't go there; make your
+first bargains at twenty-five per cent. disadvantage, and charge it as
+a lesson in the language; expect to be laughed at, and laugh yourself,
+because you win. The daily labor is its own reward. If it is a pleasure
+to look through a telescope in an observatory, gradually increasing its
+powers until a dim nebula is resolved into a whole galaxy of separate
+stars, how much more when the nebula is one of language around you, and
+the telescope is your own more educated ear!
+
+We discovered further, what no one had ever told us, that the ability to
+speak French, however poorly, is rather a drawback in learning any less
+universal language, because the best company in any nation will usually
+have some knowledge of French, and this tempts one to remain on neutral
+ground and be lazy. But the best company in Fayal was so much less
+interesting than the peasantry, that some of us persevered in studying
+the vernacular. To be sure, one finds English spoken by more of the
+peasants than of the small aristocracy of the island, so many of the
+former have spent some years in American whale-ships, and come back to
+settle down with their savings in their native village. In visiting the
+smaller hamlets on the island, I usually found that the owners of the
+two or three most decent houses had learned to speak English in this
+way. But I was amused at the dismay of an American sea-captain who on a
+shooting excursion ventured on some free criticisms on the agriculture
+of a farm, and was soon answered in excellent English by the proprietor.
+
+"Look at the foolish fellow," quoth the captain, "carrying his plough to
+the field on his shoulder!"
+
+"Sir," said the Portuguese, coolly, "I have no other way to take it
+there."
+
+The American reserved his fire, thereafter, for bipeds with wings.
+
+These Americanized sailors form a sort of humbler aristocracy in Fayal,
+and are apt to pride themselves on their superior knowledge of the
+world, though their sober habits have commonly saved them from the
+demoralization of a sailor's life. But the untravelled Fayalese
+peasantry are a very gentle, affectionate, childlike people, pensive
+rather than gay, industrious, but not ingenious, with few amusements and
+those the simplest, incapable of great crimes or very heroic virtues,
+educated by their religion up to the point of reverent obedience, but no
+higher.
+
+Their grace and beauty are like our impressions of the Italian
+peasantry, and probably superior to the reality in that case. Among
+the young men and boys, especially, one sees the true olive cheeks and
+magnificent black eyes of Southern races. The women of Fayal are not
+considered remarkable for beauty, but in the villages of Pico one sees
+in the doorways of hovels complexions like rose-petals, and faces such
+as one attributes to Evangeline, soft, shy, and innocent. But the
+figure is the chief wonder, the figure of woman as she was meant to be,
+beautiful in superb vigor,--not diseased and tottering, as with us, but
+erect and strong and stately; every muscle fresh and alive, from the
+crown of the steady head, to the sole of the emancipated foot,--and
+yet not heavy and clumsy, as one fancies barefooted women must be, but
+inheriting symmetry and grace from the Portuguese or Moorish blood. I
+have looked through the crowded halls of Saratoga in vain for one
+such figure as I have again and again seen descending those steep
+mountain-paths with a bundle of firewood on the head, or ascending them
+with a basket of farm-manure. No person who has never left America can
+appreciate the sensation of living among healthy women; often as I heard
+of this, I was utterly unprepared for the realization; I never lost the
+conscious enjoyment of it for a single day; and when I reached home and
+walked across Boston Common on a June Sunday, I felt as if I were in a
+hospital for consumptives.
+
+This condition of health cannot be attributed to any mere advantage of
+climate. The higher classes of Fayal are feeble and sickly; their diet
+is bad, they take no exercise, and suffer the consequences; they have
+all the ills to which flesh is heir, including one specially Portuguese
+complaint, known by the odd name of _dôr do cotovelo_, elbow-disease,
+which corresponds to that known to Anglo-Saxons, by an equally bold
+symbol, as the green-eyed monster, Jealousy. So the physical superiority
+of the peasantry seems to come solely from their mode of life,--out-door
+labor, simple diet, and bare feet. Change these and their health goes;
+domestic service in foreign families on the island always makes them
+ill, and often destroys their health and bloom forever; and strange
+to say, that which most nauseates and deranges their whole physical
+condition, in such cases, is the necessity of wearing shoes and
+stockings.
+
+The Pico peasants have also the advantage of the Fayalese in
+picturesqueness of costume. The men wear homespun blue jackets and blue
+or white trousers, with a high woollen cap of red or blue. The women
+wear a white waist with a gay kerchief crossed above the bosom, a full
+short skirt of blue, red, or white, and a man's jacket of blue, with
+tight sleeves. On the head there is the pretty round-topped straw hat
+with red and white cord, which is now so extensively imported from
+Fayal; and beneath this there is always another kerchief, tied under the
+chin, or hanging loosely. The costume is said to vary in every village,
+but in the villages opposite Horta this dress is worn by every woman
+from grandmother to smallest granddaughter; and when one sails across
+the harbor, in the lateen-sail packet-boat, and old and young come forth
+on the rocks to see the arrival, it seems like voyaging to some realm of
+butterflies.
+
+This out-door life begins very early. As soon as the Fayalese baby is
+old enough to sit up alone, he is sent into the nursery. The nursery
+is the sunny side of the house-door. A large stone is selected, in a
+convenient position, and there the little dusky creature squats, hour
+after hour, clad in one garment at most, and looking at the universe
+through two black beads of eyes. Often the little dog comes and suns
+himself close by, and the little cat beside the dog, and the little pig
+beside the cat, and the little hen beside the pig,--a "Happy Family," a
+row of little traps to catch sunbeams, all down the lane. When older,
+the same child harnesses his little horse and wagon, he being the horse
+and a sheep's jawbone the wagon, and trots contentedly along, in almost
+the smallest amount of costume accessible to mortals. All this refers
+to the genuine, happy, plebeian baby. The genteel baby is probably as
+wretched in Fayal as elsewhere, but he is kept more out of sight.
+
+These children are seldom noisy and never rude: the race is not
+hilarious, and their politeness is inborn. Not an urchin of three can be
+induced to accept a sugar-plum until he has shyly slid off his little
+cap, if he has one, and kissed his plump little hand. The society of
+princes can hardly surpass the natural courtesy of the peasant, who
+insists on climbing the orange-tree to select for you the choicest
+fruit. A shopkeeper never can sell you a handful of nuts without
+bringing the bundle near to his lips, first, with a graceful wave of
+salutation. A lady from Lisbon told us that this politeness surpassed
+that of the native Portuguese; and the wife of an English captain, who
+had sailed with her husband from port to port for fifteen years, said
+that she had never seen anything to equal it. It is not the slavishness
+of inferiors, for the poorest exhibit it towards each other. You see
+two very old women talking eagerly in the street, each in a cloak whose
+every square inch is a patch, and every patch a different shade,--and
+each alternate word you hear seems to be _Senhora_. Among laboring men,
+the most available medium of courtesy is the little paper cigar; it
+contains about four whiffs, and is smoked by about that number of
+separate persons.
+
+But to fully appreciate this natural courtesy, one must visit the
+humbler Fayalese at home. You enter a low stone hut, thatched and
+windowless, and you find the mistress within, a robust, black-eyed,
+dark-skinned woman, engaged in grinding corn with a Scriptural handmill.
+She bars your way with apologies; you must not enter so poor a house;
+you are so beautiful, so perfect, and she is so poor, she has "nothing
+but the day and the night," or some equally poetic phrase. But you enter
+and talk with her a little, and she readily shows you all her little
+possessions,--her chest on the earthen floor, her one chair and stool,
+her tallow-candle stuck against the wall, her husk mattress rolled
+together, with the precious blue cloak inside of it. Behind a curtain
+of coarse straw-work is a sort of small boudoir, holding things more
+private, an old barrel with the winter's fuel in it, a few ears of corn
+hanging against the wall, a pair of shoes, and a shelf with a large
+pasteboard box. The box she opens triumphantly and exhibits her
+_santinhos_, or little images of saints. This is San Antonio, and this
+is Nossa Senhora do Conceiçao, Our Lady of the Conception. She prays to
+them every day for sunshine; but they do not seem to hear, this
+winter, and it rains all the time. Then, approaching the climax of her
+blessedness, with beaming face she opens a door in the wall, and shows
+you her pig.
+
+The courtesy of the higher classes tends to formalism, and has stamped
+itself on the language in some very odd ways. The tendency common to all
+tongues, towards a disuse of the second person singular, as too blunt
+and familiar, is carried so far in Spanish and Portuguese as to disuse
+the second person plural also, except in the family circle, and to
+substitute the indirect phrases, _vuestra Merced_ (in Spanish) and
+_vossa Mercé_ (in Portuguese), both much contracted in speaking and
+familiar writing, and both signifying "your Grace." The joke of
+invariably applying this epithet to one's valet would seem sufficiently
+grotesque in either language, and here the Spanish stops; but Portuguese
+propriety has gone so far that even this phrase has become too hackneyed
+to be civil. In talking with your equals, it would be held an insult
+to call them simply "your Grace"; it must be some phrase still more
+courtly,--_vossa Excellencia_, or _vossa Senhoria_.--One may hear an
+elderly gentleman talking to a young girl of fourteen, or, better still,
+two such damsels talking together, and it is "your Excellency" at every
+sentence; and the prescribed address on an envelope is _"Illustrissima
+Excellentissima Senhora Dona Maria_." The lower classes have not quite
+reached the "Excellency," but have got beyond the "Grace," and hence the
+personal pronouns are in a state of colloquial chaos, and the only safe
+way is to hold to the third person and repeat the name of Manuel or
+Maria, or whatever it may be, as often as possible.
+
+This leads naturally to the mention of another peculiar usage. On
+visiting the Fayal post-office, I was amazed to find the letters
+arranged alphabetically in the order of the baptismal, not the family
+names, of the persons concerned,--as if we should enumerate Adam,
+Benjamin, Charles, and so on. But I at once discovered this to be the
+universal usage. Merchants, for instance, thus file their business
+papers; or rather, since four-fifths of the male baptismal names in the
+language fall under the four letters, A, F, J, M, they arrange only five
+bundles, giving one respectively to Antonio, Francisco, José or João,
+and Manuel, adding a fifth for sundries. This all seemed inexplicable,
+till at last there proved to be an historical kernel to the nut. The
+Portuguese, and to some extent the Spaniards, have kept nearer to the
+primitive usage which made the personal name the important one and the
+patronymic quite secondary. John Smith is not known conversationally as
+Mr. Smith, but as Mr. John,--Senhor João. One may have an acquaintance
+in society named Senhor Francisco, and another named Senhora Dona
+Christina, and it may be long before it turns out that they are brother
+and sister, the family name being, we will suppose, Garcia da Rosa; and
+even then it will be doubtful whether to call them Garcia or da Rosa.
+This explains the great multiplication of names in Spain and Portugal.
+The first name being the important one, the others may be added,
+subtracted, multiplied, or divided, with perfect freedom. A wife may or
+may not add her husband's name to her own; the eldest son takes some of
+the father's family names, the second son some of the mother's, saints'
+names are sprinkled in to suit the taste, and no confusion is produced,
+because the first name is the only one in common use. Each may, if he
+pleases, carry all his ancestors on his visiting-card, without any
+inconvenience except the cost of pasteboard.
+
+Fayal exhibits another point of courtesy to be studied. The gentleman of
+our party was early warned that it was very well to learn his way about
+the streets, but far more essential to know the way to the brim of his
+hat. Every gentleman touches his hat to every lady, acquaintance or
+stranger, in street or balcony. So readily does one grow used to this,
+that I was astonished, for a moment, at the rudeness of some French
+officers, just landed from a frigate, who passed some ladies, friends
+of mine, without raising the hat. "Are these," I asked, "the polite
+Frenchmen one reads about?"--not reflecting that I myself should not
+have ventured on bowing to strange ladies in the same position, without
+special instruction in Portuguese courtesies. These little refinements
+became, indeed, very agreeable, only alloyed by the spirit of caste in
+which they were performed,--elbowing the peasant-woman off the sidewalk
+for the sake of doffing the hat to the Baroness. I thought of the
+impartial courtesies shown towards woman as woman in my own country, and
+the spread eagle within me flapped his pinions. Then I asked myself,
+"What if the woman were black?" and the eagle immediately closed his
+wings, and flapped no more. But I may add, that afterwards, attending
+dances among the peasants, I was surprised to see my graceful swains in
+humble life smoking and spitting in the presence of white-robed belles,
+in a manner not to be witnessed on our farthest western borders.
+
+The position of woman in Portuguese countries brings one nearer to that
+Oriental type from which modern society has been gradually diverging.
+Woman is secluded, so far as each family can afford it, which is the key
+to the Oriental system. Seclusion is aristocracy, and if it cannot be
+made complete, the household must do the best they can. Thus, in the
+lowest classes, one daughter is often decreed by the parents to be
+brought up like a lady, and for this every sacrifice is to be made. Her
+robust sisters go bare-footed to the wells for water, they go miles
+unprotected into the lonely mountains; no social ambition, no genteel
+helplessness for them. But Mariquinha is taught to read, write, and sew;
+she is as carefully looked after as if the world wished to steal her;
+she wears shoes and stockings and an embroidered kerchief and a hooded
+cloak; and she never steps outside the door alone. You meet her, pale
+and demure, plodding along to mass with her mother. The sisters will
+marry laborers and fishermen; Mariquinha will marry a small shop-keeper
+or the mate of a vessel, or else die single. It is not very pleasant for
+the poor girl in the mean time; she is neither healthy nor happy; but
+"let us be genteel or die."
+
+On _festa_-days she and her mother draw their hoods so low and their
+muffling handkerchiefs so high that the costume is as good as a
+_yashmak_, and in passing through the streets these one-eyed women seem
+like an importation from the "Arabian Nights." Ladies of higher rank,
+also, wear the hooded cloak for disguise and greater freedom, and at a
+fashionable wedding in the cathedral I have seen the jewelled fingers of
+the uninvited acquaintances gleam from the blue folds of broadcloth. But
+very rarely does one see the aristocratic lady in the street in her own
+French apparel, and never alone. There must be a male relative, or a
+servant, or, at the very least, a female companion. Even the ladies of
+the American Consul's family very rarely go out singly,--not from any
+fear, for the people are as harmless as birds, but from etiquette. The
+first foreign lady who walked habitually alone in the streets was at
+once christened "The Crazy American." A lady must not be escorted home
+from an evening party by a gentleman, but by a servant with a lantern;
+and as the streets have no lamps, I never could see the breaking-up of
+any such entertainment without recalling Retzsch's quaint pictures of
+the little German towns, and the burghers plodding home with their
+lanterns,--unless, perchance, what a foreign friend of ours called a
+"sit-down chair" came rattling by, and transferred our associations to
+Cranford and Mr. Winkle.
+
+We found or fancied other Orientalisms. A visitor claps his hands at
+the head of the court-yard stairs, to summon an attendant. The solid
+chimneys, with windows in them, are precisely those described by
+Urquhart in his delightful "Pillars of Hercules"; so are the gardens,
+divided into clean separate cells by tall hedges of cane; so is the game
+of ball played by the boys in the street, under the self-same Moorish
+name of _arri_; so is the mode of making butter, by tying up the
+cream in a goat-skin and kicking it till the butter comes. Even the
+architecture fused into one all our notions of Gothic and of Moorish,
+and gave great plausibility to Urquhart's ingenious argument for
+the latter as the true original. And it is a singular fact that the
+Mohammedan phrase _Oxald_, "Would to Allah," is still the most familiar
+ejaculation in the Portuguese language and the habitual equivalent in
+their religious books for "Would to God."
+
+We were treated with great courtesy and hospitality by our Portuguese
+neighbors, and an evening party in Fayal is in some respects worth
+describing. As one enters, the anteroom is crowded with gentlemen, and
+the chief reception-room seems like a large omnibus, lighted, dressed
+with flowers, and having a row of ladies on each side. The personal
+beauty is perhaps less than one expects, though one sees some superb
+dark eyes and blue-black hair; they dress with a view to the latest
+French fashions, and sometimes rather a distant view. At last a lady
+takes her seat at the piano, then comes an eager rush of gentlemen into
+the room, and partners are taken for cotillons,--large, double, _very_
+double cotillons, here called _contradanças_. The gentlemen appear in
+scrupulous black broadcloth and satin and white kid; in summer alone
+they are permitted to wear white trousers to parties; and we heard of
+one anxious youth who, about the turn of the season, wore the black and
+carried the white in his pocket, peeping through the door, on arrival,
+to see which had the majority. It seemed a pity to waste such gifts of
+discretion on a monarchical country, when he might have emigrated to
+America and applied them to politics.
+
+The company perform their dancing with the accustomed air of civilized
+festivity, "as if they were hired to do it, and were doubtful about
+being paid." Changes of figure are announced by a clapping of hands from
+one of the gentlemen, and a chorus of such applauses marks the end of
+the dance. Then they promenade slowly round the room, once or twice, in
+pairs; then the ladies take their seats, and instantly each gentleman
+walks hurriedly into the anteroom, and for ten minutes there is as
+absolute a separation of the sexes as in a Friends' Meeting. Nobody
+approves of this arrangement, in the abstract; it is all very well, they
+think, for gentlemen, if foreigners, to remain in the room, but it is
+not the Portuguese custom. Yet, with this exception, the manners are
+agreeably simple. Your admission to the house guaranties you as a proper
+acquaintance, there are no introductions, and you may address any one in
+any language you can coin into a sentence. Many speak French, and two or
+three English,--sometimes with an odd mingling of dialects, as when the
+Military Governor answered my inquiry, made in timid Portuguese, as to
+how long he had served in the army. _"Vinte-cinco annos,"_ he answered,
+in the same language; then, with an effort after an unexceptionable
+translation, "Vat you call, Twenty-cinq year"!
+
+The great obstacle to the dialogue soon becomes, however, a deficit of
+subjects rather than of words. Most of these ladies never go out except
+to mass and to parties, they never read, and if one of them has some
+knowledge of geography, it is quite an extended education; so that, when
+you have asked them if they have ever been to St. Michael, and they have
+answered, Yes,--or to Lisbon, and they have answered, No,--then social
+intercourse rather flags. I gladly record, however, that there were some
+remarkable exceptions to this, and that we found in the family of
+the late eminent Portuguese statesman, Mousinho d'Albuquerque,
+accomplishments and knowledge which made their acquaintance an honor.
+
+During the intervals of the dancing, little trays of tea and of cakes
+are repeatedly carried round,--astonishing cakes, in every gradation of
+insipidity, with the oddest names: white poison, nuns' kisses, angels'
+crops, cats' tails, heavenly bacon, royal eggs, coruscations, cocked
+hats, and _esquecidos_, or oblivion cakes, the butter being omitted. It
+seems an unexpected symbol of the plaintive melancholy of the Portuguese
+character that the small confections which we call kisses they call
+sighs, _suspiros_. As night advances, the cakes grow sweeter and the
+dances livelier, and the pretty national dances are at last introduced;
+though these are never seen to such advantage as when the peasants
+perform them on a Saturday or Sunday evening to the monotonous strain of
+a viola, the musician himself taking part in the complicated dance, and
+all the men chanting the refrain. Nevertheless they add to the gayety of
+our genteel entertainment, and you may stay at the party as long as you
+have patience,--if till four in the morning, so much the better for your
+popularity; for, though the gathering consist of but thirty people, they
+like to make the most of it.
+
+Perhaps the next day one of these new friends kindly sends in a present
+for the ladies of the party: a bouquet of natural flowers with the
+petals carefully gilded; a _folar_ or Easter cake, being a large loaf of
+sweetened bread, baked in a ring, and having whole eggs, shell and all,
+in the midst of it. One lady of our acquaintance received a pretty
+basket, which being opened revealed two little Portuguese pigs, about
+eight inches long, snow-white, wearing blue ribbons round their necks
+and scented with cologne.
+
+Beyond these occasional parties, there seems very little society during
+the winter, the native ladies seldom either walking or riding, and there
+being no places of secular amusement. In summer, it is said, when the
+principal families resort to their vineyards at Pico, formalities are
+laid aside, and a simpler intercourse takes place. But I never saw any
+existence more thoroughly pitiable than that of the young men of the
+higher classes; they had literally nothing to do, except to dress
+themselves elegantly and lounge all day in an apothecary's shop. A
+very few went out shooting or fishing occasionally; but anything like
+employment, even mercantile, was entirely beneath their caste; and they
+only pardoned the constant industry of the American Consul and his
+family, as a sort of national eccentricity, for which they must not be
+severely condemned.
+
+A good school-system is being introduced into all the Portuguese
+dominions, but there is no book-store in Fayal, though some dry-goods
+dealers sell a few religious books. We heard a rumor of a Portuguese
+"Uncle Tom" also, but I never could find the copy. The old Convent
+Libraries were sent to Lisbon, on the suppression of the monasteries,
+and never returned. There was once a printing-press on the island, but
+one of the Governors shipped it off to St. Michael. "There it goes," he
+said to the American Consul, "and the Devil take it!" The vessel was
+wrecked in the bay. "You see," he afterwards piously added, "the Devil
+_has_ taken it." It is proper, however, to mention, that a press and a
+newspaper have been established since our visit, without further Satanic
+interference.
+
+Books were scarce on the island. One official gentleman from Lisbon,
+quite an accomplished man, who spoke French fluently and English
+tolerably, had some five hundred books, chiefly in the former tongue,
+including seventy-two volumes of Balzac. His daughter, a young lady of
+fifteen, more accomplished than most of the belles of the island, showed
+me her little library of books in French and Portuguese, including three
+English volumes, an odd selection,--"The Vicar of Wakefield," Gregory's
+"Legacy to his Daughters," and Fielding's "Life of Jonathan Wild." But,
+indeed, her supply of modern Portuguese literature was almost as scanty,
+(there is so very little of it,) and we heard of a gentleman's studying
+French "in order to have something to read," which seemed the last stage
+in national decay.
+
+Perhaps we were still more startled by the unexpected literary
+criticisms of a young lady from St. Michael, English on the father's
+side, but still Roman Catholic, who had just read the New Testament,
+and thus naïvely gave it her indorsement in a letter to an American
+friend:--"I dare say you have read the New Testament; but if you have
+not, I recommend it to you. I have just finished reading it, and find it
+_a very moral and nice book_." After this certificate, it will be safe
+for the Bible Society to continue its operations.
+
+Nearly all the popular amusements in Fayal occur in connection with
+religion. After the simpler buildings and rites of the Romish Church in
+America, the Fayal churches impress one as vast baby-houses, and the
+services as acted charades. This perfect intermingling of the religious
+and the melodramatic was one of our most interesting experiences, and
+made the Miracle Plays of history a very simple and intelligible thing.
+In Fayal, holiday and holy-day have not yet undergone the slightest
+separation. A festival has to the people necessarily some religious
+association, and when the Americans celebrate the Fourth of July, Mr.
+Dabney's servants like to dress with flowers a wooden image in his
+garden, the fierce figure-head of some wrecked vessel, which they boldly
+personify as the American Saint. On the other hand, the properties of
+the Church are as freely used for merrymaking. On public days there are
+fireworks provided by the priests; they are kept in the church till the
+time comes, and then touched off in front of the building, with very
+limited success, by the sacristan. And strangest of all, at the final
+puff and bang of each remarkable piece of pyrotechny, the bells ring
+out just the same sudden clang which marks the agonizing moment of the
+Elevation of the Host.
+
+On the same principle, the theatricals which occasionally enliven the
+island take place in chapels adjoining the churches. I shall never
+forget the example I saw, on one of these dramatic occasions, of that
+one cardinal virtue of Patience, which is to the Portuguese race the
+substitute for all more positive manly qualities. The performance was
+to be by amateurs, and a written programme had been sent from house to
+house during the day; and this had announced the curtain as sure to
+rise at eight. But as most of the spectators went at six to secure
+places,--literally, places, for each carried his or her own chair,--one
+might suppose the audience a little impatient before the appointed hour
+arrived. But one would then suppose very incorrectly. Eight o'clock
+came, and a quarter past eight, but no curtain rose. Half-past eight. No
+movement nor sign of any. The people sat still. A quarter to nine. The
+people sat still. Nine o'clock. The people sat perfectly still, nobody
+talking much, the gentlemen being all the while separated from the
+ladies, and all quiet. At last, at a quarter past nine, the orchestra
+came in! They sat down, laid aside their instruments, and looked about
+them. Suddenly a whistle was heard behind the scenes. Nothing came of
+it, however. After a time, another whistle. The people sat still. Then
+the orchestra began to tune their instruments, and at half-past nine the
+overture began. And during all that inexplicable delay of one hour and a
+half, after a preliminary waiting of two hours, there was not a single
+look of annoyance or impatience, nor the slightest indication, on any
+face, that this was viewed as a strange or extraordinary thing. Indeed,
+it was not.
+
+We duly attended, not on this occasion only, but on all ecclesiastical
+festivals, grave or gay,--the only difficulty being to discover any
+person in town who had even approximate information as to when or where
+they were to occur. We saw many sights that are universal in Roman
+Catholic countries, and many that are peculiar to Fayal: we saw the
+"Procession of the Empress," when, for six successive Saturday evenings,
+young girls walk in order through the streets white-robed and crowned;
+saw the vessels in harbor decorated with dangling effigies of Judas, on
+the appointed day; saw the bands of men at Easter going about with flags
+and plates to beg money for the churches, and returning at night with
+feet suspiciously unsteady; saw the feet-washing, on Maundy-Thursday, of
+twelve old men, each having a square inch of the instep washed, wiped,
+and cautiously kissed by the Vicar-General, after which twelve lemons
+were solemnly distributed, each with a silver coin stuck into the peel;
+saw and felt the showers of water, beans, flour, oranges, eggs, from the
+balcony-windows during Carnival; saw weddings in churches, with groups
+of male companions holding tall candles round kneeling brides; saw the
+distribution to the poor of bread and meat and wine from long tables
+arranged down the principal street, on Whitsunday,--a memorial vow, made
+long since, to deprecate the recurrence of an earthquake. But it must be
+owned that these things, so unspeakably interesting at first, became a
+little threadbare before the end of the winter; we grew tired of the
+tawdriness and shabbiness which pervaded them all, of the coarse faces
+of the priests, and the rank odor of the incense.
+
+We had left Protestantism in a state of vehement intolerance in America,
+but we soon found, that, to hear the hardest things said against the
+priesthood, one must visit a Roman Catholic country. There was no end
+to the anecdotes of avarice and sensuality in this direction, and there
+seemed everywhere the strangest combination of official reverence with
+personal contempt. The principal official, or _Ouvidor_, was known among
+his parishioners by the endearing appellation of "The Black Pig," to
+which his appearance certainly did no discredit. There was a great
+shipwreck at Pico during our stay, and two hundred thousand dollars'
+worth of rich goods was stranded on the bare rocks; there were no
+adequate means for its defence, and the peasants could hardly be
+expected to keep their hands off. But the foremost hands were those of
+the parish priest; for three weeks no mass was said in his church, and
+a funeral was left for days unperformed, that the representative of God
+might steal more silks and laces. When the next service occurred, the
+people remained quiet until the priest rose for the sermon; then they
+rose also tumultuously, and ran out of the church, crying, "_Ladrão!_"
+"Thief!" "But why this indignation?" said an intelligent Roman Catholic
+to us; "there is not a priest on either island who would not have done
+the same." A few days after I saw this same cool critic, candle in hand,
+heading a solemn ecclesiastical procession in the cathedral.
+
+In the country-villages there naturally lingers more undisturbed the
+simple, picturesque life of Roman Catholic society. Every hamlet is
+clustered round its church, almost always magnificently situated, and
+each has its special festivals. Never shall I forget one lovely day when
+we went to witness the annual services at Praya, held to commemorate an
+ancient escape from an earthquake. It was the first day of February.
+After weeks of rain, there came at one burst all the luxury of June,
+winter seemed to pass into summer in a moment, and blackbirds sang on
+every spray. We walked or rode over a steep promontory, down into a
+green valley, scooped softly to the sea: the church was by the beach. As
+we passed along, the steep paths converging from all the hills were full
+of women and men in spotless blue and white, with bright kerchiefs;
+they were all walking barefooted over the rocky ways, only the women
+stopping, ere reaching the church, to don stockings and shoes. Many
+persons sat in sunny places by the roadsides to beg, with few to beg
+from,--blind old men, and groups of children clamorous for coppers, but
+propitiated by sugar-plums. Many others were bringing offerings, candles
+for the altar, poultry, which were piled, a living mass, legs tied, in
+the corner of the church, and small sums of money, which were recorded
+by an ancient man in a mighty book. The church was already so crowded
+that it was almost impossible to enter; the centre was one great
+flower-garden of headdresses of kneeling women, and in the aisles were
+penitents, toiling round the church upon their knees, each bearing a
+lighted candle. But the services had not yet begun, and we went down
+among the rocks to eat our luncheon of bread and oranges; the ocean
+rolled in languidly, a summer sea; we sat beside sheltered, transparent
+basins, among high and pointed rocks, and great, indolent waves
+sometimes reared their heads, looking in upon our retreat, or flooding
+our calm pools with a surface of creamy effervescence. Every square inch
+of the universe seemed crowded with particles of summer.
+
+On our way past the church, we had caught a glimpse of unwonted black
+small-clothes, and, slyly peeping into a little chapel, had seen the
+august Senate of Horta apparently arraying themselves for the ceremony.
+Presently out came a man with a great Portuguese flag, and then the
+Senators, two and two, with short black cloaks, white bands, and
+gold-tipped staves, trod statelily towards the church. And as we
+approached the door, on our return, we saw these dignitaries sitting in
+their great arm-chairs, as one might fancy Venetian potentates, while a
+sonorous Portuguese sermon rolled over their heads as innocuously as a
+Thanksgiving discourse over any New-England congregation.
+
+Do not imagine, by the way, that critical remarks on sermons are a
+monopoly of Protestantism. After one religious service in Fayal, my
+friend, the Professor of Languages, who sometimes gave lessons in
+English, remarked to me confidentially, in my own tongue,--"His sermon
+is good, but his _exposition_ is bad; he does not _expose_ well."
+Supposing him to refer to the elocution, I assented,--secretly thinking,
+however, that the divine in question had exposed himself exceedingly
+well.
+
+Another very impressive ceremony was the Midnight Mass on New Year's
+Eve, when we climbed at midnight, through some close, dark passages in
+the vast church edifice, into a sort of concealed opera-box above
+the high altar, and suddenly opened windows looking down into the
+brilliantly lighted cathedral, crammed with kneeling people and
+throbbing with loud music. It seemed centuries away from all modern
+life,--a glimpse into some buried Pompeii of the Middle Ages. More
+impressive still was Holy Week, when there were some rites unknown to
+other Roman Catholic countries. For three days the great cathedral was
+closely veiled from without and darkened within,--every door closed,
+every window obscured. Before this there had been seventy candles
+lighting up the high altar and the eager faces; now these were all
+extinguished, and through the dark church came chanting a procession
+bearing feeble candles and making a strange clapping sound, with
+_matracas_, like watchmen's rattles; men carried the symbolical bier of
+Jesus in the midst, to its symbolical rest beneath the altar, where the
+three candles, representing the three Marys, blazed above it. During the
+time of darkness there were frequent masses and sermons, while terrible
+transparencies of the Crucifixion were suddenly unrolled from the lofty
+pulpit, and the throng below wept in sympathy, and clapped their cheeks
+in token of anguish, like the flutter of many doves. Then came the
+Hallelujah Saturday, when at noon the mourning ended. It was a
+breathless moment. The priests kneeled in gorgeous robes, chanting
+monotonously, with their foreheads upon the altar-steps; and the hushed
+multitude hung upon their lips, in concentrated ecstasy, waiting for
+the coming joy. Suddenly burst the words, _Gloria in Excelsis_. In an
+instant every door was flung open, every curtain withdrawn, the
+great church was bathed in meridian sunlight, the organ crashed out
+triumphant, the bells pealed, flowers were thrown from the galleries in
+profusion, friends embraced and kissed each other, laughed, talked, and
+cried, and all the sea of gay head-dresses below was tremulous beneath a
+mist of unaccustomed splendor. And yet (this thought smote me) all the
+beautiful transformation has come by simply letting in the common
+light of day. Then why not keep it always? Clear away, Humanity, these
+darkened windows, but clear away also these darkening walls, and show us
+that the simplest religion is the best!
+
+I cannot dwell upon the narrative of our many walks:--to the
+Espalamarca, with its lonely telegraph-station;--to the Burnt Mountain,
+with its colored cliffs;--to visit the few aged nuns who still linger
+in what was once a convent;--to Porto Pim, with its curving Italian
+beach, its playing boys and picturesque fishermen beneath the arched
+gateway;--to the tufa-ledges near by, where the soft rocks are
+honeycombed with the cells hollowed by echini below the water's edge, a
+fact undescribed and almost unexampled, said Agassiz afterwards;--to the
+lofty, lonely Monte da Guia, with its solitary chapel on the peak, and
+its extinct crater, where the sea rolls in and out;--to the Dabney
+orange-gardens, on Sunday afternoons;--to the beautiful Mirante ravine,
+whenever a sudden rain filled the cascades and set the watermills and
+the washerwomen all astir, and the long brook ran down in whirls of
+white foam to the waiting sea;--or to the western shores of the island,
+where we turned to Ariadnes, as we watched departing home-bound vessels
+from those cliffs whose wave-worn fiords and innumerable sea-birds make
+a Norway of Fayal.
+
+And I must also pass over still greater things:--the winter storms
+and ship-wrecks, whose annals were they not written to the "New York
+Tribune"?--and the spring Sunday at superb Castello Branco, with the
+whole rural population thronging to meet in enthusiastic affection the
+unwonted presence of the Consul himself, the feudalism of love;--and the
+ascent of the wild Caldeira, we climbing height after height, leaving
+the valleys below mottled with blue-robed women spreading their white
+garments to dry in the sun, and the great Pico peeping above the clouds
+across the bay, and seeming as if directly above our heads, and nodding
+to us ere it drew back again;--and, best of all, that wonderful
+ascension, by two of us, of Pico itself, seven thousand feet from the
+level of the sea, where we began to climb. We camped half-way up, and
+watched the sunset over the lower peaks of Fayal; we kindled fires of
+_faya_-bushes on the lonely mountain-sides, a beacon for the world; we
+slept in the loft of a little cattle-shed, with the calves below us,
+"the cows' sons," as our Portuguese attendant courteously called them;
+we waked next morning above the clouds, with one vast floor of white
+level vapor beneath us, such as Thoreau alone has described, with here
+and there an open glimpse of the sea far below, yet lifted up to an
+apparent level with the clouds, so as to seem like an Arctic scene, with
+patches of open water. Then we climbed through endless sheep-pastures
+and over great slabs of lava, growing steeper and steeper; we entered
+the crater at last, walled with snows of which portions might be of
+untold ages, for it is never, I believe, wholly empty; we climbed,
+in such a gale of wind that the guides would not follow us, the
+steeple-like central pinnacle, two hundred feet high; and there we
+reached, never to be forgotten, a small central crater at the very
+summit, where steam poured up between the stones,--and, oh, from what
+central earthy depths of wonder that steam came to us! There has been no
+eruption from any portion of Pico for many years, but it is a volcano
+still, and we knew that we were standing on the narrow and giddy summit
+of a chimney of the globe. That was a sensation indeed!
+
+We saw many another wild volcanic cliff and fissure and cave on our
+two-days' tour round the island of Fayal; but it was most startling,
+when, on the first morning, as we passed from green valley to valley
+along the road, suddenly all verdure and life vanished, and we found
+ourselves riding through a belt of white, coarse moss stretching from
+mountain to sea, covering rock and wall and shed like snow or moonlight
+or mountain-laurel or any other pale and glimmering thing; and when,
+after miles of ignorant wonder, we rode out of it into greenness again,
+and were told that we had crossed what the Portuguese call a _Misterio_
+or Mystery,--the track of the last eruption. The moss was the first
+primeval coating of vegetation just clothing those lava-rocks again.
+
+But the time was coming when we must bid good-bye to picturesque
+Fayal. We had been there from November to May; it had been a winter of
+incessant rains, and the first necessary of life had come to be a change
+of umbrellas; it had been colder than usual, making it a comfort to look
+at our stove, though we never lighted it; but our invalids had gained
+by even this degree of mildness, by the wholesome salt dampness, by
+the comforts of our hotel with its respectable Portuguese landlord and
+English landlady, and by the great kindness shown us by all others. At
+last we had begun to feel that we had squeezed the orange of the Azores
+a little dry, and we were ready to go. And when, after three weeks of
+rough sailing in the good bark Azor, we saw Cape Ann again, although it
+looked somewhat flat and prosaic after the headlands of Fayal, yet we
+knew that behind those low shores lay all that our hearts held dearest,
+and all the noblest hopes of the family of man.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+MIDSUMMER AND MAY.
+
+
+I.
+
+
+Very probably you never saw such a superb creature,--if that word,
+creature, does not endow her with too much life: a Semiramis, without
+the profligacy,--an Isis, without the worship,--a Sphinx, yes, a Sphinx,
+with her desert, who long ago despaired of having one come to read her
+riddle, strong, calm, patient perhaps. In this respect she seemed to own
+no redundant life, just enough to eke along existence,--not living, but
+waiting.
+
+I say, all this would have been one's impression; and one's impression
+would have been incorrect.
+
+I really cannot state her age; and having attained to years of
+discretion, it is not of such consequence as it is often supposed to be,
+whether one be twenty or sixty. You would have been confident, that,
+living to count her hundreds, she would only have bloomed with more
+immortal freshness; but such a thought would not have occurred to you
+at all, if you had not already felt that she was no longer young,--she
+possessed so perfectly that certain self-reliance, self-understanding,
+_aplomb_, into which little folk crystallize at an early age, but which
+is not to be found with those whose identities are cast in a larger
+mould, until they have passed through periods of fuller experience.
+
+That Mrs. Laudersdale was the technical magnificent woman, I need
+not reiterate. I wish I knew some name gorgeous enough in sound and
+association for that given her at christening; but I don't. It is my
+opinion that she was born Mrs. Laudersdale, that her coral-and-bell was
+marked Mrs. Laudersdale, and that her name stands golden-lettered on the
+recording angel's leaf simply as Mrs. Laudersdale. It is naturally to be
+inferred, then, that there was a Mr. Laudersdale. There was. But not by
+any means a person of consequence, you assume? Why, yes, of some,--to
+one individual at least Mrs. Laudersdale was so weak as to regard him
+with complacency; she loved--adored her husband. Let me have the
+justice to say that no one suspected her of it. Of course, then, Mr.
+Roger Raleigh had no business to fall in love with her.
+
+Well,--but he did.
+
+At the time when Mrs. Laudersdale had become somewhat more than a
+reigning beauty, and held her sceptre with such apparent indifference
+that she seemed about abandoning it forever, she no longer dazzled with
+unventured combinations of colors and materials in dress. She wore
+most frequently, at this epoch, black velvet that suppled about her
+well-asserted contours; and the very trail of her skirt was unlike
+another woman's, for it coiled and bristled after her with a life and
+motion of its own, like a serpent. Her hair, of too dead a black for
+gloss or glister, was always adorned with a nasturtium-vine, whose vivid
+flames seemed like some personal emanation, and whose odor, acrid and
+single, dispersed a character about her; and the only ornaments she
+condescended to assume were of Etruscan gold, severely simple in design,
+elaborately intricate in workmanship. It is evident she was a poet in
+costume, and had at last _en règle_ acquired a manner. But thirteen
+years ago she apparelled herself otherwise, and thirteen years ago it
+was that Mr. Roger Raleigh fell in love with her. This is how it was.
+
+Among the many lakes in New Hampshire, there is one of extreme
+beauty,--a broad, shadowy water, some nine miles in length, with steep,
+thickly wooded banks, and here and there, as if moored on its calm
+surface, an island fit for the Bower of Bliss. At one spot along its
+shore was, and still is, an old country-house, formerly used as a hotel,
+but whose customers, always pleasure-seekers from the neighboring towns,
+had been drawn away by the erection of a more modern and satisfactory
+place of entertainment at the other extremity of the lake, and it had
+now been for many years closed. There were no dwellings of any kind in
+its vicinity, so that it reigned over a solitude of a half-dozen miles
+in every direction. Once in a while the gay visitors in the more
+prosperous regions stretched their sails and skimmed along till they saw
+its white porticos and piazzas gleaming faintly up among the trees; once
+in a while a belated traveller tied his horse at the gate, and sought
+admittance in vain, at the empty house, of the shadows who may have kept
+it. It was not pleasant to see so goodly a mansion falling to ruin for
+want of fit occupancy, truly; and just as the walls had grown gray with
+rain and time, the chimneys choked and the casements shrunken, a merry
+company of friends and families, from another portion of the country,
+consolidated themselves into a society for the pursuit of happiness,
+rented the old place, put in carpenters and masons and glaziers, and,
+when the last tenants vacated the premises, took possession in state
+themselves. Care and responsibility were not theirs; the matron and her
+servants alone received such guests; the long summer-days were to come
+and go with them as joyously as with Bacchus and his crew.
+
+Behold the party domesticated a fortnight at the Bawn, as it was
+afterward dubbed. Mr. Laudersdale had returned to New York that morning,
+and his wife had not been met since. Now, at about five o'clock, her
+white robe floated past the door, and she was seen moving up and down
+the long piazza and humming a faint little tune to herself. Just then
+a flock of young women, married and single, fluttered through door and
+windows to join her; and just then Mrs. Laudersdale stepped down from
+the end of the piazza and floated up the garden-path and into the woods
+that skirted the lake-shore and stretched far back and away. Thus
+abandoned, the others turned their attention to the expanse before and
+below them; and one or two made their way down to the brink, unhooked
+a boat, ventured in, and, lifting the single pair of oars, were soon
+laboring gayly out and creating havoc on the placid waters.
+
+As Mrs. Laudersdale continued to walk, the path which she followed
+slowly descended to the pebbly rim, rich in open spaces, slopes of
+verdure just gilding in the declining sun, and coverts of cool, deep
+shadow. As she advanced leisurely, involved in pleasant fancy, something
+caught her eye, an unusual object, certainly, lying in a duskier recess;
+she drew nearer and hung a moment above it. Some fallen statue among
+rank Roman growth, some marble semblance of a young god, overlaced with
+a vine and plunged in tall ferns and beaded grasses? And she, bending
+there,--was it Diana and Endymion over again, Psyche and Eros? Ah,
+no!--simply Mrs. Laudersdale and Roger Raleigh. Only while one might
+have counted sixty did she linger to take the real beauty of the scene:
+the youth, adopted, as it were, to Nature's heart by the clustering
+growth that sprang up rebounding under the careless weight that crushed
+it; an attitude of complete and unconscious grace,--one arm thrown out
+beneath the head, the other listlessly fallen down his side, while the
+hand still detained the straw hat; the profile, by no means classic, but
+in strong relief, the dark hair blowing in the gentle wind, the flush
+of sleep that went and came almost perceptibly with the breath, and the
+sunbeam that slanting round suddenly suffused the whole. "Pretty boy!"
+thought Mrs. Laudersdale; "beautiful picture!" and she flitted on. But
+Roger Raleigh was not a boy, although sleep, that gives back to all
+stray glimpses of their primal nature, endowed him peculiarly with a
+look of childlike innocence unknown to his waking hours.
+
+Startled, perhaps, by the intruding step, for it was no light one, a
+squirrel leaped from the bough to the grass, and, leaping, woke the
+sleeper. He himself, now unperceived, saw a vision in return,--this
+woman, young and rare, this queenly, perfect thing, floating on and
+vanishing among the trees. Whence had she come, and who was she? And
+hereupon he remembered the old Bawn and its occupants. Had she seen him?
+Unlikely; but yet, unimportant as it was, it remained an interesting and
+open question in his mind. Bringing down the hair so ruffled in the idle
+breeze, he crowded his hat over it with a determined air, half ran, half
+tumbled, down the bank, sprang into his boat, and, shaking out a sail,
+went flirting over the lake as fast as the wind could carry him. Leaving
+a long, straight, shining wake behind him, Mr. Roger Raleigh skimmed
+along the skin of ripples, and, in order to avoid a sound of shrill
+voices, skirted the angle of an island, and found himself deceived by
+the echo and in the midst of them.
+
+Mrs. McLean, Miss Helen Heath, and Miss Mary Purcell, who had embarked
+with a single pair of oars, were now shipwrecked on the waters wide, as
+Helen said; for one of their means of progress, she declared, had been
+snatched by the roaring waves and was floating in the trough of the sea,
+just beyond their reach. None of the number being acquainted with the
+process of sculling, they considered it imperative to secure the truant
+tool, unless they wished to perish floating about unseen; and having
+weighed the expediency of rigging Helen into a jury-mast, they were now
+using their endeavors to regain the oar,--Mary Purcell whirling them
+about like a maelström with the remaining one, and Mrs. McLean with her
+two hands grasping Helen's garments, while the latter half stood in the
+boat and half lay recumbent on the lake, tipping, slipping, dipping,
+till her head resembled a mermaid's; while they all three filled the air
+with more exclaim, shrieking, and laughter than could have been effected
+by a large-lunged mob.
+
+"Bedlam let loose," thought the intruder, "or all the Naiads up for a
+frolic?" And as he shot by, a hush fell upon the noisy group,--Helen
+pausing and erecting herself from her ablutions, Mary's frantic efforts
+sending them as a broadside upon the Arrow and nearly capsizing it, and
+Mrs. McLean, ceasing merriment, staring from both her eyes, and saying
+nothing. Mr. Raleigh seized the oar in passing, and directly afterward
+had placed it in Helen's hands. Receiving it with a profusion of thanks,
+she seated herself and bent to its use. But, looking back in a few
+seconds, Mr. Raleigh observed that the exhausted rowers had made
+scarcely a yard's distance. He had no inclination for gallant _devoir_,
+his eyes and thoughts were full of his late vision in the woods, he
+wished to reach home and dream; but in a moment he was again beside
+them, had taken their painter with a bow and an easy sentence, but
+neither with _empressement_ nor heightened color, and, changing his
+course, was lending them a portion of the Arrow's swiftness in flight
+towards the Bawn. It seemed as if the old place sent its ghosts out to
+him this afternoon. Bringing them close upon the flat landing-rock, and
+hooking the painter therein, he sheered off, lifting his hat, and was
+gone.
+
+"Roger! Roger Raleigh!" cried Mrs. McLean, from the shore, "come back!"
+
+Obeying her with an air of puzzled surprise, the person so
+unceremoniously addressed was immediately beside her again.
+
+"A cool proceeding, Sir!" said she, extending both her hands. "How long
+would you know your Cousin Kate to be here, and refuse to spare her an
+hour?"
+
+"Upon my honor," said her cousin, bending very low over the hands, "I
+but this moment learn her presence in my neighborhood."
+
+"Ah, Sir! and what becomes of my note sealed with sky-blue wax and
+despatched to you ten days ago?"
+
+"It is true such a note lies on my table at this moment, and it is still
+sealed with sky-blue wax."
+
+"And still unread?"
+
+"You will not force me to confess such delinquency?"
+
+"And still unread?"
+
+"Ten thousand pardons! Shall I go home and read it?" And herewith the
+saucy indifference of his face became evident, as he raised it.
+
+"No. But is that the way to serve a lady's communications? Fie, for a
+gallant! I must take you in hand. These are your New Hampshire customs?"
+
+  "'O Kate, nice customs curtsy to nice
+  kings!'"
+
+"So I've heard, when curtsying was in fashion; but that is out of date,
+together with a good many other nice things,--caring for one's friends,
+for instance. Why don't you ask how all your uncles and aunts are, Sir?"
+
+"How are all my uncles and aunts, Miss?"
+
+"Oh, don't you know? I thought you didn't. There's another billet,
+inclosing a bit of pasteboard, lying on your table now unopened too,
+I'll warrant. Don't you read any of your letters?"
+
+"Alphabetical or epistolary?"
+
+"Answer properly, yes or no."
+
+"No."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I know no one that has authority to write to me, as half a reason."
+
+"Thank you, for one, Sir. And what becomes of your Uncle Reuben?"
+
+"Not included in the category."
+
+"Then you're not aware that I've changed my estate? You don't know my
+name now, do you?
+
+  "'Bonny Kate, and sometimes Kate the curst,
+  But Kate, the prettiest Kate in Christendom'"
+
+"Nonsense! What an exasperating boy! Just the same as ever! Well, it
+explains itself. Here comes a recent property unto me appertaining.
+McLean! My husband, Mr. John McLean,--my cousin, Mr. Roger Raleigh."
+
+The new-comer was one of those "sterling men" always to be relied on,
+generally to be respected, and safely and appropriately leading society
+and subscription-lists. He was not very imaginative, and he understood
+at a glance as much of the other as he ever would understand. And the
+other, feeling instantly that only coin of the king's stamp would pass
+current here, turned his own counter royal side up, and met his host
+with genuine cordiality. Shortly afterward, Mrs. McLean withdrew for
+an improvement in her toilet, and soon returning, found them comparing
+notes as to the condition of the country, tender bonds of the Union, and
+relative merits of rival candidates, for all which neither of them cared
+a straw.
+
+"How do you find me, Sir?" she asked of her cousin.
+
+"Radiant, rosy, and rarely arrayed."
+
+"I see that your affections are to be won, and I proceed accordingly,
+by making myself charming, in the first place. And now, will you be
+cheered, but not inebriated, here under the trees, in company with
+dainty cheese-cakes compounded by these hands, and jelly of Helen
+Heath's moulding, and automatic trifles that caught an ordaining
+glimpse of Mrs. Laudersdale's eye and rushed madly together to become
+almond-pasty?"
+
+"With a method in their madness, I hope."
+
+"Yes, all the almonds not on one side."
+
+"In company with cheese-cakes, jelly, and pasty, simply,--I should have
+claret and crackers at home, Capua willing. Will it pay?"
+
+"You shall have Port here, when Mrs. Laudersdale comes."
+
+"Not old enough to be crusty yet, Kate," said her husband.
+
+"Very good, for you, John!"
+
+"Mrs. Laudersdale is your housekeeper?" asked her cousin.
+
+"Mrs. Laudersdale? That is rich! But I should never dare to tell
+her. Our housekeeper? Our cynosure! She is our argent-lidded Persian
+Girl,--our serene, imperial Eleanore;--
+
+  "'Whene'er she moves,
+  The Samian Here rises, and she speaks
+  A Meinnon smitten with the morning sun.'"
+
+"Oh, indeed! And this is a conventicle of young matrimonial victims to
+practise cookery in seclusion, upon which I have blundered?"
+
+"If the fancy pleases you, yes. There they are."
+
+And hereon followed a series of necessary introductions.
+
+Mr. Roger Raleigh sat with both arms leaning on the table before him,
+and wondering which of the ladies, half whose names he had not heard,
+was the Samian Here,--if any of them was,--and if,--and if;----and here
+Mr. Roger Raleigh's reflections went wandering back to the lakeside
+path and its vision. Not inopportunely at this moment, a white garment,
+which, it is unnecessary to say, he had long ago seen advancing,
+fluttered down the opposite path, and she herself approached.
+
+"Ah! _Al fresco?_" said the pleasantest voice in the world.
+
+"And isn't it charming?" asked Mrs. McLean. "Imagine us with tables
+spread outside the door in Fifth Avenue, in Chestnut Street, or on the
+Common!"
+
+"Even then the arabesque would be wanting," said she, trailing a long
+branch of the wild grape-vine, with its pale and delicately fragrant
+blooms, along the snowy board. "Are the cheese-cakes a success, Mrs.
+McLean? I didn't dine, and am famished.--I see that you have at last
+heard from your cousin," she added, in an undertone.
+
+"Yes; let me pre--Roger!"
+
+Quickly frustrating any such presentation, Mr. Roger Raleigh half
+turned, and, bowing, said,--
+
+"I believe I have had the pleasure of meeting Mrs. Laudersdale before."
+
+Her haughtiness would have frozen any one else. She bent with the least
+possible inclination, and sat down upon a stump that immediately became
+a throne. He resumed his former position, and drummed lightly on the
+table, while waiting to be served. In less complete repose than she had
+previously seen him, Mrs. Laudersdale now examined anew the individual
+before her.
+
+Not by any means tall she found him, but having the square shoulders and
+broad chest which give, in so much greater a degree than mere height,
+an impression of strength,--a frame agile and compact, with that easy
+carriage of the head and that rapid movement so deceptively increasing
+the stature. The face, too, was probably what, if not informed by a
+singularly clean and fine soul, would, in the lapse of years, become
+gross,--the skin of a clear olive, which had slightly flushed as he
+addressed herself, but not when speaking to other strangers,--kept
+beardless, and rather square in contour; the mouth not small, but keenly
+cut, like marble, and always quivering before he spoke, as if the
+lightning of his thought ran thither naturally to seek spontaneous
+expression; teeth white; chin cleft; nose of the unclassified order,
+rather long, the curve opposite to aquiline, and saved from sharpness by
+nostrils that dilated with a pulse of their own, as those of very proud
+and sensitive people are apt to do; a wide, low forehead crowned with
+dark hair, long and fine; heavy brows that overhung deep-set eyes of
+lightest hazel, but endowed by shadow with a power that no eye of
+gypsy-black ever swayed for an instant. His whole countenance reminded
+you of nothing so much as of the young heroes of the French Revolution,
+for whom irregular features and sallow cheeks were transmuted into
+brilliant and singular beauty. It wore an inwrapped air, and, with
+all its mobility, was a mask. He very seldom raised the lids, and his
+pallor, though owning more of the golden touch of the sun, was as
+dazzling as Mrs. Laudersdale's own.
+
+Mrs. Laudersdale scarcely observed,--she felt; and probably she saw
+nothing but the general impression of what I have been telling you.
+
+"Tea, Roger?" asked Mrs. McLean.
+
+"Green, I thank you, and strong."
+
+Rising to receive it, he continued his course till it naturally brought
+him before Mrs. Laudersdale. Pausing deliberately and sipping the
+pungent tonic, he at last looked up, and said,--
+
+"Well, you are offended?"
+
+"Then you were awake when I stayed to look at you?" she asked, in reply;
+for curiosity is a solvent.
+
+"Then you _did_ stay and look at me? That is exactly what I wished to
+know. How did I look, Belphoebe?"
+
+"Out of his eyes, tell him," said Helen Heath, in passing.
+
+"They were not open," responded Mrs. Laudersdale. "And I cannot tell how
+you saw me."
+
+"I saw you as Virgil saw his mother,--I mean Aeneas,--as the goddesses
+are always known, you remember, in departure."
+
+Mrs. Laudersdale felt a weight on her lids beneath his glance, and rose
+to approach the table.
+
+"Allow me," said Mr. Raleigh, taking her plate and bringing it back
+directly with a wafery slice of bread and a quaking tumulus of jelly.
+
+Mrs. Laudersdale laughed, though perhaps scarcely pleased with him.
+
+"How did you know my tastes so well?" she asked.
+
+"Since they are not mine," he replied. "Of course you eat jelly, because
+it is no trouble; you choose your bread thin for the same reason;
+likewise you would find a glass of that suave, rich cream delicious.
+Among all motions, you prefer smooth sailing; and I'll venture to say
+that you sleep in down all summer."
+
+Mrs. Laudersdale looked up in slow and still astonishment; but Mr.
+Raleigh was already pouring out the glass of cream.
+
+"I've no doubt you would like to have me sweeten it," said he, offering
+it to her; "but I will not humor such ascetic tendencies. I never
+approved of flagellation."
+
+And as he spoke, he was gone to break ground for a flirtation with Helen
+Heath.
+
+Helen Heath appeared to be one of those gay, not-to-be-heart-broken
+damsels who can drink forever of this dangerous and exhilarating cup
+without showing symptoms of intoxication. Young men who have nothing
+worse to do with their time gravitate naturally and unawares toward them
+for amusement, and spin out the thread till they reach its end, without
+expectation, without surprise, without regret, without occasion for
+remorse. Mr. Raleigh could not have been more unfortunate than he was in
+meeting her, since it gave him reason and excuse henceforth for visiting
+the Bawn at all seasons.
+
+The table was at last removed, the dew began to fall, Mrs. Laudersdale
+shivered and withdrew toward the house.
+
+"_Incessu patet dea,_" Mr. Raleigh remembered.
+
+Somewhat later, he started from his seat, bade them all good-night, ran
+gayly down the bank, and shoved off from shore. And shortly after, Mrs.
+Laudersdale, looking from her window, saw, for an instant, a single
+fire-fly hovering over the dark lake. It was Mr. Roger Raleigh's
+distant lantern, as, stretched at ease, he turned the slow leaves of a
+Froissart, and suffered the Arrow to drift as it would across the night.
+
+The next morning Mrs. Laudersdale descended, as usual, to the
+breakfast-table, at an hour when all the rest had concluded their
+repast. Miss Helen Heath alone remained, trifling with the tea-cups, and
+singing little exercises.
+
+"Quite an acquisition, Mrs. Laudersdale!" said she.
+
+"What?" said the other, languidly, leaning one arm on the table and
+looking about for any appetizing edible. "What is an acquisition?"
+
+"You mean who. Mr. Raleigh, of course. But isn't it the queerest
+thing in the world, up here in this savage district, to light upon a
+gentleman?"
+
+"Is this a savage district? And is Mr. Raleigh a gentleman?"
+
+"Is he? I never saw his match."
+
+"Nor I."
+
+"What! don't you find him so? a thorough gentleman?"
+
+"I don't know what a thorough gentleman is, I dare say," assented Mrs.
+Laudersdale, indifferently, with no spirit for repartee, breaking an egg
+and putting it down, crumbling a roll, and finally attacking a biscuit,
+but gradually raising the siege, yawning, and leaning back in her chair.
+
+"You poor thing!" said Helen. "You are starving to death. What shall I
+get for you? I have influence in the kitchens. Does marmalade, to spread
+your muffins, present any attractions? or shall I beg for rusks? or what
+do you say to doughnuts? there are doughnuts in this closet; crullers
+and milk are nice for breakfast."
+
+And in a few minutes Helen had rifled a shelf of sufficient temptations
+to overcome Mrs. Laudersdale's abstinence.
+
+"After all," said she then, "you didn't answer my question."
+
+"What question?"
+
+"If it weren't odd to meet Mr. Raleigh here."
+
+"I don't know," said Mrs. Laudersdale.
+
+"Dear! Mary Purcell takes as much interest. She said he was impertinent,
+made her talk too much, and made fun of her."
+
+"Very likely."
+
+"You are as aggravating as he! If you had anything to do except to look
+divinely, we'd quarrel. I thought I had a nice bit of entertaining news
+for you."
+
+"Is that your trouble? I should be sorry to oppress you with it longer.
+Pray, tell it."
+
+"Will it entertain you?"
+
+"It won't bore _you_."
+
+"I don't know that I _will_ tell it on such terms. However, I--must
+talk. Well, then. I have not been dreaming by daylight, but up and
+improving my opportunities. Partly from himself, and partly from Kate,
+and partly from the matron here, I have made the following discoveries.
+Mr. Roger Raleigh has left some very gay cities, and crossed some
+parallels of latitude, to exile himself in this wilderness of ice and
+snow,--that's what you and I vote it, whether the trees are green and
+the sun shines, or not; and I don't see what bewitched mother to adopt
+such a suicidal plan as coming here to be buried alive. He, that is, Mr.
+Raleigh, to join my ends, has lived here for five years; and as he came
+when he was twenty, he is consequently about my age now,--I shouldn't
+wonder if a trifle older than you. He came here because an immense
+estate was bequeathed him on the condition that he should occupy this
+corner of it during one-half of every year from his twenty-first to his
+thirty-first He has chosen to occupy it during the entire year, running
+down now and then to have a little music or see a little painting.
+Sometimes a parcel of his friends,--he never was at college, hasn't
+any chums, and has educated himself by all manner of out-of-the-way
+dodges,--sometimes these friends, odd specimens, old music-masters,
+rambling artists, seedy tutors, fencers, boxers, hunters, clowns, all
+light down together, and then the neighborhood rings with this precious
+covey: the rest of the year, may-be, he don't see an individual. One
+result of this isolation is, that freaks which would be very strange
+escapades in other people with him are mere commonplaces. Sometimes he
+goes over to the city there, and roams round like a lost soul seeking
+for its body; sometimes he goes up a hundred miles or two, takes a guide
+and handles the mountains; and, except in the accidents at such times,
+he hasn't seen a woman since he came."
+
+"That accounts," said Mrs. Laudersdale.
+
+"Yes. But just think what a life!"
+
+"He wouldn't stay, if he didn't like," replied Mrs. Laudersdale, to whom
+the words poverty and riches conveyed not the least idea.
+
+"I don't know. He has an uncle, of whom he is very fond, in India,"
+continued Helen,--"an unfortunate kind of man, with whom everything
+goes wrong, and who is always taking fevers; and once or twice Mr.
+Raleigh has started to go and take care of him, and lose the whole
+estate by the means. He intends to endow him, I believe, by-and-by, when
+the thing is at his disposal. This uncle kept him at school, when he was
+an orphan in different circumstances, at a Jesuit institution; and he
+and Miss Kent were always quarrelling over him, and she thought she had
+tied up her property nicely out of old Reuben Raleigh's way. It will be
+nuts, if he ever accepts his nephew's proposed present. The best of it
+all is, that, if he breaks the condition,--there's no accounting for
+the caprices of wills,--part of it goes to a needy institution, and part
+of it inalienably to Mrs. McLean, who"--
+
+"Is an institution, too."
+
+"Who is not needy. There, isn't that a pretty little _conte?_"
+
+"Very," said Mrs. Laudersdale, having listened with increasing interest.
+"But, Helen, you'll be a gossip, if you go on and prosper."
+
+"Why, my dear child! He'll be over here every day now; and do you
+suppose I'm going to flirt with any one, when I don't know his
+antecedents? There he is now!"
+
+And as Mrs. Laudersdale turned, she saw Mr. Raleigh standing composedly
+in the doorway and surveying them. She bade him good-morning, coolly
+enough, while Helen began searching the grounds of the tea-cups, rather
+uncertain how much of her recital might have met his ears.
+
+"Turning tea-cups, Gypsy Helen, and telling fates, all to no audience,
+and with no cross on your palm?" asked the guest.
+
+"So you ignore Mrs. Laudersdale?"
+
+"Not at all; you weren't looking at her cup,--if she has one. Will you
+have the morning paper?" he asked of that lady, who, receiving it,
+leisurely unfolded and glanced over its extent.
+
+"Where's my Cousin Kate?" then demanded Mr. Raleigh of Helen, having
+regarded this performance.
+
+"Gone shopping in town."
+
+"Her vocation. For the day?"
+
+"No,--it is time for their return now. When you hear wheels"--
+
+"I hear them"; and he strolled to the window. "You should have said,
+when I heard tongues; Medes and Elamites and the dwellers in Mesopotamia
+were less cheerful. A very pretty team. So she took her conjugal
+appurtenance with her?"
+
+"And left her cousinly impertinence behind her," retorted a gay voice
+from his elbow.
+
+"Ah, Kate! are you there? It's not a moment since I saw you 'coming from
+the town.' A pretty hostess, you! I arrive on your invitation to pass
+the day"--
+
+"But I didn't expect you before the sun."
+
+"To pass the day, and find you absent and the breakfast-table not
+cleared away."
+
+"My dear Roger, we have not quite taken our habits yet. As soon as the
+country-air shall have wakened and made over Helen and Mrs. Laudersdale,
+you will find us ready for company at daybreak."
+
+"What a passion for 'company'! I shall not be surprised some day to
+receive cards for your death-bed."
+
+"Friends and relatives invited to attend? No, Roger, you mustn't be
+naughty. You shall receive cards for my dinner-party before we go,
+if you won't come without; for we have innumerable friends in town,
+already."
+
+"Happy woman!"
+
+"What's that? A newspaper? A newspaper! How McLean will chuckle!" And
+she seized the sheet which Mrs. Laudersdale had abandoned in sweeping
+from the room.
+
+"Is there a Mr. Laudersdale? Where is he?" asked Mr. Raleigh, as he
+leaned against the window.
+
+"Who?" asked his cousin, deep in a paragraph.
+
+"Mr. Laudersdale. Where is he?"
+
+"Oh! between his four planks, I suppose," she replied, thinking of the
+Soundboat's berth, which probably contained the gentleman designated.
+
+"Between his four planks," repeated Mr. Raleigh, in a musing tone,
+entirely misinterpreting her, and to this little accident owing nearly
+thirteen years' unhappiness.
+
+"She must have married early," he continued.
+
+"Oh, fabulously early," replied Mrs. McLean, between the lines she read.
+"She is Creole, I believe. She is perfect. The women are as infatuated
+about her as the men. Here's Helen Heath been dawdling round the table
+all the morning for the sake of chatting to her while she breakfasts. I
+don't know why, I'm sure; the woman's charming, but she's too lazy even
+to talk. McLean! Another flurry in France."
+
+And after shaking hands with Mr. Raleigh, that worthy seized the
+proffered paper and vanished behind it, leaving to his wife the
+entertainment of her cousin, which duty she seemed by no means in haste
+to assume, preferring to remain and vex her husband with a thousand
+little teasing arts. Meanwhile Mr. Raleigh proceeded to take that office
+upon himself, by crossing the hall, exploring the parlors, examining the
+manuscript commonplace-books, and finally by sketching on a leaf of
+his pocket-book Mrs. Laudersdale, at the other end of the piazza,
+half-swinging in the vines through which broad sunbeams poured, while
+Helen Heath was singing and several other ladies were busying themselves
+with books and needle-work in her vicinity."
+
+"Ah, Mr. Raleigh!" said Helen Heath, as he put up the pocket-book and
+drew near,--"Mrs. Laudersdale and I have been wondering how you amuse
+yourself up here; and I make my discovery. You study animated nature;
+that is to say, you draw Mrs. Laudersdale and me."
+
+"Mistaken, Miss Helen. I draw only Mrs. Laudersdale; and do you call
+that animated nature?"
+
+"I wish you would draw. Mrs. Laudersdale _out._"
+
+At this point Mrs. Laudersdale _fell_ out; but, without otherwise
+stirring from his position than by moving an apparently careless arm,
+Mr. Raleigh caught and restored her to her balance, as lightly as if
+he had brushed a floating gossamer from the air to his finger. For the
+first time, perhaps, in her life, a carnation blossomed an instant in
+her cheek, then all was as before,--only two of the party felt on that
+instant that in some mysterious manner their relations with each other
+were entirely changed.
+
+"But what _is_ it that you do with yourself?" persisted Helen. "Tell us,
+that we may do likewise."
+
+"Will you come and see?" he asked,--his eyes, however, on Mrs.
+Laudersdale.
+
+"Will you come in away from the lake to the brooks, and hang among the
+alders and angle, dreaming, all day long? Or will you rise at dead of
+night and go out on the lake with me and watch field after field of
+white lilies flash open as the sun touches them with his spear? Or will
+you lie during still noons up among the farmers' fields where myriad
+bandrol corn-poppies flaunt over your head, and stain your finger-tips
+with the red berries that hang like globes of light in the
+palace-gardens of mites and midges, soaking yourself in hot sunshine and
+south-winds and heavy aromatic earth-scents?"
+
+"Come!" said Mrs. Laudersdale, rising earnestly, like one in an eager
+dream.
+
+"It is plain that you are in training for a poet," said Helen Heath,
+laughing, to Mr. Raleigh. "Well, when will you take us? Are the lilies
+in bloom? Shall we go to-morrow morning?"
+
+"I don't know that I shall take you at all, Miss Helen;--river-lilies
+might suit you best; but these queens of the lakes, the great, calm
+pond-lilies, creatures of quiet and white radiance,--I have seen only
+one head that possessed enough of the genuine East-Indian repose to be
+crowned with them."
+
+"You like repose," said Mrs. Laudersdale. "But what is it?"
+
+"Repose is strength,--life that develops from within, and feels itself
+and has no need of effort. Repose is inherent security."
+
+"Goodness!" exclaimed Helen. "Article first in a new
+dictionary,--encyclopedia, I should say. You worship, but you don't
+possess your god, for you look at this moment like a shaft in the bow;
+and here comes an archer to give it flight."
+
+"Where are you going, Kate?" said her cousin.
+
+"To pick strawberries in the garden. Want to come?"
+
+The three could do no better than accept her invitation. The good ladies
+might stare as they could after Mrs. Laudersdale, and wonder what
+sudden sprite had possessed her, since for neither man nor woman of the
+numerous party had she hitherto condescended to lift an unwonted eyelid;
+what they would have said to have seen her plunged in a strawberry-bed,
+gathering handfuls and raining them drop by drop into Helen Heath's
+mouth, to silence her while she herself might talk,--her own fingers
+tipped with more sanguine shade than their native rose, her eyes full
+of the noon sparkle, and her lips parted with laughter,--we cannot say.
+Roger Raleigh forgot to move, to speak, to think, as he watched her. But
+in the midst of this brilliant and novel gayety of hers, there was still
+a dignity to make one feel that she had by no means abandoned her regal
+purple, but merely adorned it with profuse golden flourishes.
+
+At dinner that day, Helen begged to know if there were not a great many
+routes in the vicinity practicable only on horseback, and thought she
+had attained her end when Mr. Raleigh put his horses and his escort at
+the service of herself and Mrs. Laudersdale during their stay.
+
+"During our stay!" said Mrs. Laudersdale. "That reminds me that we are
+to go away!"
+
+"Pleasantly, certainly. When snows fall and storms pipe, the Bawn is an
+icehouse," said he.
+
+After noon, the remainder of the day was interspersed with light
+thunder-showers, rendering tea on the grass again impossible; they
+passed the steaming cups, therefore, as they sat on the piazza curtained
+with dripping woodbine. The glitter of the drops in the sunset light, a
+jewelled scintillation, was caught in Mrs. Laudersdale's eyes, and some
+unconscious excitement fanned a faint color to and fro on her cheek.
+At last the moon rose; the whole party, regardless of wet slippers,
+sauntered with Mr. Raleigh to the shore, where the little Arrow hung
+balancing on her restraining cord. Mrs. Laudersdale stepped in, Mr.
+Raleigh followed, took up an oar, and pushed out, both standing, and
+drifting slowly for a few rods' distance; then Mr. Raleigh made the
+shore again, assisted her out, and shot impatiently away alone. The
+waters shone like white fire in the wake he cut, great shadows fall
+through them where island and wood intercepted the broad ascending
+light, and Mrs. Laudersdale's gay laugh rung across them, as the space
+grew,--a sweet, rich laugh, that all the spirits of the depths caught
+and played with like a rare beam that transiently illumined their
+shadowy, silent haunts.
+
+The next day, and the next, and so for a fortnight, Mr. Roger Raleigh
+presented himself with the breakfast-urn at the Bawn, tarried during
+sunshine, slipped home by starlight across the lake. Every day Mrs.
+Laudersdale was more brilliant, and flashed with a cheery merriment like
+harmless summer-lightnings. One night, as he pushed away from the bank,
+he said,--
+
+"_Au revoir_ for five hours."
+
+"For five hours?" said Mrs. Laudersdale.
+
+"For five hours."
+
+"At half-past three in the night?"
+
+"In the morning."
+
+"And what brings you here at dead of dark?"
+
+"The lilies and the dawn."
+
+"Indeed! And whom do you expect to find?"
+
+"You and Miss Helen."
+
+"Well, summer and freedom are here; I am ready for all fates, all deeds
+of valor, vigils among the rest. We will await you at half-past three in
+the morning. Helen, we must sleep at high-pressure, soundly, crowding
+all we can on the square inch of time. _Au revoir_."
+
+A shadow stood on the piazza, in the semi-darkness, at the appointed
+hour; two other shadows flitted forward to meet it, and silently down
+the bank, into the boat, and out upon the lonely glimmering reaches
+of the water. Nobody spoke; the midnight capture of no fort was ever
+effected with more phantom-like noiselessness than now went to surprise
+the Vestals of the Lake; only as two hands touched for an instant, a
+strange thrill, like fire, quivered through each and tore them apart
+more swiftly than two winds might cross each other's course. Helen Heath
+was drowsy and half-nodding in the bow, nodding with the more ease that
+it was still so dark and that Mr. Raleigh's back was toward her. Mrs.
+Laudersdale reclined in the stern. Mr. Raleigh once in a while sent them
+far along with a strong stroke, then only an occasional plash broke the
+charm of perfect stillness. Ever and anon they passed under the lee of
+some island, and the heavy air grew full of idle night-sweetness; the
+waning moon with all its sad and alien power hung low,--dun, malign, and
+distant, a coppery blotch on the rich darkness of heaven. They floated
+slowly, still; now and then she dipped a hand into the cool current; now
+and then he drew in his oars, and, bending forward, dipped his hand with
+hers. The stars retreated in a pallid veil that dimmed their beams,
+faint lights streamed up the sky,--the dark yet clear and delicious.
+They paused motionless in the shelter of a steep rock; over them a
+wild vine hung and swayed its long wreaths in the water, a sweet-brier
+starred with fragrant sleeping buds climbed and twisted, and tufts of
+ribbon-grass fell forward and streamed in the indolent ripple;
+beneath them the lake, lucid as some dark crystal, sheeted with olive
+transparence a bottom of yellow sand; here a bream poised on slowly
+waving fins, as if dreaming of motion, or a perch flashed its red
+fin from one hollow to another. The shadow lifted a degree, the eye
+penetrated to farther regions; a bird piped warily, then freely, a
+second and a third answered, a fourth took up the tale, blue-jay and
+thrush, catbird and bobolink; wings began to dart about them, the world
+to rustle overhead, near and far the dark prime grew instinct with
+sound, the shores and heavens blew out gales of melody, the air broke up
+in music. He lifted his oars silently; she caught the sweet-brier, and,
+lightly shaking it, a rain of dew-drops dashed with deepest perfume
+sprinkled them; they moved on. A thin mist breathed from the lake,
+steamed round the boat, and lay like a white coverlet upon the water; a
+light wind sprang up and blew it in long rags and ribbons, lifted, and
+torn, and streaming, out of sight. All the air was pearly, the sky
+opaline, the water now crisply emblazoned with a dark and splendid
+jewelry,--the paved-work of a sapphire; a rosy fleece sailed across
+their heads, some furnace glowed in the east behind the trees, long
+beams fell resplendently through and lay beside vast shadows, the giant
+firs stood black and intense against a red and risen sun; they trailed
+with one oar through a pad of buds all-unaware of change, stole from
+the overhanging thickets through a high-walled pass, where, on the open
+lake, the broad, silent, yellow light crept from bloom to bloom and
+awoke them with a touch. How perfectly they put off sleep! with what a
+queenly calm displayed their spotless snow, their priceless gold, and
+shed abroad their matchless scent! He twined his finger round a slippery
+serpent-stem, turned the crimson underside of the floating pavilion, and
+brought up a waxen wonder from its throne to hang like a star in the
+black braids on her temple. An hour's harvesting among the nymphs, in
+this rich atmosphere of another world, and with a loaded boat they
+turned to shore again.
+
+"Smothered in sweets!" exclaimed Mr. Raleigh, as he sprang out, and woke
+Helen Heath, where, slipped down upon the floor of the boat, her head
+fallen on her arms, she had lain half-asleep. They were the first words
+spoken during the morning, and in such situations silence is dangerous.
+
+When the rest of the family descended to breakfast, they found the
+pictures framed in wreaths of lilies, great floats of them in hall and
+parlor, and the table laden with flat dishes where with coiled stems
+they crowded, a white, magnificent throng. Mr. Raleigh still lingered,
+and, while Mrs. Laudersdale and Helen renewed their toilets, had busied
+himself in weaving a crown of these and another of poppy-leaves, hanging
+the one on Mrs. Laudersdale's head, as she entered refreshed, snowy, and
+fragrant herself, and the sleep-giving things on Helen's,--the latter
+avenging herself by surveying her companion's adornment, and, as she
+adjusted the bloom-gray leaves of her own, inquiring if olives grew
+pickled.
+
+Nothing could be more airy and blithe than were Mrs. Laudersdale's
+spirits all that morning,--bubbles dancing on a brook, nor foam-sparkle
+of rosy Champagne. She related their adventures with graphic swiftness,
+and improvised dangers and escapes with such a reckless disregard of
+truth that Mr. Raleigh was forced to come to the rescue with more
+startling improbabilities than they would have encountered in the
+Enchanted Forest.
+
+The red dawn brought its rain, and before they rose from table the
+sunshine withdrew and large drops began to patter in good earnest. Mr.
+Raleigh, who had generally suffered others to entertain him, now, as
+Mrs. McLean ushered the whole company into the sewing-room, seemed
+spurred by gayety and brilliance, and to bring into employ all those
+secrets through which he had ever annihilated time. For a while devoting
+himself to the elder dames, he won the heart of one by a laborious
+invention of a million varicolored angles to a square barley-corn of
+worsted--work, involved Mrs. McLean's crocheting in an inextricable
+labyrinth as he endeavored to afford her some requisite conchological
+assistance, and turned with three strokes a very absurd drawing of Mrs.
+Laudersdale's into a splendid caricature. Having made himself thus
+generally useful, he now proceeded to make himself generally agreeable;
+went with all necessary gravity through a series of complicate
+dancing-steps with Miss Heath; begged Miss Purcell, who was longing to
+cry over her novel, to allow him to read for her, since he saw that she
+was trying her eyes, and therewith made _fiasco_ of a page of delicious
+dolor; and being challenged to chess by a third, declared that was
+child's play, and dominoes was the game for science,--whereon, having
+seated a circle at that absorbing sport, he deserted for a meerschaum
+and the gentlemen, and in company with Captain Purcell, Mr. McLean, and
+the rest, rolled up from the hall below wreaths of smoke, bursts of
+laughter, and finally chimes of those concordant voices with which
+gentlemen talk politics, and, even when agreeing infamously, become
+vociferant and high-colored.
+
+It was after lunch that Mrs. Laudersdale, having grown weary of the
+needle-women's thread of discourse, left the sewing-room and proceeded
+toward her own apartment. Just as she crossed the head of the staircase,
+the hall-door was flung open, admitting a gleeful blast of the
+boisterous gale, and an object that, puffing and blowing like a sad-hued
+dolphin, and shaking like a Newfoundland, appeared at first to be the
+famous South-West Wind, Esq., in proper person,--whose once sumptuous
+array clung to his form, and whose face and hands, shining as coal,
+rolled off the rain like a bronze.
+
+"Bless my heart, Capua!" cried Mr. Raleigh, removing the stem from his
+lips; "how came you here?"
+
+"Lors, Massa, it's only me," said Capua.
+
+"So I see," replied his master, restoring the pipe to its former
+position. "How did you come?"
+
+"'Bout swimmed, I 'spect," answered Capua, grounding a chuckle on a reef
+of ivory. "'Ta'n't no fish-story, dat!"
+
+"Well, what brings you?"
+
+"Naughty Nan,--she hadn't been out"--
+
+"Do you mean to say, you rascal! that you've taken Nan out on such a
+day? and round the lake, too, I'll warrant?" asked Mr. Raleigh, with
+some excitement.
+
+"Jes' dat; an' round de lake, ob course; we couldn' come acrost."
+
+"You've ruined her, then"------
+
+"Bress you, Massa, she won't ketch no cold,--she! Smokes like a beaver
+now; came like streak o' lightnin'."
+
+"You may as well swim her back,--and where we can all see the sport,
+too."
+
+"But"
+
+"No buts about it, Capua," insisted his master, with mock gravity, the
+stem between his teeth.
+
+"'Spect I'd better rub her down, now I'se here, an' wait'll it holds up
+a bit, Mass' Roger?" urged Capua, coaxingly.
+
+"Do as you're bid!" ejaculated his master; which, evidently, from long
+habit, meant, Do as you please.
+
+Mrs. Laudersdale and Helen Heath had crept down the stairs during this
+dialogue, and now stood interested spectators of the scene. Mrs. McLean
+came running down behind them.
+
+"Forgotten me, Capua?" said she.
+
+"Lors, Miss Kate!" he replied, scraping his foot and pulling off his
+hat,--"Cap never f'gets his friends, though you've growed. How d'ye do,
+Miss Kate?"
+
+"Nicely, thank you. And how's your wife?"
+
+"My wife? Well, she's 'bout beat out. Massa Roger 'n' I, we buried her;
+finer funeral dan Massa Roger's own mother, Miss Kate, dat was!"
+
+"Poor fellow! I'm so sorry!" began Mrs. McLean, consolingly.
+
+"Well, Miss Kate, you know some folks is easier spared 'n others. Some
+tongues sharper 'n others. Alwes liked to gib a hot temper time to cool,
+'s Massa says."
+
+"And how do _you_ do, Capua?"
+
+"Pretty well, Miss Kate; leastways, I'se well enough,--a'n't so pretty."
+
+"_What_ is his name?" whispered Helen.
+
+"'Annible, Missis," said the attentive Capua, whose eyes had been for
+some time oscillating with indecision between Helen Heath and Mrs.
+Laudersdale. "Hannibal Raleigh's my name; though Massa alwes call me
+Cap," he added, insinuatingly,--which, by the way, "Massa" never had
+been known to do.
+
+"And are you always going to stay and take care of Master Roger?"
+
+"'Spect I shall. Lors, Miss Kate, he's more bother to me 'n all my
+work,--dat boy!"
+
+"That will do, Capua," said his master; "you may go." And therewith
+Capua scuffled away.
+
+"Well, Roger, what does this mean?" asked Mrs. McLean, as the door
+closed.
+
+"It means that Capua, having been dying of curiosity, has resolved to
+die game, and therefore takes matters into his own hands, and arrives to
+inspect my conduct and my company."
+
+"Ah, I see. He trembles for his sceptre."
+
+"Miss Heath," said Mr. McLean, rallyingly, "you received a great many of
+the sable shafts."
+
+"A Saint Sebastiana," said his wife.
+
+"Did Saint Sebastian die of his wounds?" asked Helen.
+
+"Let me tell you, Miss Helen," said Mr. Raleigh, "that Capua is a
+connoisseur, and his _dictum_ is worth all flatteries. If he had only
+been with us this morning!"
+
+"You have teased me so much about that, Mr. Raleigh, that I have half a
+mind never to go with you on another expedition."
+
+"Make no rash vows. I was just thinking what fine company you would
+be when trouting. The most enchanting quiet is required then, you are
+aware."
+
+"Oh! when shall we go trouting?"
+
+"We? It was only half a mind, then! We will go to-morrow, wind and
+weather agreeing."
+
+"And what must I do?"
+
+"You must keep still, stand in the shadow, and fish up-stream."
+
+At this point, Capua put his head inside the door again.
+
+"What is it?" asked Mr. Raleigh.
+
+"Forgot to say, Massa," replied Capua, rolling his eyes fearfully, and
+still hesitating, and half-closing the door, and then looking back.
+
+"Well, Capua?"
+
+"Mass' Raleigh, your house done been burned up!" said Capua, at last,
+jerking back his head, as if afraid of losing it.
+
+"Ah? And what did you do with"----
+
+"Oh, eberyting safe an' sound. 'Ta'n't dat house; 'ta'n't dis yer house
+Massa lib in;--Massa's _sparrer_-house. Reckoned I'd better come and
+'form him."
+
+"Is that all?" asked his master, who was accustomed to Capua's method of
+breaking ill news.
+
+"Now, Mass' Roger, don't you go to being pervoked an' flyin' into one
+ob dese yer tempers! It's all distinguished now. Ole Cap didn' want to
+shock his young massa, so thought 'twarn't de wisest way to tell him
+'twarn't de sparrer-house, either, at first. 'Twas de inside ob de
+libery, if he must know de troof; wet an' smutty dar now, mebbe, but no
+fire."
+
+"Why not? What made the fire go out?" asked Mr. Raleigh, composedly.
+
+"Well, two reasons," replied Capua, rolling a glance over the
+company;--"one was dis chile's exertions; an' t'other fact, on account
+ob wich de flames was checked, was because dere warn't no more to burn.
+Hi!"
+
+"Capua, take Nan, and don't let me see your face again, till I send for
+it!" said his master, now slightly irate.
+
+"Massa's nigger alwes mind him," was the dutiful response.
+
+Mrs. Laudersdale's handkerchief fell at that moment from the hand that
+hung over the balustrade. Capua darted to restore it.
+
+"Bress her pretty eyes!" said he. "Ole Cap see's fur into a millstone as
+any one!" and vanished through the doorway.
+
+"I beg your pardon," said Mr. Raleigh, turning to Mrs. Laudersdale. "He
+has refused to leave me, and I must indulge him too much, and my
+sins fall on the head of the nearest passer. He appears to have a
+constitutional inability to comprehend this absence of punishment. His
+immunity is so painful to him that I sometimes fancy him to be homesick
+for a lashing. Now if I do not hasten home, Kate, I shall find a
+conflagration of the whole house there before me."
+
+And making quick adieux,--while Mrs. Laudersdale jested about tempting
+the raging waters, and the dinner-bell was ringing, and Helen singing,
+"Come o'er the stream, Charlie, and dine wi' McLean,"--he opened the
+door, suffered a patch of blue sky to be seen, and the segment of an
+afternoon rainbow, shut it, and was gone.
+
+Early again the next morning, Mr. Raleigh sought the Bawn, followed this
+time by Capua, who was determined not to lose any ground once made, and
+who now carried the rods, bait, and other paraphernalia.
+
+"Powerful pretty woman, dat, Massa!" said he, as through the open doors
+a voice was heard gayly exclaiming and answering.
+
+"Which one, Capua?" asked his master.
+
+"A'n't no t'orrer," was his reply; "leastwise, a'n't no 'count,--good
+for nott'n. Now she,--pity she a'n't single, Massa,--should say she'd
+lived where sun was plenty and had laid up heaps in her heart."
+
+Here Mrs. Laudersdale came out, and shortly afterward Helen and three or
+four others. In reply to their questions, Mr. Raleigh stated that the
+preceding day's disaster had been occasioned by a meerschaum, and had
+merely charred a table with its superficies of papers and pamphlets,
+which Capua had chosen to magnify for his own purposes; and the
+assemblage immediately turned its course inland and toward the brooks.
+The two who led soon distanced the rest, Capua trudging respectfully
+behind and keeping them in sight. Here, as they brushed along through
+the woods, they delayed in order to examine a partridge's nest, to
+tree a squirrel, to gather some strange wild-flower opening at their
+approach. Here on the banks they watched the bitterns rise and sail
+heavily away, and finally in silence commenced the genuine sport.
+
+"Nonsense!" said Helen Heath, meaningly, as Mrs. Laudersdale, when the
+others joined them, displayed her first capture. "Is that all you've
+caught?"
+
+Mrs. Laudersdale drew in another for reply.
+
+"How absurd!" said Helen. "Here a month ago you were the dearest and
+most helpless of mortals, and now you are doing everything!"
+
+The other opened her eyes a moment, and then laughed.
+
+"Hush!" said she.
+
+"Shs! shs!" echoed Capua, making an infinite hubbub himself.
+
+Silence accordingly reigned and produced a string fit for the Sultan's
+kitchen,--of all the number, Mrs. Laudersdale adding by far the
+majority,--possibly because her shining prey found destination in
+the same basket with Mr. Raleigh's,--possibly because, as Helen had
+intimated, a sudden deftness had bewitched her fingers, so that neither
+dropping rod nor tangling reel detained her for an instant.
+
+"Our lines have fallen in pleasant places," said Helen, as they took at
+last their homeward path; "and what a shame! not an adventure yet!"
+
+Mrs. McLean hung on Mr. Raleigh's arm as they went,--for she had taken a
+whim and feared to see her cousin in the fangs of a coquette; by which
+means Helen became the companion of Captain Purcell and his daughter,
+and Mrs. Laudersdale kept lightly in advance, leading a gambol with
+the greyhound that Capua had added to the party, and presenting in one
+person, as she went springing from knoll to knoll along the bank, now in
+sunshine, now in shade, lifting the green boughs or sweeping them aside,
+a succession of the vivid figures of some antique and processional
+frieze. Suddenly, with a quick cry, she disappeared, and Helen had her
+adventure. Mr. Raleigh darted forward, while the hound came frisking
+back; yet, when he found her fainting in the hollow, stood with stolid
+immobility until Capua snatched her up and carried her along in his
+arms, leaving his master to reflect how many times such swarthy
+servitors might have borne her, as a child, through her island groves.
+And thus the party, somewhat sobered, resumed their march again. But in
+the discovery that he had not dared to lift her in his arms, he who
+took such liberties with every one,--that, lying under her semblance of
+death, she had inspired him with a certain awe, that he had suddenly
+found this woman to be an object somewhat sacred,--in this discovery Mr.
+Raleigh learned not a little. And it would not, perhaps, be an untrue
+surmise that he found therein as much of pain as of any other emotion;
+since all the experiences and passions of life must share the phenomena
+of the great fact itself whose pulse beats through them; and if to love
+unawares be to dwell like a child in the region of thoughtless and
+innocent bliss, in attaining manhood all the sadness which is to be
+eliminated from life becomes apparent, and bliss henceforth must be
+sought and earned. From that day, then, Mr. Raleigh with difficulty
+retained his former habits, prevented any eagerness of manner,
+maintained a cautious vigilance, and in so doing he again became aware
+that the easy _insouciance_ with which he addressed all other women had
+long been lost toward Mrs. Laudersdale, or, if yet existing, had become
+like the light and tender play of any lingering summer-wind in the tress
+upon her brow.
+
+Mrs. Laudersdale's ankle having been injured by her fall, and Mrs.
+McLean having taken a cold, the two invalids now became during a week
+and a day the auditory for all quips and pranks that Miss Heath and Mr.
+Raleigh could devise. And on the event of their convalescence, the Lord
+of Misrule himself seemed to have ordained the course of affairs, with
+a swarming crew of all the imps and mischiefs ever hatched. Mr. Raleigh
+and Capua went and came with boat-loads of gorgeous stuff from across
+the lake, a little old man appeared on the spot in answer to a flight
+of telegrams, machinery and scenery rose like exhalations, music was
+brought from the city, all the availables of the family were to be found
+in garden, closet, house-top, conning hieroglyphical pages, and the
+whole chaotic confusion takes final shape and resolves into a little
+Spanish Masque, to which kings and queens have once listened in courtly
+state, and which now unrolls its resplendent pageant before the eyes
+of Mrs. Laudersdale, translating her, as it were, into another planet,
+where familiar faces in pompous entablature look out upon her from a
+whirl of light and color, and familiar voices utter stately sentences
+in some honeyed unknown tongue. And finally, when the glittering parade
+finishes, and the strange groups, in their costly raiment, throng out
+for dancing, she herself gives her hand to some Prince of the pageantry,
+who does her homage, and, sealing the fact of her restoration, swims
+once round the room in a mist of harmony, and afterward sits by his
+side, captive to his will, and subject to his enchantment, while
+
+  "All night had the roses heard
+  The flute, violin, bassoon,
+  All night had the casement jessamine stirred
+  With the dancers dancing in tune,
+  Till a silence fell with the waking bird
+  And a hush with the setting moon."
+
+This little episode of illness and recovery having been thus duly
+celebrated, the masqueraders again forswore roofs and spent long days in
+distant junketing throughout the woods; the horses, too, were brought
+into requisition, and a flock of boats kept forever on the wing. And
+meanwhile, as Helen Heath said,--she then least of all comprehending the
+real drama of that summer,--Mrs. Laudersdale had taught them how the
+Greek animated his statue.
+
+"And how was that?" asked Mr. Raleigh.
+
+"He took it out-doors, I fancy, and called the winds to curl about it.
+He set its feet in morning-dew, he let in light and shade through green
+dancing leaves above it, he gave it glimpses of moon and star, he taught
+the forest-birds to chirp and whistle in its ear, and finally he steeped
+it in sunshine."
+
+"Sunshine, then, was the vivifying stroke?"
+
+Helen nodded.
+
+"You are mistaken," said he; "the man never found a soul in his work
+till he put his own there first."
+
+"I always wonder," remarked Mrs. Laudersdale here, "that every artist,
+in brooding over his marble, adding, touching, bringing out effects,
+does not end by loving it,--absorbingly, because so beautiful to
+him,--despairingly, because to him forever silent."
+
+"You needn't wonder anything about it," said Helen, mischievously. "All
+that you have to do is to make the most of your sunshine."
+
+Mr. McLean, struck with some sudden thought, inspected the three as they
+stood in a blaze of the midsummer noon, then crossed over to his little
+wife, drew her arm in his, and held it with cautious imprisonment. The
+other wife did as she was bidden, and made the most of her sunshine.
+
+If, on first acquaintance, Mrs. Laudersdale had fascinated by her
+repose, her tropical languor, her latent fire, the charm was none the
+less, when, turning, it became one dazzle of animation, of careless
+freedom, of swift and easy grace. Nor, unfamiliar as were such traits,
+did they seem at all foreign to her, but rather, when once donned, never
+to have been absent; as if, indeed, she had always been this royal
+creature, this woman bright and winning as some warm, rich summer's day.
+The fire that sleeps in marble never flashes and informs the whole
+mass so fully; if a pearl--lazy growth and accretion of amorphous
+life--should fuse and form again in sparkling crystals, the miracle
+would be less. And with what complete unconsciousness had she stepped
+from passive to positive existence, and found this new state to be as
+sweet and strange as any child has found it! Long a wife, she had known,
+nevertheless, nothing but quiet custom or indifference, and had dreamed
+of love only as the dark and silent side of the moon might dream of
+light. Now she grew and unfolded in the warmth of this season, like a
+blossom perfumed and splendid. Sunbeams seemed to lance themselves
+out of heaven and splinter about her. She queened it over demesnes of
+sprite-like revelry; the life they led was sylvan; at their _fêtes_
+the sun assisted. The summer held to her lips a glass whose rosy
+effervescence, whose fleeting foam, whose tingling spirit exhaled a
+subtile madness of joy,--a draught whose lees were despair. So nearly
+had she been destitute of emotion hitherto that she had scarcely a right
+to be classed with humanity; now, indeed, she would win that right. Not
+only her character, but her beauty, became another thing under all this
+largess; one remembered the very Persian rose, in looking at her, and
+thought of gardens amid whose clouds of rich perfume the nightingales
+sang all night long; her manner, too, became strangely gracious, and a
+sweetness lingered after her presence, delicate and fine as the drop of
+honey in some flower's nectary. So she woke from her icy trance; but,
+alas! what had wakened her?
+
+The summer was passing. Every day the garden-scenes of Watteau became
+vivid and real; every evening Venice was made possible, when shadowy
+barks slipped down dusk tides, freighted with song and laughter, and
+snatches of guitar-tinkling; and when some sudden torch, that for an
+instant had summoned with its red fire all fierce lights and strong
+glooms, dipped, hissed, and quenched below, and, a fantastic flotilla,
+they passed on into the broad brilliance of a rising moon, all
+Middle-Age mythology rose and wafted them back into the obscurity. It
+was a life too fine for every day, fare too rich for health; they must
+be exotics who did not wither in such hot-house air. It was rapidly
+becoming unnatural. They performed in the daylight stray clarified bits
+from Fletcher or Molière, drama of an era over-ripe; they sang only from
+an old book of madrigals; their very reading was fragmentary,--now an
+emasculated Boccaccio, then a curdling phantasm of Poe's, and after some
+such scenic horror as the "Red Death" Helen Heath dashed off the Pesther
+Waltzes.
+
+If, finally, on one of the last August-nights, we had passed,
+Asmodeus-like, over the roofs, looking down, we should have seen three
+things. First, that Mrs. Laudersdale slept like any innocent dreamer,
+and, wrapped with white moonlight, in her long and flowing outline, in
+her imperceptible breath, resembling some perfect statue that we fancy
+to be instinct with suspended life. Next, that Mr. Raleigh did not sleep
+at all, but absorbed himself, to the entire disturbance of Capua's
+slumbers, in the rapture of reproducing as he could the turbulent
+passion and joy of souls larger than his own. And, lastly, that Mrs.
+McLean woke with visions of burglars before her eyes, to find her pillow
+deserted and her husband sitting at a writing-table.
+
+"How startled I was!" she exclaimed. "What are you doing, dear?"
+
+"Writing to Laudersdale," he said, in reply.
+
+"Why, what for?--what can you be writing to him for?"
+
+"I think it best he should come and take his wife off my hands."
+
+"How absurd! how contemptible! how all you husbands band together like a
+parcel of slaveholders, and hunt down each other's runaways!"
+
+Mr. McLean laughed.
+
+"Now, John, you're not making mischief?"
+
+"No, child, I am preventing it." And therewith the worthy man, dropping
+the wax on the envelope, imprinted it with a Scotch crest, and put out
+the light "That's off my mind!" said he.
+
+At last September came; a few more weeks, and they would separate,
+perhaps, to the four corners of the earth. Mr. Raleigh arrived one
+afternoon at the Bawn, and finding no one to welcome him,--that is to
+say, Mrs. Laudersdale had gone out, and Helen Heath was invisible,--he
+betook himself to a solitary stroll, and, by a short cut through the
+woods, to the highway, and just before emerging from the green shadows
+he met Mrs. Laudersdale.
+
+"Whither now, Wandering Willie?" said she; for, singularly enough, they
+seemed to avoid speaking each other's name in direct address, using
+always some title suggested by their reading or singing, or some
+sportive impromptu.
+
+"I am going to take the road."
+
+"Like a gallant highwayman?" And without more ado, and naturally enough,
+she accompanied him.
+
+The conversation, this afternoon, was sufficiently insignificant;
+indeed, Mrs. Laudersdale always affected you more by her silence than
+her speech, by what she was rather than by what she said; and it is
+only the impression produced on her by this walk with which we have any
+concern.
+
+The road, narrow and winding in high banks fringed with golden-rod and
+purple asters, was at first completely shadowed,--an old, deep-rutted,
+cross country road, birch-trees shivering at either side, and every now
+and then a puff of pine-breath drifting in between. After a time it rose
+gradually into the turnpike, and became a long, dusty track, stretching
+as far as the eye could see, a straight, dazzling line, burnt white by
+summer-heats, powdered by travel. There was no wind stirring; the sky
+was lost in a hot film stained here and there with sulphurous wreaths;
+the distant fields, skirted by low hills, were bathed in an azure
+mist; nearer, a veil of dun and dimmer smoke from burning brush hung
+motionless; around their feet the dust whirled and fell again. Bathed
+in soft, voluptuous tints, hazed and mellowed, into what weird, strange
+country were they hastening? What visionary land of delight, replete
+with perfume and luxury, lay ever beyond?--what region rich, unknown,
+forbidden, whose rank vegetation steamed with such insidious poison? And
+on what arid, barren road, what weary road,--but, alas, long worn and
+beaten by the feet of other wayfarers! a road that ran real and strong
+through this noxious and seducing mirage!
+
+A sudden blast of wind lifted a cloud of dust from before them and
+twisted it down among the meadows; the sun thrust aside his shroud and
+burnt for an instant on a scarlet maple-bough that hung in premature
+brilliance across the way. The hasty color, true and fine, was like a
+spell against enchantment; it was the drop that tested the virtue of
+this chemistry and proved it naught.
+
+Mrs. Laudersdale looked askance at her companion, then turned and met
+his gaze. Slowly her lashes fell, the earth seemed to fail beneath her
+feet, the light to swoon from her eyes, her lips shook, and a full
+flush swept branding and burning up throat and face, stinging her very
+forehead, and shooting down her fingertips. In an instant it had faded,
+and she shone the pallid, splendid thing she was before. In that
+instant, for the first time this summer, she comprehended that her
+husband's existence imported anything to her. Behind the maple-tree, the
+wood began again; without a syllable, she stepped aside, suffered him to
+pass, and hastened to bury herself in its recesses.
+
+What lover ever accounted for his mistress's caprices? Mr. Raleigh
+proceeded on his walk alone. And what was her husband to him? He did
+not know that such a man existed. For him there had been no deadly
+allurement in the fervid scene; it had stretched a land of promise
+veiled in its azure ardors, with intimations of rapture and certainty of
+rest. Now, as he wandered on and turned down another lane to the woods,
+the tints grew deeper; his eyes, bent inward, saw all the world in the
+color of his thought; he would have affirmed that the bare brown banks
+were lined in deep-toned indigo flower-bells whose fragrance rose
+visible above them or curled from stem to stem, and that the hollows
+in which the path hid itself at last were of the same soft gloom. But,
+finally, when not far distant from the Bawn again, he shook off his
+reverie and struck another path that he might avoid rencontre. Perhaps
+the very sound that awoke him was the one he wished to shun; at the next
+step it became more distinct,--a child's voice singing some tuneless
+song; and directly a tiny apparition appeared before him, as if it had
+taken shape, with its wide, light eyes and corn-silk hair, from the most
+wan and watery of sunbeams. But what had a child to do in this paradise,
+thought he, and from whence did it come? Impossible to imagine. Her
+garments, of rich material, hung freshly torn, it may be, but in shreds;
+her skin, if that of some fair and delicate nursling, was stained with
+berries and smeared with soil; she seemed to have no destination; and
+after surveying him a moment, she mounted a fallen tree, and, bending
+and swinging forward over a bough, still surveyed him.
+
+"Ah, ha!" said Mr. Roger Raleigh; "what have we here?"
+
+The child still looked in his face, but vouchsafed, in her swinging, no
+reply.
+
+"What is the little lady's name?" he asked then.
+
+This query, apparently more comprehensible, elicited a response. She
+informed him that her name was "Dymom, Pink, and Beauty."
+
+"Indeed! And anything else?"
+
+"Rose Pose," she added, as if soliciting the aid of memory by lifting
+her hands near her temples.
+
+"Is that all?"
+
+"Little silly Daffodilly."
+
+"No more?"
+
+"Rite."
+
+"Rite,--ah, that is it! Rite what?"
+
+"Rite!" said the child, authoritatively, bringing down her foot and
+shaking back her hair.
+
+"And how old is Rite?"
+
+"One, two, four, twenty. Maman is twenty;--Rite is twenty, too."
+
+"When was Rite four?"
+
+"A great while ago. She went to heaven in the afternoon," was added,
+confidentially, after a moment's inspection to see if he were worthy.
+
+"Ah! And what was there there?"
+
+"Pitchtures, and music, and peoples, and a great house."
+
+"And where is Rite going now?"
+
+"Going away in a ship."
+
+"Rite will have to wash her face first."
+
+But at this proposition the child flashed open her pale-blue orbs,
+half-closed them as a sleepy cat does, and, with no other change of
+countenance to mark her indignation, appeared to shut him out from her
+contemplation. Directly afterward, she opened them again, bent forward
+and back over the swinging, and recommenced her song, as if there were
+not another person than herself within a hundred miles. Half-hidden in
+the great hemlock-bough, this tiny, fantastic creature, so fair, so
+supercilious, seemed in her waywardness a veritable fay, mate for any of
+the little men in green, bibbers of dewdrops, lodgers in bean-blossoms,
+Green-Jacket, Red-Cap, and White-Owl's-Feather.
+
+Mr. Raleigh hesitated whether or not he should remain and watch her fade
+away into the twilight, wondered if she were bewitching him, then rubbed
+his hand across his eyes and said, in a disenchanted, matter-of-fact
+manner,--
+
+"Do you know your way home, child?" and obtained, of course, no reply.
+For an instant he had half the mind to leave her to find it; but at once
+convicted of his absurdity, "Then I shall take you with me," he said,
+making a step toward her,--"because you are, or will be, lost."
+
+At the motion, she darted past and stood defiantly just out of his
+reach. Mr. Raleigh attempted to seize her, but he might as easily have
+put his hand on a butterfly; she eluded him always when within his
+grasp, and led him such a dance up and down the forest-path as none
+other than a will-o'-the-wisp, it seemed, could have woven. All at once
+a dark figure glided out from another alley and snatched the sprite into
+its arms. It was a colored nurse, who poured out a torrent of broken
+French and English over the runaway, and made her acknowledgments to Mr.
+Raleigh in the same jargon. As she turned to go, the child stretched her
+arms toward her late pursuer, making the nurse pause, and, putting up
+her little lips, touched with them his own; then, picturesque as ever,
+and thrown into relief by the scarlet sack, snowy turban, and sable skin
+of her bearer, she disappeared. It is doubtful if in all his life Mr.
+Raleigh would ever receive a purer, sweeter kiss.
+
+He had promised to be at the Bawn that evening, and now accordingly
+sought the shore, where the Arrow lay, and was soon within the shelter
+of his own house. The arrangement of toilet was a brief matter; and that
+concluded, Mr. Raleigh entered his library, an apartment now slightly in
+disarray, and therefore, perhaps, not uncongenial with his present mood.
+After strolling round the place, Mr. Raleigh paused at the window an
+instant, the window overhung with clematis, and commanding the long
+stretch of water between him and the Bawn, which last was, however, too
+distant for any movement to be discerned there. Soon Mr. Raleigh turned
+his back upon the scene that lay pictured in such beauty below, and,
+throwing himself into a deep armchair, remained motionless and plunged
+in thought for many moments. Rising at last, he took from the table a
+package of letters from India that had arrived in his absence. Glancing
+absently at the superscriptions, breaking the seal of one, he replaced
+them: it would take too long to read them now; they must wait. Then
+Mr. Raleigh had recourse to a universal panacea, and walked to and fro
+across the room, with measured, unvarying steps, till the striking clock
+warned him that time was passing. Mr. Raleigh drew near his desk again,
+took up the pen, and hesitated; then recalling his gaze that had seemed
+to search his own inmost soul, he drew the paper nearer and wrote.
+
+What he wrote, the very words, may not signify; with the theme one is
+sufficiently acquainted. Perhaps he poured out there all that had so
+often trembled on his lips without finding utterance; perhaps, if ever
+passionate heart flashed its own fire into its implements, this pen and
+paper quivered beneath the current throbbing through them. The page was
+brief, but therein all was said. Sealing it hastily, he summoned Capua.
+
+"Capua," said he, giving him the note, "you are to go with me across the
+lake now. We shall return somewhere between eleven and twelve. Just
+as we leave, you are to give this note to Mrs. Laudersdale. Do you
+understand?"
+
+"Yah, Massa, let dis chile alone," responded Capua, grinning at the
+prospect of society, and speedily following his master.
+
+The breeze had fallen, so that they rowed the whole distance, with the
+idle sail hanging loosely, and arrived only just as the red sunset
+painted the lake behind them with blushing shadows. Mr. Raleigh
+joined Helen Heath and his cousin in the hall; Capua, superb with the
+importance of his commission, sought another entrance. But just as the
+latter individual had crossed the threshold, he encountered the nurse
+whom his master had previously met in the wood. Nothing could have
+been more acceptable in his eyes than this addition to the circle
+below-stairs. Capua's hat was in his hand at once, and bows and curtsies
+and articulations and gesticulations followed with such confusing
+rapidity, that, when the mutually pleased pair turned in company toward
+the kitchens, a scrap of white paper, that had fluttered down in the
+disorder, was suffered to remain unnoticed on the floor. The courier had
+lost his despatch. Coming in from her walk, not five minutes later, Mrs.
+Laudersdale's eye was caught thereby; stooping to take it, she read
+with surprise her own name thereon, and ascended the stairs possessed
+thereof.
+
+What burden of bliss, what secret of sorrow, lay infolded there, that
+at the first thought she covered it with sudden kisses, and the next,
+crushing it against her heart, burst into a wild weeping? Again and
+again she read it, and at every word its intense magnetic strength
+thrilled her, rapt her from remembrance, conquered her. She seized a
+pencil and wrote hurriedly:--
+
+"You are right. With you I live, without you I die. You shut heaven out
+from me; make earth, then, heaven. Come to me, for I love you. Yes, I
+love you."
+
+She did not stay to observe the contrast between her fervent sentences
+and the weak, faint characters that expressed them, but hastily sought
+the servant who was accustomed to act as postman, gave him directions to
+acquaint her of its reception, and watched him out of sight. All that in
+the swiftness of a fever-fit. Scarcely had the boat vanished when old
+thoughts rushed over her again and she would have given her life to
+recall it. Returning, she found Capua eagerly searching for the lost
+letter, and thus learned that she was not to have received it until
+several hours later.
+
+Perhaps no other woman in her situation could have done what Mrs.
+Laudersdale had done, without incurring more guilt. There could be
+few who had been reared in such isolation as she,--whose intellect,
+naturally subject to her affection, had become more so through the
+absence of systematic education,--whose morality had been allowed to be
+merely one of instinct,--to whom introspection had been till now a thing
+unknown,--and who, accepting a husband as another child accepts a
+parent, had, in the whirl of gay life where she afterward reigned, found
+so little time for thought, and remained in such mental unsophistication
+as to experience now her first passion.
+
+As Mrs. Laudersdale entered her room again, the opposite door opened and
+admitted that individual the selfishness of whose marriage was but half
+expiated when he found himself on the surplus side of the world.
+
+In the mean while, Mr. Raleigh was gayly passing the time with Helen
+Heath. There were to be some guests from the town that evening, and they
+were the topic of her discourse.
+
+"I wonder if we are never to have tea," said she at last, looking at her
+watch.
+
+"I didn't know you were attached to the custom," said he, indifferently,
+as he had said everything else, while intently listening for a footstep.
+
+"Ah! but I like to see other folks take their bitters."
+
+"Do not even the publicans the same?"
+
+"You will become a proficient chemist, converting the substance of my
+remarks to airy nothings through your gospel-retorts."
+
+"Oh, I understand your optics as well. You like to see other folks;
+taking the bitters is another thing. The tea-bell is a tocsin."
+
+"Pshaw! _You_ don't care to see any one! But shall there be no more
+cakes and ale? Haven't you any sympathy for a sweet tooth?"
+
+"None at all."
+
+"Not even in Mrs. Laudersdale's instance?"
+
+"Mrs. Laudersdale has a sweet tooth, then?" Mr. Raleigh asked in return,
+as if there were any trivial thing concerning her in which he could yet
+be instructed.
+
+"I'm not going to tell you anything about Mrs. Laudersdale."
+
+"There comes that desired object, the tea-tray. It's not to be formal,
+then, to-night. That's a blessing! What shall I bring you?" he
+continued,--"tea or cocoa?"
+
+"Neither. You may have the tea, and I'll leave the cocoa for Mrs.
+Laudersdale."
+
+"Mrs. Laudersdale drinks cocoa, then?"
+
+"You may bring me some milk and macaroons."
+
+As Mr. Raleigh was about to obey, his little apparition of the wood
+suddenly appeared in the doorway, followed by her nurse,--having arisen
+from the discipline of bath and brush, fair and spotless as a snowflake.
+She flitted by him with a mocking recognition.
+
+"Rite!" cried a voice from above, familiar, but with how strange a tone
+in it! "Little Rite!"
+
+"Maman!" cried the sprite, and went dancing up the stairs.
+
+Mr. Raleigh's face, as he turned, darkened with a heavier flush than
+half a score of Indian summers branded upon it afterward.
+
+"That is Mrs. Laudersdale's little maid?" asked he, when, after a few
+moments, he brought the required salver.
+
+"Yes,--would you ever suspect it?" Numberless as had been the times he
+had heard her speak of Rite, he never had suspected it, but had always
+at the name pictured some indifferent child, some baby-friend, or cousin
+by courtesy.
+
+"She is not like her mother," said he, coolly.
+
+"The very antipodes,--all her father.--Bless me! What is this? A real
+Laudersdale mess,--custards and cheesecakes,--and I detest them both."
+
+"Blame my unfortunate memory. I thought I had certainly pleased you,
+Miss Helen."
+
+"When you forgot my orders? Well, never mind. Isn't she exquisite?"
+
+"Isn't who exquisite? Oh, the little maid? Quite! Why hasn't she been
+here all summer?"
+
+"She was always a sickly, ailing thing, and has been at one of those
+rich Westchester farms where health and immortality are made. And now
+she is going away to Martinique, where her grandmother will take charge
+of her, bottle up those spirits, and make her a second edition of her
+mother. By the way, how that mother has effervesced this summer!"
+continued Helen, as the detested custard disappeared. "I wonder what
+made her. Do you suppose it was because her husband was away?"
+
+At that instant Mrs. Laudersdale came sailing down the stairs.
+
+A week previously, when, to repay the civilities of their friends in
+the neighboring city, Mrs. McLean had made a little fancy-party, Helen,
+appearing as Champagne, all in rosy gauzes with a veiling foam of
+dropping silver lace, had begged Mrs. Laudersdale to give her prominence
+by dressing for Port; and accordingly that lady had arrayed herself
+in velvet, out of which her shoulders rose like snow, and whose rich
+duskiness made her perfect pallor more apparent, while its sumptuous
+body of color was sprinkled with glittering crystal drops and
+coruscations; and wreathing her forehead with crisp vine-leaves and
+tendrils, she had bunched together in intricate splendor all the
+amethysts, carbuncles, garnets, and rubies in the house, for
+grape-clusters at the ear, till she seemed, with her smile and her
+sunshine, the express and incarnate spirit of vintage. To-night,
+stripped of its sparkling drops, she wore the same dress, and in her
+hair a wreath of fresh white roses. Behind her descended a tall and
+stately gentleman. She swept forward. "Mr. Raleigh," she murmured, while
+her eyes diffused their gloom and fell, "let me introduce you to my
+husband!"
+
+The blow had come previously. Mr. Raleigh bowed almost to the ground,
+without a word, then looked up and offered his hand. Mr. Laudersdale
+comprehended the whole matter at a heartbeat, and took it. Then they
+moved on toward other friends, whom, while waiting for knowledge of his
+wife's return from her walk, Mr. Laudersdale had not seen. Mr. Raleigh
+went in search of Capua, and ere long reappeared.
+
+It grew quite dark; the candles were lighted. Rite slipped in, and,
+after having flown about like a thistle-down for a while, mounted a
+chair and put her arms about her mother's shoulders. Then Mr. Raleigh,
+sitting silently on a sofa, attracted her, and shortly afterward she had
+curled herself beside him and fallen asleep with her head upon his
+knee; otherwise he did not touch her. Mrs. Laudersdale stood by an open
+casement; the servant who had carried her note came up the lawn and
+spoke to her from without. There was no one in the house, and he had
+left it on the library-table. The pressure of those tender little arms
+was yet warm about the mother's neck; she glanced sidelong at the
+sleeping child. "He shall never see that note!" she murmured, and
+slipped through the casement.
+
+Accustomed to all rash and intrepid adventure during this summer, it
+was nothing for her to unmoor a boat, enter it, and lift the oars, not
+pausing to observe that it was the Arrow. Just then, however, a little
+wind ruffled down and shook the sail, a wind not quite favorable, but in
+which she could tack across and back; she drew in the oars, put to the
+proof all her new boat-craft, and recklessly dashed through the dark
+element that curled and seethed about her. She had to make but two tacks
+in that hour's impetuous progress, before the house rose, as it had
+frequently done before, glooming at but a few rods' distance, and
+loading with odorous breath the air that tossed its vines ere stealing
+across the lake. She trembled now, and remembered that she alone of all
+the party had always unconsciously evaded entering Mr. Raleigh's house,
+had never seen the house nearer than now, and never been its guest. It
+was entering some dark, unknown place; it was to intrude on a sacred
+region. But the breeze hurried her along while she thought, and the next
+moment the keel was buried in the sand. There was no time to lose; she
+left the boat, ascended a flight of stone steps close at hand, and
+was in the garden. Low, ripe greenery was waving over her here, deep
+alluring shadows opening around, full fresh fragrance fanning idly to
+and fro and stealing her soul away. Beyond, the lake gleamed darkly, the
+water lapped gently, the wind sighed and fell like a fluttering breath.
+She would have lingered forever,--she dared not linger a moment. She
+brushed the dew from the heavy blossoms as she swept on, then the
+drenching branches swayed and closed behind her; she found a door ajar,
+and hastily entered the first room which appeared.
+
+There were stray starbeams in this apartment; her eyes were accustomed
+to the gloom; she could dimly discern the great book-cases lining the
+wall,--an antique chair,--the glittering key-board of a grand-piano that
+stood apart, yet thrilling perhaps with recent harmonies,--a colossal
+head of Antinoüs, that self-involved dreamer, stone-entranced in a calm
+of passion. She had been feverishly agitated; but as this white silence
+dawned upon her, so strong, yet voluptuous, never sad, making in its
+masque of marble one intense moment eternal, some of the same power
+spread soothingly over her. She paused a moment to gather the thronging
+thoughts. How still the room was! she had not known that music was at
+his command before. How sweet the air that blew in at the window! what
+late flowers bore such pungent balm? That portrait leaning half-startled
+from the frame, was it his mother? These books, were they the very ones
+that had fed his youth? How everything was yet warm from his touch! how
+his presence yet lingered! how much of his life had passed into the dim
+beauty of the place! How each fresh waft from the blooms without came
+drowned in fine perfume, laden with delicious languor! What heaven was
+there! and, ah! what heaven was yet possible there!
+
+Something that had flitted from the table in the draught, and had
+hovered here and there along the floor, now lay at her foot; she caught
+it absently; it was her letter. To snatch it from its envelope, and so
+tear it the more easily to atoms, was her first thought; but as suddenly
+she paused. Was it hers? Though written and sealed by her hand, had she
+any longer possession therein? Had she more authority over it than over
+any other letter that might be in the room? Absurd refinement of honor!
+She broke the seal. Yet stay! Was there no justice due to him? That
+letter which had been read long before the intended time, whose delivery
+any accident might have frustrated, whose writer might have recalled it,
+--did it demand no magnanimity of reply on her part? Had he now no claim
+to the truth from her? As she knew what he never would have told her an
+hour later, had she a right to recede from the position she had taken in
+response, simply because she could and he could not? Should she ignobly
+refuse him his right?
+
+Whether this were a sophism of sin or the logic of highest virtue, she,
+who would have blotted out her writing with her heart's blood, did not
+wait to weigh.
+
+"To him, also, I owe a duty!" she exclaimed, dropped the letter where
+she had found it, and fled,--fled, hurrying through all the bewildering
+garden-walks, down from the fragrance, the serenity, the bowery
+seclusion, from all this conspiring loveliness that tempted her to dally
+and commanded her to stay,--fled from this dream of passion, this region
+of joy,--fled forever, as she thought, out into the wide, chill, lonely
+night.
+
+Pushing off the boat and springing in, once more the water curled
+beneath the parting prow, and she shot with her flashing sail and
+hissing wake heedlessly, like a phantom, past another boat that was
+making more slowly in to shore.
+
+"This way, Helen," murmurs a subdued voice. "There are some steps, Mr.
+Laudersdale. Here we are; but it's dark as Erebus. Give me your hand;
+I'm half afraid; after that spectre that walked the water just now,
+these shadows are not altogether agreeable. There's the door,--careful
+housekeeper, this Mr. Raleigh! I wonder what McLean would say. Don't
+believe he'd like it."
+
+"What made you come, then?" asks Helen, as they step within.
+
+"Oh, just for the frolic; it was getting stupid, too. I suppose we've
+ruined our dresses. But there! we must hurry and get back. I didn't
+think it would take so long. He can't manage a boat so well as Roger,"
+adds Mrs. McLean, in a whisper.
+
+"Goodness!" exclaims Helen. "I can't see an inch of the way. We shall
+certainly deal devastation."
+
+"I've been exploring a mantel-shelf; here's a candle, but how to light
+it? Haven't you a match, Mr. Laudersdale?"
+
+That gentleman produces one from a little pocket-safe; it proves a
+failure,--and so a second, and a third.
+
+"This is the last, Mrs. McLean. Have your candle ready."
+
+The little jet of flame flashes up.
+
+"Quick, Helen! a scrap of paper, quick!"
+
+"I don't know where to find any. Here's a billet on the floor; the
+seal's broken; Mr. Raleigh don't read his letters, you know; shall I
+take it?"
+
+"Anything, yes! My fingers are burning! Quick, it's the last match!
+There!"
+
+Helen waves a tiny flambeau, the candle is lighted, the flame whirled
+down upon the hearth and trodden out.
+
+"I wonder what it was, though," adds Mrs. McLean, stooping over it.
+"Some of our correspondence. No matter, then. Now for that Indian mail.
+Here,--no,--this must be it. 'Mr. Roger Raleigh,'--'Roger Raleigh,
+Esq.,'--that's not it. 'Day, Knight, & Co., for Roger Raleigh.' Why, Mr.
+Laudersdale, that's your firm. Aren't you the Co. there? Ah, here it is,
+--'Mrs. Catherine McLean, care of Mr. Roger Raleigh.' Doesn't that look
+handsomely, Helen?" contemplating it with newly married satisfaction.
+
+"Now you have it, come!" urges Helen.
+
+"No, indeed! I must find that Turkish tobacco, to reward Mr. Laudersdale
+for his heroic exertions in our behalf."
+
+Mr. Laudersdale, somewhat fastidious and given to rigid etiquette, looks
+as if the exertions would be best rewarded by haste. Mrs. McLean takes
+the candle in hand and proceeds on a tour of the apartment.
+
+"There! isn't this the article? John says it's pitiful stuff, not to be
+compared with Virginia leaf. Look at this meerschaum, Mr. Laudersdale;
+there's an ensample. Prettily colored, is it not?"
+
+"Now are you coming?" asks Helen.
+
+"Would you? We've never been here without my worshipful cousin before; I
+should like to investigate his domestic arrangements. Needle and thread.
+Now what do you suppose he is doing with needle and thread? Oh,
+it's that little lacework that Mrs.----Sketches! I wonder whom he's
+sketching. You, Helen? Me? Upside down, of course. No, it's----Yes, we
+may as well go. Come!"
+
+And in the same breath Mrs. McLean blows out the candle and precedes
+them. Mr. Laudersdale scorns to secure the sketch; and holding back
+the boughs for Miss Heath, and assisting her down the steps, quietly
+follows.
+
+Meantime, Mrs. Laudersdale has reached her point of departure again, has
+stolen up out of the white fog now gathering over the lake, slipped into
+her former place, and found all nearly as before. The candles had been
+taken away, so that light came merely from the hall and doorways.
+Some of the guests were in the brilliant dining-room, some in the
+back-parlor. Mr. Raleigh, while Fate was thus busying herself about him,
+still sat motionless, one hand upon the sofa's side, one on the back,
+little Rite still sleeping on his knee. Capua came and exchanged a
+few words with his master; then the colored nurse stepped through the
+groups, sought the child, and carried her away, head and arms hanging
+heavy with slumber. Still Mr. Raleigh did not move. Mrs. Laudersdale
+stood in the window, vivid and glowing. There were no others in the
+room.
+
+"Where is Mrs. McLean?" asked Mary Purcell at the door, after the
+charade in which she had been engaged was concluded.
+
+"Gone across the lake with Nell and Mr. Laudersdale for a letter,"
+replied Master Fred Heath, who had returned that afternoon from the
+counting-room, with his employer, and now sauntered by.
+
+Mrs. Laudersdale started; she had not escaped too early; but then----Her
+heart was beating in her throat.
+
+"What letter?" asked Mrs. Heath, with amiable curiosity, as she joined
+them.
+
+"Do you know what letter, Mr. Raleigh?"
+
+"One from India, Madame," was his response.
+
+"Strange! Helen gone without permission! What was in the letter, I
+wonder. Do you know what was in the letter, Mr. Raleigh?"
+
+"Congratulations, and a recommendation of Mrs. McLean's cousin to her
+good graces," he said.
+
+"Oh, it was not Helen's, then?"
+
+"No."
+
+"My young gentleman's not in good humor to-night," whispered Mrs. Heath
+to Miss Purcell, with a significant nod, and moving off.
+
+"How did you know what was in Mrs. McLean's letter, Sir?" asked Mary
+Purcell.
+
+"I conjectured. In Mrs. Heath's place, I should have known."
+
+"There they come!--you can always tell Mrs. McLean's laugh. You've lost
+all the charades, Helen!"
+
+They came in, very gay, and seemed at once to arouse an airier and finer
+spirit among the humming clusters. Mr. Laudersdale did not join his
+wife, but sat on the piazza talking with Mr. McLean. People were looking
+at an herbal, others coquetting, others quiet. Some one mentioned music.
+Directly afterward, Mr. Raleigh rose and approached the piano. Every
+one turned. Taking his seat, he threw out a handful of rich chords; the
+instrument seemed to diffuse a purple cloud; then, buoyed over perfect
+accompaniment, the voice rose in that one love-song of the world. What
+depth of tenderness is there from which the "Adelaide" does not sound?
+What secret of tragedy, too? Singing, he throbbed through it a vitality
+as if the melody surcharged with beauty grew from his soul, and were his
+breath of life, indeed. The thrilling strain came to penetrate and
+fill one heart; the passionate despair surged round her; the silence
+following was like the hand that closes the eyes of the dead.
+
+Mr. Raleigh did not rise, nor look up, as he finished.
+
+"How melancholy!" said Helen Heath, breaking the hush.
+
+"All music should be melancholy," said he.
+
+"How absurd, Roger!" said his cousin. "There is much music that is only
+intensely beautiful."
+
+"Intense beauty at its height always drops in pathos, or rather the soul
+does in following it,--since that is infinite, the soul finite."
+
+"Nonsense! There's that song, Number Three in Book One"----
+
+"I don't remember it."
+
+"Well, there's no pathos there! It's just one trill of laughter and
+merriment, a sunbeam and effect. Play it, Helen."
+
+Helen went, and, extending her hands before Mr. Raleigh, played a couple
+of bars; he continued where she left it, as one might a dream, and,
+strangely enough, the little, gushing sparkle of joy became a phantom of
+itself, dissolving away in tears.
+
+"Oh, of course," said Mrs. McLean, "you can make mouths in a glass,
+if you please; but I, for one, detest melancholy! Don't you, Mrs.
+Laudersdale?"
+
+Mrs. Laudersdale had shrunk into the shadow of the curtain. Perhaps she
+did not hear the question; for her reply, that did not come at once, was
+the fragment of a Provencal romance, sung,--and sung in a voice neither
+sweet nor rich, but of a certain personal force as potent as either, and
+a stifled strength of tone that made one tremble.
+
+  "We're all alone, we're all alone!
+  The moon and stars are dead and gone,
+  The night's at deep, the winds asleep,
+  And thou and I are all alone!
+
+  "What care have we, though life there be?
+  Tumult and life are not for me!
+  Silence and sleep about us creep:
+  Tumult and life are not for thee!
+
+  "How late it is since such as this
+  Had topped the height of breathing bliss!
+  And now we keep an iron sleep,--
+  In that grave thou, and I in this!"
+
+Her voice yet shivered through the room, he struck a chord of dead
+conclusion, the curtain stirred, she emerged from the gloom and was
+gone.
+
+Mr. Raleigh rose and bade his cousin good-night. Mrs. McLean, however,
+took his arm and sauntered with him down the lawn.
+
+"I thought Capua came with you," she remarked.
+
+"He returned in a spare wherry, some time since," he replied; and
+thereon they made a few paces in silence.
+
+"Roger," said the little lady, taking breath preparatory to wasting it,
+"I thought Helen was a coquette. I've changed my mind. The fault is
+yours."
+
+He turned and looked down at her with some surprise.
+
+"You know we haven't much more time, and certainly"----
+
+"Kate!"
+
+"Yes,--don't scold!--and if you are going to propose, I really think you
+ought to, or else"----
+
+"You think I ought to marry Miss Heath?"
+
+"Why--I--well----Oh, dear! I wish I had held my peace!"
+
+"That might have been advisable."
+
+"Don't be offended now, Roger!"
+
+"Is there any reason to suppose her--to suppose me"----
+
+"Yes, there!" replied Mrs. McLean, desperately.
+
+He was silent a moment.
+
+"Good God, Kate!" said he, then, clasping his hands behind his head,
+and looking up the deep transparence of the unanswering night. "What a
+blessing it is that life don't last forever!"
+
+"But it does, Roger," she uttered under her breath,--terrified at his
+abrupt earnestness, and unwitting what storm she had aroused.
+
+"The formula changes," he replied, with his old air, and retracing their
+steps.
+
+The guests were all gone. Helen Heath was eating an ice; he bent over
+her chair and said,--
+
+"Good-night, Miss Helen!"
+
+"Oh, good-night, Mr. Raleigh! You are going? Well, we're all going soon.
+What a glorious summer it has been! Aren't you sorry we must part?"
+
+"Why must we part?" he asked in a lower tone. "Where is the necessity of
+our parting? Why won't you stay forever, Helen?"
+
+She turned and surveyed him quickly, while a red--whether of joy or
+anger he could not tell--flashed up her cheek.
+
+"Do you mean"----
+
+"Miss Heath, I mean, will you marry me?"
+
+"Mr. Raleigh, no!"
+
+With a bow he passed on.
+
+Mr. Raleigh trimmed the Arrow's sail, for the breeze had sunk again, and
+swept slowly out with one oar suspended. A waning moon was rising behind
+the trees, it fell upon the little quay that had been built that summer,
+and seemed with its hollow beams still to continue the structure upon
+the water. The Arrow floated in the shadow just beyond. Mr. Raleigh's
+eyes were on the quay; he paused, nerveless, both oars trailing, a cold
+damp starting on his forehead. Some one approached as if looking out
+upon the dim sheet,--some one who, deceived by the false light, did not
+know the end to be so near, and walked forward firmly and confidently.
+Indeed, the quay had been erected in Mr. Laudersdale's absence. The
+water was deep there, the bottom rocky.
+
+"Shout and warn him of his peril!" urged a voice in Mr. Raleigh's heart.
+
+"Let him drown!" urged another voice.
+
+If he would have called, the sound died a murmur in his throat. His eyes
+were on the advancing figure; it seemed as if that object were to be
+forever branded on the retina. Still as he gazed, he was aware of
+another form, one sitting on the quay, unseen in shadow like himself,
+and seeing what he saw, and motionless as he. Would Mrs. Laudersdale
+dip her hands in murder? It all passed in a second of time; at the next
+breath he summoned every generous power in his body, sprang with the
+leap of a wild creature, and confronted the recoiling man. Ere his foot
+touched the quay, the second form had glided from the darkness, and
+seized her husband's arm.
+
+"A thousand pardons, Sir," said Mr. Raleigh, then. "I thought you were
+in danger. Mrs. Laudersdale, good-night!"
+
+It was an easy matter to regain the boat, to gather up his oars, and
+shoot away. Till they faded from sight, he saw her still beside him;
+and so they stood till the last echo of the dipping oars was muffled in
+distance and lost.
+
+Summer-nights are brief; breakfast was late on the next morning,--or
+rather, Mrs. Laudersdale was late, as usual, to partake it.
+
+"Shall I tell you some news?" asked Helen Heath.
+
+She lifted her heavy eyes absently.
+
+"Mrs. McLean has made her husband a millionnaire. There was an Indian
+mail yesterday. Mr. Raleigh read his letters last night, after going
+home. His uncle is dying,--old, unfortunate, forlorn. Mr. Raleigh has
+abandoned everything, and must hew his own way in the world from this
+day forward. He left this morning for India."
+
+When you saw Mrs. Laudersdale for the first time, at a period thirteen
+years later, would you have imagined her possessed of this little drama?
+You fancy now that in this flash all the wealth of her soul burned out
+and left her a mere volition and motive power? You are mistaken, as I
+said.
+
+[To be continued.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+GONE.
+
+
+  A silent, odor-laden air,
+  From heavy branches dropping balm;
+  A crowd of daisies, milky fair,
+  That sunward turn their faces calm,
+  So rapt, a bird alone may dare
+  To stir their rapture with its psalm.
+
+  So falls the perfect day of June,
+  To moonlit eve from dewy dawn;
+  With light winds rustling through the noon,
+  And conscious roses half-withdrawn
+  In blushing buds, that wake too soon,
+  And flaunt their hearts on every lawn.
+
+  The wide content of summer's bloom,
+  The peaceful glory of its prime,--
+  Yet over all a brooding gloom,
+  A desolation born of time,
+  As distant storm-caps tower and loom
+  And shroud the sun with heights sublime.
+
+  For they are vanished from the trees,
+  And vanished from the thronging flowers,
+  Whose tender tones thrilled every breeze,
+  And sped with mirth the flying hours;
+  No form nor shape my sad eye sees,
+  No faithful spirit haunts these bowers.
+
+  Alone, alone, in sun or dew!
+  One fled to heaven, of earth afraid;
+  And one to earth, with eyes untrue
+  And lips of faltering passion, strayed:
+  Nor shall the strenuous years renew
+  On any bough these leaves that fade.
+
+  Long summer-days shall come and go,--
+  No summer brings the dead again;
+  I listen for that voice's flow,
+  And ache at heart, with deepening pain;
+  And one fair face no more I know,
+  Still living sweet, but sweet in vain.
+
+
+
+
+EXPRESSION.
+
+
+The law of expression is the law of degrees,--of much, more, and most.
+
+Nature exists to the mind not as an absolute realization, but as a
+condition, as something constantly becoming. It is neither entirely this
+nor that. It is suggestive and prospective; a body in motion, and not an
+object at rest. It draws the soul out and excites thought, because it
+is embosomed in a heaven of possibilities, and interests without
+satisfying. The landscape has a pleasure to us, because in the mind it
+is canopied by the ideal, as it is here canopied by the sky.
+
+The material universe seems a suspense, something arrested on the point
+of transition from nonentity to absolute being,--wholly neither, but on
+the confines of both, which is the condition of its being perceptible to
+us. We are able to feel and use heat, because it is not entirely heat;
+and we see light only when it is mixed and diluted with its opposite.
+The condition of motion is that there be something at rest; else how
+could there be any motion? The river flows, because its banks do not. We
+use force, because it is only in part that which it would be. What could
+we do with unmixed power? Absolute space is not cognizable to the mind;
+we apprehend space only when limited and imprisoned in geometrical
+figures. Absolute life we can have no conception of; the absolute must
+come down and incarnate itself in the conditioned, and cease to be
+absolute, before it comes within the plane of our knowledge. The
+unconscious is not knowable; as soon as it is thought, it becomes
+conscious.
+
+And this is God's art of expression. We can behold nothing pure; and all
+that we see is compounded and mixed. Nature stands related to us at a
+certain angle, and a little remove either way--back toward its grosser
+side, or up toward its ideal tendency--would place it beyond our ken. It
+is like the rainbow, which is a partial and an incomplete development,--
+pure white light split up and its colors detached and dislocated, and
+which is seen only from a certain stand-point.
+
+We remark, therefore, that all things are made of one stuff, and on the
+principle that a difference in degree produces a difference in kind.
+From the clod and the rock up to the imponderable, to light and
+electricity, the difference is only more or less of selection and
+filtration. Every grade is a new refinement, the same law lifted to a
+higher plane. The air is earth with some of the coarser elements purged
+away. From the zoöphyte up to man, more or less of spirit gives birth to
+the intervening types of life. All motion is but degrees of gravitating
+force; and the thousand colors with which the day paints the earth are
+only more or less of light. All form aspires toward the circle, and
+realizes it more or less perfectly. By more or less of heat the seasons
+accomplish their wonderful transformations on the earth and in the air.
+In the moral world, the eras and revolutions that check history are only
+degrees in the development of a few simple principles; and the variety
+of character that diversifies the world of men and manners springs from
+a greater or less predominance of certain individual traits.
+
+This law of degrees, pushed a little farther, amounts to detachment and
+separation, and gives birth to contrast and comparison. This is one
+aspect in which the law manifests itself in the individual. The chairs
+and the pictures must come out from the wall before we can see them. The
+tree must detach itself from the landscape, either by form or color,
+before it becomes cognizable to us. There must be irregularity and
+contrast. Our bodily senses relate us to things on this principle; they
+require something brought out and disencumbered from the mass. The eye
+cannot see where there is no shade, nor the hand feel where there is
+no inequality of surface, nor the palate taste where there is no
+predominance of flavor, nor the ear hear where there is no silence.
+Montaigne has the following pertinent passage, which also comes
+under this law:--"Whoever shall suppose a pack-thread equally strong
+throughout, it is utterly impossible it should break; for where will you
+have the breaking to begin? And that it should break altogether is not
+in Nature."
+
+The palpableness and availableness of an object are in proportion as it
+is separated from its environments. We use water as a motive power by
+detaching a part from the whole and placing ourselves in the way of its
+tendency to unite again. All force and all motion are originated on
+this principle. It is by gravity that we walk and move and overcome
+resistance, and, in short, perform all mechanical action; yet the
+condition is that we destroy the settled equilibrium of things for the
+moment, and avail ourselves of the impulse that restores it again. The
+woodman chops by controlling and breaking the force which he the next
+moment yields to.
+
+So in higher matters. We are conscious of pain and pleasure only through
+the predominance of some feeling. There must be degrees and differences
+again, and some part more relieved than another, to catch an expression
+on. Entire pain or an equal degree of physical suffering in every part
+of the body would be a perfect blank, complete numbness; and entire
+pleasure we could not be conscious of, and for the same reason. How
+could there be any contrast, any determining hue, any darker or brighter
+side? If the waters of the earth were all at the same altitude, how
+could there be any motion among the parts? Hence the fullest experience
+is never defined, and cannot be spoken. It is like the sphere, which, as
+it merges all possible form in itself, is properly of no form, as white
+is no color, and cannot be grasped and used as parts and fragments can;
+there are no angles and outlines to define and give emphasis.
+
+Hence the pain or pleasure that is definitely shaped in the
+consciousness and that can be spoken is necessarily partial, and does
+not go the full circle of our being. We are not conscious of our health
+and growth, because they are general and not local, and are not rendered
+prominent by contrast.
+
+The dictionary and the sciences, in fact the whole province of human
+knowledge, hinge upon this principle. To know a thing is but to
+separate and distinguish it from something else; and classifying and
+systematizing are carrying the same law from the particular to the
+general. We cannot know one thing alone; two ideas enter into every
+distinct act of the understanding,--one latent and virtual, the
+other active and at the surface. To use familiar examples, we cannot
+distinguish white without having known black, nor evil without having
+known good, nor beauty without having known deformity. Thus every
+principle has two sides, like a penny, and one presupposes the other,
+which it covers.
+
+When we come to the intellect and the expression of thought, the
+same law of detachment and separation prevails. In contemplation and
+enjoyment there are unity and wholeness; but in thinking, never. Our
+thoughts lie in us, like the granite rock in the earth, whole and
+continuous, without break or rupture, and shaped by a law of the
+spheres; but when they come to the surface in utterance, and can be
+grasped and defined, they lose their entireness and become partial and
+fragmentary, and hint a local and not a general law. We cannot speak
+entire and unmixed truth, because utterance separates a part from the
+whole, and consequently in a measure distorts and exaggerates and does
+injustice to other truths. The moment we speak, we are one-sided and
+liable to be assailed by the reverse side of the fact. Hence the
+hostility that exists between different sects and religions; their
+founders were each possessed of some measure of truth, and consequently
+stood near to a common ground of agreement, but in the statement it
+became vitiated and partial; and the more their disciples have expounded
+and sought to lodge their principles in a logical system, the more they
+have diverged from the primitive sentiment. If the sects would let logic
+alone and appeal only to the consciousness of men, there would be no
+very steep difference between them, and each would promote the good of
+the other. But the moment we rest with the reason and the understanding
+there must be opposition and divergence, for they apprehend things by
+parts, and not by the mass; they deal with facts, and not with laws.
+
+The fullest truth, as we have already hinted, never shapes itself into
+words on our lips. What we can speak is generally only foam from the
+surface, with more or less sediment in it; while the pure current flows
+untouched beneath. The deepest depths in a man have no tongue. He is
+like the sea, which finds expression only on its shoals and rocks; the
+great heart of it has no voice, no utterance.
+
+The religious creeds will never be reconciled by logic; the more
+emphatically they are expressed, the more they differ. Ideas, in this
+respect, resemble the trees, which branch and diverge more and more
+widely as they proceed from the root and the germinal state. Men
+are radically the same in their feelings and sentiments, but widely
+different in their logic. Argument is reaction, and drives us farther
+and farther apart.
+
+As the intellect expresses by detachment and contrast, it follows,
+that, the more emphatically an idea is expressed, the more it will be
+disencumbered of other ideas and stand relieved like a bust chiselled
+from a rock. It is suggestive and prospective, and, by being detached
+itself, will relieve others and still others. It makes a breach in
+the blank wall, and the whole is now pregnable. New possibilities are
+opened, a new outlook into the universe. Nothing, so to speak, has
+become something; one base metal has been transmuted into gold, and so
+given us a purchase on every other. When one thought is spoken, all
+others become speakable. After one atom was created, the universe would
+grow of its own accord. The difficulty in writing is to utter the
+first thought, to break the heavy silence, to overcome the settled
+equilibrium, and disentangle one idea from the embarrassing many. It is
+a struggle for life. There is no place to begin at. We are burdened with
+unuttered and unutterable truth, but cannot, for the life of us, grasp
+it. It is a battle with Chaos. We plant shaft after shaft, but to no
+purpose. We get an idea half-defined, when it slips from us, and all is
+blank again in that direction. We seem to be struggling with the force
+of gravity, and to come not so near conquering as to being conquered.
+But at last, when we are driven almost to despair, and in a semi-passive
+state inwardly settling and composing ourselves, the thought comes. How
+much is then revealed and becomes possible! New facts and forces are
+commanded by it; much of our experience, that was before meaningless
+and unavailable, assumes order and comes to our use; and as long as the
+breach can be kept open and the detachment perfect, how easily we write!
+But if we drop the thread of our idea without knotting it, or looping it
+to some fact,--if we stop our work without leaving something inserted
+to keep the breach open, how soon all becomes a blank! the wound heals
+instantly; the equilibrium which we had for a moment arrested again
+asserts itself, and our work is a fragment and must always remain so.
+Neither wife nor friends nor fortune nor appetite should call one from
+his work, when he is possessed by this spirit and can utter his thought.
+We are caught up into these regions rarely enough; let us not come down
+till we are obliged.
+
+The fullest development of this law, as it appears in the intellect,
+is Analogy. Analogy is the highest form of expression, the poetry of
+speech; and is detachment carried so far that it goes full circle and
+gives a sense of unity and wholeness again. It is the spheral form
+appearing in thought. The idea is not only detached, but is wedded to
+some outward object, so that spirit and matter mutually interpret each
+other. Nothing can be explained by itself, or, in the economy of
+Nature, is explained by itself. The night explains the day, and the day
+interprets the night. Summer gives character to winter, and in winter we
+best understand the spirit of summer. The shore defines and emphasizes
+the sea, and the sea gives form and meaning to the shore.
+
+To measure grain, we must have a bushel; and to confine water and air,
+we must have other than water and air to do it with. The bird flies by
+balancing itself against something else; the mountain is emphasized by
+the valley; and one color is brought out and individualized by another.
+Our mood of yesterday is understood and rendered available by our mood
+of to-day; and what we now experience will be read aright only when seen
+from the grounds of an opposite experience. Our life here will not be
+duly appreciated and its meaning made clear till seen from the life
+beyond.
+
+The spiritual canopies the material as the sky canopies the earth, and
+is reached and expressed only by its aid. And this is Analogy,--the
+marrying of opposite facts, the perception of the same law breaking out
+in a thousand different forms,--the completing of the circle when only
+a segment is given. The visible and the invisible make up one sphere of
+which each is a part. We are related to both; our root is in one, our
+top in the other. Our ideas date from spirit and appear in fact. The
+ideal informs the actual. This is the way the intellect detaches and
+gets expressed. It is not its own interpreter, and, like everything
+else, is only one side of a law which is explained by the other side.
+The mind is the cope and the world the draw, to use the language of the
+moulder. The intellect uses the outward, as the sculptor uses marble, to
+embody and speak its thought. It seizes upon a fact as upon a lever, to
+separate and lift up some fraction of its meaning. From Nature, from
+science, from experience, it traces laws, till they appear in itself,
+and thus finds a thread to string its thought on.
+
+Without Analogy, without this marrying of the inward and the outward,
+there can be no speech, no expression. It is a necessity of our
+condition. Spirit is cognizable by us only when endowed with a material
+body; so an idea or a feeling can be stated only when it puts on the
+form and definiteness of the sensuous, the empirical. Hence the highest
+utterance is a perpetual marrying of thought with things, as in
+poetry,--a lifting up of the actual and a bringing down of the
+ideal,--giving a soul to the one and a body to the other. This takes
+place more or less in all speech, but only with genius is it natural and
+complete. Ordinary minds inherit their language and form of expression;
+but with the poet, or natural sayer, a new step is taken, and new
+analogies, new likenesses must be disclosed. He is distinguished from
+the second-hand man by the fulness and completeness of his expression;
+his words are round and embrace the two hemispheres, the actual and the
+ideal. He points out analogies under our feet, and presents the near and
+the remote wedded in every act of his mind. Nothing is old with him,
+but Nature is forever new like the day, and gives him pure and fresh
+thoughts as she gives him pure and fresh water. Hence the expressiveness
+of poetry and its power over the human heart. It differs from prose only
+in degree, not in essence. It goes farther and accomplishes more. It
+is the blossom of which prose is the bud, and comes with sincerity,
+simplicity, purity of motive, and a vital relation to Nature.
+
+As men grow earnest and impassioned, and speak from their inmost heart,
+and without any secondary ends, their language rises to the dignity of
+poetry and employs tropes and figures. The more emphatic the statement,
+the more the thought is linked with things. The ideas of men in their
+ordinary mood are only half-expressed, like a stone propped up, but
+still sod-bound; but when they are fired and glowing with the heat of
+some great passion, the operation of the mind is more complete and the
+detachment more perfect. The thought is not only evolved, but is thrown
+into the air,--disencumbered from the understanding, and set off against
+the clear blue of the imagination. Hence the direct and unequivocal
+statement of a man writing under the impulse of some strong feeling, or
+speaking to a thrilled and an excited audience. Nature, the world, his
+experience, is no longer hard and flinty, but plastic and yielding, and
+takes whatever impress his mind gives it. Facts float through his head
+like half-pressed grapes in the wine-press, steeped and saturated with
+meaning, and his expression becomes so round and complete as to astonish
+himself in his calmer moments.
+
+People differ not so much in material as in this power of expressing it.
+The secret of the best writer lies in his art. He is not so much above
+the common stature; his experience is no richer than ours; but he knows
+how to put handles to his ideas, and we do not. Give a peasant his power
+of expression, or of welding the world within to the world without, and
+there would be no very precipitous inequality between them. The great
+writer says what we feel, but could not utter. We have pearls that
+lie no deeper than his, but have not his art of bringing them to the
+surface. We are mostly like an inland lake that has no visible outlet;
+while he is the same lake gifted with a copious channel.
+
+The secret seems to lie in the temperament and in the transmuting and
+modifying medium. More or less of filtration does it all. Nature makes
+the poet, not by adding to, but by taking from; she takes all blur and
+opacity out of him; condenses, intensifies; lifts his nerves nearer the
+surface, sharpens his senses, and brings his whole organization to an
+edge. Sufficient filtration would convert charcoal into diamonds; and we
+shall everywhere find that the purest, most precious substances are the
+result of a refining, sorting, condensing process.
+
+Our expression is clogged by the rubbish in our minds, the foolish
+personal matters we load the memory with. Ideas are not clearly defined,
+as the drift-wood in the river spoils the reflected image. We feel
+nothing intensely; our experience is a blur without distinct form and
+outline; in short we are incumbered with too much clay. Hence, when
+a slow disease burns the dross and earth out of one, how keen and
+susceptible his organization becomes! The mud-wall grows transparent.
+Our senses lose their obtuseness, our capacity both for experience and
+expression is enlarged, and we not only live deeper, but nearer the
+surface.
+
+It appears, then, that, as a general rule, our ability to express
+ourselves is in proportion to the fineness of our organization. Women,
+for this reason, are more adequate in expressing themselves than men;
+they stand removed one degree farther from the earth, and are conscious
+of feelings and sentiments that are never defined in our minds; the
+detachment is more perfect; shades and boundaries are more clearly
+brought out, and consequently the statement is more round and full.
+
+One's capacity for expression is also affected by his experience,--not
+experience in time and space, but soul-experience,--joy, sorrow,
+pleasure, pain, love, hope, aspiration, and all intense feeling by which
+the genesis of the inward man unfolded. What one has lived, that alone
+can he adequately say. The outward is the measure of the inward; it is
+as the earth and sky: so much earth as we see, so much sky takes form
+and outline. The spiritual, it is true, is illimitable, but the actual
+is the measure of that part of which we are made conscious. Experience
+furnishes the handle, but the intellect must supply the blade.
+
+Intense feeling of any kind afterward gives us more entire command over
+some thought or power within us. Every inundation of passion enriches
+and gives us a deeper soil. The most painful experiences are generally
+the most productive. Cutting teeth is by no means a pleasant operation,
+yet it increases our tools. Our lives are not thoroughly shaped out and
+individualized till we have lived and suffered in every part of us. A
+great feeling reveals new powers in the soul, as a deep breath fills
+air-cells in the lungs that are not reached by an ordinary inhalation.
+Love first revealed the poetic gift in Novalis; and in reading the
+Autobiography of Goethe, one can but notice the quickening of his powers
+after every new experience: a new love was a new push given the shuttle,
+and a new thread was added.
+
+When we come nearer the surface of our subject and speak of language,
+we remark that pure English, so far as such is possible, is the most
+convenient and expressive. Saxon words cannot be used too plentifully.
+They abridge and condense and smack of life and experience, and form the
+nerve and sinew of the best writing of our day; while the Latin is the
+fat. The Saxon puts small and convenient handles to things, handles that
+are easy to grasp; while your ponderous Johnsonian phraseology distends
+and exaggerates, and never peels the chaff from the wheat. Johnson's
+periods act like a lever of the third kind,--the power applied always
+exceeds the weight raised; while the terse, laconic style of later
+writers is eminently a lever on the first principle, and gives the mind
+the utmost purchase on the subject in hand.
+
+The language of life, and of men who speak to be understood, should be
+used more in our books. A great principle anchored to a common word or
+a familiar illustration never looses its hold upon the mind; it is like
+seeing the laws of Astronomy in the swing of a pendulum, or in the
+motion of the boy's ball,--or the law of the tides and the seasons
+appearing in the beating of the pulse, or in inspiring and expiring the
+breath. The near and the remote are head and tail of the same law, and
+good writing unites them, giving wholeness and continuity. The language
+of the actual and the practical applied to the ideal brings it at once
+within everybody's reach, tames it, and familiarizes it to the mind. If
+the writers on metaphysics would deal more in our every-day speech, use
+commoner illustrations, seek to find some interpreter of the feelings
+and affections of the mind in Nature, out of the mind itself, and thus
+keep the life-principle and the thought-principle constantly wedded,
+making them mutually elucidate and explain each other, they would be far
+more fruitful and satisfying. Cousin is the only writer we know of
+who has made any attempt at this, and we believe him to be the most
+consistent and intelligent metaphysician that has yet appeared. Surely,
+one cannot reasonably object to the height in the heavens from which a
+man steals his fire, if he can feed it with his own fuel and cook meat
+with it. Though the genealogy of our ideas be traceable to Jove and
+Olympus, they must marry their human sisters, the facts of common life
+and experience, before they can be productive of anything positive and
+valuable.
+
+Proverbs give us the best lessons in the art of expression. See what
+vast truths and principles informing such simple and common facts! It
+reminds one of suns and stars engraved on buttons and knife-handles.
+Proverbs come from the character, and are alive and vascular. There
+is blood and marrow in them. They give us pocket-editions of the most
+voluminous truths. Theirs is a felicity of expression that comes only at
+rare moments, and that is bought by long years of experience.
+
+There is no waste material in a good proverb; it is clear meat, like an
+egg,--a happy result of logic, with the logic left out; and the writer
+who shall thus condense his wisdom, and as far as possible give the two
+poles of thought in every expression, will most thoroughly reach men's
+minds and hearts.
+
+
+
+
+ITALIAN EXPERIENCES IN COLLECTING "OLD MASTERS."
+
+
+As the taste for collecting objects of art is rapidly developing in
+America, it may be not without profit to point out some of the pitfalls
+which attend the amateur in this pursuit, especially in Italy, that
+exhaustless quarry of "originals" and "old masters"; though it should be
+remembered that a work of art may be both original and old and very bad
+too,--its intrinsic worth being a separate question from its age and
+authenticity. The results given are drawn from an actual experience of
+many years.
+
+The most obvious risk is from the counterfeiter,--not from the
+vulgar shams distributed so widely over the world from the well-known
+_manufactories_ of paintings in France, England, and other parts, which
+can deceive only the most ignorant or credulous, but from talent itself
+debased to forgery and trickery.
+
+Many of the antique bronzes, terra-cottas, vases, classical and medieval
+relics, so jealously cared for in the collections of Europe, are the
+clever imitations of a poor and honest artist in one of the Italian
+cities, whose miniature studio might almost be put inside one of our
+old-fashioned omnibuses. His designs, taken from genuine antiques,
+are reproduced with fidelity, and the coatings and marks of time
+counterfeited by chemical means and skilful manipulation. He sells his
+productions as imitations, at prices that barely provide him with daily
+bread, eking out his subsistence by repairs and restorations, in which
+he is equally happy. Living in obscurity, without the capital or
+sagacity to make himself known to the public, he is at the mercy of
+those who are interested in keeping him in privacy and buying his
+artistic labors at the wages of a clodhopper. His own responsibility
+goes not beyond fulfilling orders for the imitation of certain objects,
+the process of which he frankly explains to the inquisitive visitor.
+But, once in dishonest hands, antiquity and authenticity replace
+modernism and imitation.
+
+There are two ways of seduction and deceit. The one and safer for
+the operator is the _suggestive,_ in which appearances are made by
+consummate tact and artful flattery to excite the imagination of the
+buyer so that he is led to believe what he desires without compromising
+the agent. The other is positive intrigue and absolute lying, so nicely
+done that the wealthy amateur is fleeced often in a fashion that confers
+a pleasure, and which, though he may subsequently detect it, gives him
+but a lame chance at redress. In most instances he deserves none. For,
+stimulated by vanity or fashion, without any true regard for art, he
+has offered so large a premium for a name, that it would indeed be
+wonderful, if a corresponding supply were not created. The living artist
+is sometimes sorely tempted to pander to illusions to secure that
+appreciation which the world gives more lavishly to fashion than to
+merit. Michel Angelo tested this disposition, even more current in
+his time than now; though some say it was done unknown to him. At all
+events, having finished the statue of a Cupid, after breaking off an
+arm, it was buried, and in due time discovered, disinterred, and brought
+to the notice of a distinguished Roman dignitary, who pronounced it to
+be a genuine antique and paid a large price for it, well pleased, as he
+had reason to be, with his prize. But afterwards, the deception being
+exposed, and the proof by means of the missing arm given that it was
+the work of the then unknown Florentine sculptor, the disenchanted
+connoisseur was furiously indignant, and disposed to take prompt
+vengeance upon the parties concerned.
+
+To come back to our own day. Let us suppose a rich collector to have
+arrived in some well-known Italian market for art,--picture-jockeying is
+much the same everywhere,--in pursuit of "originals."
+
+Great is the commotion among dealers and their _sensali_ or jackals.
+These latter are versed in intrigue and mystification, with enough
+intelligence to tell a good picture from a bad one, and a parrot-like
+acquaintance with names and schools. They are of all classes, from the
+decayed gentleman and artist, to shopkeepers, cobblers, cooks, and
+tailors, who find in the large commissions gained a temptation to
+forsake their petty legitimate callings for the lottery-like excitements
+and _finesse_ of picture-dealing. No sooner has the stranger gone to his
+hotel than a watch is put upon his movements, and bribery and cajolery
+used to get access to him. It is the _sensale's_ business to discover
+and offer pictures. He is supposed to know the locality of every one,
+good or bad, in his neighborhood. However jealous of each other, all
+are loyally pledged together to take in the stranger. Leagued with the
+dealer, artist, owner, courier, or servant, with any one, in fact, that
+by any possibility can stand between the buyer and his object, it has
+become almost an impossibility, especially for transient visitors, to
+purchase anything whatever without paying a heavy toll to intermediates.
+When the conspiracy is widely extended, the augmentation of price above
+what would be required in direct dealing with the owner is sometimes
+double or even quadruple. Occasionally, however, by way of compensation
+for their general evil, the _sensali,_ having scented a prize, offer it
+first to the amateur, in view of their own increase of gain over what
+the dealer would allow. In this way, good pictures not unfrequently
+escape the merchant, and reach the collector at a lower price than if
+they had gone directly to the former.
+
+The _sensali_ are not without their use in another respect. So indirect
+and underhand is the Italian's mode of dealing in these matters, and
+so eccentric his notions as to value, that a foreigner is apt to be
+speedily disgusted or driven away by the magnitude of demands which in
+reality the seller never expects to realize. Hence the negotiation is
+best done through an agent, the buyer having fixed his price, leaving
+the _sensale_ to make what he can for himself. No purchaser, however,
+should give heed to any statement about the history or authenticity of
+the works offered to him through such channels, but rely both for value
+and facts upon his own resources; otherwise he will be deceived to an
+extent that would appear almost fabulous to the uninitiated.
+
+Such are the preliminary difficulties that beset the amateur. We will
+suppose him in connection with the seller, and trace his progress.
+First, the quality of his judgment and the impressibility of his
+imagination are tested by a series of experiments as delicate as the
+atmospherical gauges of a barometer. He is of course not to be entrapped
+by copies or fabrications. He has a shrewd distrust of dealers, and
+therefore prefers to buy family pictures or originals directly from
+chapels and convents. All Italians have a patriotic pride in getting
+rid of trash at the expense of the foreigner. The more common baits to
+entrap--by bringing pictures mysteriously boxed, grandly baptized, and
+liberally decorated with aristocratic seals and eloquent with
+academical certificates, anointed with refined flattery and obsequious
+courtesy--having failed, his _Eccellenza_ being too knowing to be
+seduced into buying the ostentatiously furbished-up _roba_ of shops,
+they set about to accommodate him with originals from first hands.
+By substituting old frames for new, dirtying the pictures, and other
+ingenious processes familiar to the initiated, and then putting them out
+to board in noble villas, antique palaces, or other localities the most
+natural for good pictures to be _discovered_ in, spiced with a romance
+of decayed family-grandeur,--by employing new agents, and by hints
+sagaciously conveyed to the buyer, his curiosity is excited, hopes
+raised, and, finally, with much trouble and enhanced expense, he
+triumphantly carries off the very pictures which in a shop he could not
+be tempted to look at for fear of being caught with chaff, but which
+now, from a well-got-up romance, have acquired a peculiar value in
+his eyes. Not that this sort of delicate mystification is reserved
+exclusively for foreigners. For we have detected in an altar-piece,
+borne away as a great prize by an Italian friend from a secluded
+little chapel attached to a noble villa in the vicinity of Florence,
+a worthless specimen of an old painter, from one of the secret
+depositories of the city, which had long been wholly unsalable on any
+terms.
+
+Honest dealing exists in Italy, as elsewhere, and there are men whose
+statements may safely be received. But let the purchaser be cautious
+when led into out-of-the-way places to see newly found originals, and be
+slow to give heed to stories of churches being permitted to sell this or
+that work of art because they have a _façade_ to repair or an altar to
+decorate,--and particularly if there be said anything of an inheritance
+to divide, or a sad tale of family distress requiring the sacrifice of
+long-cherished treasures, backed up by a well-gotten-up pantomime of
+unlockings and lockings, passages through mysterious corridors and vast
+halls, cautious showings amid a crowd of family-retainers or a retinue
+of monks. Sometimes the most wary is thus seduced into offering tenfold
+its worth for a common object thus seen by a carefully arranged light
+and with artificial surroundings.
+
+Many good pictures are still to be had in Italy, if properly approached
+by those who know thoroughly the habits of the country. There are,
+however, but two means of procuring them: either to pay their full
+value as fixed by rival collectors, or to secure them by fortuitous
+circumstances for trifling sums. The extraordinary chances of discovery
+and the extreme variations of price attending this pursuit are curious
+and instructive. A few examples are worth relating. In 1856, a small
+picture, by Niccolò d'Alunno, was sold in Florence, by an artist to a
+dealer, for forty dollars; in a few weeks resold to an Englishman
+for five hundred; exhibited at the Manchester Exhibition, whence it
+subsequently passed into the gallery of a distinguished personage for
+twenty-five hundred dollars. The "Leda" of Leonardo, repainted from
+motives of prudery by the great-grandfather of Louis-Philippe, was
+bought at the sale of that ex-king's pictures in Paris, in 1849, for
+thirty dollars, restored to its primitive condition, and sold, we are
+informed, for one hundred thousand francs. Ten years ago, an Angel, by
+the same artist, was found in the old-clothes market at Florence by an
+artist, bought for a few pence, cleaned and sold to Prince Galitzin for
+twenty-two thousand francs. The "Fortune" of Michel Angelo, or what was
+supposed to be, not long since was discovered in the same locality in a
+disastrous condition, secured for a few shillings, put in such order as
+was possible, and parted with to a French gentleman for three hundred
+dollars and a pension of one dollar a day during the lives of the seller
+and his son. Quite recently one of Correggio's most beautiful works was
+discovered under the canvas of a worthless picture acquired at a public
+auction in Rome for a few dimes, at the sale by a princely family of
+discarded pictures, and resold by its fortunate discoverer for fifteen
+thousand dollars, although the original proprietor instituted a suit
+against him for its recovery, but without success. In Florence, within
+three years past, a fine portrait, by Titian, of the Doge Andrea Gritti,
+was picked out from a large lot of worthless canvases for six dollars.
+The Madonna del Gran Duca, at the Pitti, was bought by the father of
+the late Grand Duke, with some other pictures, of a widow, for a few
+dollars. Instances like these might be multiplied, to show that in all
+times prizes do strangely and unexpectedly occur, and that pictures
+in their fortunes resemble their authors, often passing from extreme
+poverty into princely homes.
+
+The changes in the money value placed upon the same works in different
+epochs are also curious. Indeed, a history of the _caprices_ of art
+would be vastly entertaining. In 1740, at the sale in Paris of M.
+Crozat's collection, a drawing by Raphael brought only ten francs. The
+same drawing, at the sale of the King of Holland's gallery, in 1850,
+fetched fourteen thousand francs. For the "Ezekiel," Raphael, in 1510,
+had but eight _scudi d' oro,_ equivalent now to thirty dollars. At
+present, it would bring a fabulous sum, if sold. Within the memory of
+those now living, gold background pictures of the schools of Giotto and
+his successors, owing to the contempt the pseudo-classical French taste
+had excited for them, were brought out of suppressed churches and
+convents and publicly burned to obtain the trifling amount of gold which
+remained in the ashes. Amateurs are now more inclined to pay their
+weight in gold for such as have escaped the ravages of time and
+Vandalism; and the same government that permitted this destruction in
+1859 passed stringent decrees to prevent their leaving the country,
+sequestering all in public buildings as national property.
+
+Without cautious study and much well-paid-for experience, the stranger
+has small chance of successfully coping with the artifices that beset
+his every step. He must be well-grounded in the history of Italian
+painting, and possess a practical knowledge of the technical execution
+of its various masters. Haste and ignorance, united to wealth and
+vanity, are a rich mine for the _sensali._ To such collectors
+America--not to speak of Europe--owes many of its galleries of great
+names, to the very natural astonishment and skepticism of the spectators
+and the defamation of great reputations. Many of these purchases are
+the speculations of couriers, who, having artfully inoculated their
+employers with a taste for originals, take care to supply the demand,
+greatly to the benefit of their own pockets and the gratitude of those
+with whom they bring their masters into connection. We have been called
+by a countryman to admire his gallery of Claudes, Poussins, Rembrandts,
+Murillos, and Titians, for which he had expended a princely sum, but
+which there was no difficulty in recognizing as the shop _roba_ got up
+expressly to entrap the unwary. One picture, worth, perhaps, for mere
+decoration, fifty dollars, had been secured as a great favor for
+twenty-two hundred dollars, the "last price" asked for it being three
+thousand. Another, by a feeble artist of the Carlo Dolce school, had
+been converted, by a substitution of names and sundry touchings-up, into
+a brilliant Guercino, at the cost of nearly one thousand dollars, of
+which the owner got about one-third, the confederates pocketing the
+rest.
+
+Some amateurs deceive themselves after a manner which acquits the
+dealer of any participation in their illusions. A gentleman entered a
+well-known studio in Florence, not many years since, and inquired the
+price of a picture.
+
+"Sixty dollars: the painting is by Furini," was the reply.
+
+"I will take it," said the gentleman, eagerly insisting upon paying for
+it on the spot; which was no sooner done, than he turned round to the
+amused artist and triumphantly exclaimed, "Do you know you have sold me
+a Murillo for nothing?"
+
+Benvenuti, President of the Academy of Florence, was once asked to
+attest the originality of an Andrea brought to him by some speculators.
+"I should be happy to gratify you, gentlemen," he replied, "but
+unfortunately I saw the picture painted." Nevertheless, certificates
+were obtained from more facile authorities, and the painting officially
+baptized for a market.
+
+Certificates and documents need to be received as cautiously as the
+pictures themselves; perhaps more so,--for they are more easily forged.
+When genuine, the former are valuable only as they are the opinions of
+honest and competent judges; and both are trustworthy only so far as
+they are attached to the pictures to which they legitimately belong.
+
+Genuine pictures have been sold and their documentary evidence kept for
+skilful imitations. We have even detected in certificates the fraudulent
+substitution of names. And sometimes, when honestly given, their
+testimony is of no value. One professional certificate in our
+possession, of the last century, ascribes the portrait in question to
+Masaccio or Sauti di Tito: as sensible a decision as if an English
+critic had decided that a certain picture of his school was either by
+Hogarth or Sir Thomas Lawrence. Cases are indeed rare, even in the
+public galleries, in which, outside of the picture itself, there is any
+trustworthy historical testimony as to its genealogy.
+
+Counterfeits of the old masters of the later Italian schools, supported
+by false evidence, have at various times deceived good judges and
+obtained posts of honor in the galleries of Europe. Even when detected,
+their owners do not always repudiate their spurious treasures. They give
+their collections the benefit of doubts or of public ignorance. The most
+noted imitator of this class was Micheli of Florence. In view of his
+success and the use for a time made of his works, he must rank as
+a forger, though they are now in esteem solely for their intrinsic
+cleverness. Some still linger in remote galleries, with the savor of
+authenticity about them. A Raphael of his make long graced the Imperial
+Gallery of Russia. He did not confine himself to literal repetitions,
+but concocted new "originals" by combining parts of several pictures
+in worm-eaten panels or time-stained canvases, with such variations of
+motive or design as their supposed authors would naturally have made
+in repeating their ideas in fresher combinations,--sometimes leaving
+portions unfinished, ingeniously dirtying their surfaces, and giving to
+them that cracked-porcelain appearance common to the old masters.
+One thus prepared was bought at his studio for one hundred dollars,
+consigned to a priest in the country, in due time _discovered_, and the
+rumor of a great master in an exceedingly dirty and somewhat dilapidated
+state, but believed to be intact beneath the varnishes and grime of
+centuries, brought to the ears of a Russian, who after a delicate and
+wearisome negotiation obtained it for eight hundred dollars, and perhaps
+paid half as much more to the manufacturer for cleaning and restoring
+it.
+
+Another sort of deception is the alteration of pictures by artists
+less-known or of inferior reputations to suit more fashionable and
+profitable names. In this way many works of much local interest, and
+often indeed of equal merit to those they are made to represent, are
+exterminated, to the serious detriment of the history of art, Lombardy,
+Umbria, and the Legations especially have suffered in this way.
+
+Though no deception be intended, if pedigrees are lost, criticism is
+often sorely perplexed to decide upon authorship. Out of the multitudes
+of pictures in the European galleries, which are so decidedly baptized
+in catalogues, the public would be surprised to learn how few
+comparatively can be historically traced to their authors. The majority
+are named upon the authority of local judges, whose acquaintance with
+art may be limited to one speciality, or who rely upon such opinions
+as can be gathered from the best available sources. Hence the frequent
+changes in the nomenclatures. We cannot, therefore, accept such
+documents as infallible, except in those cases where internal evidence
+and historic record are alike unimpeachable.
+
+The difficulty of deciding often arises from repetitions, and the
+excellence of pupils painting from the designs of their masters, and not
+unfrequently assisted by them. As we go back in art, this difficulty
+increases, from the oblivion which has overtaken once well-known names,
+and from the greater uniformity of processes and the more limited range
+of motives of the earliest artists.
+
+The great religious masters of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries
+gathered around them crowds of scholars, who travelled with them from
+city to city, partaking in their commissions and executing their
+designs, especially of _ex-voto_ pictures, multiplied in that age by the
+piety of noble families, to commemorate some special interposition of
+divine power in their behalf and to honor their patron saints. Their
+usual compositions were the Madonna enthroned with the infant Jesus in
+her arms, surrounded by holy personages or angels, with the portraits
+of those who ordered the paintings, in general of diminutive size to
+express humility, and kneeling in adoration with clasped hands and
+upraised eyes. Unless the characteristics of the master-hand are
+unmistakable in this class of works, they are to be ranked as of the
+schools of the great men whose general features they bear. And it must
+not be forgotten that frequently pupils developed into distinguished
+masters themselves. Taddeo Gaddi and Puccio Capanna worked under Giotto
+while he lived, and afterwards acquired distinction in an independent
+career.
+
+A like close relation between master and scholar, the effect of which
+was to multiply works by joint labor, obtained among the contemporaries
+of Raphael as well as of Giotto. The precise number of the genuine works
+of Raphael, owing to the cleverness of many of his pupils, will perhaps
+never be known. Coindet ascribes to him from one hundred and eighty to
+two hundred Holy Families alone. Some writers compute the entire number
+of his paintings at from five hundred to six hundred; others quote
+twelve hundred as authentic. These exaggerated estimates only prove how
+extremely popular his designs became and the great number of pictures
+ordered from them, some of which no doubt had the advantage of being
+touched by his hand, while all in some way or other bear his mental
+impress.
+
+Moreover, the great masters frequently changed their methods and styles,
+so that one might be mistaken for another, and at times studied and
+copied each other. Andrea del Sarto's copy of Raphael's Leo Tenth passed
+undetected even by Giulio Romano, who had himself worked on the latter.
+Rubens and Velasquez imitated and copied the great Italian masters,
+particularly Paul Veronese and Titian; the Caracci and their followers
+multiplied Correggios, Raphaels, and the chief Venetians; Girolamo da
+Carpi of Ferrara the same; and all with a degree of success that has
+greatly perplexed later generations: their own works, in turn, as they
+became popular, experiencing from subsequent artists the same process of
+multiplication. Of the celebrated Madonna of Loreto there are not fewer
+than ten rival claimants for authenticity; while sketches, studies, and
+works not directly imitated from, but partaking of the character of
+great artists, and often clever enough to be confounded with their
+undoubted works, are not rare. Portraits, being direct studies from
+Nature, are difficult to decide upon. Hence it is that criticism is so
+variable in its decisions.
+
+Beside the above sources of perplexity, it encounters another obstacle
+from the restorations pictures have undergone. Injured by time or
+obscured by repeated varnishings, they often require some degree of
+cleaning to make them intelligible. Unfortunately, in most instances,
+the process is sheer assassination. Many of the best works of public
+galleries have been subjected to scrubbings more analogous to the labors
+of a washtub than to the delicate and scientific treatment requisite to
+preserve intact the virgin surface of the painting. Mechanical operators
+have passed over them with as little remorse as locusts blight fields
+of grain. Their rude hands in numberless instances have skinned the
+pictures, obliterating those peerless tints, lights, and shadows, and
+those delicate but emphatic touches that bespeak the master-stroke,
+leaving instead cold, blank, hard surfaces and outlines, opaque shadows
+and crude coloring, out of tone, and in consequence with deteriorated
+sentiment as well as execution. The profound knowledge and vigorous or
+fairy-like handling which made their primary reputation are now forever
+gone, leaving little behind them except the composition to sustain it in
+competition with modern work. As bad, however, as is this wanton injury,
+that of repainting is greater. Inadequate to replace the delicate work
+he has rubbed off, to harmonize the whole and make it look fresh and
+new, the restorer passes his own brush over the entire picture, and thus
+finally obscures whatever of technical originality there might still
+have been preserved after the cleaning. The extent of injury European
+galleries have thus received is incalculable. One instance will suffice
+as an example of many. Some years gone by, the Titian's Bella Donna of
+the Pitti was intact. Unluckily it got into the hands of a professional
+cleaner. A celebrated dealer happened to be standing by when it was
+rehung. Looking at it, he exclaimed,--"Two weeks ago I would have given
+the Grand Duke two thousand pounds for that picture on speculation; now
+I would not give two hundred."
+
+Each restoration displaces more of the original and replaces it with
+the restorer. As the same hands generally have a monopoly of a public
+gallery, the contents of some are beginning to acquire a strange
+uniformity of external character, while the old masters in the same
+degree are vanishing from them. These remarks, however, are more
+applicable to past than to present systems; for a reform founded on true
+artistic principles is being everywhere inaugurated.
+
+Oil-paintings gradually deepen in tone; while tempera, if protected from
+humidity, retain their brilliancy and clearness as long as the material
+on which they rest endures. The true occupation of the restorer is to
+put the work given to him in a condition as near as possible to its
+original state, carefully abstaining from obliterating the legitimate
+marks of age, and limiting himself to just what is sufficient for the
+actual conservation of the picture. One of the chief needs of many old
+pictures is the removal of old repaintings. This done, the less added
+the better, unless, if a piece be wanting, it can be so harmonized with
+the original as to escape observation. But this is a special art, and
+to be done only by those acquainted with the old methods. In perfect
+condition ancient paintings cannot be. We must receive them for what
+they are, with the corrodings and changes of time upon them. How
+interesting in this respect is the Sienese Gallery! Here the restorer
+has been stayed, and we find the pictures genuine as time itself,
+and more precious by far to the student than the most glaring and
+"refreshed" surfaces of those works in other galleries which are the
+wonder and admiration of superficial observers.
+
+The greatest difficulty of the restorer is to harmonize _permanently_
+the new vehicles with the old; for the fresh tints are always liable
+to assume a different tone from the original, which have already been
+chemically acted upon by time.
+
+It may be said that the skill which can escape detection in restoration
+is adequate to successful counterfeiting. This is true only in part;
+for _mending_ is very different from _creating._ Instances, however, do
+occur of such attempts; but they seldom long escape detection, and never
+impose upon those who have experience in the arts of the restorer.
+Some years ago a Roman artist for a while successfully passed off his
+imitations of Claude, Salvator Rosa, and their schools, as originals,
+at large prices, with the usual guaranties of authenticity. To disarm
+suspicion, he was accustomed to allow himself to be seen at work only
+upon cheap, vulgar pictures, pretending he was competent to nothing
+better. Having sold one of his Claudes for four thousand dollars, the
+trick being detected, he was threatened with a public prosecution, the
+fear of which brought on his death.
+
+The favorite field of the early masters was fresco-painting. Unlike
+painting in oils, it has no resources of transparency, brilliancy, and
+richness of coloring, but depends for its nobility of effect upon the
+hardier virtues of art and the more robust genius of the artist. His
+success lies in strong and eloquent design and composition, with but
+feeble aid from color. Fresco and tempera paintings were chiefly
+intended for the interiors of churches or public buildings, whose dim
+light harmonized their more or less crude and positive tones. It was,
+however, only through the breadth and freedom of wall-painting that the
+ambition of the early masters was fully aroused and their powers
+found ample scope. Out of it they created a world of art unknown
+and unappreciable by those who cannot view it as it exists in the
+consecrated localities and amid the solemn associations whence it
+originated. All over Italy, by the road-side and in the sanctuary, there
+exists untold treasure of this sort, pure, grand or quaint, telling
+truth with the earnestness of conviction, and exhaling beauty through
+aroused feeling and refined sentiment, overflowing with virgin power
+and exalted efforts. Everywhere untransportable, often in localities
+untrodden except by the feet of the stolid peasant or the heavy-jawed
+monk, seen only by enthusiastic seekers, these monuments of a noble art
+are once more being awakened into vital existence by the piety and taste
+of a generation whose great joy it is to uncover and restore to the
+light of day those precious remains which were so often barbarously
+whitewashed by the clergy of the past two centuries, from no more cogent
+motive than to give greater light to their churches. Especially in
+Tuscany every souvenir of ancestral greatness is now cared for with a
+jealous patriotism honorable alike to the feeling and knowledge of its
+population. The chief desire of the country is now to reinvest her
+republican monuments with the character and aspect which best recall her
+olden freedom and enterprise. And the highest glory that can be bestowed
+upon these monuments is their careful conservation or restoration as
+they originally were designed; nothing being added or taken away except
+to their loss.
+
+Not merely patriotism, but selfish acquisition demands of Italy the
+strict conservation of art. Her monuments are funds at interest for
+posterity. Indeed, her livelihood depends in no stinted measure upon
+her artistic attractions. And nowhere is there a livelier feeling for
+artistic beauty, greater respect for the past, and a wider-spread
+knowledge of art. In all times will other peoples come within her
+borders to enjoy and study that which she can still so lavishly bestow.
+
+Tourists soundly rate Italians for their sordid indifference to their
+art, attributing to the people at large the spirit of the mercenary
+or ignorant class with whom they are most in contact. It is true that
+others may hear, as we have heard, from a noble marquis, in reply to a
+question about his family-pictures, "Ask my majordomo; had your question
+been about horses, I could have told you." They may meet aristocratic
+personages not above acting the picture-dealer in a covert manner, and,
+still worse, receive propositions to buy works of art robbed from public
+places. But such instances are uncommon. The common feeling is an
+enthusiastic pride in, and profound respect for, the names and the
+works that have done so much for the good and glory of Italy. Even the
+spirited deportment of the Signorina Borgherini, as told by Vasari,
+towards a dealer, who, during the siege of Florence, attempted to get
+possession of certain paintings belonging to her husband, to speculate
+upon by sending them to the king of France, may still find its
+counterpart in feeling, if not in fact, among some of the living
+daughters of that city.
+
+"How, then," she exclaimed, "dost thou, Giovanni Battista, thou vile
+broker of frippery, miserable huckster of farthings, dost thou presume
+to come hither with the intent to lay thy fingers on the ornaments which
+belong to the chambers of gentlemen,--despoiling, as thou hast long
+done and art ever doing, our city of the fairest ornaments to embellish
+strange lands therewith? I prize these pictures from reverence to the
+memory of my father-in-law, from whom I had them, and from the love I
+bear to my husband; I mean to defend them, while I have life, with my
+own blood. Away with thee, then, base creature of nothingness! If again
+thou shouldest be so bold as to come on a similar errand to this house,
+thou shalt be taught what is the respect due to the dwelling of a
+gentleman, and that to thy serious discomfort; make sure of it!"
+
+And so she drove the intriguing bargainer away, with "reproaches of such
+intolerable bitterness, that the like had never before been hurled at
+man alive." Be it remembered, too, that Vasari was a good judge of the
+quality of a Florentine dame's scolding, for he had himself in his
+younger days passed a painful apprenticeship under the weight of
+Lucretia Feti's tongue.
+
+Criticism is too often local in its tone, being pledged, as it were, to
+the admiration of its favorite subjects and a corresponding disregard of
+those with which it is not familiar. Particularly in Italy, where the
+municipal feeling has been so strong, the partisans of each school were
+greatly prejudiced. Each people also very naturally prefers its own to
+another's art, and does not always question its motives of preference.
+The Florentines have overlooked the merits of their rivals, the
+Venetians and Sienese,--who, in turn, have reciprocated; while Italy,
+as a whole, has had but small regard for the works of other nations.
+England has been slow to recognize the great merits of the Southern
+schools; and France, Holland, and Germany are equally in the bondage of
+local tastes or transitory fashions. But true criticism is cosmopolitan.
+It tests merit according to the standard of the nature on which it is
+founded, not overlooking excellence in whatever respect or degree. A
+truly catholic view of art is the result only of its universal study.
+The critic may be just to all inspirations, and yet enjoy his own
+preferences. But, as Blackwood observes, too many "are self-endowed with
+the capacity to judge all matters relating to the fine arts just in
+proportion to the extent of their ignorance, because it is not difficult
+to condemn in general terms and to attain notoriety by shallow
+pretence." Neither "the narrowness of sect nor the noise of party"
+should be heard in this matter. As a great gallery should represent
+all phases of art through their several stages of progress and decay,
+meeting all wants and tastes, so criticism should be based upon a
+foundation equally broad,--not proud of its erudition nor dictatorial,
+but with due humility uttering its opinions, prompt to sustain them, and
+yet ever ready to listen and learn.
+
+"Old masters" are almost a by-word of doubt or contempt in America,
+owing to the influx of cheap copies and pseudo-originals of no artistic
+value whatever. It is the more important, therefore, that they should be
+represented among us by such characteristic specimens as are still to
+be procured. Some modern artists are jealous of or indifferent to past
+genius, and sedulously disparage it in view of their own immediate
+interests. Bayle St. John, in his "Louvre," relates that he heard an
+associate of the Royal Academy deliberately and energetically declare,
+that, if it were in his power, he would slash with his knife all the
+works of the old masters, and thus compel people to buy modern. This
+spirit is both ungenerous and impolitic. If neither respect nor care for
+the works of departed talent be bestowed, what future has the living
+talent itself to look forward to? Art is best nourished by a general
+diffusion of aesthetic taste and feeling. There can be no invidious
+rivalry between the dead and the living. Alfred Tennyson looks not with
+evil eye upon John Milton. Why should a modern be jealous of a mediaeval
+artist? The public can love and appreciate both. Nor should it be
+forgotten that it is precisely in those countries where old art is most
+appreciated that the modern is most liberally sustained.
+
+
+
+
+'TENTY SCRAN'.
+
+
+  "Patience hath borne the bruise, and I the stroke."
+
+"I think she's a-sinkin', Doctor," sobbed old Aunt Rhody, the nurse, as
+she came out of Mary Scranton's bed-room into the clean kitchen, where
+Doctor Parker sat before the fire, a hand on either knee, staring at the
+embers, and looking very grave.
+
+Doctor Parker got up from the creaky chair, and went into the bed-room.
+It was very small, very clean, and two sticks of wood on the old iron
+dogs burned away gradually, and softened the cool April air.
+
+Before this pretence of a fire sat an elderly woman, with grave, set
+features, an expression of sense and firmness, but a keen dark eye that
+raised question of her temper. Miss Lovina Perkins was her style, being
+half-aunt to the unpleasant-colored baby she now tended, rolled up in
+a flannel shawl, and permitted to be stupid undisturbedly, since its
+mother was dying.
+
+Dying, evidently; she had not been conscious for several hours. Her
+baby had not had its welcome; she knew nothing, cared for nothing, felt
+nothing but the chill of the blood that stood still in her veins, and
+the choking of the heart that hardly beat.
+
+Poor child! poor widow! Her head lay on the pillow, white as the linen,
+but of a different tint,--the indescribable pallor that you know and
+I know, who have seen it drawn over a dear face,--a tint that is best
+unknown, that cannot be reproduced by pen or pencil. Yet, for all its
+pallor, you saw at once that this face was still young, had been
+lovely, a true New-England beauty, quaint and trim and delicate as the
+slaty-gray snow-bird, with its white breast, and soft, bright eyes, that
+haunts the dusky fir-trees and dazzling hill-side slopes when no other
+bird dare show itself,--a quiet, shy creature, full of innocent trust
+and endurance, its chirp and low repetition dearer than the gay song of
+lark or robin, because a wintry song.
+
+But Mary Perkins had never been called handsome in Deerfield; if they
+said she was "a real pretty girl," it only meant kindly and gentle, in
+the Connecticut vernacular; and Tom Scranton, the village joiner, was
+first to find out that the delicate, oval face, with its profuse brown
+hair, its mild hazel eyes, and smiling mouth, was "jest like a
+pictur'." So Tom and Mary duly fell in love, got married,--nobody
+objecting,--went West, and eight months afterward Mary came home with
+a coffin. Tom had fallen from a ladder, been taken up and brought home
+dead, and she had travelled back five hundred miles to bury him in
+Deerfield, beside his father and mother; for he was their only son.
+
+There were about a hundred dollars left for Mary. She could not
+work now, and she went to board with her half-sister, the Deerfield
+tailoress.
+
+Mary Scranton was only nineteen; but she did not want to live,--not even
+for her baby's sake. All her sunshine and her strength went out of this
+world with Tom, and she had no energy to care to live without him. She
+did not say so to her sister,--for Miss 'Viny would have scolded her
+smartly,--nor did she tell Doctor Parker; but she prayed about it,
+and kept it in her heart all those silent days that she sat sewing
+baby-clothes, and looking forward to an hour that should, even through a
+death-agony, take her to Tom. She thought the baby would die, too, and
+then they should all be together;--for Mary had a positive temperament,
+without hope, because without imagination; what she had possessed and
+lost eclipsed with her all uncertainties of the future; and she thought
+seven times of Tom where she once thought of her child, though she took
+pains to make its garments ready, and knit its tiny socks, and lay the
+lumbering old cradle, that she had been rocked in, with soft and warm
+wrappings, lest, indeed, the child should live longer than its
+mother. So she sat in Miss 'Viny's bed-room in an old rush-bottomed
+rocking-chair, sewing and sewing, day after day, the persistent will and
+intent to die working out its own fulfilling, her white lips growing
+more and more bloodless, her transparent cheek more wan, and the
+temples, from which her lustreless hair was carelessly knotted away,
+getting more hollow and clear and sharp-angled.
+
+And now she lay on the bed, one hand under her cheek, the other picking
+restlessly at the blanket,--for consciousness was fluttering back.
+
+"Give me the brandy, Aunt Rhody," said Doctor Parker, softly.
+
+He poured a few drops into the spoon she brought, and held it to Mary's
+lips. The potent fluid stung the nerves into life again, and quickened
+the flickering circulation; her thin fingers lay quiet, her eyes opened
+and looked clear and calm at the Doctor. He tried to rouse her with an
+interest deeper to most women than their own agony or languor.
+
+"You've got a nice little girl, Mary," said he, cheerfully.
+
+The ghost of a smile lit her face.
+
+"I'm content," said she, in a low whisper.
+
+Aunt Rhody brought the baby and laid it on its mother's arm. The child
+stirred and cried, but Mary took no notice; her eyes were fixed and
+glazing. Suddenly she smiled a brilliant smile, stretched both arms
+upward, dropping her baby from its place. Only for one moment that
+recognizing look defied death and welcomed life; her arms dropped, her
+jaw fell;--it was over.
+
+"I guess you'd better take the baby into the kitchen, Miss Loviny," said
+Aunt Rhody; "'tisn't considered lucky to keep 'em round where folks has
+died."
+
+"Luck a'n't anything," grimly returned Lovina, who had squeezed her
+tears back, lest the two or three that inclined to fall should spot the
+baby's blanket; "but I'm goin' to take her out into the kitchen, because
+I calculate to open the winder in here."
+
+So the baby and Aunt 'Viny went out.
+
+It was a new thing and a hard thing for Lovina Perkins to have a baby
+on her hands; she would rather have charged herself with the care of a
+farm, or the building of a house; she could work, she could order,
+plan, regulate, and execute; but what to do with a baby? There it
+lay, helpless, soft, incapable, not to be scolded, or worked, or made
+responsible in any way, the most impracticable creature possible: a
+kitten she could have put into a basket at night, and set in the shed;
+a puppy she could and would have drowned; but a baby, an unlucky, red,
+screeching creature, with a soul, was worse than all other evils.
+However, she couldn't let it die; so she went after some milk, and, with
+Aunt Rhody's help, after much patient disgust, taught the child how to
+live, and it lived.
+
+Mary Scranton was buried next to Tom, and the June grass grew over both
+their graves, and people thought no more about it; only every now and
+then Doctor Parker came to Miss Perkins's house to ask after "baby," who
+grew daily fat and fair and smiling; and on one of these occasions he
+met the minister, Parson Goodyear, who had come, as Miss 'Viny expressed
+it, "o' purpose to take me to do, because I ha'n't presented the child
+for baptism."
+
+"Fact is," continued she, "I ha'n't an idea what _to_ call her. I don't
+favor callin' of her Mary, because that was her mother's name, and I
+couldn't think of two on 'em at once; and Scripter names are generally
+rather ha'sh. Miss Parker, Doctor, kind of favored her bein' called
+Aribelly, because there was one of that name rather come over in the
+Mayflower; but I think it's too mighty for a child that's got to
+work;--what do you say?"
+
+"I think you're right, Miss 'Viny," said the Doctor, as gravely as he
+could.
+
+"I don't believe in fine names myself. I should think you might do worse
+than to call the baby Content;--that was your own mother's name, wasn't
+it? and it was the last word Mary spoke."
+
+"Well, now, that's quite an idea, Doctor! I guess I will."
+
+"And you will present her on the first Sabbath in May?" said Parson
+Goodyear.
+
+"Well, yes, if I'm spared," said Aunt 'Viny; and, being spared, on that
+sweet May-Sunday she carried the smiling little child up the aisle of
+the meeting-house, and had it baptized Content.
+
+Strange to say,--yet not all strange,--before it was a year old, the
+baby had found its way quite down into the middle of Aunt 'Viny's
+heart. To be sure, it was a deal of trouble; it would ache and cry in a
+reasonless way, when nobody could tell what ailed it; it would take a
+great amount of caring-for with ungrateful silence and utter want
+of demonstration for a long time;--but then it was so helpless!
+--irresistible plea to a woman!--and under all Miss 'Viny's
+rough exterior, her heart was as sweet as the kernel of a butternut,
+though about as hard to discover. True, she was hard of feature, and
+of speech, as hundreds of New-England women are. Their lives are hard,
+their husbands are harder and stonier than the fields they half-reclaim
+to raise their daily bread from, their existence is labor and endurance;
+no grace, no beauty, no soft leisure or tender caress mitigates the
+life that wears itself away on wash-tubs, cheese-presses, churns,
+cooking-stoves, and poultry; but truth and strength and purity lie
+clear in these rocky basins, and love lurks like a jewel at the
+bottom,--visible only when some divine sun-ray lights it up,--love as
+true and deep and healthy as it is silent and unknown.
+
+So Miss 'Viny's hardness gave way before "baby." She could not feel
+unmoved the tiny groping hands about her in the night, the soft beatings
+of the little heart against her arm, the round downy head that would
+nestle on her neck to be rocked asleep; she could not resist that
+exquisite delight of miserable, exacting, feminine nature,--the
+knowledge that one thing in the world loved her better than anybody
+else. Sorry am I to betray this weakness of Aunt 'Viny's,--sorry to know
+how many strong-minded, intellectual, highly educated and refined women
+will object to this mean and jealous sentiment in a woman of like
+passions with themselves. I know, myself, that a lofty love will regard
+the good of the beloved object first, and itself last,--that jealousy
+is a paltry and sinful emotion; but, my dear creatures, I can't help
+it,--so it was. And if any one of you can, with a serene countenance
+and calm mind, see your husband devote himself to a much prettier, more
+agreeable, younger woman than yourself,--or hear your own baby scream
+to go from you to somebody else,--or even behold your precious female
+friend, your "congenial soul," as the Rosa Matilda literature hath
+it, fascinated by a young woman or young man to the neglect of
+yourself,--although in one and all of these instances the beloved object
+seeks his or her best good,--then let that superhuman female throw a
+stone at Aunt 'Viny;--but for the present she will not be lapidated.
+
+Never, indeed, had she been quite as happy as now. Her life had been
+a routine of hard work. Love and marriage had never looked over the
+palings at her; and--to tell the truth--she had not suffered by their
+neglect, in her own estimation. She was one of those supernumerary women
+who are meant to do other people's work in life: servants, nurses,
+consolers; accepting their part with unconscious humility as a matter
+of course; quite as good as the Santas and Santissimas of legend and
+chronicle, and not nearly so intrusive. So this new phase had its own
+sweetness and special charm for Aunt 'Viny; the happiest hour in her
+day lying between daylight and dark, when waistcoats and jackets and
+trousers were laid aside, the dim light forbidding her to sew, and
+economy delaying the lamp,--so she could with a clear conscience spare
+half an hour, while the tea-kettle boiled, for undressing "baby,"
+rubbing the little creature down,--much as a groom might have done,
+only with a loving touch not kept for horses,--enduing it with a long
+night-gown, and toasting its shell-pink feet at the fire, till, between
+the luxury of ease and warmth and tending, "baby" cooed herself to
+sleep, and lay along Miss 'Viny's lap like a petted kitten, the
+firelight playing soft lights over its fair head, sealed eyelids, and
+parted lips, tinting the relaxed arm and funny dimpled fist with a rosy
+glow, while Aunt 'Viny's face took on a tender brooding gleam that
+nobody who had seen her in church on Sunday, severely crunching fennel,
+or looking daggers at naughty boys, could have believed possible. But
+this expression is an odd wonder-worker. I saw but the other day a
+bad-eyed, bronzed, "hard-favored" Yankee, with a head all angles, a
+dirty face, the air of a terrified calf, and the habiliments of a poor
+farmer; I looked at him aristocratically, and thanked the Lord for my
+mind, my person, and my manners, in true Pharisaic triumph,--when his
+little blue-eyed daughter came round the corner and pulled at the tail
+of his ragged coat. Why, the man was transfigured! I wondered he was
+willing to shake hands with me when I left him; I knew before that his
+hands were brown and big and dirty, and mine were little and white and
+soap-scented; but I thought afterwards I'd as lief have been Peter as
+myself just then,--and I think so still. Wherefore, young ladies all,
+learn from this that the true cestus, fabled----No! I shall make an
+essay on that matter some day; I will not inflict it here.
+
+So, by dint of hard work, Aunt 'Viny brought up her dead sister's child
+in the way it should go, nor ever for one moment grudged her labor or
+her time. Neither did she spoil Content by over-indulgence; her good
+sense kept the child unharmed, taught her hardy and self-reliant
+habits, made her useful all the time, and, even if Nature had not been
+beforehand with her, would have made her happy. But 'Tenty had her
+father's firm and sunny character; she never cried but for good reason,
+and then screamed lustily and was over with it; fretting was out of the
+question,--she did not know how; her special faults were a strong
+will and a dogged obstinacy,--faults Miss 'Viny trained, instead of
+eradicating; so that 'Tenty emerged from district-school into the
+"'Cademy's" higher honors as healthy and happy an individual as ever
+arrived at the goodly age of fourteen without a silk dress or a French
+shoe to peacock herself withal. Every morning, rain or shine, she
+carried her tin pail to Doctor Parker's for milk, hung on the
+tea-kettle, set the table, wiped the dishes, weeded a bit of the
+prolific onion-bed, then washed her hands and brushed her hair, put
+on the green sun-bonnet or the blue hood, as the weather pleased, and
+trotted off to school, where she plodded over fractions, and wearied
+herself out with American history, and crammed geography, and wrote
+copies, for a whole year, when Aunt 'Viny thought she might learn her
+trade, being a stout girl of fifteen, and the 'Cademy knew her no more.
+
+There is but little incident in a New-England village of the Deerfield
+style and size,--full of commonplace people, who live commonplace lives,
+in the same white and brown and red houses they were born in, and die
+respectably in their beds, and are quietly buried among the mulleins
+and dewberry-vines in the hill-side graveyard. Mary Scranton's life and
+death, though they possessed the elements of a tragedy, were divested of
+their tragic interest by this calm and pensive New-England atmosphere.
+Nothing so romantic had happened there for many years, or did occur
+again for more; yet nobody knew a romance had come and gone. People in
+Deerfield lived their lives with a view to this world and the next,
+after the old Puritanic fashion somewhat modified, and so preserved the
+equilibrium. No special beauty of the town attracted summer-visitors.
+It was a village of one street, intended to be straight, crossing a
+decorous brook that turned the mill, and parting itself just below the
+church and the "store," to accommodate a small "green," where the geese
+waddled, hissed, and nibbled Mayweed all summer, and the boys played
+ball sometimes after school. There was a post-office in the "store,"
+beside boots, sugar, hams, tape, rake-tails, ploughs, St. Croix
+molasses, lemons, calico, cheese, flour, straw hats, candles, lamp-oil,
+crackers, and rum,--a good assortment of needles and thread, a shelf of
+school-books, a seed-drawer, tinware strung from the ceiling, apples in
+a barrel, coffee-mills and brooms in the windows, and hanging over the
+counter, framed and glazed, the following remarkable placard, copied out
+in a running hand:--
+
+  No
+  Credit Will be Given
+  in
+  This Store after
+  This Date.
+  Under no circumstances whatever.
+  My Reasons
+
+I cannot buy goods or do business without cash, and as the bulk of my
+capital is now trusted out with the promise to pay which that promise
+has never been full filled I deem it a duty to myself and my Cash paying
+customers to sell goods for cash at the lowest market price.
+
+I shall indeavor make it an interest of my customers to pay cash for
+all goods purchas by them. I shall offer goods at reduced rates as an
+inducement for all to pay cash.
+
+If I am asked if I give credit I want this to be my answer
+
+No Never.
+
+ELKANAH MILLS.
+
+Distrust not, O reader! This is _verbatim et literatim_ a copy.
+
+In front of the "store" was a hay-scale, across the way a tavern, and,
+at respectful distances along the street, white or red houses, with the
+inevitable front-door, south-door, kitchen-and shed-floor, lilacs and
+altheas before the windows, fennel, tiger-lilies, sweet-brier, and
+Bar_gun_dy rosebushes, with red "pinies" and livid hydrangeas, or now
+and then a mat of stonecrop and "voilets" along the posy-bed that edged
+cabbage and potato-plots, while, without the fence, Bouncing-Bets
+adorned the road-side, or blue sea-pinks from the pasture-lot strayed
+beyond its rails.
+
+Nothing happened in Deerfield; so nothing happened to "'Tenty Scran',"
+as the school-children nicknamed her. She earned her living now at
+tailoring and dress-making; for Miss 'Viny was much "laid up with
+rheumatiz," and could not go about as was her wont. Also, the art and
+mystery of housekeeping became familiar to the child, and economy of
+the domestic sort was a virtue she learned unconsciously by continual
+practice. She went to church on Sundays in a clean calico frock and a
+white cape, sat in the singers' seat and uplifted her voice in Lenox and
+Mear, Wells and Bethesda, shared her fennel with the children in the
+gallery, looked out the text in her Bible, and always thought Parson
+Goodyear's sermon was intended for her good, and took it in accordingly.
+
+I should like to say that 'Tenty Scran' was pretty; in fact, I have
+always regarded it as one of the chief pleasures of a literary calling,
+that you are not obliged to take people as they are, but can make them
+to order, since it takes no more pen-scratches to describe luxuriant
+curls and celestial eyes and roseate lips than it does to set forth much
+less lovely things; but when it comes to stubborn facts, why, there you
+have to come down to this world, and proceed accordingly,--so I must
+say 'Tenty was not handsome. She had fresh rosy cheeks and small brown
+eyes, hair to match the eyes, a nose undeniably pug, a full, wide mouth,
+and strong, white teeth,--fortunately, since every one showed when she
+laughed, and she laughed a great deal. Then she had a dumpy figure, and
+good large hands and feet, a look of downright honesty and good-temper,
+and a nice, clear voice in speech or singing, though she only sang
+hymns. But for all this, every-body in Deerfield liked 'Tenty Scran';
+old and young, men and maidens, all had a kindly welcome for her; and
+though Aunt 'Viny did not say much, she felt the more.
+
+But "everybody has their sorrers," as Hannah-Ann Hall remarked, in one
+of her "'Cademy" compositions, and 'Tenty came to hers when she was
+about twenty-two. Miss Lovina was almost bed-ridden with the rheumatism
+that year, and 'Tenty had to come back twice a day from her work to see
+to her, so that she made it up by staying evenings, against her usual
+rules. Now about the middle of that May, Doctor Parker's scapegrace son
+Ned came home from sea,--a great, lazy, handsome fellow, who had run
+away from Deerfield in his fifteenth year, because it was so "darned
+stupid," to use his own phrase. Doctor Parker was old, and Mrs. Parker
+was old, too, but she called it nervous; and home was stupider than ever
+to Ned, particularly as he had broken his ankle and was laid on the sofa
+for a good six weeks at least. About the second of those weeks, Content
+Scranton came to "do over" Mrs. Parker's summer-gowns, and put her caps
+together after their semi-annual starching.
+
+Of course 'Tenty sat in the "keeping-room," where the old sofa was;
+and of course Ned had nothing better to do than to watch the gay, good
+little bee at her toil, hear her involuntary snatches of hymn-singing,
+laugh at her bright simplicity, and fall in love with her,
+sailor-fashion,--"here to-day, and gone tomorrow."
+
+'Tenty stayed a long time at Mrs. Parker's that summer; she seemed to
+get on so slowly with her work, but, as Mrs. Parker said,--
+
+"Why, the fact of it is, 'Tenty is so handy and so spry, I can't see
+how to spare her. Ed'ard, he wants a sight of waitin' on; and I am so
+nervous, and husband is afflicted with neuralogy, beside that he is
+considerable in years, so we can't be around as we used to be; and
+'Tenty steps about and gets Ed'ard his books, and his victuals, and
+fixes his pillows, and keeps the light out of his eyes, so't he isn't
+contented a moment of time without she's right there."
+
+And while Mrs. Parker was conveying these ideas to Miss 'Viny, they were
+being illustrated in her own house after this fashion:--
+
+"'Tenty," (three weeks had abolished the Miss,) "won't you give me that
+blue book off the shelf?"
+
+'Tenty sprang up and handed the book, and went to her work again,
+beginning under her breath to hum
+
+  "Sweet fields beyond"----
+
+"Dear me! this pillow has slipped away. 'Tenty, won't you fix it?"
+
+Jump the second;--the pillow is put straight under Ned's dark curls,
+though he is so helpless she has to raise his head with one arm and
+arrange the cushion with the other; then the seam and hymn recommence.
+
+  "Sweet fields beyond the swelling"---
+
+"I wish I had a drink of cold water."
+
+Jump the third;--'Tenty finishes her hymn on the way to the well, and
+brings the water, and holds the invalid up to drink it, and then the
+pillows fall again, and the book slips down, and everything goes wrong
+and has to be re-arranged, and at length 'Tenty goes back to her place
+by the window quite indisposed to sing, but glowing with a new, shy
+pleasure, for Ned had looked up at her with those great gray eyes that
+said so much more than his lips did, and laid his cheek against the
+stubbed hand that arranged his pillows, and said,--"Oh, 'Tenty! how good
+you are!" in tones that meant, "and how I love you!" as well, though he
+did not say it.
+
+So matters progressed from day to day, Ned needing more and more care,
+till he made his first progress across the room with a cane and the
+help of 'Tenty's shoulder; after which experiment he began to recover
+rapidly, impelled by the prospect of getting away from that house and
+being free to go where he chose again.
+
+For 'Tenty had ceased to amuse or interest him as much as she had done;
+six weeks had done away with the novelty of her deepening color and shy
+dropping eyes; beside, she laughed less, almost ceased to sing, sighed
+softly, and looked quiet and grave, instead of gay and unconscious.
+It was the old fable of sport to the boys and death to the frogs. She
+thought he was in earnest; he knew he was amusing himself.
+
+Miss 'Viny noticed the change in her darling, but she was a woman who
+had acquired wisdom by experience, and she said nothing; she only grew
+more exacting of 'Tenty's presence, wanted her earlier in the evening,
+found fault with her food, and behaved generally so unlike her usual
+stern patience, that Content was really roused out of her dreaminess to
+wonder what ailed Aunt 'Viny.
+
+As soon as Ned Parker was able to get out of doors again, he was heard
+of in every house in the village, making himself agreeable after his
+own fashion,--drinking hard cider with the old farmers, praising their
+wives' gingerbread and spruce-beer, holding skeins for the girls, going
+on picnics, huckleberryings, fishing-excursions, apple-bees, riding Old
+Boker, his father's horse, bare-backed down the street, playing ball
+on the green, and frequenting singing-school with one pretty girl and
+another, till all Deerfield shook its head and remarked that "That 'ere
+Ned Parker was a master-hand for carryin' on." And 'Tenty sewed harder
+than ever.
+
+What makes me always put love into a story, Aunt Grundy? Why, because
+love is popular; because nine-tenths of the people who read smile to see
+the first and faintest hint of the tender passion in what they read;
+because a story without love is like bricks without straw; because
+a life without it is a life no doubt comfortable to lead, but
+uninteresting to hear. Love is your only democrat; Ethelinda in Fifth
+Avenue, glittering with the clear splendor of diamonds, and rustling
+like a white-birch-swamp with pale silks, gleaming through the twilight
+before an opera, and looking violets at Sydney Hamilton over the top
+of her inlaid fan, is no more thrilled and rapt and tortured by the
+Disturber in Wings, than Biddy in the kitchen, holding tryst with her
+"b'y" at the sink-room window. Thousands of years ago, Theseus left
+Ariadne tearing the ripples of her amber-bright hair, and tossing her
+white arms with the tossing surf, in a vain agony of distraction and
+appeal: poets have sung the flirtation, painters have painted it; the
+story is an eternal legend of pain and passion, illuminated with lucent
+tints of age and the warm South, outlined with the statuesque purity of
+classic scenery and classic diction: but I myself never for a moment
+believed that Ariadne was a particle more unhappy or pitiable than
+Nancy Bunker, our seamstress, was, when Hiram Fenn went West to peddle
+essences, and married a female Hoosier whose father owned half a
+prairie. They would by no means make as lovely a picture; for Nancy's
+upper jaw projects, and she has a wart on her nose, very stiff black
+hair, and a shingle figure, none of which adds grace to a scene; and
+Hiram went off in the Slabtown stage, with a tin-box on his knees,
+instead of in a shell-shaped boat with silken sails; but I know Nancy
+reads love-stories with great zest, and I know she had a slow fever
+after Hiram was married. For, after all, love is the same thing ever
+since Paradise,--the unwearying tradition, the ever new presence, the
+rapture or the anguish unspeakable; and while 'Tenty Scran' sat and
+sewed at Squire Hall's new linen pantaloons, she set every stitch with a
+sigh, and sewed on every button with a pang that would have made Ariadne
+put both arms round her, and kiss her long and close, a sister in
+bonds,--though purple robes with jewelled borders, crescented pearls,
+and armlets of gold, would not have been at all congruous hugging a
+sixpenny calico with a linen collar.
+
+Not that Ned neglected 'Tenty; he could not follow her about from house
+to house, and she had done sewing for his mother, and in the evening
+Aunt 'Viny always needed her. But more than once he joined her after
+church, walked home to the door with her, and cheered her simple soul
+with his familiar looks and tones, and words of praise that made
+Adriadne Scran' think Theseus Parker a little more than mere man,
+something altogether adorable. However, she knew he was having a very
+good time when he didn't see her at all. The real reason why she ached
+and sighed over Squire Hall's pantaloons was, that she heard Ned in the
+next room helping Hannah-Ann Hall pack up the dinner for their grand
+Snake Hill picnic, and diverting the same Hannah-Ann with such wit and
+humor and frolic, that she declared several times she should split, and
+begged him not to be so funny.
+
+Now 'Tenty never had a pleasant day, unless Ned was with her,--it had
+got as far as that; and the idea that he could and did enjoy himself so
+thoroughly and heartily without her was a dull pang that ate into her
+soul continually, and made her forlorn. Oh, these women! these pitiful
+creatures! not magnanimity enough in a whole race of them to be visible
+to the naked eye! jealous dogs-in-the-manger! If they weren't useful
+domestically, I should vote for having them exterminated from this great
+generous world, and give place to some better institution, which no
+doubt could be got up by the india-rubber companies or the scientific
+conventions. But as Alphonso of Castile did not make the world, one must
+take it as it is; and I will say, for the encouragement of philosophers,
+that I have known one magnanimous woman, and she a beautiful woman,
+moreover.
+
+So 'Tenty sewed, and ached, and made Aunt 'Viny's bed and her gruel,
+read her Bible and prayed for Ned Parker, and thought she was growing
+very old, till one night he asked her to go to singing-school with him;
+whereupon she put on a pink calico dress, and began to recover her youth
+most wonderfully.
+
+They went to Master Solon's singing-school, it is true; but they never
+got home to Aunt 'Viny's till half past nine, and 'Tenty never could
+remember what tunes they sang; and the singers in church next Sunday
+asked her why she didn't come in when she got as far as the door, and
+'Tenty said she thought the benches were all full! Truth, stern tutor
+of the historian, compels me to confess that 'Tenty and Ned Parker were
+sitting on the meeting-house steps most of that evening, in a touching
+attitude; for Ned was telling her how his ship had come into port and
+was going to sail again for South America, and he had an offer to join
+her as second mate; so he had got to say goodbye to his kind little
+nurse, and so forth and so on, with admonitions never to forget him,
+and how he never should forget her, and here was a little locket; and
+finally, sobered by her stifled sobs, Ned bent down his handsome head,
+and said, softly,--
+
+"Won't you kiss me for good-bye, 'Tenty?"
+
+Dear me! of course she kissed him, and thought how good he was to kiss
+her, and told him so. Whereupon he got better and better; and when the
+sexton came to ring the bell for nine o'clock, they only just heard his
+steps in time to steal away unobserved through the starry darkness, and
+go round past the pine-grove. So reaching home at the aforesaid late
+hour, where Mr. Ned became good again when he stooped to unlatch the
+gate, 'Tenty looked so fresh and rosy and sweet when she came in, that
+Aunt 'Viny growled to herself, found fault with her gruel, scolded at
+the blanket, tipped over the teacup, and worried 'Tenty back into stern
+reality, till the girl stole off to her bed. Not to sleep,--oh, no!
+Waste such sweetness on sleep? Never! She lay there, broad awake, and
+thought it all over, and how very nice it was to have anybody love her
+so much, and how she should like to be handsome and smart and worthy so
+much honor, till the cock crowed for dawn, and then she fell asleep,
+nowise daunted by the recollection that Ned had said nothing to her
+except that she was as sweet as a ripe blackberry and as pretty as a
+daisy; for to her innocent logic actions spoke louder than words, and
+she knew that anybody who did so (?) must love her enough to marry her.
+
+So Ned sailed for Valparaiso, and 'Tenty stayed at home. Aunt 'Viny got
+no better in all those winter-snows and blows; they are not favorable to
+rheumatism, these New-England airs; so 'Tenty had enough to do; but she
+was happy and contented. And winter crept by and merged into spring,
+and spring into autumn, before Deerfield heard any news of Ned Parker;
+though, in the mean time, one report after another of his being engaged
+to various girls, at length settling with marked weight on Hannah-Ann
+Hall, spread over the village and was the theme of Sunday-noon
+gossips and sewing-society meetings, greatly to 'Tenty's contempt and
+amusement,--though the contempt was too bitter and the amusement too
+tremulous to be pleasant. For did not she know better? People don't kiss
+people when they don't like them: a self-evident proposition, but one
+that required some assertion and repetition to weigh its right weight in
+her mind.
+
+Poor little 'Tenty! In that cold November there came a letter to Doctor
+Parker just as he was getting out of his gig, after a round of visits.
+The postmaster, going home to dinner, handed it to him, and, going back
+from dinner, was called in to lift him up-stairs to his bed. Ned Parker
+had been wrecked off the Horn, the crew took to their boats, and only
+one boat, with one surviving man to tell the tale, was picked up by a
+whaler coming back to New Bedford from the Pacific; all the rest were
+gone. Doctor Parker was old and feeble; this only child was all he had;
+paralysis smote his body when the smitten mind bowed before that dire
+knowledge, and he never looked up again. Content would have given
+anything to go and nurse him; but she, too, was stunned, and in the
+whirl of that great grief even Aunt 'Viny's demands were no more to her
+than a dull mechanic routine that she could hardly force her trembling
+steps to carry through. So she stayed at home, sewing all day and crying
+all night, and looking generally miserable, though she said nothing; for
+whom could she speak to? Aunt 'Viny had resolutely kept her suspicions
+about Ned Parker to herself, though well she knew who had walked home
+from meeting with 'Tenty in those pleasant autumn Sundays now gone,
+pleasure and all. But Miss 'Viny believed in silence on such matters,
+and had held her peace; now it was too late to break it. Nor was 'Tenty
+disposed to tell her anything; for it occurred for the first time to her
+innocent soul that she had nothing to tell. So they both went on their
+way, with secret pity and still endurance.
+
+After a brief illness of three days, poor old Doctor Parker's weary
+soul and body gave out; he died on a Thursday afternoon, and, in
+country-fashion, it was proposed to bury him on Sunday, from the church.
+Sunday came, cold and raw and blustering. 'Tenty took her usual seat in
+the gallery, but took it early, that she might see the "mourners" come
+in and fill the front pews kept for them. She wiped away the tears from
+her eyes, and looked on with a feeling of half envy, thinking of the son
+to whom no funeral honors should ever now be paid, slumbering in the
+cruel seas that break and roar about the Horn. She counted the bearers,
+all known faces; she watched Parson Goodyear into the pulpit; she saw
+Mrs. Parker on her brother's arm. But there was one other veiled female
+figure, shrouded also in black, whose presence she could no way account
+for; and when Parson Goodyear made his first long prayer, and sent up an
+earnest petition for the doubly bereaved woman before him, what did he
+mean by adding,--"And Thine other handmaid, in the bloom of her years
+bereaved of hope and promise,--her whom Thou hast afflicted from afar
+off, and made a widow before Thee"? What _did_ it mean? 'Tenty's
+breath fluttered, and she turned cold. Just at that moment, one of her
+neighbors murmured under her bonnet,--"That's Hanner-Ann, next to Miss
+Parker; only to think how sly she's kep' it a hull year! And she engaged
+to Ed'ard all that time! I wouldn't never ha' believed it, ef she hadn't
+had his letters to show for't, an' a gold watch he gin her; an' Miss
+Parker says she's knowed it all the time."
+
+Little more did 'Tenty know of psalm or sermon; some whirling sounds
+passed her, and then a rush of people. She was last to leave the church;
+and when she got home, and went to make Miss 'Viny's tea, as she tilted
+the long well-sweep down and up to draw her pail of water, she looked
+earnestly down the depths of crystal, as if to see what lay below, then
+quietly opened her left hand above it;--something bright fell, dashed
+the clear drops from a fern that grew half-way down, tinkled against a
+projecting stone, made a little splash, and was gone. 'Tenty took up her
+pail and went into the shed; and Ned Parker's locket lies at the bottom
+of the well, for all I know, to this day. Thenceforth 'Tenty cried no
+more; though for many weeks she was grave, wretched, pining.
+
+Winter set in with furious storms and heavy snows, but, strange to say,
+Aunt 'Viny grew better; she could sit up; at length could move about;
+and at last, one night when she sat by the fire knitting, suddenly
+looked up at 'Tenty and said,--
+
+"You haven't seen Miss Parker lately, have you, Content?"
+
+'Tenty shivered a little.
+
+"No, I have not, Aunt 'Viny."
+
+"Well, it appears as though you should go and see her; she's a weakly
+woman, but she can set her back up dreadful against the Lord's doings,
+and I don't know but what such kind of people need comfortin' more 'n
+others. It's a world full o' gales, this is, and everybody hasn't learnt
+the grass's lesson, to bend when the wind blows."
+
+"The Lord sends the wind, Aunt 'Viny."
+
+"The Lord sends everything, only folks don't allow it; they'd ruther lay
+it to the door of man, so's to feel free to worry. But the worst thing
+He ever does send to people is their own way, 'Tenty; and you'll know it
+before you die."
+
+'Tenty turned away to her work, hardly convinced by Miss 'Viny's wisdom,
+and inwardly thinking she should like to try her own way for all
+that. However, 'Tenty suffered far less than she might have done, for
+indignation helped her; the feeling that Ned Parker had deliberately
+amused himself with her, while she was in mortal earnest, had lowered
+him not a little from his height. Then Aunt 'Viny's care diverted her
+sad thoughts from herself, by sending her upon daily errands to the poor
+and the sick, so that 'Tenty's pleasant face and voice became the hope
+of the hour to more than one poverty-stricken or dying woman; and so her
+own grief, measured by theirs, shrank and withdrew itself day by day,
+and became something she could now and then forget. And more than all,
+her naturally sweet temperament and healthy organization helped her to
+recover.
+
+Myriads have died of a broken heart, no doubt, but it was
+physiologically broken; grief torments into sleeplessness, sleeplessness
+destroys the appetite, then strength goes, the circulation fails, and
+any latent evil lurking in the constitution springs on the helpless and
+willing victim and completes its work. This is a shockingly unromantic
+and material view to take of the matter, and brings to nought poems by
+the hundred and novels by the thousand; but is it not, after all, more
+true to God and human nature to believe in this view than to think He
+made men or women to be the sport of passion and circumstance, even to
+their destruction?
+
+'Tenty Scran' was too healthy to break her heart,--and too unselfish; so
+she gradually recovered her bright bloom, and went to her work, and took
+care of Aunt 'Viny, as energetically and gayly as ever. Hannah-Ann Hall
+married a lawyer from Meriden, and moved away, quite consoled for Ned,
+within three years; but 'Tenty favored no lovers, though one or two
+approached her. There are some--women who are like the aloe,--their life
+admits of but one passion. It comes late and lasts long, but never is
+repeated; the bloom dies out of its resplendence and odor, but no second
+flowering replaces it. She was one of these. But what one man lost in
+her love, a thousand of her fellow-creatures gained. 'Tenty was the
+Deerfield blessing, though she never knew it herself. All the sick
+wanted her; all the children pulled at her gown, and smiled at her from
+their plays; her heart and her hands were so full, no regret found place
+to nestle there, and silence brooded dove-like over that sorrowful time
+gone by.
+
+After a while, some ten years after Ned Parker's death, Miss 'Viny
+took to her bed again,--this time never to rise. Slow consumption had
+fastened on her, and she knew well what was before her, for so had her
+mother died; but no saint was ever more patient than she. 'Tenty was
+the best of nurses, and had even learned to speak of her aunt's death
+without a tremor in her voice, the last triumph of her unselfishness;
+for Miss 'Viny could bear no agitation, and yet needed to speak of the
+event she neither dreaded nor desired.
+
+"'Tenty," said she, one day, "I feel a sight easier to leave you than if
+you'd married Ned Parker."
+
+"Why, Aunty?" said Content, a light blush only testifying her surprise
+at this address.
+
+"Because he was a selfish feller; he always was. I believe some women
+are better off to marry, though I can't say but what I believe a single
+state is as good; but a woman that gets a real lazy, selfish feller gets
+pretty near the worst thing there is. I seemed kind of hard, 'Tenty,
+them days, but I had feelin' enough."
+
+"I don't doubt but what you had, Aunt 'Viny; only one can't see far
+ahead, you know, when it rains. I'm sure I've been as happy as a clam
+these last six years, and I don't calculate to resk that by gettin'
+married, never. Besides, I've learned what you used to call the grass's
+lesson, pretty well."
+
+Here Parson Goodyear interrupted the conversation, and it never was
+resumed; for the week after, Miss 'Viny died, and Content was left alone
+in her little house, "to battle with the world," as people say. But no
+conflict ensued, since it takes two to make a quarrel, and 'Tenty was
+on good terms with the Deerfield world. So she lived on, peaceful and
+peace-making, till forty found her as comely and as happy as ever, a
+source of perpetual wonder to the neighbors, who said of her, "She has
+got the dreadfullest faculty of gettin' along I ever see," and thereby
+solved the problem, for all except one, and that other one 'Tenty's
+opposite in every trait, Miss Mehitable Hall, Hannah-Ann's older sister,
+an old maid of the straitest sect, and one who was nowise sustained
+under the inflictions of life by the consciousness of enough money to
+support her, and friends to care for her approaching age.
+
+It was Miss Hitty Hall's delight to be miserable: rather an Irish
+expression, but the only one that suits her case. One bright October
+afternoon she came over to see Content, bringing her blue knitting, sure
+symptom of a visitation. 'Tenty welcomed her with her usual cordial
+homeliness, gave her the easiest chair she had, and commenced
+hospitalities.
+
+"Do lay off your things, Miss Hall, and set awhile; I haven't seen you
+for quite a spell."
+
+"Well, I don't really know how to," replied Miss Hitty. "I don't know
+but what everything will go to rack while I'm away. My help is dreadful
+poor,--I can't calculate for her noway. I shouldn't wonder if she was
+settin' in the keepin'-room this minute, looking at my best books."
+
+"Oh, I guess not, Miss Hitty. Now do let me take off your bunnet, and
+make yourself easy. Bridget can't do much harm, and you're such a
+stranger."
+
+"Well, I don't know but what I will,--there! Don't put yourself out for
+me, 'Tenty,--I'll set right here. Dear me! what a clever house this is!
+A'n't you lonesome? I do think it's dreadful to be left all alone in
+this wicked world; it appears as though I couldn't endure it noways,
+sometimes."
+
+"Why, Miss Hitty! I'm sure you're extreme well off. Supposing, now, you
+had married a poor man, and had to work all your life,--or a cross man,
+always a-findin' fault, or"----
+
+"Well, that's a consideration, re'lly.--Now there's Hanner-Ann's
+husband,--he's always nag-naggin' at her for something she's done or
+ha'n't done, the whole enduring time. She's real ailing, and he ha'n't
+no patience,--but then he's got means, and she wants for nothing. She
+had, to say, seven silk dresses, when I was there last time, and things
+to match,--that's something.--But I'm sure you have to work as hard as
+though you was a minister's wife, 'Tenty. I don't see how you do keep
+up."
+
+"Oh, I like work, Miss Hitty. It kind of keeps my spirits up; and all
+the folks in Deerfield are as clever to me as though I belonged to 'em.
+I have my health, and I don't want for anything. I think I'm as well off
+as the Queen."
+
+"You haven't had no great of troubles," groaned Miss Hitty. "I've
+suffered so many 'flictions I'm most tired out; them is what wears on
+people, 'flictions by death."
+
+"I don't know," meekly answered 'Tenty; "I've had some, but I haven't
+laid 'em up much. I felt bad while they lasted; but I knew other folks's
+was so much worse, I was kind of shy about feelin' too bad over my
+troubles."
+
+"Well, you've got a real faculty at takin' things easy; now I'm one of
+the feelin' kind. I set down often and often to knit, and get a-thinkin'
+over times back, and things people said and did years ago, and how bad
+I felt, till I feel jest so ag'in, and I get a-cryin' till it seems as
+though I should screech right out, and I can't sleep, nor I can't do
+nothing."
+
+"A'n't you borrowin' trouble a little bit, Miss Hitty? I've kind of
+figured it out that it's best to let the things that's dead and done for
+stay so. I don't know as we've got any call to remember 'em. 'The Lord
+requireth that which is past,' it says in the Bible; and I've always
+looked upon that as a kind of a hint to men that it wa'n't their
+business, but the Lord's."
+
+"Oh, it's all very well to talk, 'Tenty Scranton!--talk, do!--but
+'tisn't so mighty easy to practise on't."
+
+"Why, now, I think it's the easiest way, by a sight, Miss Hitty. I
+didn't mean to cast it up against you, for I know it's partly natur',
+but I do think folks can help natur' more'n they're generally willing
+to allow. I know it does seem as if you couldn't help thinkin' about
+troubles sometimes, and it's quite a chore to keep bright; but then it
+seems so much more cheery not to be fretted over things you can't help,
+and it is such a sight pleasanter for everybody else! I declare, it does
+seem jest as though the Lord had made this world for folks to have a
+good time in, only they don't all know how, and I always feel a call to
+help 'em."
+
+"You're a master-piece to talk, 'Tenty,--but it don't make the
+difference with me it does with some folks; it seems as if I should ha'
+had a better time almost any way beside my way. I get more and more
+failin' every day,--I'm pretty near gone now. I don't know but what
+I shall die any time. I suffer so with rheumatiz, and I'm troubled
+considerable with a risin' of the lungs; and sometimes I do think I've
+got a spine in my back, it aches and creaks so nights."
+
+"Why, I was thinking, since you set here, Miss Hitty, how spry you be,
+and you've got a real 'hullsome look to your face; I should say you'd
+grown fat."
+
+"Fat!" exclaimed the indignant spinster; "about as fat as a hen's
+forehead! Why, Content Scranton! I'm dreadful poor,--poor as Job's
+turkey; why, my arms is all bones and sinners."
+
+"You don't say so! I guess that's knitting, Miss Hitty; you do knit
+beautiful. Is that worsted or cotton you're at now?"
+
+Praise allayed Miss Hitty's wounded self-pity. She grew amiable under
+its slow-dropping dews always, as 'Tenty knew.
+
+"Oh, this a'n't anything to boast of. I call this common knitting; it's
+a pair of socks I promised Miss Warner for her boy. Speakin' of her boy
+Ned makes me think;--have you heared the news, 'Tenty?"
+
+"No, I haven't heared any."
+
+"Well, it's jest like a story-book. Ned Parker,--he't was Doctor
+Parker's son, an' promised to our Hanner-Ann,--he's turned up, it
+appears. He wa'n't drownded, but he was washed ashore, and the Indians
+they took him, and he wasn't able to get away for ten year; then a
+whaler's crew catched sight of him, havin' slopped there, for water,
+and took him aboard, and he's been the world over since. He calculated
+everybody to Deerfield was dead and married, so he didn't come back; but
+now he is a-comin' back, for he's lost a leg, and he's got some money,
+and they say he is a-goin' to settle down here."
+
+"Has he come yet, Miss Hitty?"
+
+"No, they're expectin' of him to Miss Warner's every day;--you know she
+was Miss Parker's half-brother's wife."
+
+"Yes, I have heared she was. But, Miss Hitty, don't roll up your work."
+
+"Oh, I must be a-goin',--it's time; my help will be standin' on her head
+by this time, like enough. I don't see but what one Irish girl is about
+as confinin' as seven children, I'm sure."
+
+With which despairing remark, Miss Hitty put on her shawl and calash and
+departed; while Content filled her teakettle and prepared for supper.
+
+But while the kettle boiled, she sat down by the window, and thought
+about Miss Hitty's news. Her first feeling was one of surprise at
+herself, a sort of sad surprise, to feel how entirely the love that once
+threatened to wreck her life had died out of it. Hard, indeed, it is to
+believe that love can ever die! The young girl clings passionately even
+to her grief, and rejects as an insult the idea that such deep regret
+can become less in all a lifetime,--that love, immortal, vital,
+all-pervading, can perish from its prime, and flutter away into dust
+like the dead leaves of a rose. Yet is it not the less true. Time, cold
+reason, bitter experience, all poison its life-springs; respect, esteem,
+admiration, all turn away from a point that offers no foothold for their
+clinging; and she who weeps to-day tears hot as life-blood ten years
+hereafter may look with cool distaste at the past passion she has calmly
+weighed and measured, and thank God that her wish failed and her
+hope was cut down. Yet there is a certain price to pay for all such
+experience, to such a heart as sat in the quieted bosom of Content. Had
+it been possible for her to love again, she would have felt the change
+in her nature far less; but with the stream, the fountain also had
+dried, and she was conscious that an aridness, unpleasant and unnatural,
+threatened to desolate her soul, and her conflict with this had been the
+hardest battle of all. It is so hard to love voluntarily,--to satisfy
+one's self with minor affections,--to know that life offers no more its
+grandest culmination, its divinest triumph,--to accept a succession of
+wax-lights because the sun and the day can return no more,--above all,
+to feel that the capacity of receiving that sunlight is fled,--that, so
+far, one's own power is eternally narrowed, like the loss of a right
+hand or the blinding of a right eye! Patience endures it, but even
+patience weeps to think how the fair intent of the Maker is marred,--to
+see the mutilated image, the brokenness of perfection!
+
+Not that 'Tenty was conscious of all these ideas. They simplified
+themselves to her simple nature in a brief soliloquy, as she sat looking
+at the splendid haze of October, glorifying the scarlet maples and
+yellow elms of Deerfield Street, now steeped in a sunset of purpled
+crimson that struck its level rays across the sapphire hill-tops
+and transfigured briefly that melancholy earth dying into winter's
+desolations.
+
+"Well, it is curious to think I ever cared so much for anybody as I did
+for Ned Parker! poor, selfish cre'tur', just playing with me for fun,
+as our kitty does with a mouse! and I re'lly thought he was a fine man!
+Live and learn, I declare for't! He let me know what kind of cre'turs
+men are, though. I haven't had to be pestered with one all my life, I'm
+thankful: that's one good thing to come out of evil. I don't know but
+what I should like to feel as wide awake again as I did then; but
+'tisn't worth the price."
+
+Saying which, Miss 'Tenty brewed her tea, spread her bread and butter,
+and with a bit of cheese made her savory meal, cleared it away, washed
+the dishes, and resumed her work as peacefully as if her life had been
+all as serene as today.
+
+Ned Parker did come back to Deerfield, and settled there,--a coarse,
+red-faced, stout, sailor-like man, with a wooden leg. Ten years in
+Patagonia and ten years of whaling had not improved his aspect or his
+morals. He swore like a pirate, chewed, smoked a pipe, and now and then
+drank to excess; and by way of elegant diversion to these amusements,
+fell in love with Content Scranton! Her trim figure, her bright,
+cheerful face, her pretty, neat little house and garden, the rumored
+"interest-money," that was the fruit of years of hard work and saving,
+all attracted this lazy, selfish man, who, remembering his youth,
+fancied he had only to ask, to receive; and was struck with astonishment
+to hear,--
+
+"No, thank you," in a very calm, clear tone, answered to his
+proposition.
+
+"Good Lord! you women are queer craft! I swear, I thought you'd lay to
+when I h'isted signals; I ha'n't forgot past times and the meetin'-house
+steps, if you have, 'Tenty Scranton."
+
+"You've forgotten Hannah-Ann Hall, I guess," retorted the indignant
+little woman.
+
+Ned Parker swore a great oath; he _had_ forgotten that passage,--though
+only for a moment.
+
+"Look here!" said 'Tenty, coloring with quiet wrath. "I cannot be
+friendly, even, with a man that talks that way. You had your sport,
+makin' believe you liked me, and I didn't know better than to believe
+you was an honest man. I did think a sight of you then, Ed'ard Parker. I
+a'n't ashamed to own it. I had reason to,--for your actions was louder
+than words. But when I come to know you hadn't meant nothing by all your
+praises and kisses and fine words, except just to have your own fun
+while you stayed, no matter what become of me, I see, after I'd got the
+tears out of my eyes, what kind of a self-seekin', mean, paltry man it
+was that could carry on so with an innocent young girl, and I hadn't no
+more respect for you than I have for a potato-peeling. I've lived to
+bless the Lord that kept me from you, and I a'n't going to take my
+blessings back. It's because I do remember them times that I say No,
+now. Your locket is at the bottom of our well; but any love I had with
+it is drowned deeper, down to the bottom of nothing. I wish you well,
+and to mend your ways; but I don't want to see you here, never!"
+
+After this pungent dismission, nothing was left for Ned Parker but to
+hobble from the house, cursing to himself for shame, while 'Tenty buried
+her face in her apron and cried as bitterly as if fifteen, instead of
+fifty, assailed her with its sorrows.
+
+Why did she cry? Who knows? Perhaps, if you, my dear friend, longing for
+the face that bloomed, the lips that kissed, the eyes that smiled for
+you, years ago, should suddenly be confronted by those features, after
+years of death and decay had done their ghastly work on them, bones
+grinning from their clinging morsels of clay, you, too, might hide your
+head and cry with terror and disgust and regret. And again you might
+not. As I said before, who knows?
+
+But after this, Content subsided into her peaceful routine. Ned Parker
+drank himself into delirium-tremens, spent all his money, and came upon
+the town. But at that juncture, the Reverend Everett Goodyear, Parson
+Goodyear's son and successor, interfered in his behalf, hired a room
+and a nurse for him, and had him taken care of in the most generous and
+faithful way for the remaining year-and-a-half of his life. Mr. Goodyear
+said he was acting for Parker's friends; some said he had a rich uncle,
+who was moved to compassion at last; some thought it was Hannah-Ann
+Hall; but only one person knew, and she said nothing.
+
+The day Ned Parker died, the young minister stepped in to see 'Tenty
+Scran', and told her he was gone. Content did not cry nor smile.
+
+"I'm glad he's rested," said she; "though I haven't no certainty about
+his state hereafter."
+
+"You must leave that with the Lord, Miss Content," said Mr. Goodyear.
+"You have done what was right; you can't think He will do less."
+
+"That's a fact; and now I expect my last trouble is over."
+
+"But it has taken almost all your money," hesitatingly replied the
+minister.
+
+"Well, that's the least of my concerns, Mr. Goodyear," smiled 'Tenty.
+"I'm spared my hands yet, and I sha'n't want for nothing while they
+last. When I get helpless, I expect the Lord will take care of me. I
+sha'n't worry about it till it comes."
+
+"That is philosophy, certainly," said Mr. Goodyear.
+
+"I don't know as it's that; but I guess it's six of common-sense and
+half-a-dozen of religion; I always thought they was near about the same
+thing. Fact is, people don't die of troubles in this world; they die of
+frettin' at 'em, only they don't seem to know it."
+
+"According to that rule, you won't die this long time, Miss 'Tenty,"
+said the minister, unable to resist a smile.
+
+"Well, I don't know, Sir. I guess I shall live as long as I want to; and
+I expect I shall die content. I a'n't troubled."
+
+"Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth," murmured Mr.
+Goodyear, as he walked away.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+RECOLLECTIONS OF IRVING.
+
+BY HIS PUBLISHER.
+
+
+You are aware that one of the most interesting reunions of men connected
+with literary pursuits in England is at the annual dinner of the
+"Literary Fund,"--the management of which has been so often dissected of
+late by Dickens and others. It is a fund for disabled authors; and, like
+most other British charities, requires to be fed annually by a public
+dinner. A notable occasion of this kind happened on the 11th of May,
+1842. It was at this that I first met Mr. Irving in Europe. The
+president of the festival was no less than the Queen's young husband,
+Prince Albert,--his first appearance in that (presidential) capacity.
+His three speeches were more than respectable, for a prince; they were
+a _positive_ success. In the course of the evening we had speeches by
+Hallam and Lord Mahon for the historians; Campbell and Moore for the
+poets; Talfourd for the dramatists and the bar; Sir Roderick Murchison
+for the _savans_; Chevalier Bunsen and Baron Brunnow for the
+diplomatists; G. P. R. James for the novelists; the Bishop of
+Gloucester; Gally Knight, the antiquary; and a goodly sprinkling of
+peers, _not_ famed as authors. Edward Everett was present as American
+Minister; and Washington Irving (then on his way to Madrid in diplomatic
+capacity) represented American authors. Such an array of speakers in
+a single evening is rare indeed, and it was an occasion long to be
+remembered.
+
+The toasts and speeches were, of course, very precisely arranged
+beforehand, as etiquette requires, I suppose, being in the presence of
+"His Royal Highness," yet most of them were animated and characteristic.
+When "Washington Irving and American Literature" was propounded by the
+fugleman at the elbow of H.R.H., the cheering was vociferously hearty
+and cordial, and the interest and curiosity to see and hear Geoffrey
+Crayon seemed to be intense. His name appeared to touch the finest
+chords of genial sympathy and good-will. The other famous men of the
+evening had been listened to with respect and deference, but Mr.
+Irving's name inspired genuine enthusiasm. We had been listening to the
+learned Hallam, and the sparkling Moore,--to the classic and fluent
+author of "Ion," and to the "Bard of Hope,"--to the historic and
+theologic diplomate from Prussia, and to the stately representative of
+the Czar. A dozen well-prepared sentiments had been responded to in as
+many different speeches. "The Mariners of England," "And doth not
+a meeting like this make amends," had been sung, to the evident
+satisfaction of the authors of those lyrics--(Campbell, by-the-way, who
+was near my seat, had to be "regulated" in his speech by his friend and
+publisher, Moxon, lest H.R.H. should be scandalized). And now everybody
+was on tiptoe for the author of "Bracebridge Hall." If his speech had
+been proportioned to the cheers which greeted him, it would have been
+the longest of the evening. When, therefore, he simply said, in his
+modest, beseeching manner, "I beg to return you my very sincere thanks,"
+his brevity seemed almost ungracious to those who didn't know that it
+was physically impossible for him to make a speech. It was vexatious
+that routine had omitted from the list of speakers Mr. Everett, who
+was at Irving's side; but, as diplomate, the Prussian and Russian
+had precedence, and as American author, Irving, of course, was
+the representative man. An Englishman near me said to his
+neighbor,--"Brief?" "Yes, but you can tell the _gentleman_ in the very
+tone of his voice."
+
+In the hat-room I was amused to see "little Tom Moore" in the crowd,
+appealing, with mock-pathos, to Irving, as the biggest man, to pass his
+ticket, lest he should be demolished in the crush. They left the hall
+together to encounter a heavy shower; and Moore, in his "Diary," tells
+the following further incident.
+
+"The best thing of the evening (as far as I was concerned) occurred
+after the whole grand show was over. Irving and I came away together,
+and we had hardly got into the street, when a most pelting shower came
+on, and cabs and umbrellas were in requisition in all directions. As
+we were provided with neither, our plight was becoming serious, when a
+common cad ran up to me, and said,--'Shall I get you a cab, Mr. Moore?
+Sure, a'n't I the man that patronizes your Melodies?' He then ran off in
+search of a vehicle, while Irving and I stood close up, like a pair of
+male caryatides, under the very narrow protection of a hall-door ledge,
+and thought, at last, that we were quite forgotten by my patron. But
+he came faithfully back, and while putting me into the cab, (without
+minding at all the trifle I gave him for his trouble,) he said
+confidentially in my ear,--'Now mind, whenever you want a cab, Misthur
+Moore, just call for Tim Flaherty, and I'm your man.'--Now, this I call
+_fame_, and of somewhat more agreeable kind than that of Dante, when
+the women in the street found him out by the marks of hell-fire on his
+beard."
+
+When I said that Mr. Irving could not speak in public, I had forgotten
+that he did once get through with a very nice little speech on such an
+occasion as that just alluded to. It was at an entertainment given in
+1837, at the old City Hotel in New York, by the New York booksellers to
+American authors. Many of "the Trade" will remember the good things said
+on that evening, and among them Mr. Irving's speech about Halleck,
+and about Rogers the poet, as the "friend of American genius." At my
+request, he afterwards wrote out his remarks, which were printed in the
+papers of the day. Probably this was his last, if not his best effort in
+this line; for the Dickens-dinner remarks were not _complete_.
+
+In 1845, Mr. Irving came to London from his post at Madrid, on a short
+visit to his friend, Mr. McLane, then American Minister to England. It
+was my privilege at that time to know him more domestically than before.
+It was pleasant to have him at my table at "Knickerbocker Cottage." With
+his permission, a quiet party of four was made up;--the others being
+Dr. Beattie, the friend and biographer of Campbell; Samuel Carter Hall,
+the _littérateur_, and editor of the "Art Journal"; and William Howitt.
+Irving was much interested in what Dr. Beattie had to tell about
+Campbell, and especially so in Carter Hall's stories of Moore and his
+patron, Lord Lansdowne. Moore, at this time, was in ill-health and shut
+up from the world. I need not attempt to quote the conversation. Irving
+had been somewhat intimate with Moore in former days, and found him
+doubtless an entertaining and lively companion,--but his replies to
+Hall about the "patronage" of my Lord Lansdowne, etc., indicated pretty
+clearly that he had no sympathy with the _small_ traits and parasitical
+tendencies of Moore's character. If there was anything specially
+detestable to Irving and at variance with his very nature, it was that
+self-seeking deference to wealth and station which was so characteristic
+of the Irish poet.
+
+I had hinted to one of my guests that Mr. Irving was sometimes "caught
+napping" even at the dinner-table, so that such an event should not
+occasion surprise. The conversation proved so interesting that I had
+almost claimed a victory, when, lo! a slight lull in the talk disclosed
+the fact that our respected guest was nodding. I believe it was a
+habit with him, for many years, thus to take "forty winks" at the
+dinner-table. Still, the conversation of that evening was a rich
+treat, and my English friends frequently thanked me afterwards for the
+opportunity of meeting "the man of all others whom they desired to
+know."
+
+The term of Mr. Irving's contract with his Philadelphia publishers
+expired in 1843, and, for five years, his works remained _in statu quo_,
+no American publisher appearing to think them of sufficient importance
+to propose definitely for a new edition. Surprising as this fact appears
+now, it is actually true that Mr. Irving began to think his works had
+"rusted out" and were "defunct,"--for nobody offered to reproduce them.
+Being, in 1848, again settled in Now York, and apparently able to render
+suitable business-attention to the enterprise, I ambitiously proposed an
+arrangement to publish Irving's Works. My suggestion was made in a
+brief note, written on the impulse of the moment; but (what was more
+remarkable) it was promptly accepted without the change of a single
+figure or a single stipulation. It is sufficient to remark, that the
+number of volumes since printed of these works (including the later
+ones) amounts to about eight hundred thousand.
+
+The relations of friendship--I cannot say intimacy--to which this
+arrangement admitted me were such as any man might have enjoyed with
+proud satisfaction. I had always too much earnest _respect_ for Mr.
+Irving ever to claim familiar intimacy with him. He was a man who would
+unconsciously and quietly command deferential regard and consideration;
+for in all his ways and words there was the atmosphere of true
+refinement. He was emphatically a gentleman, in the best sense of that
+word. Never forbidding or morose, he was at times (indeed always, when
+quite well) full of genial humor,--sometimes overflowing with fun. But I
+need not, here at least, attempt to sum up his characteristics.
+
+That "Sunnyside" home was too inviting to those who were privileged
+there to allow any proper opportunity for a visit to pass unimproved.
+Indeed, it became so attractive to strangers and lion-hunters, that some
+of those whose _entrée_ was quite legitimate and acceptable refrained,
+especially during the last two years, from adding to the heavy tax which
+casual visitors began to levy upon the quiet hours of the host. Ten
+years ago, when Mr. Irving was in his best estate of health and spirits,
+when his mood was of the sunniest, and Wolfert's Roost was in the
+spring-time of its charms, it was my fortune to pass a few days there
+with my wife. Mr. Irving himself drove a snug pair of ponies down to the
+steamboat to meet us--(for, even then, Thackeray's "one old horse" was
+not the only resource in the Sunnyside stables). The drive of two miles
+from Tarrytown to that delicious lane which leads to the Roost,--who
+does not know all that, and how charming it is? Five hundred
+descriptions of the Tappan Sea and the region round about have not
+exhausted it. The modest cottage, almost buried under the luxuriant
+Melrose ivy, was then just made what it is,--a picturesque and
+comfortable retreat for a man of tastes and habits like those of
+Geoffrey Crayon,--snug and modest, but yet, with all its surroundings,
+a fit residence for a gentleman who had means to make everything
+suitable as well as handsome about him. Of this a word anon.
+
+I do not presume to write of the home-details of Sunnyside, further than
+to say that this delightful visit of three or four days gave us the
+impression that Mr. Irving's element seemed to be at home, as head of
+the family. He took us for a stroll over the grounds,--some twenty acres
+of wood and dell, with babbling brooks,--pointing out innumerable trees
+which he had planted with his own hands, and telling us anecdotes
+and reminiscences of his early life:--of his being taken in the
+Mediterranean by pirates;--of his standing on the pier at Messina, in
+Sicily, and looking at Nelson's fleet sweeping by on its way to the
+Battle of Trafalgar;--of his failure to see the interior of Milan
+Cathedral, because it was being decorated for the coronation of the
+first Napoleon;--of his adventures in Rome with Allston, and how near
+Geoffrey Crayon came to being an artist;--of Talleyrand, and many other
+celebrities;--and of incidents which seemed to take us back to a former
+generation. Often at this and subsequent visits I ventured to suggest,
+(not professionally,) after some of these reminiscences, "I hope you
+have taken time to make a note of these";--but the oracle nodded a sort
+of humorous No.--A drive to Sleepy Hollow--Mr. Irving again managing
+the ponies himself--crowned our visit; and with such a coachman and
+guide, in such regions, we were not altogether unable to appreciate the
+excursion.
+
+You are aware that in "Knickerbocker," especially, Mr. Irving made
+copious revisions and additions, when the new edition was published in
+1848. The original edition (1809) was dedicated with mock gravity to the
+New York Historical Society; and the preface to the revision explains
+the origin and intent of the work. Probably some of the more
+literal-minded grandsons of Holland were somewhat unappreciative of the
+precise scope of the author's genius and the bent of his humor; but if
+this "veritable history" really elicited any "doubts" or any hostility,
+at the time, such misapprehension has doubtless been long since removed.
+It has often been remarked that Diedrich Knickerbocker had really
+enlisted more practical interest in the early annals of his native State
+than all other historians together, down to his time. But for him we
+might never have had an O'Callaghan or a Brodhead.
+
+The "Sketch-Book" also received considerable new matter in the revised
+edition; and the story, in the preface, of the author's connection with
+Scott and with Murray added new interest to the volume, which has always
+been _the_ favorite with the public. You will remember Mr. Bryant's
+remark about the change in the tone of Mr. Irving's temperament shown in
+this work as contrasted with Knickerbocker, and the probable cause of
+this change. Mr. Bryant's very delicate and judicious reference to
+the fact of Mr. Irving's early engagement was undoubtedly correct. A
+miniature of a young lady, intellectual, refined, and beautiful, was
+handed me one day by Mr. Irving, with the request that I would have a
+slight injury repaired by an artist and a new case made for it, the old
+one being actually worn out by much use. The painting (on ivory) was
+exquisitely fine. When I returned it to him in a suitable velvet case,
+he took it to a quiet corner and looked intently on the face for some
+minutes, apparently unobserved, his tears falling freely on the glass as
+he gazed. That this was a miniature of the lady,--Miss Hoffman, a sister
+of Ogden Hoffman,--it is not now, perhaps, indelicate to surmise. It
+is for a poet to characterize the nature of an attachment so loyal, so
+fresh, and so fragrant, _forty years_ after death had snatched away the
+mortal part of the object of affection.
+
+During one of his visits to the city, Mr. Irving suddenly asked if I
+could give him a bed at my house at Staten Island. I could. So we had
+a nice chatty evening, and the next morning we took him on a charming
+drive over the hills of Staten. Island. He seemed to enjoy it highly,
+for be had not been there, I believe, since he was stationed there in a
+military capacity, during the War of 1812, as aid of Governor Tompkins.
+He gave us a humorous account of some of his equestrian performances,
+and those of the Governor, while on duty at the island; but neither
+his valor nor the Governor's was tested by any actual contact with the
+enemy.
+
+In facility of composition, Mr. Irving, I believe, was peculiarly
+influenced by "moods." When in his usual good health, and the spirit was
+on him, he wrote very rapidly; but at other times composition was an
+irksome task, or even an impossible one. Dr. Peters says he frequently
+rose from his bed in the night and wrote for hours together. Then again
+he would not touch his pen for weeks. I believe his most rapidly written
+work was the one often pronounced his most spirited one, and a model as
+a biography, the "Life of Goldsmith." Sitting at my desk one day, he
+was looking at Forster's clever work, which I proposed to reprint. He
+remarked that it was a favorite theme of his, and he had half a mind to
+pursue it, and extend into a volume a sketch he had once made for an
+edition of Goldsmith's Works. I expressed a hope that he would do so,
+and within sixty days the first sheets of Irving's "Goldsmith" were in
+the printer's hands. The press (as he says) was "dogging at his heels,"
+for in two or three weeks the volume was published.
+
+Visiting London shortly after the "Life of Mahomet" was prepared for
+the press, I arranged with Mr. Murray, on the author's behalf, for an
+English edition of "Mahomet," "Goldsmith," etc., and took a request from
+Mr. Irving to his old friend Leslie, that he would make a true sketch of
+the venerable Diedrich Knickerbocker. Mr. Irving insisted that the great
+historian of the Manhattoes was not the vulgar old fellow they would
+keep putting on the omnibuses and ice-carts; but that, though quaint and
+old-fashioned, he was still of gentle blood. Leslie's sketches, however,
+(he made two,) did not hit the mark exactly; Mr. Irving liked Darley's
+better.
+
+Among the briefer visits to Sunnyside which I had the good-fortune
+to enjoy was one with the estimable compiler of the "Dictionary of
+Authors." Mr. Irving's amiable and hospitable nature prompted him always
+to welcome visitors so kindly, that no one, however dull, and however
+uncertain his claims, would fail to be pleased with his visit. But
+when the genial host was in good health and in his best moods, and the
+visitor had any magnetism in his composition, when he found, in short,
+a kindred spirit, his talk was of the choicest. Of Sir Walter Scott,
+especially, he would tell us much that was interesting. Probably no two
+writers ever appreciated each other more heartily than Scott and Irving.
+The sterling good sense, and quiet, yet rich humor of Scott, as well as
+his literary tastes and wonderful fund of legendary lore, would find
+no more intelligent and discriminating admirer than Irving; while the
+rollicking fun of the veritable Diedrich and the delicate fancy and
+pathos of Crayon were doubtless unaffectedly enjoyed by the great
+Scotsman. I wish I could tell you accurately one-half of the anecdotes
+which were so pleasantly related during those various brief visits at
+"the Cottage"; but I did not go there to take notes, and it is wicked to
+spoil good stories by misquotation. One story, however, I may venture to
+repeat.
+
+You remember how the author of the "Pleasures of Hope" was once
+hospitably entertained by worthy people, under the supposition that he
+was the excellent missionary Campbell, just returned from Africa,--and
+how the massive man of state, Daniel Webster, had repeated occasion, in
+England, to disclaim honors meant for Noah, the man of words. Mr. Irving
+told, with great glee, a little story against himself, illustrating
+these uncertainties of distant fame. Making a small purchase at a shop
+in England, not long after his second or third work had given currency
+to his name, he gave his address ("Mr. Irving, Number," etc.) for the
+parcel to be sent to his lodgings. The salesman's face brightened: "Is
+it possible," said he, "that I have the pleasure of serving Mr. Irving?"
+The question, and the manner of it, indicated profound respect and
+admiration. A modest and smiling acknowledgment was inevitable. A few
+more remarks indicated still more deferential interest on the part of
+the man of tape; and then another question, about Mr. Irving's "latest
+work," revealed the pleasant fact that he was addressed as the famous
+Edward Irving, of the Scotch Church,--the man of divers tongues.
+The very existence of the "Sketch-Book" was probably unknown to his
+intelligent admirer. "All I could do," added Mr. Crayon, with that rich
+twinkle in his eye,--"all I could do was to take my tail between my legs
+and slink away in the smallest possible compass."
+
+A word more about Mr. Irving's manner of life. The impression given by
+Thackeray, in his notice (genial enough, and well-meant, doubtless) of
+Irving's death, is absurdly inaccurate. His picture of the "one old
+horse," the plain little house, etc., would lead one to imagine Mr.
+Irving a weak, good-natured old man, amiably, but parsimoniously, saving
+up his pennies for his "eleven nieces," (!) and to this end stinting
+himself, among other ways, to "a single glass of wine," etc., etc.
+Mr. Thackeray's notions of style and state and liveried retinues are
+probably not entirely un-English, notwithstanding he wields so sharp a
+pen against England's snobs; and he may naturally have looked for more
+display of greatness at the residence of an ex-ambassador. But he
+could scarcely appreciate that simple dignity and solid comfort, that
+unobtrusive _fitness_, which belonged to Mr. Irving's home-arrangements.
+There were no flunkies in gold and scarlet; but there were four or five
+good horses in the stable, and as many suitable carriages. Everything in
+the cottage was peculiarly and comfortably elegant, without the least
+pretension. As to the "single glass of wine," Mr. Irving, never a
+professed teetotaller, was always temperate on instinct both in eating
+and drinking; and in his last two years I believe he did not taste
+wine at all. In all financial matters, Mr. Irving's providence and
+preciseness were worthy of imitation by all professional literary men;
+but with exactness and punctuality he united a liberal disposition to
+make a suitable use of money, and to have all around him comfortable and
+appropriate. Knowing that he could leave a handsome independence for
+those nearest to him, he had no occasion for any such anxious care as
+Mr. Thackeray intimates.
+
+Thackeray had been invited to Yonkers, to give his lecture on "Charity
+and Humor." At this "Ancient Dorp" he was the guest of Cozzens, and I
+had the honor of accompanying the greater and lesser humorist in a
+drive to Sunnyside, nine miles. (This call of an hour, by-the-way, was
+Thackeray's only glimpse of the place he described.) The interview was
+in every way interesting. Mr. Irving produced a pair of antiquated
+spectacles, which had belonged to Washington, and Major Pendennis tried
+them on with evident reverence. The hour was well filled with rapid,
+pleasant chat; but no profound analysis of the characteristics of wit
+and humor was elicited either from the Stout Gentleman or from Vanity
+Fair. Mr. Irving went down to Yonkers, to hear Thackeray's lecture in
+the evening, after we had all had a slice of bear at Mr. Sparrowgrass's,
+to say nothing of sundry other courses, with a slight thread of
+conversation between. At the lecture, he was so startled by the
+eulogistic presentation of the lecturer to the audience, by the
+excellent chief of the committee, that I believe he did not once nod
+during the evening. We were, of course, proud to have as our own guest
+for the night such an embodiment of "Charity and Humor" as Mr. Thackeray
+saw in the front bench before him, but whom he considerately spared from
+holding up as an illustration of his subject.
+
+Charity, indeed, practical "good-will toward men," was an essential
+part of Mr. Irving's Christianity,--and in this Christian virtue he was
+sometimes severely tested. Nothing was more irksome to him than to be
+compelled to endure calls of mere curiosity, or to answer letters either
+of fulsome eulogy of himself or asking for his eulogy of the MSS. or new
+work of the correspondent. Some letters of that kind he probably never
+did answer. Few had any idea of the _fagging_ task they imposed on
+the distinguished victim. He would worry and fret over it trebly in
+anticipation, and the actual task itself was to him probably ten times
+as irksome as it would be to most others. Yet it would be curious to
+know how many letters of suggestion and encouragement he actually did
+write in reply to solicitations from young authors for his criticism and
+advice, and his recommendation, or, perhaps, his pecuniary aid. Always
+disposed to find merit, even where any stray grains of the article lay
+buried in rubbish, he would amiably say the utmost that could justly be
+said in favor of "struggling genius." Sometimes his readiness to aid
+meritorious young authors into profitable publicity was shamefully
+abused,--as in the case of Maitland, an Englishman, who deliberately
+forged an absurdly distorted paraphrase of a note of Mr. Irving's,
+besides other disreputable use of the signature which he had enticed
+from him in answer to urgent appeals. But these were among the penalties
+of honorable fame and influence which he might naturally expect to pay.
+The sunny aspect on the "even tenor of his way" still prevailed; and
+until the hand of disease reached him in the last year of his life, very
+few probably enjoyed a more tranquil and unruffled existence.
+
+It became almost a proverb, that Mr. Irving was a nearly solitary
+instance of a long literary career (half a century) untouched by even
+a breath of ill-will or jealousy on the part of a brother-author. The
+annals of the _genus irritabile_ scarcely show a parallel to such a
+career. The most prominent American contemporary of Mr. Irving in
+imaginative literature, I suppose, was Fenimore Cooper,--whose genius
+raised the American name in Europe more effectively even than Irving's,
+at least on the Continent. Cooper had a right to claim respect and
+admiration, if not affection, from his countrymen, for his brilliant
+creations and his solid services to American literature; and he knew it.
+But, as we all know,--for it was patent,--when he returned from Europe,
+after sending his "Letter to his Countrymen," and gave us "Home as
+Found," his reception was much less marked with warmth and enthusiasm
+than Mr. Irving's was; and while he professed indifference to all such
+whims of popular regard, yet he evidently brooded a little over the
+relative amount of public attention extended to his brother-author. At
+any rate, he persistently kept aloof from Mr. Irving for many years; and
+not unfrequently discoursed, in his rather authoritative manner, about
+the humbuggery of success in this country, as exhibited in some shining
+instances of popular and official favor. With great admiration for
+Cooper, whose national services were never recognized as they deserved
+to be, I trust no injustice is involved in the above suggestion, which I
+make somewhat presumptuously,--especially as Mr. Irving more than once
+spoke to me in terms of strong admiration of the works and genius of
+Cooper, and regretted that the great novelist seemed to cherish some
+unpleasant feeling towards him. One day, some time after I had commenced
+a library edition of Cooper's best works, and while Irving's were in
+course of publication in companionship, Mr. Irving was sitting at my
+desk, with his back to the door, when Mr. Cooper came in, (a little
+bustlingly, as usual,) and stood at the office-entrance, talking. Mr.
+Irving did not turn, (for obvious reasons,) and Cooper did not see him.
+Remembering his "Mr. Sharp, Mr. Blunt,--Mr. Blunt, Mr. Sharp," I had
+acquired caution as to introductions without mutual consent; but with
+a brief thought of how matters stood, (they had not met for several
+years,) and a sort of instinct that reduced the real difference between
+the parties to a baseless fabric of misapprehension, I stoutly obeyed
+the impulse of the moment, and simply said,--"Mr. Cooper, here is Mr.
+Irving." The latter turned,--Cooper held out his hand cordially, dashed
+at once into an animated conversation, took a chair, and, to my surprise
+and delight, the two authors sat for an hour, chatting in their best
+manner about almost every topic of the day and some of former days. They
+parted with cordial good wishes, and Mr. Irving afterwards frequently
+alluded to the incident as being a very great gratification to him.
+He may have recalled it with new satisfaction, when, not many months
+afterwards, he sat on the platform at the "Cooper Commemoration," and
+joined in Bryant's tribute to the genius of the departed novelist.
+
+Mr. Irving was never a systematic collector of books, and his little
+library at Sunnyside might have disappointed those who would expect to
+see there rich shelves of choice editions, and a full array of all the
+favorite authors among whom such a writer would delight to revel. Some
+rather antiquated tomes in Spanish,--in different sets of Calderon
+and Cervantes, and of some modern French and German authors,--a
+presentation-set of Cadell's "Waverley," as well as that more recent and
+elegant emanation from the classic press of Houghton,--a moderate amount
+of home-tools for the "Life of Washington," (rarer materials were
+consulted in the town-libraries and at Washington,)--and the remainder
+of his books were evidently a hap-hazard collection, many coming from
+the authors, with their respects, and thus sometimes costing the
+recipient their full (intrinsic) value in writing a letter of
+acknowledgment.
+
+The little apartment had, nevertheless, become somewhat overcrowded, and
+a suggestion for a general renovation and pruning seemed to be gladly
+accepted,--so I went up and passed the night there for that purpose.
+Mr. Irving, in his easy-chair in the sitting-room, after dinner, was
+quite content to have me range at large in the library and to let me
+discard all the "lumber" as I pleased; so I turned out some hundred
+volumes of _un_-classic superfluity, and then called him in from his
+nap to approve or veto my proceedings. As he sat by, while I rapidly
+reported the candidates for exclusion, and he nodded assent, or as, here
+and there, he would interpose with "No, no, not _that_," and an anecdote
+or reminiscence would come in as a reason against the dismissal of the
+book in my hand, I could not help suggesting the scene in Don Quixote's
+library, when the priest and the barber entered upon their scrutiny of
+its contents. Mr. Irving seemed to be highly amused with this pruning
+process, and his running commentary on my "estimates of value" in
+weighing his literary collections was richly entertaining.
+
+Observing that his library-table was somewhat antiquated and inadequate,
+I persuaded him to let me make him a present of a new one, with the
+modern conveniences of drawers and snug corners for keeping his stray
+papers. When I sent him such a one, my stipulation for the return of the
+old one as a present to me was pleasantly granted. This relic was of no
+great intrinsic value; but, as he had written on this table many of his
+later works, including "Mahomet," "Goldsmith," "Wolfert's Roost," and
+"Washington," I prize it, of course, as one of the most interesting
+mementos of Sunnyside.
+
+As an illustration of habit, it may be added, that, some time after the
+new table had been installed, I was sitting with him in the library,
+when he searched long and fruitlessly for some paper which had been "so
+_very_ carefully stowed away in some _very_ safe drawer" that it was
+not to be found, and the search ended in a sort of half-humorous,
+half-earnest denunciation of all "modern conveniences";--the simple old
+table, with its primitive facilities, was, after all, worth a dozen of
+these elegant contrivances for memory-saving and neatness.
+
+One rather curious characteristic of Mr. Irving was excessive,
+unaffected modesty and distrust of himself and of his own writings.
+Considering how many a _débutant_ in letters, not yet out of his teens,
+is so demonstratively self-confident as to the prospective effect of his
+genius on an expecting and admiring world, it was always remarkable to
+hear a veteran, whose fame for half a century had been cosmopolitan,
+expressing the most timid doubts as to his latest compositions, and
+fearing they were unequal to their position,--so unwilling, too, to
+occupy an inch of ground to which any other writer might properly lay
+claim. Mr. Irving had planned and made some progress in a work on the
+Conquest of Mexico, when he learned of Mr. Prescott's intentions, and
+promptly laid his project aside. His "Life of Washington," originating
+more than thirty years ago, was repeatedly abandoned, as the successive
+works of Mr. Sparks, Mr. Padding, and others, appeared; and though he
+was subsequently induced to proceed with his long-considered plan of a
+more dramatic and picturesque narrative from a new point of view, yet
+he was more than once inclined to put his MSS. into the fire, in the
+apprehension that the subject had been worn threadbare by the various
+compilations which were constantly coming out. When he ventured his
+first volume, the cordial and appreciative reception promptly accorded
+to it surprised as much as it cheered and pleased him; for though he
+despised hollow flattery, no young writer was more warmly sensitive than
+he to all discriminating, competent, and honest applause or criticism.
+When "Wolfert's Roost" was published, (I had to entice the papers
+of that volume from his drawers, for I doubt whether he would have
+collected them himself,) I saw him affected actually to tears, on
+reading some of the hearty and well-written personal tributes which
+that volume called forth. But though every volume was received in this
+spirit by the press and the public, he was to the last apprehensive of
+failure, until a reliable verdict should again reassure him. The very
+last volume of his works (the fifth of "Washington") was thus timidly
+permitted to be launched; and I remember well his expression of relief
+and satisfaction, when he said that Mr. Bancroft, Professor Felton, and
+Mr. Duyckinck had been the first to assure him the volume was all that
+it should be. His task on this volume had perhaps extended beyond the
+period of his robust health,--it had _fagged_ him,--but he had been
+spared to write every line of it with his own hand, and my own copy is
+enriched by the autograph of his valedictory.
+
+To refer, however briefly, to Mr. Irving's politics or religion, even if
+I had intimate knowledge of both, (which assuredly I had not,) would
+be, perhaps, to overstep decorous limits. It may, however, properly be
+mentioned, that, in the face of all inherent probabilities as to
+his comfortable conservatism, and his earnest instincts in favor of
+fraternal conciliation and _justice_, (which was as marked a quality in
+him as in the great man whom be so faithfully portrayed,) in spite of
+all the considerations urged by timid gentlemen of the old school in
+favor of Fillmore and the _status quo_, he voted in 1856, as he told me,
+for Fremont. In speaking of the candidates then in the field, he said of
+Fremont, that his comparative youth and inexperience in party-politics
+were points in his favor; for he thought the condition of the country
+called for a man of nerve and energy, one in his prime, and unfettered
+by party-traditions and bargains for "the spoils." His characterization
+of a more experienced functionary, who had once served in the State
+Department, was more severe than I ever heard from him of any other
+person; and severity from a man of his judicious and kindly impulses had
+a meaning in it.
+
+Favored once with a quiet Sunday at "the Cottage," of course there was
+a seat for us all in the family-pew at Christ Church in the village
+(Tarrytown). Mr. Irving's official station as Church-Warden was
+indicated by the ex-ambassador's meek and decorous presentation of
+the plate for the silver and copper offerings of the parishioners. At
+subsequent successive meetings of the General (State) Convention of
+the Protestant Episcopal Church, (to which I had been delegated from
+a little parish on Staten Island,) the names of Washington Irving and
+Fenimore Cooper were both recorded,--the latter representing Christ
+Church, Cooperstown. Mr. Irving for several years served in this
+capacity, and as one of the Missionary Committee of the Convention, his
+name was naturally sought as honoring any organization. He was the last
+person to be demonstrative or conspicuous either as to his faith or his
+works; but no disciple of Christ, perhaps, felt more devoutly than he
+did the reverential aspiration of "Glory to God in the highest, and on
+earth peace, good-will toward men."
+
+Passing a print-window in Broadway one day, his eye rested on the
+beautiful engraving of "Christus Consolator." He stopped and looked at
+it intently for some minutes, evidently much affected by the genuine
+inspiration of the artist in this remarkable representation of the
+Saviour as the consoler of sorrow-stricken humanity. His tears fell
+freely. "Pray, get me that print," said he; "I must have it framed
+for my sitting-room." When he examined it more closely and found the
+artist's name, "It's by my old friend Ary Scheffer!" said he,--remarking
+further, that he had known Scheffer intimately, and knew him to be a
+true artist, but had not expected from him anything so excellent as
+this. I afterwards sent him the companion, "Christus Remunerator"; and
+the pair remained his daily companions till the day of his death. To me,
+the picture of Irving, amid the noise and bustle of noon in Broadway,
+shedding tears as he studied that little print, so feelingly picturing
+human sorrow and the source of its alleviation, has always remained
+associated with the artist and his works. If Irving could enjoy wit and
+humor and give that enjoyment to others, no other writer of books had a
+heart more tenderly sensitive than his to the sufferings and ills which
+flesh is heir to.
+
+Of his later days,--of the calmly received premonitions of that peaceful
+end of which only the precise moment was uncertain,--of his final
+departure, so gentle and so fitting,--of that "Washington-Irving-day"
+so dreamily, blandly still, and almost fragrant, December though it was,
+when with those simple and appropriate obsequies his mortal remains were
+placed by the side of his brothers and sisters in the burial-ground of
+Sleepy Hollow, while thousands from far and near silently looked for the
+last time on his genial face and mourned his loss as that of a personal
+friend and a national benefactor, yet could hardly for _his_ sake desire
+any more enviable translation from mortality,--of the many beautiful
+and eloquent tributes of living genius to the life and character and
+writings of the departed author,--of all these you have already an ample
+record. I need not repeat or extend it. If you could have "assisted"
+at the crowning "Commemoration," on his birthday, (April 3d,) at the
+Academy of Music, you would have found it in many respects memorably in
+accordance with the intrinsic fitness of things. An audience of five
+thousand, so evidently and discriminatingly intelligent, addressed for
+two hours by Bryant, with all his cool, judicious, deliberate criticism,
+warmed into glowing appreciation of the most delicate and peculiar
+beauties of the character and literary services he was to
+delineate,--and this rich banquet fittingly _desserted_ by the periods
+of Everett,--such an evening was worthy of the subject, and worthy to
+be remembered. The heartiness and the genial insight into Irving's best
+traits which the poet displayed were peculiarly gratifying to the nearer
+friends and relatives. His sketch and analysis, too, had a remarkable
+completeness for an address of that kind, while its style and manner
+were models of chaste elegance. Speaking of Irving's contemporaries and
+predecessors, he warms into poetry, thus:--
+
+"We had but one novelist before the era of the 'Sketch-Book': their
+number is now beyond enumeration by any but a professed catalogue-maker,
+and many of them are read in every cultivated form of human speech.
+Those whom we acknowledge as our poets--one of whom is the special
+favorite of our brothers in language who dwell beyond the sea--appeared
+in the world of letters and won its attention after Irving had become
+famous. We have wits and humorists and amusing essayists, authors of
+some of the airiest and most graceful contributions of the present
+century,--and we owe them to the new impulse given to our literature
+in 1819. I look abroad on these stars of our literary firmament,--some
+crowded together with their minute points of light in a galaxy, some
+standing apart in glorious constellations; I recognize Arcturus and
+Orion and Perseus and the glittering jewels of the Southern Crown, and
+the Pleiades shedding sweet influences; but the Evening Star, the soft
+and serene light that glowed in their van, the precursor of them all,
+has sunk below the horizon. The spheres, meanwhile, perform their
+appointed courses; the same motion which lifted them up to the mid-sky
+bears them onward to their setting; and they, too, like their bright
+leader, must soon be carried by it below the earth."
+
+Let me quote also Mr. Bryant's closing remarks:--
+
+"Other hands will yet give the world a bolder, more vivid, and more
+exact portraiture. In the mean time, when I consider for how many
+years he stood before the world as an author, with still increasing
+fame,--half a century in this most changeful of centuries,--I cannot
+hesitate to predict for him a deathless renown. Since he began to write,
+empires have arisen and passed away; mighty captains have appeared on
+the stage of the world, performed their part, and been called to
+their account; wars have been fought and ended which have changed the
+destinies of the human race. New arts have been invented and adopted,
+and have pushed the old out of use; the household economy of half
+mankind has undergone a revolution. Science has learned a new dialect
+and forgotten the old; the chemist of 1807 would be a vain babbler among
+his brethren of the present day, and would in turn become bewildered in
+the attempt to understand them. Nation utters speech to nation in words
+that pass from realm to realm with the speed of light. Distant countries
+have been made neighbors; the Atlantic Ocean has become a narrow frith,
+and the Old World and the New shake hands across it; the East and the
+West look in at each other's windows. The new inventions bring new
+calamities, and men perish in crowds by the recoil of their own devices.
+War has learned more frightful modes of havoc, and armed himself with
+deadlier weapons; armies are borne to the battle-field on the wings of
+the wind, and dashed against each other and destroyed with infinite
+bloodshed. We grow giddy with this perpetual whirl of strange events,
+these rapid and ceaseless mutations; the earth seems to be reeling under
+our feet, and we turn to those who write like Irving for some assurance
+that we are still in the same world into which we were born; we read,
+and are quieted and consoled. In his pages we see that the language of
+the heart never becomes obsolete; that Truth and Good and Beauty,
+the offspring of God, are not subject to the changes which beset the
+inventions of men. We become satisfied that he whose works were the
+delight of our fathers, and are still ours, will be read with the same
+pleasure by those who come after us."
+
+
+
+
+IRENE ANADYOMENE.
+
+
+  O'er far Pacific waves the wanderer holding
+  His steady course before the strong monsoon,
+  Entranced, beholds the coral isle unfolding
+  Its ring of emerald and its bright lagoon.
+
+  At first their shadowy helms in the faint distance
+  The tree-tops rear; then, as he nearer glides,
+  The white surf gleams where the firm reef's resistance
+  Meets and hurls back the fiercely charging tides.
+
+  He sees outspread the wide sea-beach, all sparkling
+  With coral sand and many-tinted shells,
+  While high above, in tropic rankness darkling,
+  A cloud of verdure ever-brooding dwells,
+
+  With growing wonder and delight the stranger,
+  While his swift shallop nears the enchanted strand,
+  Sees the white surf cleared with one flash of danger,
+  And a broad portal opening through the land.
+
+  And deftly through the verdurous gateway steering,
+  The strong-armed oarsmen urge their flying boat,
+  Till now, the broad horizon disappearing,
+  On the still island-lake they pause and float.
+
+  The gun booms loud. With wishful eyes receding,
+  They watch from their swift boat the lessening isle.
+  The yards are squared. Again the good ship speeding
+  Sees the chafed waves beneath her counter file.
+
+  Long musing o'er his scientific pages,
+  The curious voyager pursues the theme,
+  And learns whate'er the geologic sages
+  Have found or fancied,--building each his scheme.
+
+
+
+
+The Professor's Story.
+
+
+  This pleased him best:--In earth's red primal morning,
+  When Nature's forces wrought with youthful heat,
+  A mighty continent outspread, adorning
+  Our planet's face, where now the surges beat:
+
+  A land of wondrous growths, of strange creations,
+  Of ferns like oaks, of saurians huge and dire,
+  Of marshes vast, their dreary habitations,
+  Of mountains flaming with primeval fire.
+
+  At length, by some supernal fiat banished,
+  The land sank down in one great cataclysm;
+  The vales, the plains, the mountains slowly vanished,
+  Buried and quenched in the wide sea's abysm.
+
+  'Twas then (so ran the scheme) on each lost crater
+  The coral-builders laid their marvellous pile;
+  Millions on millions wrought, till ages later
+  Saw reared to light and air the circling isle.
+
+  Thus Science dreams: but from the dream upflashes
+  On his swift thought the subtly shadowed truth,
+  That all serener joys bloom on the ashes,
+  The lava, and spent craters of lost youth.
+
+  The heart, long worn by fierce volcanic surges,
+  Feels its old world slow sinking from the sight,
+  Till o'er the wreck a home of peace emerges,
+  Bright with unnumbered shapes of new delight.
+
+
+
+
+THE PROFESSOR'S STORY.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+THE WIDOW BOWENS GIVES A TEA-PARTY.
+
+
+There was a good deal of interest felt, as has been said, in the lonely
+condition of Dudley Venner in that fine mansion-house of his, and with
+that strange daughter, who would never be married, as many people
+thought, in spite of all the stories. The feelings expressed by the good
+folks who dated from the time when they "buried aour little Anny Mari,"
+and others of that homespun stripe, were founded in reason, after all.
+And so it was natural enough that they should be shared by various
+ladies, who, having conjugated the verb _to live_ as far as the
+preterpluperfect tense, were ready to change one of its vowels and begin
+with it in the present indicative. Unfortunately, there was very little
+chance of showing sympathy in its active form for a gentleman who kept
+himself so much out of the way as the master of the Dudley Mansion.
+
+Various attempts had been made, from time to time, of late years, to get
+him out of his study, which had, for the moat part, proved failures. It
+was a surprise, therefore, when he was seen at the Great Party at
+the Colonel's. But it was an encouragement to try him again, and the
+consequence had been that he had received a number of notes inviting him
+to various smaller entertainments, which, as neither he nor Elsie had
+any fancy for them, he had politely declined.
+
+Such was the state of things when he received an invitation to take tea
+_sociably,_ with _a few friends,_ at Hyacinth Cottage, the residence of
+the Widow Rowens, relict of the late Beeri Rowens, Esquire, better known
+as Major Rowens. Major Rowens was at the time of his decease a promising
+officer in the militia, in the direct line of promotion, as his
+waistband was getting tighter every year; and, as all the world knows,
+the militia-officer who splits off most buttons and fills the largest
+sword-belt stands the best chance of rising, or, perhaps we might say,
+spreading, to be General.
+
+Major Rowens united in his person certain other traits that help a
+man to eminence in the arm of the service referred to. He ran to high
+colors, to wide whisker, to open pores; he had the saddle-leather skin
+common in Englishmen, rarer in Americans,--never found in the Brahmin
+caste, oftener in the military and the commodores: observing people know
+what is meant; blow the seed-arrows from the white-kid-looking button
+which holds them on a dandelion-stalk, and the pricked-pincushion
+surface shows you what to look for. He had the loud, gruff voice which
+implies the right to command. He had the thick hand, stubbed fingers,
+with bristled pads between their joints, square, broad thumb-nails, and
+sturdy limbs, which mark a constitution made to use in rough out-door
+work. He had the never-failing predilection for showy switch-tailed
+horses that step high, and sidle about, and act as if they were going to
+do something fearful the next minute, in the face of awed and admiring
+multitudes gathered at mighty musters or imposing cattle-shows. He had
+no objection, either, to holding the reins in a wagon behind another
+kind of horse,--a slouching, listless beast, with a strong slant to his
+shoulder and a notable depth to his quarter and an emphatic angle at the
+hock, who commonly walked or lounged along in a lazy trot of five or
+six miles an hour; but, if a lively colt happened to come rattling up
+alongside, or a brandy-faced old horse-jockey took the road to show off
+a fast nag, and threw his dust into the Major's face, would pick his
+legs up all at once, and straighten his body out, and swing off into a
+three-minute gait, in a way that "Old Blue" himself need not have been
+ashamed of.
+
+For some reason which must be left to the next generation of professors
+to find out, the men who are knowing in horse-flesh have an eye also
+for,----let a long dash separate the brute creation from the angelic
+being now to be named,--for lovely woman. Of this fact there can be no
+possible doubt; and therefore you shall notice, that, if a fast horse
+trots before two, one of the twain is apt to be a pretty bit of
+muliebrity, with shapes to her, and eyes flying about in all directions.
+
+Major Rowens, at that time Lieutenant of the Rockland Fusileers, had
+driven and "traded" horses not a few before he turned his acquired skill
+as a judge of physical advantages in another direction. He knew a neat,
+snug hoof, a delicate pastern, a well-covered stifle, a broad haunch, a
+deep chest, a close ribbed-up barrel, as well as any other man in the
+town. He was not to be taken in by your thick-jointed, heavy-headed
+cattle, without any go to them, that suit a country-parson, nor yet by
+the "galinted-up," long-legged animals, with all their constitutions
+bred out of them, such as rich greenhorns buy and cover up with their
+plated trappings.
+
+Whether his equine experience was of any use to him in the selection of
+the mate with whom he was to go in double harness so long as they both
+should live, we need not stop to question. At any rate, nobody could
+find fault with the points of Miss Marilla Van Deusen, to whom he
+offered the privilege of becoming Mrs. Rowens. The _Van_ must have been
+crossed out of her blood, for she was an out-and-out brunette, with hair
+and eyes black enough for a Mohawk's daughter. A fine style of woman,
+with very striking tints and outlines,--an excellent match for the
+Lieutenant, except for one thing. She was marked by Nature for a widow.
+She was evidently got up for mourning, and never looked so well as in
+deep black, with jet ornaments.
+
+The man who should dare to marry her would doom himself; for how could
+she become the widow she was bound to be, unless he would retire and
+give her a chance? The Lieutenant lived, however, as we have seen, to
+become Captain and then Major, with prospects of further advancement.
+But Mrs. Rowens often said she should never look well in colors. At last
+her destiny fulfilled itself, and the justice of Nature was vindicated.
+Major Rowens got overheated galloping about the field on the day of the
+Great Muster, and had a rush of blood to the head, according to the
+common report,--at any rate, something which stopped him short in his
+career of expansion and promotion, and established Mrs. Rowens in her
+normal condition of widowhood.
+
+The Widow Rowens was now in the full bloom of ornamental sorrow. A very
+shallow crape bonnet, frilled and froth-like, allowed the parted raven
+hair to show its glossy smoothness. A jet pin heaved upon her bosom with
+every sigh of memory, or emotion of unknown origin. Jet bracelets shone
+with every movement of her slender hands, cased in close-fitting black
+gloves. Her sable dress was ridged with manifold flounces, from beneath
+which a small foot showed itself from time to time, clad in the same hue
+of mourning. Everything about her was dark, except the whites of her
+eyes and the enamel of her teeth. The effect was complete. Gray's Elegy
+was not a more perfect composition.
+
+Much as the Widow was pleased with the costume belonging to her
+condition, she did not disguise from herself that under certain
+circumstances she might be willing to change her name again. Thus, for
+instance, if a gentleman not too far gone in maturity, of dignified
+exterior, with an ample fortune, and of unexceptionable character,
+should happen to set his heart upon her, and the only way to make him
+happy was to give up her weeds and go into those unbecoming colors again
+for his sake,--why, she felt that it was in her nature to make the
+sacrifice. By a singular coincidence it happened that a gentleman was
+now living in Rockland who united in himself all these advantages. Who
+he was, the sagacious reader may very probably have divined. Just to see
+how it looked, one day, having bolted her door, and drawn the curtains
+close, and glanced under the sofa, and listened at the keyhole to be
+sure there was nobody in the entry,--just to see how it looked, she
+had taken out an envelope and written on the back of it _Mrs. Marila
+Venner._ It made her head swim and her knees tremble. What if she should
+faint, or die, or have a stroke of palsy, and they should break into the
+room and find that name written? How she caught it up and tore it into
+little shreds, and then could not be easy until she had burned the small
+heap of pieces! But these are things which every honorable reader will
+consider imparted in strict confidence.
+
+The Widow Rowens, though not of the mansion-house set, was among the
+most genteel of the two-story circle, and was in the habit of visiting
+some of the great people. In one of these visits she met a dashing young
+fellow with an olive complexion at the house of a professional gentleman
+who had married one of the white necks and pairs of fat arms from a
+distinguished family before referred to. The professional gentleman
+himself was out, but the lady introduced the olive-complexioned young
+man as Mr. Richard Venner.
+
+The Widow was particularly pleased with this accidental meeting. Had
+heard Mr. Venner's name frequently mentioned. Hoped his uncle was well,
+and his charming cousin,--was she as original as ever? Had often admired
+that charming creature he rode: _we_ had had some fine horses. Had never
+got over her taste for riding, but could find nobody that liked a good
+long gallop since--well--she couldn't help wishing she was alongside of
+him, the other day, when she saw him dashing by, just at twilight.
+
+The Widow paused; lifted a flimsy handkerchief with a very deep black
+border so as to play the jet bracelet; pushed the tip of her slender
+foot beyond the lowest of her black flounces; looked up; looked down;
+looked at Mr. Richard, the very picture of artless simplicity,--as
+represented in well-played genteel comedy.
+
+"A good bit of stuff," Dick said to himself,--"and something of it left
+yet; _caramba!_" The Major had not studied points for nothing, and
+the Widow was one of the right sort. The young man had been a little
+restless of late, and was willing to vary his routine by picking up an
+acquaintance here and there. So he took the Widow's hint. He should like
+to have a scamper of half a dozen miles with her some fine morning.
+
+The Widow was infinitely obliged; was not sure that she could find any
+horse in the village to suit her; but it was _so_ kind in him! Would he
+not call at Hyacinth Cottage, and let her thank him again there?
+
+Thus began an acquaintance which the Widow made the most of, and on the
+strength of which she determined to give a tea-party and invite a number
+of persons of whom we know something already. She took a half-sheet of
+note-paper and made out her list as carefully as a country "merchant's"
+"clerk" adds up two and threepence (New-England nomenclature) and twelve
+and a half cents, figure by figure, and fraction by fraction, before he
+can be sure they will make half a dollar, without cheating somebody.
+After much consideration the list reduced itself to the following names:
+Mr. Richard Venner and Mrs. Blanche Creamer, the lady at whose house she
+had met him,--mansion-house breed,--but will come,--soft on Dick; Dudley
+Venner,--take care of him herself; Elsie,--Dick will see to her,--won't
+it fidget the Creamer woman to see him round her? the old Doctor,--he's
+always handy; and there's that young master there, up at the
+school,--know him well enough to ask him,--oh, yes, he'll come. One,
+two, three, four, five, six,--seven; not room enough, without the leaf
+in the table; one place empty, if the leaf's in. Let's see,--Helen
+Darley,--she'll do well enough to fill it up,--why, yes, just the
+thing,--light brown hair, blue eyes,--won't my pattern show off well
+against her? Put her down,--she's worth her tea and toast ten times
+over,--nobody knows what a "thunder-and-lightning woman," as poor Major
+used to have it, is, till she gets alongside of one of those old-maidish
+girls, with hair the color of brown sugar, and eyes like the blue of a
+teacup.
+
+The Widow smiled with a feeling of triumph at having overcome her
+difficulties and arranged her party,--arose and stood before her glass,
+three-quarters front, one-quarter profile, so as to show the whites of
+the eyes and the down of the upper lip. "Splendid!" said the Widow,
+--and to tell the truth, she was not far out of the way, and with
+Helen Darley as a foil anybody would know she must be foudroyant and
+pyramidal,--if these French adjectives may be naturalized for this one
+particular exigency.
+
+So the Widow sent out her notes. The black grief which had filled her
+heart and overflowed in surges of crape around her person had left a
+deposit half an inch wide at the margin of her note-paper. Her seal was
+a small youth with an inverted torch, the same on which Mrs. Blanche
+Creamer made her spiteful remark, that she expected to see that boy of
+the Widow's standing on his head yet; meaning, as Dick supposed, that
+she would get the torch right-side up as soon as she had a chance. That
+was after Dick had made the Widow's acquaintance, and Mrs. Creamer had
+got it into her foolish head that she would marry that young fellow,
+if she could catch him. How could he ever come to fancy such, a
+quadroon-looking thing as that, she should like to know?
+
+It is easy enough to ask seven people to a party; but whether they will
+come or not is an open question, as it was in the case of the "vasty
+spirits." If the note issues from a three-story mansion-house, and goes
+to two-story acquaintances, they will all be in an excellent state of
+health, and have much pleasure in accepting this very polite invitation.
+If the note is from the lady of a two-story family to a three-story one,
+the former highly respectable person will find that an endemic complaint
+is prevalent, not represented in the weekly bills of mortality, which
+occasions numerous regrets in the bosoms of eminently desirable parties
+that they _cannot_ have the pleasure of and-so-forth-ing.
+
+In this case there was room for doubt,--mainly as to whether Elsie
+would take a fancy to come or not. If she should come, her father would
+certainly be with her. Dick had promised, and thought he could bring
+Elsie. Of course the young schoolmaster will come, and that poor
+tired-out looking Helen,--if only to get out of sight of those horrid
+Peckham wretches. They don't get such invitations every day. The others
+she felt sure of,--all but the old Doctor,--he might have some horrid
+patient or other to visit; tell him Elsie Venner's going to be
+there,--he always likes to have an eye on her, they say,--oh, he'd come
+fast enough, without any more coaxing.
+
+She wanted the Doctor, particularly. It was odd, but she was afraid of
+Elsie. She felt as if she should be safe enough, if the old Doctor were
+there to see to the girl; and then she should have leisure to devote
+herself more freely to the young lady's father, for whom all her
+sympathies were in a state of lively excitement.
+
+It was a long time since the Widow had seen so many persons round her
+table as she had now invited. Better have the plates set and see how
+they will fill it up with the leaf in.--A little too scattering with
+only eight plates set; if she could find two more people now that would
+bring the chairs a little closer,--snug, you know,--which makes the
+company sociable. The Widow thought over her acquaintances. Why! how
+stupid! there was her good minister, the same that had married her, and
+might--might--bury her for aught she knew, and his granddaughter
+staying with him,--nice little girl, pretty, and not old enough to be
+dangerous;--for the Widow had no notion of making a tea-party and asking
+people to it that would be like to stand between her and any little
+project she might happen to have on anybody's heart,--not she! It was
+all right now;--Blanche was married and so forth; Letty was a child;
+Elsie was his daughter; Helen Darley was a nice, worthy drudge,--poor
+thing!--faded, faded,--colors wouldn't wash,--just what she wanted to
+show off against. Now, if the Dudley mansion-house people would only
+come,--that was the great point.
+
+"Here's a note for us, Elsie," said her father, as they sat round the
+breakfast-table. "Mrs. Rowens wants us all to come to tea."
+
+It was one of "Elsie's days," as Old Sophy called them. The light in her
+eyes was still, but very bright. She looked up so full of perverse and
+wilful impulses, that Dick knew he could make her go with him and
+her father. He had his own motives for bringing her to this
+determination,--and his own way of setting about it.
+
+"I don't want to go," he said. "What do you say, Uncle?"
+
+"To tell the truth, Richard, I don't much fancy the Major's widow. I
+don't like to see her weeds flowering out quite so strong. I suppose you
+don't care about going, Elsie?"
+
+Elsie looked up in her father's face with an expression which he knew
+but too well. She was just in the state which the plain sort of people
+call "contrary," when they have to deal with it in animals. She would
+insist on going to that tea-party; he knew it just as well before she
+spoke as after she had spoken. If Dick had said he wanted to go and her
+father had seconded his wishes, she would have insisted on staying at
+home. It was no great matter, her father said to himself, after
+all; very likely it would amuse her; the Widow was a lively woman
+enough,--perhaps a little _comme il ne faut pas_ socially, compared with
+the Thorntons and some other families; but what did he care for these
+petty village distinctions?
+
+Elsie spoke.
+
+"I mean to go. You must go with me, Dudley. You may do as you like,
+Dick."
+
+That settled the Dudley-mansion business, of course. They all three
+accepted, as fortunately did all the others who had been invited.
+
+Hyacinth Cottage was a pretty place enough, a little too much choked
+round with bushes, and too much overrun with climbing-roses, which, in
+the season of slugs and rose-bugs, were apt to show so brown about
+the leaves and so coleopterous about the flowers, that it might be
+questioned whether their buds and blossoms made up for these unpleasant
+animal combinations,--especially as the smell of whale-oil soap was very
+commonly in the ascendant over that of the roses. It had its patch
+of grass called "the lawn," and its glazed closet known as "the
+conservatory," according to that system of harmless fictions
+characteristic of the rural imagination and shown in the names applied
+to many familiar objects. The interior of the cottage was more tasteful
+and ambitious than that of the ordinary two-story dwellings. In place
+of the prevailing hair-cloth covered furniture, the visitor had the
+satisfaction of seating himself upon a chair covered with some of the
+Widow's embroidery, or a sofa luxurious with soft caressing plush. The
+sporting tastes of the late Major showed in various prints on the
+wall: Herring's "Plenipotentiary," the "red bullock" of the '34 Derby;
+"Cadland" and "The Colonel"; "Crucifix"; "West-Australian," fastest of
+modern racers; and ugly, game old "Boston," with his straight neck and
+ragged hips; and gray "Lady Suffolk," "extending" herself till she
+measured a rod, more or less, skimming along within a yard of the
+ground, her legs opening and shutting under her with a snap, like the
+four blades of a compound jack-knife.
+
+These pictures were much more refreshing than those dreary fancy
+death-bed scenes, common in two-story country-houses, in which
+Washington and other distinguished personages are represented as
+obligingly devoting their last moments to taking a prominent part in a
+tableau, in which weeping relatives, attached servants, professional
+assistants, and celebrated personages who might by a stretch of
+imagination be supposed present, are grouped in the most approved style
+of arrangement about the chief actor's pillow.
+
+A single glazed bookcase held the family library, which was hidden from
+vulgar eyes by green silk curtains behind the glass. It would have been
+instructive to get a look at it, as it always is to peep into one's
+neighbor's bookshelves. From other sources and opportunities a partial
+idea of it has been obtained. The Widow had inherited some books from
+her mother, who was something of a reader: Young's "Night-Thoughts";
+"The Preceptor"; "The Task, a Poem," by William Cowper; Hervey's
+"Meditations"; "Alonzo and Melissa"; "Buccaneers of America"; "The
+Triumphs of Temper"; "La Belle Assemblée"; Thomson's "Seasons"; and a
+few others. The Major had brought in "Tom Jones" and "Peregrine Pickle";
+various works by Mr. Pierce Egan; "Boxiana"; "The Racing Calendar"; and
+a "Book of Lively Songs and Jests." The Widow had added the Poems of
+Lord Byron and T. Moore; "Eugene Aram"; "The Tower of London," by
+Harrison Ainsworth; some of Scott's Novels; "The Pickwick Papers"; a
+volume of Plays, by W. Shakspeare; "Proverbial Philosophy"; "Pilgrim's
+Progress"; "The Whole Duty of Man" (a present when she was married);
+with two celebrated religious works, one by William Law and the other
+by Philip Doddridge, which were sent her after her husband's death, and
+which she had tried to read, but found that they did not agree with her.
+Of course the bookcase held a few school manuals and compendiums, and
+one of Mr. Webster's Dictionaries. But the gilt-edged Bible always lay
+on the centre-table, next to the magazine with the fashion-plates and
+the scrapbook with pictures from old annuals and illustrated papers.
+
+The reader need not apprehend the recital, at full length, of such
+formidable preparations for the Widow's tea-party as were required in
+the case of Colonel Sprowle's Social Entertainment. A tea-party, even in
+the country, is a comparatively simple and economical piece of business.
+As soon as the Widow found that all her company were coming, she set to
+work, with the aid of her "smart" maid-servant and a daughter of her
+own, who was beginning to stretch and spread at a fearful rate, but whom
+she treated as a small child, to make the necessary preparations. The
+silver had to be rubbed; also the grand plated urn,--her mother's before
+hers,--style of the Empire,--looking as if it might have been made to
+hold the Major's ashes. Then came the making and baking of cake and
+gingerbread, the smell whereof reached even as far as the sidewalk in
+front of the cottage, so that small boys returning from school snuffed
+it in the breeze, and discoursed with each other on its suggestions; so
+that the Widow Leech, who happened to pass, remembered she hadn't called
+on Marilly Raowens for a consid'ble spell, and turned in at the gate and
+rang three times with long intervals,--but all in vain, the inside Widow
+having "spotted" the outside one through the binds, and whispered to her
+aides-de-camp to let the old thing ring away till she pulled the bell
+out by the roots, but not to stir to open the door.
+
+Widow Rowens was what they called a real smart, capable woman, not very
+great on books, perhaps, but knew what was what and who was who as well
+as another,--knew how to make the little cottage look pretty, how to set
+out a tea-table, and, what a good many women never can find out, knew
+her own style and "got herself up tip-top," as our young friend Master
+Geordie, Colonel Sprowle's heir-apparent, remarked to his friend from
+one of the fresh-water colleges. Flowers were abundant now, and she had
+dressed her rooms tastefully with them. The centre-table had two or
+three gilt-edged books lying carelessly about on it, and some prints,
+and a stereoscope with stereographs to match, chiefly groups of picnics,
+weddings, etc., in which the same somewhat fatigued-looking ladies
+of fashion and brides received the attentions of the same
+unpleasant-looking young men, easily identified under their different
+disguises, consisting of fashionable raiment such as gentlemen are
+supposed to wear habitually. With these, however, were some pretty
+English scenes,--pretty except for the old fellow with the hanging
+under-lip who infests every one of that interesting series; and a statue
+or two, especially that famous one commonly called the Lahcóon, so as to
+rhyme with moon and spoon, and representing an old man with his two sons
+in the embraces of two monstrous serpents.
+
+There is no denying that it was a very dashing achievement of the
+Widow's to bring together so considerable a number of desirable guests.
+She felt proud of her feat; but as to the triumph of getting Dudley
+Venner to come out for a visit to Hyacinth Cottage, she was surprised
+and almost frightened at her own success. So much might depend on the
+impressions of that evening!
+
+The next thing was to be sure that everybody should be in the right
+place at the tea-table, and this the Widow thought she could manage by a
+few words to the older guests and a little shuffling about and shifting
+when they got to the table. To settle everything the Widow made out
+a diagram, which the reader should have a chance of inspecting in an
+authentic copy, if these pages were allowed under any circumstances to
+be the vehicle of illustrations. If, however, he or she really wishes to
+see the way the pieces stood as they were placed at the beginning of the
+game, (the Widow's gambit,) he or she had better at once take a sheet
+of paper, draw an oval, and arrange the characters according to the
+following schedule.
+
+At the head of the table, the Hostess, Widow Marilla Rowens. Opposite
+her, at the other end, Rev. Dr. Honeywood. At the right of the Hostess,
+Dudley Venner, next him Helen Darley, next her Dr. Kittredge, next him
+Mrs. Blanche Creamer, then the Reverend Doctor. At the left of the
+Hostess, Bernard Langdon, next him Letty Forester, next Letty Mr.
+Richard Venner, next him Elsie, and so to the Reverend Doctor again.
+
+The company came together a little before the early hour at which it was
+customary to take tea in Rockland. The Widow knew everybody, of course:
+who was there in Rockland she did not know? But some of them had to
+be introduced: Mr. Richard Venner to Mr. Bernard, Mr. Bernard to Miss
+Letty, Dudley Venner to Miss Helen Darley, and so on. The two young men
+looked each other straight in the eyes,--both full of youthful life,
+but one of frank and fearless aspect, the other with a dangerous feline
+beauty alien to the New England half of his blood.
+
+The guests talked, turned over the prints, looked at the flowers, opened
+the "Proverbial Philosophy" with gilt edges, and the volume of Plays by
+W. Shakspeare, examined the horse-pictures on the walls, and so passed
+away the time until tea was announced, when they paired off for the room
+where it was in readiness. The Widow had managed it well; everything was
+just as she wanted it. Dudley Venner was between herself and the poor
+tired-looking schoolmistress with her faded colors. Blanche Creamer, a
+lax, tumble-to-pieces, _Greuze_-ish looking blonde, whom the Widow
+hated because the men took to her, was purgatoried between the two old
+Doctors, and could see all the looks that passed between Dick Venner and
+his cousin. The young schoolmaster could talk to Miss Letty: it was his
+business to know how to talk to school-girls. Dick would amuse himself
+with his cousin Elsie. The old Doctors only wanted to be well fed and
+they would do well enough.
+
+It would be very pleasant to describe the tea-table; but the truth is,
+it did not pretend to offer a plethoric banquet to the guests. The Widow
+had not visited at the mansion-houses for nothing, and she had learned
+there that an overloaded tea-table may do well enough for farm-hands
+when they come in at evening from their work and sit down unwashed in
+their shirt-sleeves, but that for decently bred people such an insult to
+the memory of a dinner not yet half-assimilated is wholly inadmissible.
+There was no lump of meat on the table, no wedge of cheese, no dish
+of pickles. Everything was delicate, and almost everything of fair
+complexion: white bread and biscuits, frosted and sponge cake, cream,
+honey, straw-colored butter; only a shadow here and there, where the
+fire had crisped and browned the surfaces of a stack of dry toast, or
+where a preserve had brought away some of the red sunshine of the last
+year's summer. The Widow shall have the credit of her well-ordered
+tea-table, also of her bountiful cream-pitchers; for it is well known
+that city-people find cream a very scarce luxury in a good many
+country-houses of more pretensions than Hyacinth Cottage. There are no
+better maxims for ladies who give tea-parties than these:--
+
+  _Cream is thicker than water._
+
+  _Large heart never loved little cream-pot._
+
+There is a common feeling in genteel families that the third meal of
+the day is not so essential a part of the daily bread as to require any
+especial acknowledgment to the Providence that bestows it. Very devout
+people, who would never sit down to a breakfast or a dinner without the
+grace before meat which honors the Giver of it, feel as if they thanked
+Heaven enough for their tea and toast by partaking of them cheerfully
+without audible petition or ascription. But the Widow was not exactly
+mansion-house-bred, and so thought it necessary to give the Reverend
+Doctor a peculiar look which he understood at once as inviting his
+professional services. He, therefore, uttered a few simple words of
+gratitude, very quietly,--much to the satisfaction of some of the
+guests, who had expected one of those elaborate effusions, with rolling
+up of the eyes and rhetorical accents, so frequent with eloquent divines
+when they address their Maker in genteel company.
+
+Everybody began talking with the person sitting next at hand. Mr.
+Bernard naturally enough turned his attention first to the Widow; but
+somehow or other the right side of the Widow seemed to be more wide
+awake than the left side, next him, and he resigned her to the
+courtesies of Mr. Dudley Venner, directing himself, not very
+unwillingly, to the young girl next him on the other side. Miss Letty
+Forester, the granddaughter of the Reverend Doctor, was city-bred, as
+anybody might see, and city-dressed, as any woman would know at sight; a
+man might only feel the general effect of clear, well-matched colors, of
+harmonious proportions, of the cut which makes everything cling like a
+bather's sleeve where a natural outline is to be kept, and ruffle itself
+up like the hackle of a pitted fighting-cock where art has a right to
+luxuriate in silken exuberance. How this city-bred and city-dressed girl
+came to be in Rockland Mr. Bernard did not know, but he knew at any rate
+that she was his next neighbor and entitled to his courtesies. She was
+handsome, too, when he came to look, very handsome when he came to
+look again,--endowed with that city beauty which is like the beauty of
+wall-fruit, something finer in certain respects than can be reared off
+the pavement.
+
+The truth is, the miserable routinists who keep repeating invidiously
+Cowper's
+
+"God made the country and man made the town,"
+
+as if the town were a place to kill out the race in, do not know what
+they are talking about. Where could they raise such Saint-Michael pears,
+such Saint-Germains, such Brown Beurrés, as we had until within a few
+years growing within the walls of our old city-gardens? Is the dark
+and damp cavern where a ragged beggar hides himself better than a
+town-mansion that fronts the sunshine and backs on its own cool shadow,
+with gas and water and all appliances to suit all needs?
+
+God made the _cavern_ and man made the _house_! What then? The truth is,
+the pavement keeps a deal of mischief from coming up out of the earth,
+and, with a dash off of it in summer, just to cool the soles of the feet
+when it gets too hot, is the best place for many constitutions, as some
+few practical people have already discovered. And just so these beauties
+that grow and ripen against the city-walls, these young fellows with
+cheeks like peaches and young girls with cheeks like nectarines, show
+that the most perfect forms of artificial life can do as much for the
+human product as garden-culture for strawberries and blackberries.
+
+If Mr. Bernard had philosophized or prosed in this way, with so pretty,
+nay, so lovely a neighbor as Miss Letty Forester waiting for him to
+speak to her, he would have to be dropped from this narrative as a
+person unworthy of his good-fortune, and not deserving the kind reader's
+further notice. On the contrary, he no sooner set his eyes fairly on her
+than he said to himself that she was charming, and that he wished she
+were one of his scholars at the Institute. So he began talking with her
+in an easy way; for he knew something of young girls by this time, and,
+of course, could adapt himself to a young lady who looked as if she
+might be not more than fifteen or sixteen years old, and therefore
+could hardly be a match in intellectual resources for the seventeen and
+eighteen year-old first-class scholars of the Apollinean Institute.
+But city-wall-fruit ripens early, and he soon found that this girl's
+training had so sharpened her wits and stored her memory, that he need
+not be at the trouble to stoop painfully in order to come down to her
+level.
+
+The beauty of good-breeding is that it adjusts itself to all relations
+without effort, true to itself always, however the manners of those
+around it may change. Self-respect and respect for others,--the
+sensitive consciousness poises itself in these as the compass in the
+ship's binnacle balances itself and maintains its true level within the
+two concentric rings that suspend it on their pivots. This thoroughbred
+school-girl quite enchanted Mr. Bernard. He could not understand where
+she got her style, her way of dress, her enunciation, her easy manners.
+The minister was a most worthy gentleman, but this was not the Rockland
+native-born manner; some new element had come in between the good,
+plain, worthy man and this young girl, fit to be a Crown Prince's
+partner where there were a thousand to choose from.
+
+He looked across to Helen Barley, for he knew she would understand the
+glance of admiration with which he called her attention to the young
+beauty at his side; and Helen knew what a young girl could be, as
+compared with what too many a one is, as well as anybody.
+
+This poor, dear Helen of ours! How admirable the contrast between her
+and the Widow on the other side of Dudley Venner! But, what was very
+odd, that gentleman apparently thought the contrast was to the advantage
+of this poor, dear Helen. At any rate, instead of devoting himself
+solely to the Widow, he happened to be just at that moment talking in a
+very interested and, apparently, not uninteresting way to his right-hand
+neighbor, who, on her part, never looked more charmingly,--as Mr.
+Bernard could not help saying to himself,--but, to be sure, he had just
+been looking at the young girl next him, so that his eyes were brimful
+of beauty, and may have spilled some of it on the first comer: for
+you know M. Becquerel has been showing us lately how everything is
+phosphorescent; that it soaks itself with light in an instant's
+exposure, so that it is wet with liquid sunbeams, or, if you will,
+tremulous with luminous vibrations, when first plunged into the negative
+bath of darkness, and betrays itself by the light which escapes from its
+surface.
+
+Whatever was the reason, this poor, dear Helen never looked so sweetly.
+Her plainly parted brown hair, her meek, blue eyes, her cheek just a
+little tinged with color, the almost sad simplicity of her dress, and
+that look he knew so well,--so full of cheerful patience, so sincere,
+that he had trusted her from the first moment as the believers of the
+larger half of Christendom trust the Blessed Virgin,--Mr. Bernard took
+this all in at a glance, and felt as pleased as if it had been his own
+sister Dorothea Elizabeth that he was looking at. As for Dudley Venner,
+Mr. Bernard could not help being struck by the animated expression of
+his countenance. It certainly showed great kindness, on his part, to
+pay so much attention to this quiet girl, when he had the
+thunder-and-lightning Widow on the other side of him.
+
+Mrs. Marilla Rowens did not know what to make of it. She had made her
+tea-party expressly for Mr. Dudley Venner. She had placed him just as
+she wanted, between herself and a meek, delicate woman who dressed in
+gray, wore a plain breastpin with hair in it, who taught a pack of
+girls up there at the school, and looked as if she were born for a
+teacher,--the very best foil that she could have chosen; and here was
+this man, polite enough to herself, to be sure, but turning round to
+that very undistinguished young person, as if he rather preferred her
+conversation of the two!
+
+The truth was that Dudley Venner and Helen Darley met as two travellers
+might meet in the desert, wearied, both of them, with their long
+journey, one having food, but no water, the other water, but no food.
+Each saw that the other had been in long conflict with some trial; for
+their voices were low and tender, as patiently borne sorrow and humbly
+uttered prayers make every human voice. Through these tones, more than
+by what they said, they came into natural sympathetic relations with
+each other. Nothing could be more unstudied. As for Dudley Venner, no
+beauty in all the world could have so soothed and magnetized him as the
+very repose and subdued gentleness which the Widow had thought would
+make the best possible background for her own more salient and effective
+attractions. No doubt, Helen, on her side, was almost too readily
+pleased with the confidence this new acquaintance she was making seemed
+to show her from the very first. She knew so few men of any condition!
+Mr. Silas Peckham: he was her employer, and she ought to think of him
+as well as she could; but every time she thought of him it was with
+a shiver of disgust. Mr. Bernard Langdon: a noble young man, a true
+friend, like a brother to her,--God bless him, and send him some young
+heart as fresh as his own! But this gentleman produced a new impression
+upon her, quite different from any to which she was accustomed. His
+rich, low tones had the strangest significance to her; she felt sure
+he must have lived through long experiences, sorrowful like her own.
+Elsie's father! She looked into his dark eyes, as she listened to him,
+to see if they had any glimmer of that peculiar light, diamond-bright,
+but cold and still, which she knew so well in Elsie's. Anything but
+that! Never was there more tenderness, it seemed to her, than in the
+whole look and expression of Elsie's father. She must have been a great
+trial to him; yet his face was that of one who had been saddened, not
+soured, by his discipline. Knowing what Elsie must be to him, how hard
+she must make any parent's life, Helen could not but be struck with the
+interest Mr. Dudley Venner showed in her as his daughter's instructress.
+He was too kind to her; again and again she meekly turned from him, so
+as to leave him free to talk to the showy lady at his other side, who
+was looking all the while
+
+"like the night Of cloudless realms and starry skies";
+
+but still Mr. Dudley Venner, after a few courteous words, came back to
+the blue eyes and brown hair; still he kept his look fixed upon her, and
+his tones grew sweeter and lower as he became more interested in talk,
+until this poor, dear Helen, what with surprise, and the bashfulness
+natural to one who had seen little of the gay world, and the stirring of
+deep, confused sympathies with this suffering father, whose heart seemed
+so full of kindness, felt her cheeks glowing with unwonted flame, and
+betrayed the pleasing trouble of her situation by looking so sweetly as
+to arrest Mr. Bernard's eye for a moment, when he looked away from the
+young beauty sitting next him.
+
+Elsie meantime had been silent, with that singular, still, watchful
+look which those who knew her well had learned to fear. Her head just a
+little inclined on one side, perfectly motionless for whole minutes, her
+eyes seeming to grow small and bright, as always when she was under her
+evil influence, she was looking obliquely at the young girl on the
+other side of her cousin Dick and next to Bernard Langdon. As for Dick
+himself, she seemed to be paying very little attention to him. Sometimes
+her eyes would wander off to Mr. Bernard, and their expression, as old
+Dr. Kittredge, who watched her for a while pretty keenly, noticed, would
+change perceptibly. One would have said that she looked with a kind of
+dull hatred at the girl, but with a half-relenting reproachful anger at
+Mr. Bernard.
+
+Miss Letty Forester, at whom Elsie had been looking from time to time in
+this fixed way, was conscious meanwhile of some unusual influence. First
+it was a feeling of constraint,--then, as it were, a diminished power
+over the muscles, as if an invisible elastic cobweb were spinning round
+her,--then a tendency to turn away from Mr. Bernard, who was making
+himself very agreeable, and look straight into those eyes which would
+not leave her, and which seemed to be drawing her towards them, while at
+the same time they chilled the blood in all her veins.
+
+Mr. Bernard saw this influence coming over her. All at once he noticed
+that she sighed, and that some little points of moisture began to
+glisten on her forehead. But she did not grow pale perceptibly; she had
+no involuntary or hysteric movements; she still listened to him and
+smiled naturally enough. Perhaps she was only nervous at being stared
+at. At any rate, she was coming under some unpleasant and unnatural
+influence or other, and Mr. Bernard had seen enough of the strange
+impression Elsie sometimes produced to wish this young girl to be
+relieved from it, whatever it was. He turned toward Elsie and looked at
+her in such a way as to draw her eyes upon him. Then he looked steadily
+and calmly into them. It was a great effort, for some perfectly
+inexplicable reason. At one instant he thought he could not sit where he
+was; he must go and speak to Elsie. Then he wanted to take his eyes away
+from hers; there was something intolerable in the light that came from
+them. But he was determined to look her down, and he believed he could
+do it, for he had seen her countenance change more than once when he had
+caught her gaze steadily fixed on him. All this took not minutes, but
+seconds. Presently she changed color slightly,--lifted her head, which
+was inclined a little to one side,--shut and opened her eyes two or
+three times, as if they had been pained or wearied,--and turned away
+baffled, and shamed, as it would seem, and shorn for the time of her
+singular and formidable or at least evil-natured power of swaying the
+impulses of those around her.
+
+It takes too long to describe these scenes where a good deal of life
+is concentrated into a few silent seconds. Mr. Richard Venner had sat
+quietly through it all, although this short pantomime had taken place
+literally before his face. He saw what was going on well enough, and
+understood it all perfectly well. Of course the schoolmaster had been
+trying to make Elsie jealous, and had succeeded. The little school-girl
+was a decoy-duck,--that was all. Estates like the Dudley property were
+not to be had every day, and no doubt the Yankee usher was willing to
+take some pains to make sure of Elsie. Doesn't Elsie look savage? Dick
+involuntarily moved his chair a little away from her, and thought he
+felt a pricking in the small white scars on his wrist. A dare-devil
+fellow, but somehow or other this girl had taken strange hold of his
+imagination, and he often swore to himself, that, when he married her,
+he would carry a loaded revolver with him to his bridal chamber.
+
+Mrs. Blanche Creamer raged inwardly at first to find herself between the
+two old gentlemen of the party. It very soon gave her great comfort,
+however, to see that Marilla Rowens had just missed it in her
+calculations, and she chuckled immensely to find Dudley Venner devoting
+himself chiefly to Helen Darley. If the Rowens woman should hook Dudley,
+she felt as if she should gnaw all her nails off for spite. To think of
+seeing her barouching about Rockland behind a pair of long-tailed bays
+and a coachman with a band on his hat, while she, Blanche Creamer, was
+driving herself about in a one-horse "carriage"! Recovering her spirits
+by degrees, she began playing her surfaces off at the two old Doctors,
+just by way of practice. First she heaved up a glaring white shoulder,
+the right one, so that the Reverend Doctor should be stunned by it, if
+such a thing might be. The Reverend Doctor was human, as the Apostle was
+not ashamed to confess himself. Half-devoutly and half-mischievously he
+repeated inwardly, "Resist the Devil and he will flee from you." As the
+Reverend Doctor did not show any lively susceptibility, she thought
+she would try the left shoulder on old Dr. Kittredge. That worthy and
+experienced student of science was not at all displeased with the
+manoeuvre, and lifted his head so as to command the exhibition through
+his glasses. "Blanche is good for half a dozen years or so, if she is
+careful," the Doctor said to himself, "and then she must take to her
+prayer-book." After this spasmodic failure of Mrs. Blanche Creamer's
+to stir up the old Doctors, she returned again to the pleasing task of
+watching the Widow in her evident discomfiture. But dark as the Widow
+looked in her half-concealed pet, she was but as a pale shadow, compared
+to Elsie in her silent concentration of shame and anger.
+
+"Well, there is one good thing," said Mrs. Blanche Creamer; "Dick
+doesn't get much out of that cousin of his this evening! Doesn't he look
+handsome, though?"
+
+So Mrs. Blanche, being now a good deal taken up with her observations of
+those friends of hers and ours, began to be rather careless of her two
+old Doctors, who naturally enough fell into conversation with each other
+across the white surfaces of that lady,--perhaps not very politely, but,
+under the circumstances, almost as a matter of necessity.
+
+When a minister and a doctor get talking together, they always have a
+great deal to say; and so it happened that the company left the table
+just as the two Doctors were beginning to get at each other's ideas
+about various interesting matters. If we follow them into the other
+parlor, we can, perhaps, pick up something of their conversation.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+WHY DOCTORS DIFFER.
+
+
+The company rearranged itself with some changes after leaving the
+tea-table Dudley Venner was very polite to the Widow; but that lady
+having been called off for a few moments for some domestic arrangement,
+he slid back to the side of Helen Darley, his daughter's faithful
+teacher. Elsie had got away by herself, and was taken up in studying the
+stereoscopic Lahcóon. Dick, being thus set free, had been seized upon by
+Mrs. Blanche Creamer, who had diffused herself over three-quarters of
+a sofa and beckoned him to the remaining fourth. Mr. Bernard and Miss
+Letty were having a snug _tète-à-tète_ in the recess of a bay-window.
+The two Doctors had taken two armchairs and sat squared off against each
+other. Their conversation is perhaps as well worth reporting as that of
+the rest of the company, and, as it was earned on in a louder tone, was
+of course more easy to gather and put on record.
+
+It was a curious sight enough to see those two representatives of two
+great professions brought face to face to talk over the subjects they
+had been looking at all their lives from such different points of view.
+Both were old; old enough to have been moulded by their habits of
+thought and life; old enough to have all their beliefs "fretted in," as
+vintners say,--thoroughly worked up with their characters. Each of them
+looked his calling. The Reverend Doctor had lived a good deal among
+books in his study; the Doctor, as we will call the medical gentleman,
+had been riding about the country for between thirty and forty years.
+His face looked tough and weather-worn; while the Reverend Doctor's,
+hearty as it appeared, was of finer texture. The Doctor's was the graver
+of the two; there was something of grimness about it,--partly owing
+to the northeasters he had faced for so many years, partly to long
+companionship with that stern personage who never deals in sentiment or
+pleasantry. His speech was apt to be brief and peremptory; it was a way
+he had got by ordering patients; but he could discourse somewhat, on
+occasion, as the reader may find out. The Reverend Doctor had an open,
+smiling expression, a cheery voice, a hearty laugh, and a cordial
+way with him which some thought too lively for his cloth, but which
+children, who are good judges of such matters, delighted in, so that he
+was the favorite of all the little rogues about town. But he had the
+clerical art of sobering down in a moment, when asked to say grace while
+somebody was in the middle of some particularly funny story; and though
+his voice was so cheery in common talk, in the pulpit, like almost all
+preachers, he had a wholly different and peculiar way of speaking,
+supposed to be more acceptable to the Creator than the natural manner.
+In point of fact, most of our anti-papal and anti-prelatical clergymen
+do really _intone_ their prayers, without suspecting in the least that
+they have fallen into such a Romish practice.
+
+This is the way the conversation between the Doctor of Divinity and the
+Doctor of Medicine was going on at the point where these notes take it
+up.
+
+"_Ubi tres medici, duo athei_, you know, Doctor. Your profession has
+always had the credit of being lax in doctrine,--though pretty stringent
+in _practice_, ha! ha!"
+
+"Some priest said that," the Doctor answered, dryly. "They always talked
+Latin when they had a bigger lie than common to get rid of."
+
+"Good!" said the Reverend Doctor; "I'm afraid they would lie a little
+sometimes. But isn't there some truth in it, Doctor? Don't you think
+your profession is apt to see 'Nature' in the place of the God of
+Nature,--to lose sight of the great First Cause in their daily study of
+secondary causes?"
+
+"I've thought about that," the Doctor answered, "and I've talked about
+it and read about it, and I've come to the conclusion that nobody
+believes in God and trusts in God quite so much as the doctors; only it
+isn't just the sort of Deity that some of your profession have wanted
+them to take up with. There was a student of mine wrote a dissertation
+on the Natural Theology of Health and Disease, and took that old lying
+proverb for his motto. He knew a good deal more about books than ever
+I did, and had studied in other countries. I'll tell you what he said
+about it. He said the old Heathen Doctor, Galen, praised God for his
+handiwork in the human body, just as if he had been a Christian, or the
+Psalmist himself. He said they had this sentence set up in large letters
+in the great lecture-room in Paris where he attended: _I dressed his
+wound and God healed him._ That was an old surgeon's saying. And he gave
+a long list of doctors who were not only Christians, but famous ones. I
+grant you, though, ministers and doctors are very apt to see differently
+in spiritual matters."
+
+"That's it," said the Reverend Doctor; "you are apt to see 'Nature'
+where we see God, and appeal to 'Science' where we are contented with
+Revelation."
+
+"We don't separate God and Nature, perhaps, as you do," the Doctor
+answered. "When we say that God is omnipresent and omnipotent and
+omniscient, we are a little more apt to mean it than your folks are.
+We think, when a wound heals, that God's _presence_ and _power_ and
+_knowledge_ are there, healing it, just as that old surgeon did. We
+think a good many theologians, working among their books, don't see the
+facts of the world they live in. When we tell 'em of these facts, they
+are apt to call us materialists and atheists and infidels, and all
+that. We can't help seeing the facts, and we don't think it's wicked to
+mention 'em."
+
+"Do tell me," the Reverend Doctor said, "some of these facts we are in
+the habit of overlooking, and which your profession thinks it can see
+and understand."
+
+"That's very easy," the Doctor replied. "For instance: you don't
+understand or don't allow for idiosyncrasies as we learn to. We know
+that food and physic act differently with different people; but you
+think the same kind of truth is going to suit, or ought to suit, all
+minds. We don't fight with a patient because he can't take magnesia or
+opium; but you are all the time quarrelling over your beliefs, as if
+belief did not depend very much on race and constitution, to say nothing
+of early training."
+
+"Do you mean to say that every man is not absolutely free to choose his
+beliefs?"
+
+"The men you write about in your studies are, but not the men we see
+in the real world. There is some apparently congenital defect in the
+Indians, for instance, that keeps them from choosing civilization and
+Christianity. So with the Gypsies, very likely. Everybody knows
+that Catholicism or Protestantism is a good deal a matter of race.
+Constitution has more to do with belief than people think for. I went to
+a Universalist church, when I was in the city one day, to hear a famous
+man whom all the world knows, and I never saw such pews-full of broad
+shoulders and florid faces, and substantial, wholesome-looking persons,
+male and female, in all my life. Why, it was astonishing. Either their
+creed made them healthy, or they chose it because they were healthy.
+Your folks have never got the hang of human nature."
+
+"I am afraid this would be considered a degrading and dangerous view of
+human beliefs and responsibility for them," the Reverend Doctor replied.
+"Prove to a man that his will is governed by something outside of
+himself, and you have lost all hold on his moral and religious nature.
+There is nothing bad men want to believe so much as that they are
+governed by necessity. Now that which is at once degrading and dangerous
+cannot be true."
+
+"No doubt," the Doctor replied, "all large views of mankind limit our
+estimate of the absolute freedom of the will. But I don't think it
+degrades or endangers us, for this reason, that, while it makes us
+charitable to the rest of mankind, our own sense of freedom, whatever it
+is, is never affected by argument. _Conscience won't be reasoned with_.
+We feel that _we_ can practically do this or that, and if we choose the
+wrong, we know we are responsible; but observation teaches us that this
+or that other race or individual has not the same practical freedom of
+choice. I don't see how we can avoid this conclusion in the instance of
+the American Indians. The science of Ethnology has upset a good many
+theoretical notions about human nature."
+
+"Science!" said the Reverend Doctor, "science! that was a word the
+Apostle Paul did not seem to think much of, if we may judge by the
+Epistle to Timothy: 'Oppositions of science falsely so called.' I own
+that I am jealous of that word and the pretensions that go with
+it. Science has seemed to me to be very often only the handmaid of
+skepticism."
+
+"Doctor!" the physician said, emphatically, "science is knowledge.
+Nothing that is not _known_ properly belongs to science. Whenever
+knowledge obliges us to doubt, we are always safe in doubting.
+Astronomers foretell eclipses, say how long comets are to stay with us,
+point out where a new planet is to be found. We see they _know_ what
+they assert, and the poor old Roman Catholic Church has at last to knock
+under. So Geology _proves_ a certain succession of events, and the best
+Christian in the world must make the earth's history square with it.
+Besides, I don't think you remember what great revelations of himself
+the Creator has made in the minds of the men who have built up science.
+You seem to me to hold his human masterpieces very cheap. Don't
+you think the 'inspiration of the Almighty' gave Newton and Cuvier
+'understanding'?"
+
+The Reverend Doctor was not arguing for victory. In fact, what he
+wanted was to call out the opinions of the old physician by a show of
+opposition, being already predisposed to agree with many of them. He was
+rather trying the common arguments, as one tries tricks of fence merely
+to learn the way of parrying. But just here he saw a tempting opening,
+and could not resist giving a horne-thrust.
+
+"Yes; but you surely would not consider it inspiration of the same kind
+as that of the writers of the Old Testament?"
+
+That cornered the Doctor, and he paused a moment before he replied. Then
+he raised his head, so as to command the Reverend Doctor's face through
+his spectacles, and said,--
+
+"I did not say that. You are clear, I suppose, that the Omniscient spoke
+through Solomon, but that Shakspeare wrote without his help?"
+
+The Reverend Doctor looked very grave. It was a bold, blunt way
+of putting the question. He turned it aside with the remark, that
+Shakspeare seemed to him at times to come as near inspiration as any
+human being not included among the sacred writers.
+
+"Doctor," the physician began, as from a sudden suggestion, "you won't
+quarrel with me, if I tell you some of my real thoughts, will you?"
+
+"Say on, my dear Sir, say on," the minister answered, with his most
+genial smile; "your real thoughts are just what I want to get at. A
+man's real thoughts are a great rarity. If I don't agree with you, I
+shall like to hear you."
+
+The Doctor began; and in order to give his thoughts more connectedly, we
+will omit the conversational breaks, the questions and comments of the
+clergyman, and all accidental interruptions.
+
+"When the old ecclesiastics said that where there were three doctors
+there were two atheists, they lied, of course. They called everybody
+that differed from them atheists, until they found out that not
+believing in God wasn't nearly so ugly a crime as not believing in some
+particular dogma; then they called them _heretics_, until so many good
+people had been burned under that name that it began to smell too strong
+of roasting flesh,--and after that _infidels_, which properly means
+people without faith, of whom there are not a great many in any place or
+time. But then, of course, there was some reason why doctors shouldn't
+think about religion exactly as ministers did, or they never would have
+made that proverb. It's very likely that something of the same kind is
+true now; whether it is so or not, I am going to tell you the reasons
+why it would not be strange, if doctors should take rather different
+views from clergymen about some matters of belief. I don't, of course,
+mean all doctors nor all clergymen. Some doctors go as far as any old
+New-England divine, and some clergymen agree very well with the doctors
+that think least according to rule.
+
+"To begin with their ideas of the Creator himself. They always see him
+trying to help his creatures out of their troubles. A man no sooner gets
+a cut, than the Great Physician, whose agency we often call _Nature_,
+goes to work, first to stop the blood, and then to heal the wound, and
+then to make the scar as small as possible. If a man's pain exceeds a
+certain amount, he faints, and so gets relief. If it lasts too long,
+habit comes in to make it tolerable. If it is altogether too bad, he
+dies. That is the best thing to be done under the circumstances. So you
+see, the doctor is constantly in presence of a benevolent agency working
+against a settled order of things, of which pain and disease are
+the accidents, so to speak. Well, no doubt they find it harder than
+clergymen to believe that there can be any world or state from which
+this benevolent agency is wholly excluded. This may be very wrong; but
+it is not unnatural. They can hardly conceive of a permanent state of
+being in which cuts would never try to heal, nor habit render suffering
+endurable. This is one effect of their training.
+
+"Then, again, their attention is very much called to human limitations.
+Ministers work out the machinery of responsibility in an abstract kind
+of way; they have a kind of algebra of human nature, in which _friction_
+and _strength_ (or _weakness_) _of material_ are left out. You see,
+a doctor is in the way of studying children from the moment of birth
+upwards. For the first year or so he sees that they are just as much
+pupils of their Maker as the young of any other animals. Well, their
+Maker trains them to _pure selfishness_. Why? In order that they may be
+sure to take care of themselves. So you see, when a child comes to be,
+we will say a year and a day old, and makes his first choice between
+right and wrong, he is at a disadvantage; for he has that _vis a tergo_,
+as we doctors call it, that force from behind, of a whole year's life of
+selfishness, for which he is no more to blame than a calf is to blame
+for having lived in the same way, purely to gratify his natural
+appetites. Then we see that baby grow up to a child, and, if he is fat
+and stout and red and lively, we expect to find him troublesome and
+noisy, and, perhaps, sometimes disobedient more or less; that's the way
+each new generation breaks its eggshell; but if he is very weak and
+thin, and is one of the kind that may be expected to die early, he will
+very likely sit in the house all day and read good books about other
+little sharp-faced children just like himself; who died early, having
+always been perfectly indifferent to all the out-door amusements of the
+wicked little red-cheeked children. Some of the little folks we watch
+grow up to be young women, and occasionally one of them gets nervous,
+what we call hysterical, and then that girl will begin to play all sorts
+of pranks,--to lie and cheat, perhaps, in the most unaccountable way, so
+that she might seem to a minister a good example of total depravity. We
+don't see her in that light. We give her iron and valerian, and get her
+on horseback, if we can, and so expect to make her will come all right
+again. By-and-by we are called in to see an old baby, three-score years
+and ten or more old. We find this old baby has never got rid of that
+first year's teaching which led him to fill his stomach with all he
+could pump into it, and his hands with everything he could grab. People
+call him a miser. We are sorry for him; but we can't help remembering
+his first year's training, and the natural effect of money on the great
+majority of those that have it. So while the ministers say he 'shall
+hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven' we like to remind them that
+'with God all things are possible.'
+
+"Once more, we see all kinds of monomania and insanity. We learn from
+them to recognize all sorts of queer tendencies in minds supposed to
+be sane, so that we have nothing but compassion for a large class of
+persons condemned as sinners by theologians, but considered by us as
+invalids. We have constant reasons for noticing the transmission of
+qualities from parents to offspring, and we find it hard to hold a child
+accountable in any moral point of view for inherited bad temper or
+tendency to drunkenness,--as hard as we should to blame him for
+inheriting gout or asthma. I suppose we are more lenient with human
+nature than theologians generally are. We know that the spirits of men
+and their views of the present and the future go up and down, with the
+barometer, and that a permanent depression of one inch in the mercurial
+column would affect the whole theology of Christendom.
+
+"Ministers talk about the human will as if it stood on a high look-out,
+with plenty of light, and elbow-room reaching to the horizon. Doctors
+are constantly noticing how it is tied up and darkened by inferior
+organization, by disease, and all sorts of crowding interferences, until
+they get to look upon Hottentots and Indians--and a good many of their
+own race--as a kind of self-conscious blood-clocks with very limited
+power of self-determination. That's the _tendency_, I say, of
+a doctor's experience. But the people to whom they address their
+statements of the results of their observation belong to the thinking
+class of the highest races, and _they_ are conscious of a great deal of
+liberty of will. So in the face of the fact that civilization with all
+it offers has proved a dead failure with the aboriginal races of this
+country,--on the whole, I say, a dead failure,--they talk as if they
+knew from their own will all about that of a Digger Indian! We are more
+apt to go by observation of the facts in the case. We are constantly
+seeing weakness where you see depravity. I don't say we're _right_; I
+only tell what you must often find to be the fact, right or wrong, in
+talking with doctors. You see, too, our notions of bodily and moral
+disease, or sin, are apt to go together. We used to be as hard on
+sickness as you were on sin. We know better now. We don't look at
+sickness as we used to, and try to poison, it with everything that is
+offensive,--burnt toads and earth-worms and viper-broth, and worse
+things than these. We know that disease has something back of it which
+the body isn't to blame for, at least in most cases, and which very
+often it is trying to get rid of. Just so with sin. I will agree to take
+a hundred new-born babes of a certain stock and return seventy-five of
+them in a dozen years true and honest, if not 'pious' children. And I
+will take another hundred, of a different stock, and put them in the
+hands of certain Ann-Street teachers, and seventy-five of them will be
+thieves and liars at the end of the same dozen years. I have heard of
+an old character, Colonel Jaques, I believe it was, a famous
+cattle-breeder, who used to say he could breed to pretty much any
+pattern he wanted to. Well, we doctors see so much of families, how the
+tricks of the blood keep breaking out, just as much in character as they
+do in looks, that we can't help feeling as if a great many people hadn't
+a fair chance to be what is called 'good,' and that there isn't a text
+in the Bible better worth keeping always in mind than that one, 'Judge
+not, that ye be not judged.'
+
+"As for our getting any quarter at the hands of theologians, we don't
+expect it, and have no right to. You don't give each other any quarter.
+I have had two religious books sent me by friends within a week or
+two. One is Mr. Brownson's; he is as fair and square as Euclid; a
+real honest, strong thinker, and one that knows what he is talking
+about,--for he has tried all sorts of religions, pretty much. He tells
+us that the Roman Catholic Church is the one 'through which alone we can
+hope for heaven.' The other is by a worthy Episcopal rector, who appears
+to write as if he were in earnest, and he calls the Papacy the 'Devil's
+Masterpiece,' and talks about the 'Satanic scheme' of that very Church
+'through which alone,' as Mr. Brownson tells us, 'we can hope for
+heaven'! What's the use in _our_ caring about hard words after
+this,--'atheists,' heretics, infidels, and the like? They're, after all,
+only the cinders picked up out of those heaps of ashes round the stumps
+of the old stakes where they used to burn men, women, and children for
+not thinking just like other folks. They'll 'crock' your fingers, but
+they can't burn us.
+
+"Doctors are the best-natured people in the world, except when they get
+fighting with each other. And they have some advantages over you. You
+inherit your notions from a set of priests that had no wives and no
+children, or none to speak of, and so let their humanity die out of
+them. It didn't seem much to them to condemn a few thousand millions of
+people to purgatory or worse for a mistake of judgment. They didn't know
+what it was to have a child look up in their faces and say 'Father!' It
+will take you a hundred or two more years to get decently humanized,
+after so many centuries of dehumanizing celibacy.
+
+"Besides, though our libraries are, perhaps, not commonly quite so big
+as yours, God opens one book to physicians that a good many of you don't
+know much about,--the Book of Life. That is none of your dusty folios
+with black letters between pasteboard and leather, but it is printed
+in bright red type, and the binding of it is warm and tender to every
+touch. They reverence that book as one of the Almighty's infallible
+revelations. They will insist on reading you lessons out of it, whether
+you call them names or not. These will always be lessons of charity. No
+doubt, nothing can be more provoking to listen to. But do beg your folks
+to remember that the Smithfield fires are all out, and that the cinders
+are very dirty and not in the least dangerous. They'd a great deal
+better be civil, and not be throwing old proverbs in the doctors' faces,
+when they say that the man of the old monkish notions is one thing and
+the man they watch from his cradle to his coffin is something very
+different."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It has cost a good deal of trouble to work the Doctor's talk up into
+this formal shape. Some of his sentences have been rounded off for him,
+and the whole brought into a more rhetorical form than it could have
+pretended to, if taken as it fell from his lips. But the exact course of
+his remarks has been followed, and as far as possible his expressions
+have been retained. Though given in the form of a discourse, it must
+be remembered that this was a conversation, much more fragmentary and
+colloquial than it seems as just read.
+
+The Reverend Doctor was very far from taking offence at the old
+physician's freedom of speech. He knew him to be honest, kind,
+charitable, self-denying, wherever any sorrow was to be alleviated,
+always reverential, with a cheerful trust in the great Father of all
+mankind. To be sure, his senior deacon, old Deacon Shearer,--who seemed
+to have got his Scripture-teachings out of the "Vinegar Bible," (the one
+where _Vineyard_ is misprinted _Vinegar_, which a good many people seem
+to have adopted as the true reading,)--his senior deacon had called Dr.
+Kittredge an "infidel." But the Reverend Doctor could not help feeling,
+that, unless the text, "By their fruits ye shall know them," were an
+interpolation, the Doctor was the better Christian of the two. Whatever
+his senior deacon might think about it, he said to himself that he
+shouldn't be surprised if he met the Doctor in heaven yet, inquiring
+anxiously after old Deacon Shearer.
+
+He was on the point of expressing himself very frankly to the Doctor,
+with that benevolent smile on his face which had sometimes come near
+giving offence to the readers of the "Vinegar" edition, but he saw that
+the physician's attention had been arrested by Elsie. He looked in the
+same direction himself, and could not help being struck by her attitude
+and expression. There was something singularly graceful in the curves of
+her neck and the rest of her figure, but she was so perfectly still that
+it seemed as if she were hardly breathing. Her eyes were fixed on the
+young girl with whom Mr. Bernard was talking. He had often noticed their
+brilliancy, but now it seemed to him that they appeared dull, and the
+look on her features was as of some passion which had missed its stroke.
+Mr. Bernard's companion seemed unconscious that she was the object of
+this attention, and was listening to the young master as if he had
+succeeded in making himself very agreeable.
+
+Of course Dick Venner had not mistaken the game that was going on. The
+schoolmaster meant to make Elsie jealous,--and he had done it. That's
+it: get her savage first, and then come wheedling round her,--a sure
+trick, if he isn't headed off somehow. But Dick saw well enough that he
+had better let Elsie alone just now, and thought the best way of killing
+the evening would be to amuse himself in a little lively talk with Mrs.
+Blanche Creamer, and incidentally to show Elsie that he could make
+himself acceptable to other women, if not to herself.
+
+The Doctor presently went up to Elsie, determined to engage her in
+conversation and get her out of her thoughts, which he saw, by her look,
+were dangerous. Her father had been on the point of leaving Helen Darley
+to go to her, but felt easy enough when he saw the old Doctor at her
+side, and so went on talking. The Reverend Doctor, being now left alone,
+engaged the Widow Rowens, who put the best face on her vexation she
+could, but was devoting herself to all the underground deities for
+having been such a fool as to ask that pale-faced thing from the
+Institute to fill up her party.
+
+There is no space left to report the rest of the conversation. If there
+was anything of any significance in it, it will turn up by-and-by, no
+doubt. At ten o'clock the Reverend Doctor called Miss Letty, who had no
+idea it was so late; Mr. Bernard gave his arm to Helen; Mr. Richard saw
+to Mrs. Blanche Creamer; the Doctor gave Elsie a cautioning look, and
+went off alone, thoughtful; Dudley Venner and his daughter got into
+their carriage and were whirled away. The Widow's gambit was played, and
+she had not won the game.
+
+
+
+
+REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.
+
+
+_Reminiscences of the late Thomas Assheton Smith, Esq.; or, The Pursuits
+of an English Country-Gentleman._ By Sir J.E. EARDLEY-WILMOT. London:
+Murray. 1860.
+
+We are somewhat doubtful whether Charles Lamb would have included this
+handsome volume in a list of _books_. It is evidently the work of an
+eager sportsman, one learned in all the minutiae of the chase. Much of
+it is taken up with enthusiastic description of Mr. Smith's favorite
+horses and hounds, of the astonishing qualities of Rory O'More, of the
+splendid runs made by Fireship and Lightboat, of the notable improvement
+made in the Suffolk pack by Mr. Smith's judicious system of crossing.
+All this part of the book will doubtless interest any English gentleman
+who delights in pink and buckskins, and will especially please those who
+recollect the famous Tom Smith, as he was called, when,
+
+  "on a morning
+  Ruddy as health, he rode into the field
+  And then pursued the chase,"
+
+over and through swamp, hedge, and ditch, with that dare-devil speed and
+recklessness that won for him the reputation of being the best rider,
+the hardest seat, and the first sportsman in all England.
+
+And even to us, who never chased the fox nor ever crossed a
+thoroughbred, this portion of the work is not without a certain
+interest; for we take a species of pleasure in hearing or learning the
+technical terms of any art, trade, or pursuit whatsoever, and not often
+to American eyes comes the chance of becoming acquainted with the
+huntsman, the whipper-in, the ride to cover, and the eager, toilsome,
+dangerous chase.
+
+Still we cannot help regarding the over-abundance of these things as not
+only a blemish in the book as a work of art, which indeed it scarcely
+pretends to be, but also as a hindrance to the attainment of its object,
+which is the vindication of Mr. Smith's character from certain charges
+made against it by the "Times" and other London newspapers, which spoke
+but slightingly of him, pronouncing him to have been a mere fox-hunting
+squire, and nothing more.
+
+To contradict these and similar aspersions, his widow put all of Mr.
+Smith's correspondence into the hands of his warm friend, Sir J.E.
+Eardley-Wilmot, and left to him the task of defending the name and fame
+of her husband. These memoirs are the result, and we are of opinion,
+that, with the exception of the superabundant cricketing and hunting
+technicalities before mentioned, the work has been exceedingly well
+performed. The book is written in an unambitious, straightforward,
+gentlemanly style, that carries conviction with it; and as we rise from
+a perusal of it, with occasional stoppings, we feel that the "Times"
+correspondent has now at least no excuse for harsh judgment of Mr.
+Smith, and that, if he was a reckless rider and a mighty hunter, he was
+also very much more and better.
+
+Thomas Assheton Smith was born of sturdy and right English stock, as the
+following anecdote makes patent. His father opposed the building of
+the Menai Bridge, did not believe, in fact, that it could be built,
+considered the ferry good enough, and declared, that, if it should be
+finished, he for one would never set foot upon it. The possibility of
+building a bridge having been demonstrated to Mr. Smith by the completed
+structure, he, for the remainder of his life, when his occasions took
+him across the strait, made use of a boat. Other such anecdotes are told
+of him, setting forth his obstinacy and courage in a strong light, so
+that we are not surprised when we are informed that his son had a
+stern temper and was somewhat dictatorial in the field. We could have
+accounted for Tom Smith's severe countenance, though we had never heard
+of that two hours' battle at Eton, of which the school-traditions yet
+speak, when he fought a drawn fight with Jack Musters, who, the Squire
+always declared, spoiled his beauty for him. Neither do we wonder when
+we hear that he fought a six-foot carter in the street and beat him, or
+that, when nearly eighty years of age, he jumped off his horse and put
+up his hands to a farm-laborer who had insulted him, or that, when he
+ran as candidate for Parliament, for Nottingham, and was hissed and
+groaned in that radical city, he stepped down from the hustings and
+proposed a set-to with any voter in the crowd. This was good crowing,
+but the old cock had taught him.
+
+From Eton young Smith was removed to Oxford, where we are told he often
+rode out with the hounds and began his practice of keeping close up to
+them at the risk of his own and his horse's neck. Clearly the subject of
+these memoirs was not intended to shine in the schools and wisely did
+not make the attempt. Leaving college, Mr. Smith for a few years devoted
+himself to the improvement of his horses and hounds, and, as the author
+says, to "creating a new country near Salisbury Plain." The thread
+of his life is then followed down to the death of his father and his
+entrance upon the manifold duties of a large landed proprietor, owner
+of immense quarries, and landlord of some hundreds of tenants,--the
+pursuits, in short, of an English country-gentleman. Here is the real
+interest of the book. It is interesting to note the difference between
+this country-squire and that typical country-squire with which the plays
+and novels of the last hundred and fifty years have made us familiar.
+We all know him. Purple with Port, beef-witted, tyrannical, intolerant,
+ignorant, never happy unless when on horseback or drunk, nor looking
+happy then.
+
+But the "glorious gains" of the nineteenth century have come to
+fox-hunters as well as to other men, and Squire Smith is a very much
+ameliorated Squire Western, though we see plain enough evidence that
+the original stock is the same in both. Both are good Tories, hate the
+French, and would fight for the Church; but we are sure that Squire
+Western considers a curate as but a poor creature, and we fear Squire
+Smith has not any Puritanical reverence for the clergy,--for curates, at
+least; for we are told, that, when the Reverend Mr. T. Dyson preached
+his first sermon, the Squire walked up to him in the church-porch, and,
+clapping him on the back, said to the young parson, "Well done, my boy!
+you shall have a mount on Rory next Tuesday for this!" But we do not
+think that Squire Western would have been liberal or politic enough
+to have given land and money to several neighboring congregations of
+Dissenters, or that he would have given away to his quarrymen several
+thousand acres of good land together with building-materials. Nor have
+we such faith in the ability of the Georgian Squire as to believe that
+he, from his own observation and acute reasoning on facts which he had
+noticed when a boy in school, would ever have given to the world the
+famous wave-line bow to be a pattern on which all nations should model
+their vessels. Yet this our Victorian Squire has done, and he loses no
+credit by the fact that Mr. Scott Russell, the great naval architect,
+had at nearly the same time, working from entirely different premises,
+arrived at the same result.
+
+Mr. Smith seems to us well worth knowing as the type of a great class of
+Englishmen,--that class to which the author of "School-Days at Rugby"
+gives the comprehensive patronymic of Brown,--a class bold, honest,
+energetic, not too affectionate, not too intellectual, perhaps, but,
+by virtue of their strength of hand, head, and will, and their inborn
+honesty of soul, the masters in some important respects of all the men
+that live.
+
+
+_Essays and Reviews_. The Second Edition. London: 1860. 8vo. pp. 434.
+
+The second English and the first American edition of the volume bearing
+the modest title given above have followed quickly its original
+publication. The title-page, indicating only the form of the matter in
+the volume, compels a reference to the table of contents in order to
+learn its substance. From this it appears that the Essays and Reviews
+are seven in number, each by a different author, and that they treat
+chiefly of topics connected with the study of Scripture,--the only one
+not directly indicating its relation to this study by its title being
+the first, on "The Education of the World," by the Reverend Frederick
+Temple, Head Master of Rugby School. The names of several of the
+authors, those, for instance, of the late Baden Powell, of Dr. Rowland
+Williams, and of Mr. Jowett, Regius Professor of Greek in the University
+of Oxford, are well known as among those of the most advanced and ablest
+leaders of thought in the most liberal section of the English Church. It
+is not strange that a volume to which such men have contributed should
+have excited a general and deep interest among all who are interested in
+the present position of scholarship in England and of thought in regard
+to the most important subjects which can occupy the intellects of men.
+
+Whatever expectations the announcement of the volume excited are well
+supported by its contents. It is the most important contribution made
+during the present generation in England to the establishment of a sound
+religious philosophy, and to the advance of religious truth. Whatever
+opposition some of the speculations contained in it may excite, whether
+the main views of its authors be accepted or not, (and in this notice we
+do not propose to consider whether they be true or not,) the
+principles upon which their opinions and speculations are based are
+so incontrovertible, and the learning and ability with which they are
+supported are so great, that the work must inevitably produce a lasting
+effect upon the tendency of thought in respect to the subjects it
+embraces and must lead to the reconsideration of many prevalent
+opinions. It is a book at once to start doubts in the minds of those
+attached to established forms and bound by ancient creeds, and to quiet
+doubts in those who have been perplexed in the bewilderments of modern
+metaphysical philosophy or have found it difficult to reconcile the
+truths established by science with their faith in the Christian
+religion. It is a book which serves as a landmark of the most advanced
+point to which religious thought has yet reached, and from which to take
+a new observation and departure.
+
+The most striking external characteristic of these Essays is, that,
+having been "written in entire independence of each other, and without
+concert or comparison," they, without exception, present a close
+similarity in spirit and in tone. All of them are distinguished by
+a union of freedom with reverence, as rare as it is remarkable, in
+treating of subjects peculiarly likely to suffer from being handled in a
+conventional manner, and usually discussed with exaggerated freedom or
+with superstitious reverence. In tone and temper they leave nothing to
+be desired; they are neither hot with zeal nor rash with controversial
+eagerness; but they are calm without coldness, earnest without
+extravagance. The fairness and candor displayed in them, the freedom
+from party-prejudice or bias, the clearness in the statement of
+difficulties, the honesty in the recognition of the limits of present
+knowledge, all indicate most clearly the growth of a worthy spirit in
+the treatment of subjects which have too often heretofore been fields
+for the exhibition of narrowness, intolerance, and bigotry. Such a book
+is not only an honor to the men engaged in its production, but of happy
+augury for the future progress of truth.
+
+The topics which these Essays discuss are of as much interest in America
+as in England, to those outside the English Church as to those within
+it. But, at the same time, most of the Essays (and this consideration
+is not a satisfactory one) are of a kind which it would seem could have
+been produced only in England, and there only within the limits of the
+Church. In America we have no body of men capable of work so different
+in its parts, and, at the same time, exhibiting such soundness and
+extent of scholarship, such liberality of opinion, such disciplined
+habits of thought. Any single Essay in the volume might, perhaps,
+without any extravagance of supposition, have been the work of some
+American scholar; but the difficulty would be to find here seven writers
+each capable of producing one of the Essays. The intellectual discipline
+of English methods of study and of English institutions still produces
+a greater number of men capable of the highest sort of work, than the
+methods in vogue and the institutions established here. We have thinkers
+who venture as pioneers into the uncleared wilderness. Their vigorous
+blows bring down many an old tree moss-grown with errors, and their
+ploughs for the first time turn the soil covered with the fallen leaves
+of decayed beliefs; but we fail in our supply of those men who are to
+follow the pioneers and do the higher and more lasting constructive work
+of civilization. Now, as in past times, we must be content, so far as we
+may, to have this work done for us by the thinkers and scholars of other
+lands. But how long is this to last? Is the same sort of makeshift to be
+allowed in the processes of American thought, which in the expanse of
+our territory we have allowed in the processes of material labor?
+
+The publication of these "Essays and Reviews" marks, as we believe,
+an epoch in the history of thought in England. They will stand as the
+monument of the reaction of the best minds against the "Tractarian"
+movement on the one hand, and against the skeptical tendencies of much
+of the science and philosophy of recent times on the other. For while,
+at Oxford and elsewhere, a strong current has set back against the
+unimpeded progress of truth, while the attempt has been made, and not
+without a transient success, to rivet old fetters upon the hearts and
+intellects of men, another school, borrowing their metaphysics from
+Germany, and their notions of Christianity from the common creeds, have
+set up science in opposition to faith, and have treated religion, with
+more or less openness, as if it were a worn-out superstition. The
+essential value of this book is, that its various Essays are virtually
+an attempt--how far successful each reader must judge for himself--to
+show that the Christian religion is no fixed and formalized set of
+doctrines, but an expansive and fluent faith, adapting itself to the new
+needs of every generation and of each individual; not opposed to the
+teachings of science, but, when properly understood, entirely harmonious
+with them, and drawing continually fresh support from them; having
+nothing to fear from the progress of knowledge and the increase of
+light, but everything to gain; welcoming truth, whencesoever it may
+come, whatsoever it may be, whithersoever it may lead.
+
+Beside the topics of thought treated of in this volume, it suggests
+incidentally many others of peculiar interest. As an indication of the
+present condition of English scholarship, it is full of encouragement
+for the future. For more than a century there has been very little deep,
+original, and productive study of the Scriptures in England. A new
+impulse has now been given to it. What will be its effect, and the
+effect of the liberalized and more tolerant spirit of which it is a
+proof, upon the constitution of the English Church can be foreseen but
+in part. It is certain that it must lead to great changes, and to a
+virtual breaking-down of many of the most confining sectarian barriers.
+No Articles and no Creeds can stand for many generations as the
+authoritative expressions of belief, after the character of the
+compulsion which they exercise is understood, after the history of
+sectarian differences is fairly stated, after the interpretation of
+Scripture is placed upon a sound basis, and the nature of Christianity
+and the object of the teachings of Christ are thus brought home to the
+intellects and the hearts of men.
+
+
+_A Journey in the Back-Country_. By FREDERICK LAW OLMSTED. Author of "A
+Journey in the Seaboard Slave-States," "A Journey in Texas," "Walks and
+Talks of an American Farmer in England," etc. New York: Mason Brothers.
+1860. pp. xvi., 492.
+
+Mr. Olmsted is no ordinary traveller for amusement or adventure. He
+leaves home to instruct himself through his own eyes and ears concerning
+matters of general interest about which no trustworthy information was
+to be found in books. Looking at Slavery merely as an economist, with no
+political or moral prepossessions to mislead his judgment, he went to
+study for himself its workings and results as a form of labor, we might
+almost say, so cool-headed is he, as an application of forces, rather
+than as a social or political phenomenon. Self-possessed and wary,
+almost provokingly unsympathetic in his report of what he saw,
+pronouncing no judgment on isolated facts, and drawing no undue
+inferences from them, he has now generalized his results in a most
+interesting and valuable book. No more important contributions to
+contemporary American history have been made than in this volume and the
+two that preceded it. We know of no book that offers a parallel to them,
+except Arthur Young's "Travels in France." To discuss the question of
+Slavery without passion or even sentiment seemed an impossibility; yet
+Mr. Olmsted has shown that it can be done, and, having no theory to
+bolster, has contrived to tell us what he saw, and not what he went to
+see,--the rarest achievement among travellers. Without the charm of
+style, he has the truthfulness of Herodotus.
+
+We do not forget that there was wisdom as well as wit in Dr. Johnson's
+sarcastic classification of facts with donkeys. The great majority of
+so-called facts, and especially those detailed by travellers, are of no
+consequence whatever to man or beast. What is it to us that Mr. A. has
+been condescending enough to look at the Venus of Milo, or that Mr. B.,
+with more time than he knows what to do with already on his hands, must
+steal a couple of good working hours from Carlyle, worth probably five
+guineas apiece? That Hannibal crossed the Alps was something; that
+Goethe did was and is also of some consequence; but the transit of Mr.
+Anarithmon Smith need cause no excitement in the observatories. That a
+man has found out, by laborious counting, which is the middle word
+in the New Testament, is pretty sure to get into the newspapers as a
+remarkable fact; that he had discovered its central thought, and made
+it the keystone to knit together his else incomplete outward and inward
+lives, would hardly be esteemed of so much consequence. Facts are such
+different things, especially to different persons! The truth is, that
+we should distinguish between real facts and the mere images of facts,
+though the newspapers teach us to confound them, putting side by side,
+as they do, Garibaldi's entry into Naples and Dennis McQuigley's into
+the lock-up.
+
+The man who gives us a really new fact deserves to be classed with
+him who makes two blades of grass grow where one grew before, for it
+contains the germinal principle of knowledge. We owe a large debt in
+this kind to Mr. Olmsted. He tells us much of what he saw, little of
+what he thought. He has good eyes, and that something behind them that
+makes a good observer. As respects the South, he has the advantage of
+being at once native and foreigner, so that what is merely American does
+not divide his attention with what is local and peculiar. Making entries
+in his diary before impressions have had time to cool, he has preserved
+even the dialect of those with whom he talked, and thus given a lively
+reality to his narrative.
+
+Nearly one-half of Mr. Olmsted's present volume is devoted to a
+discussion of the conclusions to be drawn from the mass of observations
+he has thus far collected. His views are entitled to the more
+consideration that the tone of his mind is so dispassionate. He finds
+himself compelled to give his verdict against Slavery, whether it be
+considered morally, politically, or economically. We cannot but think
+that the reading of his book will do great good in opening the minds of
+many to a perception that the agitation of the Slavery question is not
+a mere clash of unthinking prejudices between North and South, that
+Slavery itself is not a matter of purely local concern, but that
+it interests all parts of the Republic equally. It is certainly of
+paramount importance that we should understand the practical workings
+of a system which is converting what by natural increase will soon
+constitute a majority of the population in the fairest portion of our
+territory into a vast planting, hoeing, and cotton-picking machine.
+
+Mr. Olmsted's qualifications as a traveller are so remarkable that we
+cannot help wishing that he would make a journey through New England and
+make us as thoroughly acquainted with its internal condition as we ought
+to be. We believe there is no book of the kind since that of President
+Dwight, and that gives us little of the sort of information we desire.
+It is an insight into the manners, modes of life, and ways of thinking
+that is of value; and Mr. Olmsted, who goes about, like Chaucer's
+Somner,
+
+  "Ever inquiring upon everything,"
+
+is just the person to supply a great want in our literature. We know
+less of the domestic habits of a large part of our population than of
+those of the Saxons in the time of Alfred. But for a few glimpses
+which we get from Dunton, Madam Knight, the Rev. Jacob Bailey, and the
+Proceedings of Synods, we should be little better acquainted with the
+New Englanders of the century following the Restoration than with the
+primitive Aryans. Bailey's account of his voyage to England is the best
+contemporary testimony to the truth of Smollett's pictures of sea-life
+that we ever met with, and we cannot sufficiently regret that the whole
+of his journal during his college-life was not published. Mr. Olmsted
+would be sure of a grateful recognition from posterity, if he would
+do for New England what he has done for the South. We might not be
+flattered by his report, but we could not fail to be benefited by it.
+It would, perhaps, lead to the establishment of home missions among the
+Bad-Bread and Foul-Air tribes, who make more wretched captives for life
+and kill more children than the French and Indians together ever dreamed
+of.
+
+
+_Sketches of Parisian Life. The Greatness and Decline of César
+Birotteau_. From the French of HONORÉ DE BALZAC. Translated by O.W.
+WIGHT and F.B. GOODRICH. New York: Rudd & Carleton, 130 Grand Street.
+1860. pp. 387.
+
+We are very glad to see this beginning of a translation of Balzac, or
+de Balzac, as he chose to christen himself. Without intending an
+exact parallel, he might be called the Fielding of French
+Literature,--intensely masculine, an artist who works outward from an
+informing idea, a satirist whose humor will not let him despise human
+nature even while he exposes its weaknesses. The story of Caesar
+Birotteau is well-chosen as an usher to the rest, for it is eminently
+characteristic, though it does not show the higher imaginative qualities
+of the author. It is one of the severest tests of genius to draw an
+ordinary character so humanly that we learn to love and respect it in
+spite of a thorough familiarity with its faults and absurdities. In this
+respect Balzac's "Birotteau" is a masterpiece. The translation, as far
+as we have had time to look into it, seems a very easy, spirited, and
+knowing one. The translators have overcome the difficulties of _slang_
+with great skill, rendering by equivalent vulgarisms which give the
+spirit where the letter would be unintelligible. We object, however, to
+a phrase like "vest-pocket," where we find it in the narrative, and not
+in the mouth of one of the personages. It is tailor's English, which is
+as bad as peddler's French. But this is a trifle where there is so much
+to commend in essentials, and we hope the translators will be encouraged
+to go on in a work so excellently begun.
+
+
+_Home Ballads and Poems_. By JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. Boston: Ticknor &
+Fields. 1800. pp. 206.
+
+The natural product of a creed which ignores the aesthetical part of man
+and reduces Nature to a uniform drab would seem to have been Bernard
+Barton. _His_ verse certainly infringed none of the superstitions of the
+sect; for from title-page to colophon, there was no sin either in the
+way of music or color. There was, indeed, a frugal and housewifely Muse,
+that brewed a cup, neither cheering unduly nor inebriating, out of the
+emptyings of Wordsworth's teapot. How that little busy B. improved each
+shining hour, how neatly he laid his wax, it gives us a cold shiver to
+think of,--_ancora ci raccappriccia!_ Against a copy of verses signed
+"B.B.," as we remember them in the hardy Annuals that went to seed
+so many years ago, we should warn our incautious offspring as an
+experienced duck might her brood against a charge of B.B. shot. It
+behooves men to be careful; for one may chance to suffer lifelong from
+these intrusions of cold lead in early life, as duellists sometimes
+carry about all their days a bullet from which no surgery can relieve
+them. Memory avenges our abuses of her, and, as an awful example, we
+mention the fact that we have never been able to forget certain stanzas
+of another B.B., who, under the title of Boston Bard, whilom obtained
+from newspaper-columns that concession which gods and men would
+unanimously have denied him.
+
+George Fox, utterly ignoring the immense stress which Nature lays on
+established order and precedent, got hold of a half-truth which made him
+crazy, as half-truths are wont. But the inward light, whatever else it
+might be, was surely not of that kind "that never was on land or sea."
+There has been much that was poetical in the lives of Quakers, little in
+the men themselves. Poetry demands a richer and more various culture,
+and, however good we may find such men as John Woolman and Elias
+Boudinot, they make us feel painfully that the salt of the earth is
+something very different, to say the least, from the Attic variety of
+the same mineral. Let Armstrong and Whitworth and James experiment as
+they will, they shall never hit on a size of bore so precisely adequate
+for the waste of human life as the journal of an average Quaker.
+Compared with it, the sandy intervals of Swedenborg gush with singing
+springs, and Cotton Mather is a very Lucian for liveliness.
+
+Yet this dry Quaker stem has fairly blossomed at last, and Nature, who
+can never be long kept under, has made a poet of Mr. Whittier as she
+made a General of Greene. To make a New England poet, she had her choice
+between Puritan and Quaker, and she took the Quaker. He is, on the
+whole, the most representative poet that New England has produced. He
+sings her thoughts, her prejudices, her scenery. He has not forgiven the
+Puritans for hanging two or three of his co-sectaries, but he admires
+them for all that, calls on his countrymen as
+
+  "Sons of men who sat in council with their
+  Bibles round the board,
+  Answering Charles's royal mandate with a
+  stern 'Thus saith the Lord,'"
+
+and at heart, we suspect, has more sympathy with Miles Standish than
+with Mary Dyer. Indeed,
+
+  "Sons of men who sat in meeting with their
+  broadbrims o'er their brow,
+  Answering Charles's royal mandate with a
+  _thee_ instead of _thou_,"
+
+would hardly do. Whatever Mr. Whittier may lack, he has the prime merit
+that he smacks of the soil. It is a New England heart he buttons his
+strait-breasted coat over, and it gives the buttons a sharp strain now
+and then. Even the native idiom crops out here and there in his verses.
+He makes _abroad_ rhyme with _God_, _law_ with _war_, _us_ with _curse_,
+_scorner_ with _honor_, _been_ with _men_, _beard_ with _shared_. For
+the last two we have a certain sympathy as archaisms, but with the rest
+we can make no terms whatever,--they must march out with no honors of
+war. The Yankee lingo is insoluble in poetry, and the accent would give
+a flavor of _essence-pennyr'y'l_ to the very Beatitudes. It differs from
+Lowland Scotch as a _patois_ from a dialect.
+
+But criticism is not a game of jerk-straws, and Mr. Whittier has other
+and better claims on us than as a stylist. There is true fire in the
+heart of the man, and his eye is the eye of a poet. A more juicy soil
+might have made him a Burns or a Béranger for us. New England is dry
+and hard, though she have a warm nook in her, here and there, where the
+magnolia grows after a fashion. It is all very nice to say to our poets,
+"You have sky and wood and waterfall and men and women,--in short, the
+entire outfit of Shakspeare; Nature is the same here as elsewhere"; and
+when the popular lecturer says it, the popular audience gives a stir of
+approval. But it is all _bosh_, nevertheless. Nature is _not_ the same
+here, and perhaps never will be, as in lands where man has mingled his
+being with hers for countless centuries, where every field is steeped in
+history, every crag is ivied with legend, and the whole atmosphere of
+thought is hazy with the Indian summer of tradition. Nature without an
+ideal background is nothing. We may claim whatever merits we like, (and
+our orators are not too bashful,) we may be as free and enlightened as
+we choose, but we are certainly not interesting or picturesque. We may
+be as beautiful to the statistician as a column of figures, and dear to
+the political economist as a social phenomenon; but our hive has little
+of that marvellous Bee-bread that can transmute the brain to finer
+issues than a gregarious activity in hoarding. The Puritans left us a
+fine estate in conscience, energy, and respect for learning; but they
+disinherited us of the past. Not a single stage-property of poetry did
+they bring with them but the good old Devil, with his graminivorous
+attributes, and even he could not stand the climate. Neither horn nor
+hoof nor tail of him has been seen for a century. He is as dead as the
+goat-footed Pan, whom he succeeded, and we tenderly regret him.
+
+Mr. Whittier himself complains somewhere of
+
+  "The rigor of our frozen sky,"
+
+and he seems to have been thinking of our clear, thin, intellectual
+atmosphere, the counterpart of our physical one, of which artists
+complain that it rounds no edges. We have sometimes thought that his
+verses suffered from a New England taint in a too great tendency to
+metaphysics and morals, which may be the bases on which poetry rests,
+but should not be carried too high above-ground. Without this, however,
+he would not have been the typical New England poet that he is. In the
+present volume there is little of it. It is more purely objective than
+any of its forerunners, and is full of the most charming rural pictures
+and glimpses, in which every sight and sound, every flower, bird, and
+tree, is neighborly and homely. He makes us see
+
+  "the old swallow-haunted barns,
+  Brown-gabled, long, and full of seams
+  Through which the moted sunlight streams,
+  And winds blow freshly in to shake
+  The red plumes of the roosted cocks
+  And the loose hay-mow's scented locks,"--
+
+  "the cattle-yard
+  With the white horns tossing above the wall,"--
+
+the spring-blossoms that drooped over the river,
+
+  "Lighting up the swarming shad:"--
+
+and
+
+  "the bulged nets sweeping shoreward
+  With their silver-sided haul."
+
+Every picture is full of color, and shows that true eye for Nature which
+sees only what it ought, and that artistic memory which brings home
+compositions and not catalogues. There is hardly a hill, rock, stream,
+or sea-fronting headland in the neighborhood of his home that he has not
+fondly remembered. Sometimes, we think, there is too much description,
+the besetting sin of modern verse, which has substituted what should be
+called wordy-painting for the old art of painting in a single word. The
+essential character of Mr. Whittier's poetry is lyrical, and the rush of
+the lyric, like that of a brook, allows few pictures. Now and then there
+may be an eddy where the feeling lingers and reflects a bit of scenery,
+but for the most part it can only catch gleams of color that mingle
+with the prevailing tone and enrich without usurping on it. This volume
+contains some of the best of Mr. Whittier's productions in this kind.
+"Skipper Ireson's Ride" we hold to be by long odds the best of modern
+ballads. There are others nearly as good in their way, and all, with a
+single exception, embodying native legends. In "Telling the Bees," Mr.
+Whittier has enshrined a country superstition in a poem of exquisite
+grace and feeling. "The Garrison of Cape Ann" would have been a fine
+poem, but it has too much of the author in it, and to put a moral at the
+end of a ballad is like sticking a cork on the point of a sword. It is
+pleasant to see how much our Quaker is indebted for his themes to Cotton
+Mather, who belabored his un-Friends of former days with so much bad
+English and worse Latin. With all his faults, that conceited old pedant
+contrived to make one of the most entertaining books ever written on
+this side the water, and we wonder that no one should take the trouble
+to give us a tolerably correct edition of it. Absurdity is common
+enough, but such a genius for it as Mather had is a rare and delightful
+gift.
+
+This last volume has given us a higher conception of Mr. Whittier's
+powers. We already valued as they deserved his force of faith, his
+earnestness, the glow and hurry of his thought, and the (if every third
+stump-speaker among us were not a Demosthenes, we should have said
+Demosthenean) eloquence of his verse; but here we meet him in a softer
+and more meditative mood. He seems a Berserker turned Carthusian. The
+half-mystic tone of "The Shadow and the Light" contrasts strangely, and,
+we think, pleasantly, with the war-like clang of "From Perugia." The
+years deal kindly with good men, and we find a clearer and richer
+quality in these verses where the ferment is over and the _rile_ has
+quietly settled. We have had no more purely American poet than Mr.
+Whittier, none in whom the popular thought found such ready and vigorous
+expression. The future will not fail to do justice to a man who has been
+so true to the present.
+
+
+
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+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11103 ***